rabidyak's posting of DW's g1 comics sales numbers caught me off guard. i was surprised how poorly they sold, i thought the stories were getting better (tho this is subjective). how much of declining g1 sales do you think were attributed to declining interest in relation to actual quality of the comics? what do u actually think of the plot development?
wow. so nobody cares? i just wanted to see the divide between those who taught DW g1 was awesome and those who were put off by supposed loosed ends in the plot/marketing gimmick.
I thought the books were amazing and that people were turned off by the lack of character development/interaction in the first miniseries.
I wasn't a fan of DW's comics. Then again, I hated Marvel's TF comics as well. For some reason TF's don't generate well to paper for me.
I was totally, COMPLETELY unaware of any of the internal political squabbling on DW's behalf, nor did I know what a jerk Pat Lee was. As far as I knew, it was just a smaller, independent comic, which was why I couldn't find the issues much of the time. When I found out it was cancelled, I was just as surprised as if, say, Marvel was cancelled. That said, I thought the ENTIRETY of Dreamwave's Transformers arcs was amazing. Very amazing. Great art, great writing, great plots. I got kind of bored with Bumblebee/Jazz's Insecticon plotline, and I got bored with Marissa Faireborne. Things REALLY picked up when Megatron was making his big comeback, and I was so psyched. It was like Episode 3 seeing Darth Vader or seeing Batman again this summer. Then...cancelled. Makes me sad that IDW isn't continuing DW's plotlines.
TF G1 Vol 2 and 3 were amazing! I used Vol 2 to get a friend of mine back into transformers. Im suprised they sold so poorly. IMO, the sales numbers should have been picking up. The stories were getting to be very very good. There were afew issues that were not all that great, but the story did seem to be going in the right direction. I really wish we could at least see what was going to happen in the comic. At Botcon, Pat Lee said that Unicron would have been shown before the year was out, so I would have liked to see what would have happened there. Damnit IDW!! Pick that storyline back up, and hire the G1 vol 3 crew! As I said, Im suprised that the sales numbers did not go up as the story got better. But I recall Dreamwave often being late delivering the books, so that would kinda get me out of the mood until at least the next month. I guess some people didnt even bother to check back
The DW stuff just wasnt doing it for me at all. During there run I picked up all the DW stuff with the exception of the last few issues of the armada/energon run and I never had the feeling of being excited about it at anytime. The G1 ongoing was poorly paced, the whole sunstorm arc was tedious to read, and not enough time was focused on Prime or Megatron. These leaders should be featured more prominantly in the series, and should see at least a page or two of exposure an issue. I could care less about insecticons, or junkions. Hopefully the people at IDW have taken a serious look at what makes G1 popular, and arent all hooked on trying to bend G1 to there ideas which may have nothing to do with transformers. BTW, where can I read about the political squabbling and DW's demise?
i was actually glad to see prime and megs out of the picture for awhile, but u may have a point there. for neophytes, thats what they want - prime n megs. also, maybe the 6 issue story arc is kinda long. still, i didnt mind the insecticons story arc. nice filler material between major story arc. i didnt hate vol 1 but the improvement between vol 1 and 2 was just too staggering to ignore.
Overall, I loved Vol. 2 and ongoing, but I think reasons for the trend in decline were: a) Accessiblity-as was already mentioned, no Prime, no Megs, with a couple of familiar faces like Starscream didn't seem to hold the normal comic laymen's attention span for long. I know Mick&Patyk were going space opera epic with Unicron, the matrix, possibly "Decepticon Matrix", etc, so that sort of turned people off. b) Competition- I don't remember what titles were popping out at that time, but I believe that was a pressuring factor. c) Prestige/Respect- despite what was leftover of the "80's nostalgia" boom, I think many laymen comic book readers don't even consider Transformers as a "serious" genre like Batman or Avengers. And that's somewhat true since it is hard to identify with robots (toys)....and I still have a feeling the stigma continues on somewhat today... And of course, Mr. Lee's utter combination of poor financial mismanagement and lack of respect for employees fit in the picture.... Overall, I still think and have hope Mick & Patyk may contiue where they left off (Meg's story), if the talks all go well with IDW.
Certainly the single best DW comic, setting up what was sure to be a great run, and then it was gone. I loved the G1 and War Within comics. Armada/Energon was tedious and even the Galvatron arc in Armada seemed a little unrealized. I don't think it's fair to say that the declining sales were entirely b/c of the story. The '80s fad wearing off, excessively late issues (a result of the inner turmoil) and too many covers no doubt played a part. That said, the Sunstorm arc probably could have been done in 4, the Insecticon 2fer, while not bad, maybe could have been scrapped in order to get to the meatier stuff that we got a taste of in 9 and 10. And Micromasters just shouldn't have been done for a number of reasons. I have severe reservations about the IDW comic. Not a knock on them, but I have very little interest in starting all over again, especially after having been left hanging with DW #10 and the whole tweaked 'toon+comic universe that DW had created.
