I'm bored waiting for LL #2 to come out, so thought I would start this thread. It might die, who knows? Anyway, as a little girl I LOVED OP, thought he was the greatest thing ever. As an adult, I notice he's been doing some rather shitty things. (Keep in mind I only have access to the IDW/MTMTE comics, so I might not know what you're talking about in the others, so if you want to make a point, just give a little explanation, not just a "And that Giftnab thing, wow!") The most recent I can think of is literally taking the Lost Light and putting it in Megatron's hand. I get that Megatron wants to atone for his actions, and that OP wants to help him, but to me that was rather a dick move. The ship was bought by Drift (so it's a private craft, not actually an "Autobot" ship. If someone in the army buys a speedboat it doesn't suddenly become a military craft. It wasn't purchased with Autobot funds, it's private), for the express purpose of finding the Knights of Cybertron. Now whether or not Rodimus is doing a good job of finding them (he's obviously not), there -were- other ships ALSO out looking for Knights, Thunderclash's being one. Yet OP takes what is essentially a private ship, and hands it to the universe's greatest genocidal maniac, who will be in the presence of some EXTREMELY twitchy people (Whirl), and doesn't expect a massacre. What were you on, Prime? Give me your thoughts and ideas!
Nowadays? Human. For the first time since animated, Optimus is a real person again. One of the biggest issues with Prime in any fiction is the tendency to write him as an idol only. It's similar to what DC does, but even more so, as even among his friends he speaks unnaturally and the lack of a family means he's never given a natural stage to unwind. He's "perfect" and the hero and well meaning and that's it. It drives me potty. I adore the TF: Prime show but my GOD was Optimus not a character. IDW frequently suffered from this in its early days whether in the plot focused Ations, the action movie AHM or the...happening that was the ongoing. From Chaos Theory through to the Barber-Roberts era, Optimus has stopped being perfect. He's stopped being the idol of his world and he's stopped being imo 2D. He's become a person. The Megatron event is actually incredibly telling of this. Optimus has a history where he fully believed in what Megatron was selling, and then spent so long with these confused feelings about the man. Megatron presents himself in a manner he's never done before and Prime makes a choice, based in many ways on his own feelings. It's not perfect, it's flawed and it's got the potential for disaster. In other words, the kind of decision you never really see Prime make i.e. a real one. DOOP stated he was freeing himself as much as the planet and I think that's no bad thing. Today we have Optimus in a highly dubious position where sometimes its hard to see how he's the hero. Because he's no longer the hero. He's a person, trying to do the right thing and dealing with the consequences. He's exposed to a whole new way of seeing him, he's put into a situation where belief and reality collide, and he's desperate to take things to where he's CONVINCED they need to go. And he's making a lot of moves that'll probably be wrong ones. Because that's what people do. I love how he can't see the whole anymore, I love how to quote him, he's in a place where "everyone is ACTUALLY out to get me". Flawed? Yes. But this only makes him superior to the blank canvases that all the other variants of Optimus have been for almost 10 years. Optimus will make the right choice in the end, as he always does. But this time he'll have earned it by learning from the wrong choices. Prime's state of being is that of the comics. No longer a child's simplicity but an adult's complexity, because most of us reading them are adults and as much as "escapist" fiction is viewed by people who either don't engage or only dip their toe in as simplistic, it doesn't take much examination to see how complex most of it really can be. TF has needed this for a long time. Between them, Optimus and Megatron give me serious faith in where John and James will take the fiction.
There has been talk of Autobots committing mass genocide on people who where in league with Decepticons. That tells me enough of IDW Prime, i think he is a great strategist and an inspiring leader but morally he is very flawed. And that is fine, i think it is impossible to find any Cybertronian in IDW apart perhaps from Tailgate who has not done or ordered unspeakable things. That is only natural for a galaxy spanning million year war. I used to think it a problem that this is notmade more obvious and that a lot of the traditionally good guys are still presented as good guys while morally they are pretty far from their Sunbow counterparts. But history is written by the victor and people always like to act like they are the good guys no matter the atrocities they committed, no one is going to say he's a villain. So i kinda think this all makes sense in this universe: all Cybertronians are massmurdering monsters who casually play games and have drinks cause the war is over and they need to pretend like all moral scorecards are set to zero because they have a society to rebuild.
There's a reason all the other races in the universe hate them. "Wherever Cybertronians go, Death and Destruction follow."
YEP! IDW have succeeded in making me give a damn about these characters. TBH, I've always found them boring and in the way. The idolisation of Prime - by both characters and fans - is one of the only reasons I've had to feel embarrassed about being a Transformers fan, because of the way it makes the whole franchise look like it revolves around power fantasies, with Prime as the Mary Sue for a whole generation. Similar problems with Megatron the scenery-chewing invulnerable cartoon villain. But these days I find myself sympathising with most of Prime's decisions, and many of his flaws. Seeing fans criticise him for almost every decision he makes (as well as for being indecisive) is eerily reminiscent of how people criticise real life politicians for every decision they make - and that's surely a good indication of how far the character has come.
