Comics not being accessible to the mainstream because they aren't found in places where the mainstream shops is a big problem. Of course that kind of happened also because there was no where to put the comics when the newsstand's space shrunk and physical book stores all but disappeared, but when looking to expand into the casual market the industry just isn't getting enough exposure.

However, to be honest the other problem is that I think that twenty some dollar toy is actually still more attractive to parents than that $4...I mean $5...no, I mean $10 because it's double sized or whatever comic book. Because of that even if they were at the grocery store still I'm not sure that that out of control price structure wouldn't scare away the casual and young kid buyers.

 

Comics have gotten away from the direct market, they're just not what most people mean when we talk about comics. Manga was driving a global print shortage, and Raina Telgemeier's comics are some of the most popular books in the world. People love reading comics, they just don't want what the so-called comics industry is selling.

 

Part of the reason costs are so high is because with low print runs comes low advertising $$$ to offset print costs. As that print run goes up it becomes more appealing to advertisers.

and as a parent, I'd much rather buy my kiddo $20 in comic books (or any book really) than a $20 toy...

 

But wasn't Morrison's run all about evolution and moving forward I.E. leaving the evergreen and the status quo behind? We all love the classic X-Men, but it's time to keep moving forward instead of trying to soft reboot that franchise back to the 1991 all the time.

 

MTMTE, lost light, and three wreckers book, all of them are amazing.
Beast wars is ok, the new characters makes me want to know more about the story.
I also read the IDW 2019 version, I'm at #17 so far, the main storyline interests me, but the pacing is slow so far and most of characters aren't as vivid as those from MTMTE. I might have false expectations before reading it, but I will still read the rest of it.

 

Well ads are a thing of the past in comics now, it will never be like it was again, since advertisers want to reach a wider audience, and comic book companies can't reach a larger audience without a larger print run, and they can't have a larger print run with advertising revenue, which they'll only get when advertisers see that a wider audience is reading comics again, and on and on.

And I think that's only because you yourself are a comic book man, most casuals just don't see that value like you do, or understand why a single book is like a kid's entire allowance any more than they understand the overabundance and need for multiple variant covers. All I'm saying is that it's going to take more than just a rack at Walgreens if they want to bring back the casual buyers.

 

The biggest problem with modern comics is they don't tell stories people are interested in. My kids read manga because they're fun and self-contained; the complete opposite of comic books.

 

I'm disappointed but not too badly. I came back Transformers after IDW1 ended and it took a few months before I was invested enough to even start the shows let alone the comics. Because of that, I never got in to the main IDW2 run either. However over the last few months I've been really getting in to the new BW and Wreckers books (SG too but not quite as much). So I'd be sad to see those runs end, but I don't have a long term connection with IDW's comics to really name this feel too bad for me.

I'll be curious to see if there ends up being any truth to this.

 

That is something I feel many many recent American comics fail at: telling a fairly complete story in one or two issues, instead of everything being a 3-6+ issue overarching story minimum. You can have ongoing story stuff happening as well, and longer story arcs, but you need to make individual issues interesting to read on their own, enough to bring in new readers.

 

There's nothing wrong with wanting more self contained stories, and sure, a lot of manga do that better than western comics. But saying that the biggest problem with modern comics is that don't do self contained stuff more often is wrong. Let's look at two manga examples.

Tokyo Revengers - it had an anime adaptation earlier this year. After the anime started, exposing it to a wider audience, sales of the manga volumes absolutely exploded, increasing to something like 5x or more what it was before the anime. Why bring it up? Because Tokyo Revengers has something like 25+ right now, and some of it's story arcs go like 3 or 4 volumes. The longest arc so far was like 8 volumes long. That is not self contained.

One Piece - this series has been in publication on a near constant weekly basis since about 1997, only taking breaks for the creator's health or national emergencies (the writer/head artist has been hospitalized several times for overworking himself). It has well over a hundred volumes, like 900ish episodes, merchandise out the wazoo, etc. And it's all one long continuous story broken up into story arcs that span multiple volumes each.

Fans in general do not care that much about whether something is self contained or not, they just want something that's well written and well produced, that doesn't rely on constant crossovers and shocking pointless deaths of characters that have been around years or decades. And I don't mean no deaths ever, I mean that stupid BS you see in big ticket events in western comics where random c-list or lower characters get randomly killed just to show how serious the threat of the week is.

