Characters, that IDW butchered the most?

Discussion in 'Transformers Comics Discussion' started by Seeker of seekers, Nov 27, 2021.

  1. Veridioz

    Veridioz Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2019
    Posts:
    1,110
    News Credits:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    197
    Likes:
    +5,490
    Tbh they shouldve just had onyx and liege maximo as an individual threat no shockwave or unicron. Hell it wouldve been awesome seeing galvatron being right that the primes were their enemies. But when you put unicron in a Tf story nowadays that means the continuity is at its end excluding tf prime. I was anticipating maybe the quints or the fallen be a endgame villain too.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  2. Happy Miracle

    Happy Miracle Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 9, 2016
    Posts:
    424
    Trophy Points:
    142
    Likes:
    +1,178
    also not to be a pedant but it feels like shockwave twice announces his servitude to Unicron but as if the previous one hasn’t happened.
    Also shockwave should have stayed dead. His surprise reveal is funny and interesting but then just becomes well… kinda bad lol
     
    • Like Like x 4
  3. Senator Magnificus

    Senator Magnificus Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2021
    Posts:
    1,569
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    Jackson, Georgia.
    Likes:
    +2,798
    YouTube (Legacy):
    I just wish there'd been a payoff to that Quint mural in Spotlight: Wheelie.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  4. Senator Magnificus

    Senator Magnificus Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2021
    Posts:
    1,569
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    Jackson, Georgia.
    Likes:
    +2,798
    YouTube (Legacy):
    He definitely should've remained gone after Dark Cybertron.
    That's a great end for his character: emotions restored Shockwave, horrified by the monstrous creature he'd been turned into, commits cosmic seppuku to save existence. It reminded me so much of Doc Ock's heroic demise from Spider-Man 2. He died as the good natured person he once was & Optimus swearing to remember him as the kindly senator he befriended millennia ago was heartbreaking. That faux Onyx Prime, Maximal horde scheming crap is grade A desecration.
     
    • Like Like x 7
  5. Veridioz

    Veridioz Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2019
    Posts:
    1,110
    News Credits:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    197
    Likes:
    +5,490
    It's like they wanted a new villain but they ended up just using shockwave for no good reason.
    Now for butchered characters lets talk about combiners excluding superion and monstructor(biggest winner in Idw1 btw) almost every combiner got shafted menasor is a punching bag, defensor oh my poor defensor gets side lined so bad that he lost his new combiner limb ( poor rook never stood a chance) and got replaced by a dead guy, and he gets shouldered by a zealot so hard he de- combines? Wtf? Bruticus had proper hype and gets shot by a few rockets and hes gone too. Computron and abominus weren't even an aftertought. And then we get to the king of not even going to be a big threat Predaking he gets to be a slave to some random villain that doesn't even matter in the long run, and razorclaw gets headshotted and there goes predaking out the window 1 panel in the final issue of unicron is good enough for this king.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  6. Ravage Stanixa

    Ravage Stanixa My Spark belongs to the TRUE Perfect Decepticon.

    Joined:
    May 26, 2021
    Posts:
    1,218
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    San Francisco
    Likes:
    +3,209
    Ebay:
    Twitter:
    YouTube (Legacy):
    YouTube (Custom URL):
    Tumblr:
    I agree but you know the series is over right?
     
    • Like Like x 2
  7. Senator Magnificus

    Senator Magnificus Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2021
    Posts:
    1,569
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    Jackson, Georgia.
    Likes:
    +2,798
    YouTube (Legacy):
    Right, but, I meant them exploring the idea. Period.
     
    • Like Like x 2
  8. Ravage Stanixa

    Ravage Stanixa My Spark belongs to the TRUE Perfect Decepticon.

    Joined:
    May 26, 2021
    Posts:
    1,218
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    San Francisco
    Likes:
    +3,209
    Ebay:
    Twitter:
    YouTube (Legacy):
    YouTube (Custom URL):
    Tumblr:
    I don't think we have to worry about that anymore. :)  I'm not in the crowd being ugly about IDW losing the licence but they're not going to be exploring any ideas for much longer.
     
