I wish Mags would have binge watched the show and read all six Star Comics. She’s getting paid to make a Visionaries mini-series that might turn into a regular gig if she would have gotten things right. Since there’s so little material, there’s no excuse for screwing it up. Not like she had to read the entirety of G1.

 

Being devils advocate here; it could be argued that there is so little material available it wasn't deemed popular enough to carry on with, and therefore - you might as well start from scratch with only a few basic elements from the original.

Thats said i do like the originals, never read the comics... and im liking this series, but don't feel all that invested in it, and likely won't care if the visionaries doesn't continue, once everything is wrapped up.

 

I’ve got to admit, Thrustinator was pretty high on my list of characters I never thought we’d see in IDW. If nothing else, at least the series has give us that.

 

More convention/club exclusive characters need to appear in the IDW series.

 

Especially since he’s on th cover of the Wreckers one shot.

 

I really didn't. It's an obscure cartoon that came out eight years before I was born, First Strike is the first I heard of it.

 

They need to stop trying to get us to give a shit about their obscure properties through these dumb tie ins.

Nobody is every going to care enough, in enough numbers, about a 13 episode show from 30 years ago, for it to ever be worthwhile for them to expand upon. And they need to stop listening to whoever pushes that idea.

Hasbro has Transformers, G.I. Joe and MLP. That's a lot more than most companies have for franchises.

 

If you're using that logic, what's even the point in reviving it?

 

I'd imagine, its an Intellectual Property that Hasbro owns and can be (fairly easily) folded into the Hasbro-verse... see if it gains some traction and if it does... roll with it, and keep producing.

To try to make some money.

But its not my actual viewpoint, i just saw a potential counter argument. I'd generally hope it continues - maybe someone who is an actual fan will want to write a second series, and pitch it to the right people?

 

Yeah, out of the reboots so far I only really care for Rom and Micronauts. Both are similarly obscure to anyone who wasn't already a fan (I heard of Micronauts but never looked into it, and IDW Rom was first I found out about the character), but are far more enjoyable then IDW's attempts with MASK and Visionaries.

 

So I'd encourage everyone unfamiliar with Visionaries to check out the first three episodes online to get a flavor for what the original source material was. I watched them this past week to refresh my memory. The blatant disregard for the source material in favor of something so banal is mind boggling. Thanks to the OP for laying out the takeaways from this issue--you've saved me $4.

Edit, here's the first ep:


Edit #2: Shout-outs to Flint Dille who wrote the first episode and Chris Latta for voicing one of the characters.

 

This is nothing like the original show. It would have been a lot better if it had been closer to the original show. Say, the Transformers visit the world of Prysmos from the cartoon Visionaries and interact with the characters from the cartoon.

This is just a generic supehero/supervillain comic crossover with the Transformers with some loose references to the Visionaries brand. IDW isn't trying to sell the book to only those who remember the original Visionaries, but to make new fans of the new comic book. Which would all be very well and good if the actual book was a good decent story in the first place.

Those unfamiliar with the cartoon will read this book, think that its crap and claim that no wonder the original Visionaries line failed hard in the 80s. When in actual fact the hologram gimmick proved to be too costly to produce so they cancelled the series because of that not because of a poor quality TV show or anything. And unfortunately, studios back then won't continue making a cartoon series based on a toyline if the toyline isn't around to support it.

 

A few months ago I was looking into how those kind of holograms are made, and HOLY SHIT no wonder it costed so much to make therm.

 

Yeah, this kind of a gimmick is quite expensive to produce even today. Let alone in the eighties.

 

She’s done other comics, including the Eisner-nominated Kim & Kim and the new Eternity Girl at DC.

 

Maybe she should team up with superstar comic book artist Pat Lee.

 

It's amazing what you can get away with saying in advertising hyperbole.

 

Honestly I think the writing and such is fine in a vacuum, I like Leonic and Mortdred and Virulina and the visual look of the characters is cool, it's just the basic concept of pitting them against the Transformers when we've already had a lot of that is one that leaves us ill-disposed to be generous to it, plus of course we're getting to know them as we go along, which would work better if we weren't iffy on them going on.

It feels a lot like the book would benefit from a prior mini with their story.

 

This mirrors my thoughts in a lot of ways, I really enjoyed the first issue and was hoping for something as good as the Shining Armour crossover but the last two issues really feel like they’re missing the mark.

Re-reading the first 3 issues and First strike again make me really feel like something is missing in the middle or the writer of this story started before First Strike ended. Hopefully they can still pull a rabbit out of this hat but ouf, quite the uphill battle.

 

Pretty much this.