 

I don't think what I mentioned is the BIGGEST problem facing comics, but I do still think it's a pretty frequent and major problem that so many comics can't balance both a larger ongoing story arc with telling complete stories in one or two issues. I don't think longer overarcing stories should be abandoned, just that the smaller-level storytelling shouldn't normally be 3-6 issues for a full story.

Those other things you mentioned I absolutely agree with being major problems as well; crossovers that continually completely interrupt the stories that authors of other books were trying to build up, often to the extent that what their plans are for a major character they're writing has to change because of something that happened with the character in the crossover; the deaths purely for shock value, that often comparatively minor yet beloved by at least some small group characters may take years and years to be revived from, if ever. Has Arsenal even been brought back since Heroes in Crisis? Let alone Blue Jay, Commander Steel, Gnarrk, etc...

 

To be honest, I actually the IDW comics but when they had the GI JOE and other properties collab, things when in a downward spiral

 

The new She-Ra has 52 episodes, released over a year and a half!

My point is, compare that to WFC. Not only was there no attempt to bring in BW and G1 voice actors, the voice talent they did pull in were, IMHO, absolutely terrible, and in most cases didn't sound anything like the original: the BW characters being the worst.

4 special-order dolls from a 52-episode series I wouldn't call a "toyline". What I'm saying is the intent of the show wasn't to support a toyline, anymore than Dr. Who exists to support its toys.

And I wouldn't say the ending promoted abusive relationships anymore than Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader's relationship, or Rey/Kylo Ren's. It is a story of redemption and change.

 

Personally I would rather have something than nothing, but I’d rather have a good comic than a bad comic. Quality is subjective of course but I’ve not been happy with many IDW2 issues. If IDW isn’t capable of producing comics that I enjoy, then I’d have to put my name on the “let it go, let it go” pile, and hopefully some other publisher will pick up the license.

 

I've always liked IDW but I did lose a bit of faith in them when they stopped completing the classic collections e.g. they never completed the uk collection or gave us the generation 2 collection.

 

The IDW2 Ruckley-written Transformers is my favorite Transformers series in a long, long time. Probably the best since Dreamwave. I'm hoping the rumor isn't true here, because I'm not ready for that series to end.

I'm not sure I'm really interested in starting over yet again either, if some other company is given the license.

 

I was always disappointed in this, but I'm sure it's a simple case of economics. I doubt the demand is there, especially since the UK books were originally in black and white. I'm fortunate to have all of the Titan reprints from a couple of decades ago, including the smaller digest books.

I doubt we'll ever see all of that in print, but I hope at some point they all get offered digitally. The big two have put a lot of work in app-based subscription services, but I doubt any Transformers publisher can justify that level of effort, especially since the license eventually expires, and it can't be a priority for Hasbro.

I've stated elsewhere in this thread the reasons I don't think Hasbro will ever move to hosting comics in the Pulse app, but if that's something they're ever interested in, I would love to see them digitize the old TF UK comics that have never been officially distributed outside their original release.

 

If IDW loses the license, do they also lose the ability to reprint their old comics? I might have to start stocking up on the trades.

 

Self contained means that you don't need to read three or four different series to follow the plot. AKA every big comic event.

 

Yes, that's how it works. See the recent example of Dark Horse losing the Star Wars license to Marvel for how that plays out. One of the things Marvel did was reprint new editions of the same collections that Dark Horse had, including the same trade dress style that DH used for their omnibus editions. Marvel also reprinted vintage comics in Marvel's own preferred format like their Epic Collections.

Hypothetically, a new licensor could continue reprinting the hardcover collections in the same style that IDW does today. However, since they're branded as "The IDW Collection," I don't think that's likely.

Edit to clarify: I think I'm wrong about the reprinting in the same trade dress point I made above, I'm mixing that up with digital copies. When Marvel got the rights, they relisted digital collections of the Dark Horse digital copies that were effectively identical with the exception of the licensing text. I'm not sure they actually physically printed that same material. Sorry to be confusing. The point about what a new licensor could do stands, however, on the same principle.