    • Like Like x 2
  9. Senator Magnificus

    Senator Magnificus Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2021
    Posts:
    1,569
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    Jackson, Georgia.
    Likes:
    +2,798
    YouTube (Legacy):
    I meant for HASBRO to stop gunning for it.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  10. Happy Miracle

    Happy Miracle Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 9, 2016
    Posts:
    424
    Trophy Points:
    142
    Likes:
    +1,178
    the moment for hasbro to really commit to this has long passed I think and I reckon they know that hehe
     
    • Like Like x 1
  11. Senator Magnificus

    Senator Magnificus Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2021
    Posts:
    1,569
    Trophy Points:
    187
    Location:
    Jackson, Georgia.
    Likes:
    +2,798
    YouTube (Legacy):
    I doubt it. Wait & see. They'll assemble another writers room.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  12. BB Shockwave

    BB Shockwave Behold, Gagatron!

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2003
    Posts:
    11,971
    News Credits:
    68
    Trophy Points:
    362
    Location:
    Budapest
    Likes:
    +11,202
    Ebay:
    I agree with all of these (well, cannot comment on Rattrap as I never read much of the BW book, the ugly art kept me away). (EDIT: I just realize that during the Generations comics they threw Rattrap into the comics and he was a yes-man to Starscream's ineffectual presidency. Man he was completely useless. He seemed to be scheming but in truth never actually did anything important. No wonder I forgot he was even there.)

    Thing is, character personalities always changed on a dime whenever someone took over writing duties. I enjoyed Shockwave and Soundwave during Furman's run and even during McCarthy/Costa they stayed OK-ish or at least weren't terrible - mostly because for some inexplicable reason both believed it would be a cool idea if Soundwave, the guy famous for his unique voice in the cartoon, never talked. (hint: it wasn't, but at least he never said anything stupid).
    Then came Barber and in his insane quest to build a complete timeline by stitching together the corpses of continuities past by many different authors, he somehow forgot that continuity would require characters to ACT like they used before. So Shockwave became this master planner who went back in time and Dreamwave-style "Shockwave-Did-It-All!" everything since the time of creation just so he can stick it to someone he knew trillions of years in the future and go "Nananana, your heroes were not real!", yet not changing things so that he can rule the universe, a facepalm-worthy moment.
    Soundwave, the guy who was shown as a self-serving opportunist under Furman, seemingly loyal but looking out mostly for himself, suddenly became this misunderstood loner who decided the Decepticons need to be one happy family and went on a never-ending quest to... I dunno, did that go anywhere in the end? I got bored by Barber and last I saw Soundwave I think he blew up when Shockwave in his Onyx Prime cosplay did something? Meh. He was a waste of space.
    I utterly, utterly hated Thundercracker (and his little dog, too!) - he went from a brief betrayal of the Decepticon cause in Shane's comic to living something resembling a sitcom life, and Barber thought that his utter lack of understanding of human life but how he writes fanfics about humans nonetheless was endearing. (It wasn't). Honestly, it reminded me of an ACTUAL fanfic G1 webcomic where Skywarp and Thundercracker desert and start working for humans and living like the odd couple, and never a good sign when official comics start to resemble bad fanfic webcomics.