I think the problem with using secondary characters is that too many of them appear without having any sort of personality developed. What type of character is Jazz at this point? Or Sunstreaker and Sideswipe? When these secondary characters appear a few pages here and there we arent given any reason to care for them. At least with primary characters like megs and prime we know a little more about them so there stories are more compelling. I have always felt like the biggest problem with TF comics has been too many characters. The writer really needs to settle on a cast and develop them some personalities in spite of how it will make fans feel when there favorite characters arent given enough time. It wouldnt hurt to fall into some stereotypes either. With DW the autobots were stoic warriors and the decepticons were mindless drones following megatron with the exception of starscream and shockwave. There were only a handful of characters in the DW stuff that were allowed enough time to be fleshed out at all due to the massive abundance of appearances.
the too many characters issue is 2-prong. on one hand it alienates novice reader. on the other us oldies love it cuz were familiar with the character already.
I choose to view it as this. Forget accessibility, forget the average-joe reader, forget people who didn't empathize with the Transformers. We're Transformers fans, and we probably grew up watching Transformers, and we probably LIKE Transformers. Seeing as Dreamwave was a small company, their target audience was us: people who love Transformers. They didnt have the resources to make it appeal to everybody, and even if they wanted to, would us fans have liked being talked down to with "lowest common denominator" writing? Much in the same way that you can't fault FF7: Advent Children for "not developing Cloud's relationship with Aeris," or you can't say "Endless Waltz's characters have no motivations!". Dreamwave wrote those comics for US FANS. You are expected to walk into the first issue knowing what's happening, just like Advent Children was made by people so that it's a big reward for people who stuck with FF7. I, for one, really didn't mind the absence of Optimus and Megatron since we've seen them done SO MANY TIMES before, it was refreshing to read about the other guys for a change. And (remember, this is under my ignorance of DW's demise) I assumed that they'd be back eventually, for a grand comeback (Vol 3 issue 10 proved my suspicions right, as Megatron made one hell of a comeback). Mind you, I'm not saying Optimus and Megatron are boring. I'm just saying that their absence lets you see more about the Autobots/Decepticons than you could ever see if Optimus/Megatron were duking it out every issue. I'm aware the following is just my opinion, so I won't try to play it off as anything more than that: I plain disagree to the person who said the Autobots/Decepticons personalities were different. I thought their personalities matched their cartoon/80s comics personalities to a T. Some of the time, it was a direct reference to the cartoon. Sometimes it was a direct reference to the 80s comic series (look at Ratbat's portrayal in "War Within"). Sometimes it was a mixture of both. Things like this were great, I thought. True, the uninitiated reader wouldn't have a ghost of an idea of who these people were, but as someone who has seen the 80s cartoons, read the comics, the Dreamwave stuff was GREAT! It meant the return of the Transformers in a SERIOUS format, with elements of the cartoon, movie, and comics that I loved so much. I'm not saying Dreamwave's comics were perfect. I thought the Marissa/Insecticon/Bumblebee arc was kind of boring. I thought Sunstorm was a boring villain. I really missed Optimus/Megatron at times. And I'd have to reiterate, I didn't know about Dreamwave's internal squabbles while I read these books, so maybe my viewpoint is different from you guys.
In spite of my ramblings I love the old characters and did enjoy seeing them again. I guess my problem has always been that I loved season one of G1 and have always wanted that back. I really liked the characterizations, especially the camraderie of the autobots (without any of them being prepubescent punks), how the decepticons were actually cunning and especially the dialogue. Season one had the absolute best dialogue between megatron and starscream, but I suppose thats a different issue altogether. It seems like in each subsequent season a little of what made transformers great for me has been lost as the lines shift towards more flash and less substance. Thats just my opinion though.
^^^I agree. I can sense this topic going a bit off-topic, but I think season 1 was the best Transformers season. The cast of characters was much smaller, you actually got to know Prowl/Jazz/Rumble/etc through various episodes, and it was just...warmer, I guess would be the word. Season 2 was "More." Like a sequel to a movie promises more, Season 2 was like season 1, but "more." More characters, more explosions, more action, more everything. But less warmth. Gone were quiet moments where Mirage and Hound talk about having a garage on Cybertron. Season 3...sucked.
keep in mind that the reason books were late was because the writers refused to write until they got their paycheck. when writers dont write, comics dont get drawn anyways
In retrospect, yes DW's story was my favorite Transformers story since I saw FFOD about 13 years ago on VHS. It was big, epic, and if you looked closely enough there was a lot to think about. It was fun. I remember coming to the boards reading speculation on what meant what and who was gonna show up... great times.
ah, yes. heres to the new series by IDW. thx for playing everyone. lookout for my next thread: speculating the direction of where DW's G1 run would have headed.
