.....about IDW's comics? Personally? I used to like them, but they basically went downhill as soon as AHM came along. Since then the only thing IDW has made that I enjoyed was LSoTW.
I hear the Ironhide mini is okay, I haven't picked it up. I skipped the Bumblebee series and the ongoing based on those horrible faces.
Well, apparently the Bumblebee series has normal designs. Which is a damned shame because I would've liked to see what Skywarp would've looked like.
Ok, the Ongoing series as a whole moves extremely slow and is very human centered. This is of course due to the fallout of All Hail Megatron, which is a great read. Now as far as the "ugly faces", well the artwork is ever changing, sense IDW got the hate mail on the faces themselves, they're gone. If you listen to the Book Club podcast, Vangelus and the others give a nice insight on the series. I love the fact that I still am able to get a comic book filled with new stories of my beloved Transformers. I loved Dreamwaves books, but sense they couldn't foot the bill, I'll take IDW. At least someone gives us something to read and gives us new stories.
The IDW books were great at first, but halfway though AHM they took a slide. I wasn't a fan of the G1/Movie hybrid look (thank God that's gone) but the stories are no where as exciting as the first few mini-series, though LSOTW came close, and Ironhide wasn't bad. I still read ongoing, since it's new G1 stories, but, it's not something I get excited about anymore.
I like Furman's run (and all related Spotlight issues penned by other authors), Last Stand of the Wreckers and Hearts of Steel. The rest is meh; AHM should've been an Elseworlds-style one-shot.
Yeah. It's kinda like how the Cylons Download in BSG. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. The Iron Age - Transformers Wiki TF Wiki has each issue up as a synopsis, in case you want to catch up. I wish they'd do more Hearts of Steel type stuff.
I didn't really care for Mr. Furman's work that much; his dialogue was painful to read, and I absolutely hate how he handled Arcee and femmes in general. Then there's the original Autobot strategy of hiding the Transformers' existence from the races (as though the poor little lambs couldn't take it). If there's one thing that I like about the new direction, it is how they pointed out the fallacy of the old strategy.
Last Stand of the Wreckers, The Ironhide mini are awesome... The xx-ations were good, AHM was... it's an okay read in tradeback form... I think if I had to read it an issue a month it would be boring - which is the biggest problem with ongoing. I like them, and I like having comics to read... but they're definately not everyone's cup of tea
I actually like the fact that the Autobots and Decepticons had agreed to hide from the general population of a planet until a certain point in the war on said planet was reached. It really gave meaning to "robots in disguise".
At first I was liking what they were doing. A few problems, but for the most part it was some interesting stuff and sometimes a spotlight issue would be just great. But then things started going from all the cool new ideas or new twists on cool old ideas into well I guess I'd have to describe it as a mess. I don't know just seems like they started to loose their focus at about the time they were attempting to cash in on the movies. Ouch and the faces in some of the preview pages I saw just totally killed what tiny bit of interest I had in them. Kind of sad but I went from buying issues to not even bothering to look at the free previews. Just seems better to put the price per issue and the gas it would take to pick them up toward some of the toys. If there is something that enough fans say is great I might pick it up in trade paperback form, but that's about it now.
AHM was probably when the quality started to decline in my opinion, though going back and reading it all at once, it works. Pretty well actually. Right now though I think Ongoing is pretty weak, due mostly to the inclusion of Spike...He's just not a likable or interesting character. I still enjoy the Spotlights, and yes, Ironhide miniseries was really good. However, I long for the -tion days, when the universe felt a lot more epic and conflicts had a much grander scale. Now we're stuck on earth, for no good reason really.