    Add Prowl to the mishandled characters too. For the record, I loved him under Nick Roche and Roberts, who made it clear that while his methods were questionable, he was on the side of good - all his manipulations and cloak and dagger stuff served the Autobot cause. It was a continuation of what was established under Furman, that Prime needs to be the blameless face of the movement, and Prowl handles the dirty things so he can stay clean. But once turned over to Barber, it all collapsed with Prowl acting like a constantly angry prick who seem to have lost his strategic mind and made incredibly dumb decisions, like trusting a psychopath like Arcee to NOT kill people on her missions. Of course partially it was Bombshell's doing but things got little better after that plot ended and he became a renegade villain hanging with the Constructicons, trying to kill Spike and coming to blows with Optimus. I frankly don't know how his story ended, and don't really care, he was way beyond redemption after this character assassination.
    Speaking of Mary Sue Arcee, there was another horribly mishandled character. As established under Furman, she was not crazy or a psycho, she was on a vendetta to kill Jhiaxus, and even worked with Decepticons once to accomplish it, she could be reasoned with. Even in that Darkness/Galvatron special, after she got killing Jhiaxus over and over again out of her system, she seemingly became more balanced. Well all that was gone under Barber, where she turned into this japanese anime stereotype "assassin girl who does not understand normal life" and doing "ooops, did I do thaaaat?" when making blunders like killing Ratbat when she was ordered to capture him, or blurting out Prowl's secrets in front of everyone like she was not fully aware what she was doing. On top of that, she turned into this unbeatable badass who could defeat anyone in seconds, so Barber kept her away from Megatron or Devastator or else the story would have been over in seconds. Guh. Later on there came this out of nowhere retcon that made her be Galvatron's brother from the past, something that I guess she never remembered before despite meeting Galvatron? I have not read the final issues much so I dunno where she ended up, in the end run she largely faded into the background.
    And since I mentioned Spike, let's talk about Costa's terrible run for a bit now. Does anyone even understand what his idea was about Spike? We started off with him secretly killing Scrapper and riding around in a disabled Breakdown, making it clear he absolutely hated Decepticons, yet a sudden heel-face-turn revealed he was working for Swindle... somehow? For what, money? I remember he showed up again under Roberts and told Prowl that he only hates him because he is a bastard too and I guess that was all it took for Prowl to forgive him? Dunno if he ever came back, no doubt he did under the terrible "let's mix every other Hasbro property into Transformers to make the plot even more incomprehensible!" era but I just couldn't care at that point.

    Turning Megatron into an Autobot and going "my bad, sorry, millions of years of war and butchery but turns out I was wrong, so... no hard feelings?" was where Roberts lost me. Megatron at this point in the comic has been responsible for a war he has been running for millions of years, and his expansion policies cost not just Autobots but countless aliens their lives. He created Phase Sixers and had an expansion plan that included reducing whole planets to resource piles and enslaving or killing the population.
    The fact he even gets to say "My bad" and then goes on a vacation was something that I expected would enrage every Autobot everywhere and make them lose faith in Optimus Prime. That Roberts portrayed the people who are unhappy with this choice and want to kill him as villains, shows how little he understands how people would feel in this situation. This would be like if after ruling the Soviet Union for 30 years, murdering thousands and squashing freedom, suddenly announced that communism was a mistake and the party is disbanded and everyone should go their separate ways, my bad. :D 
    And I somehow fail to see how something like Bumblebee saving him made him decide he was wrong. Especially after we got Megatron : Origins we had to see he was motivated by far more than just being an evil expansionist. And I am also pretty sure that Optimus/Orion, who was his friend, saved his life plenty of times in the past, yet somehow that never made him question his choices?

    Oh that's what he was supposed to be? Chalk up another for Roberts' weird idea that various human minority traits need "representation" in a comic about giant transforming aliens. I thought he was just a dumb thug who for some reason was good with a scalpel. I kept expecting them to reveal how, maybe he was a nurse before the war, but that never happened.
    LOL wait, really, they called him Spinster in the Netflix show? :D 

    Yeah, I expected his Marvel UK or US personality to surface, maybe reveal he was the leader of Mayhem Squad before, but nope. Why take a character and change him so much when he had so many others who never had character development before... Ah well. At least we got a good toy of him out of it, at last.
    Star Saber was done OK by Furman in 84, I wish we could have seen a continuation of that. The IDW version was barely a character. He was touted as a religious extremist who was a super dangerous villain... and then defeated in an incredibly easy way.

