Pretty sure OP knew, as IDW Prime was painted as having grown more and more distant as the war went on to try and rectify Furman's characterization and McCarthy's characterization both being the same Optimus. So as the war got bigger and spread to even more worlds he kind of just started looking the other way like he did with the Dynobots and left the Wreckers to Prowl. It wasn't until AHM that Prime started to look at things more like a traditional Optimus would again.

 

Even though it's via secondhand accounts,
we are told the Wreckers weren't murdering
adversaries left & right 24/7. They still knew
how to perform Autobot heroics, like when
Impactor rescued Emirate Xaaron during the
early days of GW's second half. You have to
remember, these aren't the sanest, squeakiest
clean soldiers around. Every Wrecker had
something wrong with them. In Whirl's case
it was all the trauma the Senate put him
through: demolishing his clock making
shop, forcing him to serve as their attack dog,
replacing his head & hands with a cyclopic mug
& salad tong mitts. He's so twisted up inside.
Roadbuster? There was something askew with
him upstairs BEFORE Tarantulas came along to
manipulate him into slaughtering those cadets.
That's a recurring element in Nick Roche's books:
can these people be heroic? Of course. But, are
they all incredibly fucked up? Absolutely.

 

Hope someone asks him on this interview why he wrote the comics to have events proceed as slowly as molasses. He thought he could do a Game of Thrones and write this until he is old and gray? 

 

Amen to that, the pacing has been atrocious. Easily my least favourite run of TF comics.

 

I haven't been a big fan of the rebooted G1 continuity the same as many, but I feel it has finally become a lot more crisp and interesting in regards to story telling after its ponderous slow and dull world-building start. So to me, it's nice to see that hopefully they can wrap up the Exarchon story with this before they lose the license at year's end as I do think Ruckley is doing a few interesting and unique things with this take on the Cybertronian civil war.

 

This made me dig out my CW Cyclonus and BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I forgot how inferior it was to Kingdom and Universe 2.0 Cyclonus. That head in particularly is just not good. Of all the molds they chose to be IDW 2.0's Cyclonus's design . . .

 

Well it's because CW Cyclonus was the latest one out when IDW2 started.

 

Totally agree with this, it was such a slog at the start but it's a little bit sad to see it go now that it's finally getting interesting doing its own thing

 

spoken by someone who admits they don’t read the comics but someone who every month says “hey what’s happening in these previous?” “Why is this character like this? What is this happening?” Go read the comics “no I don’t want to.”

 

I always liked the writing... to me, the biggest positive change is the ART, which really (finally) feels the way Transformers should. Jack Lawrence really killed it in War's End #1. Here's hoping that IDW goes out strong with its best artists on the TF titles. I'm looking forward to how they wrap up (or, possibly more likely, "leave off") this universe... I don't think they're going to end the war or anything, I think they're going to lay the groundwork for the TF history we're familiar with so that this continuity can dovetail into whatever (non-IDW1) G1 or post-G1 story you like best. Like, there's no reason why this can't be the backstory for Beast Wars, for example. And I doubt any future series is going to delve into the origins of the war with the level of detail and attention that this one did... if the next publisher starts up in media res of the Earthen war, who's to say this isn't the history? Even the original 'Infiltration' setup for IDW1 would have worked GREAT with this as a backstory.

So I'm glad Ruckley did his thing and I'm glad he's getting to wrap up his story. This particular continuity is one of my favorites for actually showing me something I was always curious about but never really got to see in detail. It's ACTUALLY DIFFERENT while still feeling completely G1 (other than Brainstorm being prematurely dead).