IDW1 had a good story and ideas, but nothing felt planned out, almost like if IDW felt the series wouldn't be their most popular comic. IDW2 atleast feels like it was plotted from start to end.

 

Yeah. It's why I give phase 2 of IDW1 high praise for it's first half because it made sense of a near incomprehensible phase 1 and tried to tie things all together.

 

IMO it's way too early for this thread.

 

Neither. I prefer Scioli's TF VS GI Joe over both.

 

There's gender issues in IDW2 so far?

 

There are not unless he's under the impression that featuring fembots as a normal part of the population is somehow a gender issue?

 

The alien aspect was a major part of my enjoyment of the start of IDW1, that it was set from the human's standpoint helped the robots feel like dangerous alien machines. IDW2 feels more like humans in robot suits (with human problems); gender to me makes them more relatable, which is not what I personally want from Transformers.

 

Ah. I see.

 

Maybe it's fairer to compare the first 20 or so issues to one another.

In IDW1, by this stage, we were most of the way through Escalation, I believe - if you count the Spotlights as issues.

In this case, I would put IDW1 miles ahead on artwork, and in terms of the story, IDW2 feels more coherent while IDW1 has made a bigger impact in terms of characters, mysteries and action.

 

I prefer IDW 1 better because it had a lot of variety between earth and other planets as well as the pacing of the stories seemed better when they introduced new characters and when they killed off old ones you felt it more. While with IDW 2 it feels like an inconsistent story trying to lead up to something and when it does it was easily predicted.

 

What? You don't want to relate to characters?

 

Obviously everything is on a scale; but Transformers are aliens and machines, they should be weird and wonderful, not grappling with the exact same thoughts and emotions as me.
That is how I feel, I'm probably in the minority, but hey we are all different so I will give some examples that relate to the topic.

I think that the first 20 issues of IDW1 did that better, Rachet's holo avatar is a good example, he is clunky and doesn't fit in. Most of the robots shown are in disguise as vehicles, the panels are drawn so that the robots look larger than us. Another example is how alien feeling Megatron is when Verity first meets him, he is huge, he just stands there as the place is exploding and glares, he barely acknowledges a human as a living entity and says nothing. I can't relate to that! Her reaction is what I relate to, what the heck would I do in that situation? That is what I enjoy.



In the initial issues of IDW2, I think that they all speak and act like humans. They are drawn in panels so that you have no sense of how massive they are. Largely, they look more human, with human proportions and features.
I don't think: "Wow look at how cool and different these robots are or how weird Cybertron is", I think: "Those Cybertronian conferences look as tedious as the one I was in last week." Does that make sense?

 

If by Phase 1 you mean scrap everything from All Hail Megstron on? Then easily phase 1.

 

The pacing complaints about the current series are interesting, because I remember the same complaints about how long it took for anything to happen in Infiltration. What short memories we have! Stories have to build up to the payoff for that payoff to mean anything. That means introducing characters and the world they live in, setting the stakes and upping the tension gradually.

It's too early to really fairly compare the previous continuity with the current one, but if I were to choose I would say I'm enjoying IDW2 more than anything I've read since Dreamwave. I liked Furman's story quite a bit, and still consider it probably my favorite part of IDW1, but Ruckley's Transformers series has surpassed it. I'll admit the current series did crawl a bit for me as well, at first (so I get the pacing complaints), but the first time I sat down and read the first nine issues in a row, it all clicked and I've been on board ever since and constantly looking forward to the next issue.

 

I think the lack of scale in the new continuity is more of an unavoidable by-product of the setting if anything. And in terms of dialogue I've always found it kind of an impossible demand for the Transformers to "talk alien" when really, no matter how stilted or fluid their speech is, they still ultimately speak like humans. It's just unavoidable when considering we base their diction and speech entirely off of how we as humans (or, er, English language humans) speak and interact, and removing things like slang kind of just promotes the illusion of being robotic and alien, when even in the Furman era there are turn-of-phrases, metaphors, and such employed.

I fully agree about the Cybertronian conferences in IDW2 though. I generally enjoy the IDW2 comics, but it totally misses how batshit certain political congregations can be. Less than a week ago the Taiwanese parliament had opposition members throwing pig-guts at the leading party over a trade agreement with the US followed by literal fistfights, whereas anyone who keeps up with Canadian house of commons debates (just me probably) will note the sick burns Erin O'Toole has leveled at Trudeau for his brinkmanship, and that one time an opposition leader brought a cardboard cutout of the Prime Minister to the room just to make a point. IDW2 does what a lot of other fiction trying to depict parliamentary or caucus meetings do, which is illustrate a total, I guess, idealized painting of how these processes work, in which everyone calmly takes their turns speaking and completely ignores the inherent absurdity present in many of these political debates. People in these positions are heavily passionate about what they believe in and what they are doing (or at the very least need to convey a sense of passion), and this results in these explosive scenarios-- but because of this bizarre agreed upon belief that politics are somehow perpetually boring and mundane in practice it is depicted in a strictly intellectual capacity in fiction such as this and does away with the human factor that can be readily observed in these issues.

 

Worse surname ever lol

Think idw1 wins out but not by much.

 

I feel like this isn't as big of an issue in this series. Right now everyone is on Cybertron, and is from the Cybertronian point of view. Being that size the are isn't impressive to them, so without anything to contrast it with, like an onlooking human, I don't feel like it needs to be emphasized.

This right here? It sums up exactly why I don't feel like this approach to treating the Transformers all the time works. The humans are more relatable than the Transformers. I want to the title characters of the franchise to be the stars of the show and as close as they can be to being relatable to me as any other character, regardless of species. I acknowledge that there are ways where they can never be relatable to the audience, but I don't feel like that relatibility needs to be kept to a minimum.

 

Neither, IDW1 Phase 2 "Season 1" is probably some of the best transformers content ever!

 

I very much prefer Ruckley’s take on the world of Transformers. Honestly, outside of MTMTE/LL, I don’t really care all that much about IDW1.

 

In that case, anything is better than IDW1. A horrible, meandering story (that ended up getting ditched without paying off when Furman got ousted in favor of AHM) with some of the most amateurish, lackluster art ever inflicted on any franchise. All capped off with what was easily the worst coloring job in all of comics history up to that point (mid-2000s). How any of you can force yourself to revisit it, much less enjoy any of it, is completely baffling to me.

IDW never became good, imo, until after Costa's run.