    The problem with all three was that Roberts is incapable of writing an Autobot turned villain without making them total nutcases. All of these, especially Getaway, went utterly bonkers and they often had very little push that did this. If Getaway can turn into a murderer from not getting respect, if Tyrest has decided the weight of autobot atrocities was so heavy he had to drill holes in his head... HOW did these people stay sane for millions of years, only snapping in a matter of years?
    I think the issue was, for all his contributions to Cybertronian customs and physiology, Roberts often wrote these millenia-old characters as if they were humans.

    But... he DOES!
    It took me a long time for the other shoe to drop but all the "Guiding Hand were just regular people", the "Knights' quest led them to a mad space clinic to die", the alternate universe functionists... it was a heavy-handed way to show how Roberts absolutely thinks like a marxist, IE that religion is the opium of masses, has no basis in reality, and is only there to control the masses and for corrupt people to abuse their power using it as an excuse. Honestly, his take on religion reminded me of how most anime do this, since Japan has a really misunderstood view at organized religion seeing as how their religion isn't like that.

    Thanks, you reminded me that while Barber did far more worst things to characters as he had a longer run, Shane did some horrible things too.

    I know, Roberts wrote a lot of Transmasters UK, a fanfic-continuation of Marvel G2, where they inexplicably made Star Saber a part of the Cybertronian Empire... despite how all of those guys were teal-white same looking grunts. Honestly, it was not a very good fanfic, I read some of it in the late 90ies online, there was a lot of oil and gore and horrible deaths in that too. And I dunno if it was Roberts or another writer who had retconned in one story that Beast Machines ends by Cybertron actually being destroyed by Primal's sacrifice, and the Maximals leave for another dimension only to be brutally murdered by this version of Star Saber. Classy, about as much as killing off Daniel and Wheelie in that TFCC fanfic comic...

    He was always my favourite Autobot due to the Marvel comics. He was what Cyclops was in the X-men, the voice of reason, the one whom nobody thanks or appreciates but who keeps things running.

    Wait, how can you say Tailgate was a kid? He was offline for most of the war, but he was not some newly minted protoform. He existed for quite some time by then.
    Also said "kid" was also in what amounts to (as I sadly understood after the twitter mob pointed out what Conjunx Endura means) a sexual relationship with Cyclonus. So... he was not really a kid.

    I really like the idea behind Nova Prime, as an expansionist who does not care about "lesser species". It made Optimus being Prime all that different considering the legacy he had to live up to was not clean-cut and heroic. And his change and possession by the dead universe to Nemesis was interesting too. Sadly, not much became of him, and that third party awesome toy based on Don's design was made in like 50 copies only.

    Because said alien lifeforms are MECHANICAL.
    Aka, inorganic, and they reproduce by putting sparks that magically spawn from their creator god (well, until said god was retconned into some writer's psychologist OC, so where sparks come from is unexplained still) and are put into protoforms.
    Nowhere in this process is any sexual reproduction needed. Thus the transformers do not have, or need, gender, since they do not reproduce sexually. Just because some of them look female and others look male doesn't mean they are. Maybe they remodeled themselves after organic species because they liked the idea of there being different genders.
    I agree that the Arcee spotlight was not the best way to resolve this, but I like it better than what Barber and Roberts did which was NOTHING AT ALL. Female Transformers are just... there... from Caminus... don't ask how or why. Not even a throwaway line like my idea above.
    Jhiaxus' experiment however, made a lot of sense, and in a way, I think it later culminated in the Insecticons, as in - creating a Transformer that like the organic species, is capable of self-reproduction without external spark-creation needed.

    I expected that was where his character was going and I too like the idea behind him - if anything a species this old NEEDS a lot of psychologists like him - but Roberts had to make his own OC Primus which was completely pointless, and also does not explain then WHAT is Cybertron? Who created it? And where do sparks come from if not Primus?
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2022
  13. ChickenQuicken

    ChickenQuicken Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Apr 7, 2020
    Posts:
    201
    Trophy Points:
    97
    Likes:
    +217
    Spike.

