Do you think it would have been better if it got more time to grow or do you think it was as good as it was gonna get?

 

No. If anything, I wish IDW had lost the rights to Transformers much earlier.

 

Not really.

 

No.

As much as I enjoyed stories set on Cybertron in past continuities, they didn’t last that long and the main focus of Transformers has always been set on Earth. I was waiting for Ruckley to take them to Earth as they’re supposed to but that never happened. 40+ issues set in one location just gets boring.

 

Absolutely. I really enjoyed IDW2, and loved seeing the war from the beginning instead of as a flashback. I really liked a lot of the ideas they brought to the table too - Like the mentor system, going immersant, and Cybertron as a galactic hub to name a few. While I get the complaints about it being slow, it didn't really bother me, and I actually enjoyed having a large cast.

It would have been neat to watch them show the whole war, up to getting to Earth, but alas.

 

I think Ruckley's run actually ended in a pretty nice place. I would have liked to see a new writer pick up the next chapter, but it is what it is.

 

It's a mercy killing.

Put it to ya like this... Ruckley was SO BAD he left the comics SO COLD that not even ten people can be bothered to muster much more than a "meh" at this point.

 

You know how your friends will say "YOU GOTTA WATCH THIS TV SHOW" and you maybe tentatively agree, but then they say "oh, skip episodes two and three, but from there it's really good!" or variations on that theme?

I bought the first eight or so issues just due to the way preordering comics works... by the time I decided that I didn't like it, I was that many issues deep. I think I was out by around issue 12, I could be off an issue or two. I did poke an eye here and there at some things, for instance, the final issue (the final final issue) seemed okay... but there was a lot of tell, don't show anytime I checked in. I hear a lot here that if you can get past the initial slow part, the book begins to sing... I didn't see anything that truly indicated that to me.

So, basically, I checked out a quarter of the comics' ultimate output (okay, maybe a fifth if we want to count the companion minis)... I get that some people really liked the world building and new ideas, but I don't think a slow burn is the right way to approach Transformers comics. I feel like I gave it more than a fair chance... it was too slow. The inconsistent art did not help.

I also think that there is something to the idea that you need to be a Transformers fan, these days. I realize that wasn't always the case, and I don't know if that means you have to be an eidetic memory superfan or anything, but I don't think that hammering characters into your generic sci fi world is the right step.

 

No. I gave up issue 17, and read the descriptions of the remaining issues. There were good ideas, but they were ideas. They required a better writer to use them to their full potential.

 

it had plenty of time to “grow” but in truth it was more or less fully formed by about issue… 6? 12? 18? It had a tone and a pace and a method for telling the story it wanted to tell and there’s no sign it would have changed in whatever potential future story that could have been.

i do wish it kept going though. Not for me, but because some people liked it and there was more story to tell.

 

I'd be curious how long they would have kept Ruckly on the book had they kept the license. Part of me thinks they might have swapped writers sooner if they didn't have the fact that it was all ending anyway hanging over their heads. But they could have just as well kept him on for another 3 years, if not longer, for all I know.

 

No.

 

Yes, I am reading through it right now and enjoy it a lot.

 

Absolutely, it was great.

 

Honestly, I wish it did last longer and was more successful so we could possibly have other media take after it's lore the way everything starting with Prime seems to use IDW 1.0's war backstory as a basis.

 

No. It wasn't very good at all.

 

Looking back on why IDW2 never clicked with me, I think what it needed was a more distinctive art style that better complimented the kind of story Ruckley was trying to tell. Not to say any of the art is especially bad, but I found the majority of it to be very... flat? Lots of bright colors but very little sense of contrast or lighting, and almost no sense of weight or physicality that would have really brought the characters to life - they always just felt like toys. In a more cartoon-plot story, that kind of art is serviceable, but when you've got a political thriller that is trying to delve into the social structures of a complex and fully-realized alien civilization, the dissonance between what you're reading and what you're seeing is just too much.

This book needed an art style that made the Cybertronians feel alive, and the best example of this is really Milne's work from MTMTE-onwards. He put so much detail into the bodies of the characters and their environments in a way that gave the setting a sense of realness that few other Transformers artists have been able to accomplish. I honestly think if Ruckley's writing had been accompanied by Milne's art, IDW2 would have been far better received.

Again, not to drag the artists of the books - ultimately, it's just a stylistic preference on my part.

 

I love this post because it makes great arguments that I happen to disagree with. I didn't find the art cartoony, though I do think the character builds were more basic, less detailed, less technical. I found that an asset for Ruckley's story, because I could see them at individuals, and for lack of a better word, as people. I found the narrative elements more compelling because the characters were not machines in a technological system so much as individual points of view in a political system. Put more simply, the characters' expressions and body language came through more clearly than other styles might support, at least in my opinion. Physical realness and embodiment have their place, and it very well may have worked here, but it's not a problem to be fixed.

As for the original question, I don't think I wish it would have gone longer. I do really like what Ruckley was setting up, and the narrative did feel rushed and incomplete by the end, but it wasn't working well enough that more time would have made a big difference. There are other things I would have wished for instead: that the tie-in books like Galaxies felt more connected to the core book, that the world-building was better reinforced by other stories and artists, that more people gave it a chance. I hope as it ends that future storytellers look for ways to incorporate its ideas in the future. I don't worry for its legacy as a story cut short that too few people liked, with the answer that it should have had more time to resolve itself; rather, I worry that its early conclusion might make it harder for people to look back at its strengths and adapt them later on.

 

Yeeeeaaaahhh, kind of. It really did kind of just end.

Granted, Ruckley seemed to think what he was starting would last over a decade like the last continuity did, and clearly gave zero fucks when it came to writing a conclusion.

This dude introduced a new character each issue, and for no reason. Like he would completely forget about Elita-One and Prowl because he either had no plans for their arcs or figured he could get back to them thirty issues later and decided to instead introduce guys like Charger and Firebeast, and have teams consisting of guys like Sunstreaker or Sureshot but then wouldn't do anything to differentiate them from any regular generic soldier character.

Like he might as well have used Autotroopers. There were zero breakout sweethearts in this series outside of maybe Flamewar, and she turned out to be an awkwardly written Harley Quinn expy at best.

I think the sheer number of characters in Transformers got to his head to some extent, and with an almost fanfic-writer-like desire decided to cram as many as he possibly could into his story. Some of them were definitely just to fill pages in the tfwiki, too. Like the only reason Computron appeared, or why there were so many micromasters in the comic was because they weren't used in IDW1. Also Halonix Maximus though, like come on.

If Ruckley had an ending in mind, he clearly didn't show it. If the comic did continue, I would be interested in a potential post-exarchon war, but what would we really get? Characters like Red Hot or Skater showing up for an issue while characters he introduced ages ago faded into the background? What happened to Stakeout or the Rainmakers, who never got any kind of arc or conclusion to their characters, yet were still featured in enough issues to warrant some kind of mention in the conclusion? What about Skytread, who disappeared in a bunch of worms with the Enigma of Combination, only for neither to be seen again? They just disappeared. Perhaps if the comic ended like a year, or even two years later we'd get essentially the same ending we got in the final issue. A fight, the Autobots leave Cybertron for the Moon, and multitudes of characters turn out to have been redundantly introduced, and filled up precious page-time for a comic that was notoriously becoming slow-paced. I feel like no matter when this comic ended, there was no way there would have been a satisfying conclusion considering how much Ruckley tried to cram into it issue to issue.

 

Honestly, I never really got in to it. Going back and retelling the war beginning again isn't interesting. I wish they'd continued their original universe.