This thought crossed my mind recently while both rereading IDW1 and binging IDW2, the sheer amount of original characters from their continuity they had made. I was wonder how you all felt about them?

Me personally, The only ones IDW OCs I've ever found myself caring about was Rung and Pharma from MTMTE.

 

From what little I've seen, I like Rung. I haven't experienced much else, yet.

 

I like some of them and some I don't, which is generally what you would hope for in a realistic sense.

They defiantly weren't all good, but they most certainly weren't all bad like some people say. Just some had bad send offs even though most of the time they were on panel was very enjoyable.

 

Some work, some don't.

The OC that I feel works the most is Nautica. This is a gal I would love to be pals with and she is quite engaging as a character. So yeah, I really fell in love with Nautica so much that she actually became my favorite female Transformer of all time.

Rung started pretty good, but when the Primus twist happened, it all went to hell.

 

I think that describes Roberts OC's pretty well for me. Started out really good but didn't really stick the landing. Still doesn't change I like most of them.

But seriously, Nautica needs more toys. Would love a 3rd Party MP of her.

 

Would be nice to see one, even if I might not buy it. Yes, again, I'm so cheap.  

I personally want a general retail release of a Nautica. No exclusive this time, Hasbro.

AH WUNT MA NAUTICA!!!

 

Pretty much agreed.

To go more in-depth in my thoughts, I think the main ones that worked were Rung, Pharma, and Nautica. All three of these characters work so well due to having engaging characteristics, fun character dynamics, and actual purposes for being in the story. I think these three hit all these keys while many others missed. Nautica was an engineer on the lost light, had an engaging personality with her being a very light-hearted and fun-loving character, with good dynamics with other characters, notably skids. Pharma was an incredibly interesting foil for the medics on the lost light as all of them (minus Velocity) had a connection with him and couldn't help his mental break. His best dynamic was easy with Ratchet as former friends, and he had an obvious role in the story as a minor villain.

Rung is an interesting one as he is by far my favorite out of the Roberts OCs. He has amazing character dynamics with everyone on the main cast, he had an amazing personality chalked full of small little quirks that made him fleshed out and had a distinct purpose as the ship psychiatrist, something seldom seen in TF lore. While I do agree with you @TheUltimateBum that the Primus stuff wasn't that good, I still enjoyed his ending, as I thought sacrificing himself for his friends was the best end for him.

 

Some of them worked for me, some didn't. The one that annoyed me the most was Minimus Ambus because he essentially replaced Ultra Magnus. I don't mind the addition of original characters to the cast, if some niche needs to be filled, but I don't like to see them replace existing characters.

 

Generally, I liked them. Drift, Windblade (when written by Marghraid Scott), Nautica, Nova Prime was a good villain. I like seeing new guys pop up alongisde the old, as it helps to bring in new character designs. What about existing characters who were completely reinvented though? And this is mostly Robert's run (which folks seem to be focusing on so far on this thread). Existing characters were changed so much, they may as well be new characters. Cyclonus, Chromedome and Rewind, Swerve, Whirl. Do they count considering they were nothing like their old portrayals?

 

I feel like that is more of a general writing discussion as some of the reinvent characters like Chromedome, Rewind, Swerve, Cyclonus, and Whirl still have roots in there original versions.

 

I like Rung, Nautica, Pharma, Velocity, Windblade, Fulcrum, Stardrive, Swift...Found them very entertaining and interesting.

I wasn't a fan of Minimus Ambus. Simply because I didn't like the idea of an "immortal lawman" Ultra Magnus. Wasn't a fan of Aileron or Gauge either.

 

After the first read-through I mainly cared about Tarn and he is still one of my favorites. But after a second read I learned to appreciate a ton of others. Particularly Tyrest, Pharma and Sentinel Prime, who is basically an OC aside from the name. Zeta had some nice traits too and I am a fan of his design and the same goes for the religious Springarm and IDW/Figuera's Nova (basically also OC, see Sentinel) and Proteus, who works greatly as the cunning evil/privileged villain he is.

I love Kaon and the rest of the DJD as well, mainly for the designs, but I also think that they had some potential if they had gotten screentime on their own, particularly without Tarn. Same goes for Nominus, for whom I hope that IDW2 will provide some flashbacks in the future.
Not sure about how to categorize senator Shockwave. Technically not an OC, but I would love to see him re-appear as own bot, separate from Shockwave.

Fulcrum, Censere and a bunch of others were less interesting but still a nice addition in my opinion. Plus, there is a huge amount of bots without much of a storyline or personality traits that simply have very cool designs. Turmoil or Roller for example. I am sure I forget a bunch of guys because I know that there were more than 10 I liked.
Strangely, I never cared about Rung or Nautica. At least not compared to how much I like the other OCs.

 

I always saw that as Roberts saying; "If I'm going to write this character, then I'm going to write them my way", like most comic book writers.

 

I dont really like most of them, but I enjoyed drifts first mini series. Victorion and nautica have cool designs I guess.