    Regular Spike: is a decent guy

    IDW Spike: raging afthole
     
    • Like Like x 2
  14. ChickenQuicken

    ChickenQuicken Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Apr 7, 2020
    Posts:
    201
    Trophy Points:
    97
    Likes:
    +217
    "Distracted by his own fingers" seems more like high as balls.
     
    • Like Like x 6
  15. BB Shockwave

    BB Shockwave Behold, Gagatron!

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2003
    Posts:
    11,971
    News Credits:
    68
    Trophy Points:
    362
    Location:
    Budapest
    Likes:
    +11,202
    Ebay:
    "Duuuude. My hands are, like, HUUUUGE!"
    "I told you not to steal Devastator's fists, Constructicons will be pissed."
     
    • Like Like x 2
  16. Suboptimal Optimus

    Suboptimal Optimus Burn it all down

    Joined:
    Jul 3, 2020
    Posts:
    1,831
    Trophy Points:
    197
    Likes:
    +4,875
    Welcome to American comic book writing, where nothing sticks and is never allowed to matter. Always one new writer/retcon away.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  17. Nova Maximus

    Nova Maximus Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 29, 2020
    Posts:
    11,345
    News Credits:
    19
    Trophy Points:
    277
    Location:
    Mississauga, Canada
    Likes:
    +53,937
    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 3
  18. WatermelonSpectacles1

    WatermelonSpectacles1 Average Beast Wars Megatron Enjoyer

    Joined:
    May 23, 2022
    Posts:
    1,223
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    177
    Likes:
    +3,149
    Optimus Primal and Beast Wars Megatron. My two favorite transformers treated more horribly than they ever had been before.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  19. Driskull98

    Driskull98 Evil is as evil do.

    Joined:
    Dec 21, 2011
    Posts:
    4,290
    News Credits:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    262
    Location:
    Western NY
    Likes:
    +3,115
    Ebay:
    Twitter:
    Instagram:
    YouTube (Handle):
    Tumblr:
    I'd really have to think about it, it's been so long since I finished reading all of IDW and...well, there's a lot to remember.

    The first one that comes to mind is Arcee, mainly because her ridiculous debut issue caused a domino effect for pretty much all the new female characters introduced afterwards. Trying to explain the existence of Cybertronian gender (from the mind of a single male writer, btw) just ended up causing an unfortunate subtext to the story that was gross then and continues to be gross now. Thankfully, as more female characters were introduced, it stopped being this awkward thing the writers would have to acknowledge and just became a normal part of the world. But that brief period between...let's say Dark Cybertron and the beginning of Lost Light where each time a female character was introduced, the story had to stop and directly acknowledge it, wasn't great and you can thank Spotlight: Arcee being the way it is for that.

    I don't think Star Saber was "butchered" but didn't really enjoy the character's depiction. I know the original was pretty much a blank slate, but a slimy, hyper-violent, religious extremist sounds like a more fitting basis for an original character rather than a legacy one.

    A lot of the Lost Light crew's depictions post-Dark Cybertron also kinda suffered. Megatron's been discussed to death, but I think a vast majority of the characters became flanderized due to Roberts believing his own hype and doubling-down on aspects of the characters that people praised. Cyclonus, Tailgate, Chromedome, Rewind, Rodimus, Getaway, Ultra Magnus are the ones that come to mind first.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  20. Rodimus Prime

    Rodimus Prime Sola Gratia, Sola Fide TFW2005 Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2002
    Posts:
    26,239
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    442
    Likes:
    +37,222
    The problem had nothing to do with Furman being male, but the fact that IDW promised to let him make the series in line with his personal vision of no genders and no familial ties. They then forced him to introduce both, so he tried to do it without retconing anything, and it was an absolute fustercluck of an execution.
     
    • Like Like x 1