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MINDVVIPE wrote:Hey Seibertron, I've just gotten back into reading the comics, with a buncha random issues I grabbed at free comic book day, including MTMTE, Ongoing, as well as RID.
They seem pretty cool to me, but I hear ya about the humour, especially since I felt Drift was a more serious character opposed to being more chippy. Anyway, my question is, what exactly are you talking about with the older comics you spoke favourably about? was it the Marvel G2 ish stuff (which i really liked)? Or just in general. Any suggestions on specific storylines, etc?

I have a love/hate relationship with most Transformers comic books. My favorites are the original G1 Marvel books. A lot of it isn't the greatest, but they did the best with what they could do back then. I would be disappointed with today's books if they continued to be done in the manner in which the 80s books were. However, that doesn't mean that the old stuff should be overlooked or that there aren't elements that could be integrated with today's style.

I'm less concerned with storylines than I am with how the stories are told. I think any number of the new stories have been overall intriguing and have/have had lots of potential. Unfortunately, the tendency of today's comics are to tell stories that can be packaged up later into a trade paperback.

Perhaps I know too much about what goes on behind-the-scenes so it spoils a lot of how these books are made, gives me a bit of a negative attitude right from the get-go. Spoiled milk. Feel free to correct me if I've got any of this wrong ... the Transformers writers and artists are all freelancers, brought on board to work on a book for X number of issues. Knowing this, it seems too obvious that they are just filling out their contract obligations. I also feel like a writer comes up with a story that might be sufficient for a 2 or 3 issue run, but they're told that the book needs to be put into a 4 or 6 issue storyline for a later trade paperback collection. Whether its the writer or someone else, the storyline seems to get stretched to a point where the book is just too damn slow of a read. Too little seems to happen between issues. I feel bored when I read today's comic books ... IDW's first Infestation storyline being the best paced storyline I've read since the 90s.

I don't understand why there isn't one comic that is about the Classics toyline. I feel like they're really missing the opportunity to use the ongoing comics to focus on the toys that have been coming out. Maybe there hasn't been enough product to work with in the way that I'm envisioning.

I feel like the IDW Transformers comics have just thrown all of the elements about the Transformers into a blender and have their fingers crossed that the end result is OK. There seems to be little rhyme or reason about why characters are in situations together in the books. Maybe I'm too close minded ... when I see Brainstorm in the comics, I expect Chromedome, Highbrow, and Hardhead to not be far behind. If Brainstorm and Ratchet share a scene together, it should be a special situation because they shouldn't normally be around each other.

That statement might seem contradictory because if I had it my way where the ongoing series would be guided by the release of Classics toys, we would certainly end up with odd pairings such as Kup and Thunderwing or Black Shadow and Junkheap ... but at least there would be a reason as dictated by the toy releases, which could prove for some interesting storytelling.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Furman's got cooked up for us in Regeneration. Maybe that's the series for which I've been waiting years. I don't know what the solution is. I just know that I'm not a fan of the IDW has been telling the Transformers story. I think it's salvageable if you had the right person in charge that could help guide the overall universe, put in some restrictions and rules on the writers and artists.

Classics figures are not enough to fill a storyline - there aren't 20-30 new figures a year worthy of using them in a comic. It could end up like a BotCon/TFCC or Henkei-style story, with generations and movie figures' repaints fighting each other. I can't see that working.

All Hail Megatron tried to integrate some Universe figures into the story, but didn't really have high success.

In my opinion, Hasbro made some successful moves when they used IDW artists' artworks for figures - Drift and Thunderwing were total hits (while they tried to use Bludgeons sketch, but ruined him with making him more movie-ish) So, they should just sit down with Milne and Roché, and buy as many concept arts from them as possible.

I have to agree I've been pretty disappointed with the overall quality of the IDW run for Transformers.

For the most part I felt the stories were pretty disjointed. Some stories were well done, Like LSOTW or the Dinobot story. But overall there was a lot of inconsistency to the feel of the books.

With the release of the new titles, I think they are finally on the right track to having consistency in what is happening. They are building a good stable of main characters, and a bigger group of "B" characters.

More to the point, everyone involved has a place in the story. I often felt with both the "Transformers" title, as well as the -tion stories that preceded them that characters would just show up randomly because someone thought they were cool.

While there are some things I dislike about the current titles, most of it can be explained away because they chose not to scrap the preceding history. It is forcing them to work with story elements that old readers wish they could forget or new readers may not like. So, I'm willing to give them a little leeway, while they hash out the old and build up the current scenarios.

I've been pretty lukewarm on the TF books for a while now, but the 2 new titles have given me a bit of hope in the comic incarnations.