 

Personally, I liked a few of them including Minimus Ambus and Rung. Minimus to me is now the white Prime inside, and Magnus is the full armored form.

Rung, I really liked the Primus reveal, but kind of feel it would have been better if they had a chance to explore it a bit more. To me, he wasn't some supernatural force, he was just a tool that the original creators (Quints?) put everything in to keep their system running. I figured Rung was the first creation of the Quintessons, which was the necessary component to give life to their tools, so they gave him all of the best of everything, from self-preservation systems to accelerated repair.

Nautica, what more can be said that others haven't? She was an almost perfect way of bringing in a new character.

Windblade and Drift, once they found their niche, were great. Unfortunately, they got off on a bad start, and had to deal with fallout from being pushed into mainline when they had potentially several others in reserve that might have worked.

DJD were a miss. They really should have been explored a bit more, because they had a lot of potential. Tarn, an executive bot that thinks he's more well-cultured than everyone else, but has an addiction? A "purist" who refuses to speak anything but the old language? Hell, I originally thought Kaon was blind and the pet was his seeing eye dog. Another missed opportunity.

Right now, the only truly original character I like of IDW2 is Geomotus. Thanks to someone recommending I give the series another try now that it's been out a while, I actually find him to be the more interesting new character. I actually want the little guy to survive, and actually get a toy of him in the near future.

 

I don't know

 

The oddest thing for me about Nautica is the way that she and Windblade were introduced together, and yet, somehow, Nautica manages to be the textbook example of how to introduce an Original Character well, whilst Windblade is almost a textbook example of how to do so badly.

Admittedly, Nautica does have a certain element of being rapidly adopted as the new best friend of several canon characters- but, on the flip side, she earns that reasonably well through having a likeable character, and she's portrayed as competent in her field- but competent, not super-mega-genius. She's just an average nice person, and it's already been established and lampshaded by Hoist, in his spotlight, that the Lost Light has a serious shortage of those.

Windblade, in contrast... ugh. Her job is basically to be Scamper- so, why not let Scamper do it? - and she's a self-righteous arrogant mary-sue, whose real-world creation backstory axiomatically makes her the distillation of overkill fan-character traits, and the cosmos gets "Windblade is right" hardwired into it to accommodate her.

Seriously, if you wound back time to before she was introduced, and presented : "We've got this new character that we're going to introduce. A new Autobot. She's going to be a female Japanese-styled jet Autobot with VTOL fans and psychic powers to talk to giants, and we're going to make her one of the stars of the show, and even Optimus Prime will have to defer to and respect her, and, and she's going to have her own miniseries where she's the star, but she'll have to be one of the stars of the main book too..." ...

Well, it's a shame that there isn't an animated gif of a still of Windblade sliding up out of the panel, along with the dialogue: "I must go now, my home planet needs me!" and then the following caption "Windblade died on her way back to Caminus."

Now, you could argue that Rung's 'twist' is even more of the same- "My OC is

Spoiler

God!

- although to me, in that sense, it feels more like the point Roberts is making is more

Spoiler

God is a skinny little psychiatrist who got misunderstood

- as with Ultra Magnus, it feels more to me like him saying something new and different about an established character, than replacing them with a new one.

The much maligned Anode I don't really have a problem with. Her main issue, for me, is that the horrible pacing issues caused by the "Lost Light" relaunch and the stupid Unicron event led to her plotline being shoved to the front too much, with too much else rushed or cut or pushed to the side, rather than anything intrinsically wrong or over the top in her character and story itself.

So, whilst Windblade is Poochie, Anode's crime is more on a par with being Byron from Season 5 of Babylon 5.

...

...

...

Wait, changed my mind. Nuke her from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

 

Yeah, Windy's IDW characterization was always meh to me.

Personally, I only started liking the character in RiD2015, where even though it is stated that she was sent by Primus, she didn't have all that cityspeaker nonsense and I liked that she was mainly a nicknaming sassbomb rather than a Mary Sue like in IDW.

Cyberverse adds the whole cityspeaker nonsense, but oddly enough, handles it much better than IDW ever did. Plus, her personality was pretty akin to the RiD2015 one in terms of likeability (though she is less of a wiseass gal in Cyberverse, but there were times when she managed to get into the humorous moments).

But the IDW and Prime Wars versions were... ugh. She had a rough start in IDW, and in Prime Wars, I felt she was just TFP (and IDW) Arcee 2.0.

 

It's a case by case basis for me. I'm neutral on most, I like Aileron, I like Codexa conceptually (ditto for Geomotus), I'm partial to the design of Javelin even if she's never done anything meaningful in the actual fiction as of yet, and the execution of most of Roberts' OCs left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth by the end of the original run and I'm hoping they can turn out better the second time around because as much as I complain about Anode I know she was made with nothing but good intentions, she just wound up being frustrating in all the wrong ways in LL.

 

They're good.