The Energon Pub

In the comics, both Dreamwave and IDW, Shockwave was a scientist and satisfied his curiosity and greed for knowledge and Decepticon dominance by trying to create soldiers like there have never been before. So I was thinking, what are all the different kinds of 'mutations' of Transformers that he's responsible for? I can remember DW saying he created triplechangers. In the G1 comics he was also responsible for combiners, but Devastator was his only one. Was he shown to create any other type of 'abnormal' Transformers?

Rodimus Prime wrote:In the comics, both Dreamwave and IDW, Shockwave was a scientist and satisfied his curiosity and greed for knowledge and Decepticon dominance by trying to create soldiers like there have never been before. So I was thinking, what are all the different kinds of 'mutations' of Transformers that he's responsible for? I can remember DW saying he created triplechangers. In the G1 comics he was also responsible for combiners, but Devastator was his only one. Was he shown to create any other type of 'abnormal' Transformers?

In Dreamwave he seemed to be more interested in mutations and new kinds of Transformers like The Triple Changers, Duocons, the Clones, and maybe the Micromasters.

Whereas in IDW he seemed to be more interested in solving Cybertron's energy crisis so he was created stuff like the 13 different ores (or kinds of Energon) that seeded on Earth and other worlds and he ended up trying to use the Dead Universe to power Cybertron for all time (that didn't work and he wound up dead at the end of the Dark Cybertron crossover event). Characters like Scoropok, Bludgeon, and Jihaxus were more interested in creating new kinds of Transformers. Maybe Shockwave had a hand in creation of Devastator but I think it was Jihaxus (and later Swindle and Starscream along with the Combination of Enigma) that was trying to make Combiners.

So even though Furman wrote both versions, he didn't carry the DW ideas over into IDW?

And Shockwave didn't die at the end of Dark Cybertron. Just disappeared. To the beginning of time. And started the longest experiment in existence.

Rodimus Prime wrote:So even though Furman wrote both versions, he didn't carry the DW ideas over into IDW?

In retrospect: not really. No.

He teased at a few of them but he didn't really do any of Dreamwave's concepts in his IDW run.


Honestly IMHO Furman's run at IDW is vastly over rated, he had some great ideas but he failed miserably in execution to anything with them and much of his work is at best bland and worst is just **** awful. I mean IMHO Maximum Dinobots and Revelation are 100% pure garbage two of the worst comics in general ever produced and I HATED his Arcee female Transformers origin which was stupid when did the first in the Marvel UK series and it was even worse in IDW. He dragged out stories and he couldn't figure out how to write an ongoing "mini-series" series at all, and only John Byrne and Jay Faber have ever seemed to be the only 2 writers to ever figure that out.

Others like Roberts, Barber, Scott, hell even McCarthy and Costa did much better work on the original IDW TF Universe than Furman did. Personally I think Furman should stop writing Transformers comics all he's doing is pissing all over his own legacy.

Yeah he certainly did with the middle half of Regeneration One. I did like Transformers '84, even if there were some minor inconsistencies.

But the start of IDW was only a year after DW went out of business, so I thought he would produce at the same level of quality that he did for DW. Maybe IDW's editor(s) made the difference?

Either way, Shockwave ended up 1 of the better characters in IDW, even if he wasn't used to his full potential.

Rodimus Prime wrote:Yeah he certainly did with the middle half of Regeneration One. I did like Transformers '84, even if there were some minor inconsistencies.

But the start of IDW was only a year after DW went out of business, so I thought he would produce at the same level of quality that he did for DW. Maybe IDW's editor(s) made the difference?

Either way, Shockwave ended up 1 of the better characters in IDW, even if he wasn't used to his full potential.

I felt like Regeneration One was a mistake in "the be careful what you wish for" sense that fans wanted it and then found out quickly that it was mistake. IMHO Transformers '84 #0 was the most cynical cash grabs ever made and it sucked on top that.

IDW had been around for a few years before they got the rights to the Transformers, Star Trek, TMNT, G.I. Joe, Jem and the Holograms, Dr. Who, Angel, The X-Files, and etc. They were mostly doing horror comics by Steve Niles and the rights to stuff like Underworld and Metal Gear Solid.

DW was starting to release Transformers as an "ongoing" series (or a series that would last longer than 6 issues) and at the start IDW had Furman write continuing mini-series that would end at #4 or #6 but leave on a cliffhanger so that the next series would pick up where it left off. Furman writes best when he either doing one-shots or epic 25+ issues runs, or in more common modern comic book lingo he sucks when he has to "write for the trade" unless he controls the number of issues that arc would run so he can write a story that he knows where it will begin and end that is why his best work is still Target: 2006 or even something like The Matrix Quest is better suited to his strengths than any of his IDW work, in my opinion.

What really sucks is that he had a lot of great ideas that needed more time to develop like Sixshot, The Reapers, Galvatron, the Dead Universe, Nova Prime, and so on instead the build up to make the Reapers something akin to Unicron they are reduced to threat that Galvatron and the Decepticons make quick work out of and Sixshot's decision to join them (or not it was kind of muddled) just to give Starscream a "hero moment" was weak and downright stupid.

It also didn't help that IDW was releasing a lot of Transformers mini-series based mostly on the LAM and stuff like their original Beast Wars series probably confused some LCS owners who didn't order them and the G1 stuff written by Furman compounded by all of the various Spotlights which came off as "this one is important and this is one is not important" to overall main plot threads that Furman was dog piled one on top one to point where you needed a damn score card to keep up.

It was partly Furman's fault and partly the people running IDW at that time's fault. Regardless of whose fault it is I stopped reading them after Devastation because it was so boring and ultimately such a stupid series and only came back after reading a much more fun and IMHO much more superior series with AHM was published in trade.

Cyberstrike wrote:I felt like Regeneration One was a mistake in "the be careful what you wish for" sense that fans wanted it and then found out quickly that it was mistake.

But IMO it wasn't due to the source material, but rather Furman's diminishing writing and pacing skills.

IMHO Transformers '84 #0 was the most cynical cash grabs ever made and it sucked on top that.

Yeah it certainly seems that way in hindsight. At the time of reading not only the 1-shot, but later the entire TPB, I was excited for it. The G1 comics are my favorite continuity, and I was looking forward to them getting more attention. But again, like with RG1, Furman showed his fading abilities. I don't regret having read the story, but it does leaves lot to be fixed. I did like that it focused on Shockwave, whom to me is the most interesting G1 comic character. I wish he had been treated better in the later issues.

IDW had been around for a few years before they got the rights to the Transformers, Star Trek, TMNT, G.I. Joe, Jem and the Holograms, Dr. Who, Angel, The X-Files, and etc. They were mostly doing horror comics by Steve Niles and the rights to stuff like Underworld and Metal Gear Solid.

When I said "at the start of IDW" I meant at the start of IDW's run of Transformers. I should have been more specific. My mistake.

Furman writes best when he either doing one-shots or epic 25+ issues runs, or in more common modern comic book lingo he sucks when he has to "write for the trade" unless he controls the number of issues that arc would run so he can write a story that he knows where it will begin and end that is why his best work is still Target: 2006 or even something like The Matrix Quest is better suited to his strengths than any of his IDW work, in my opinion.

Agreed. I guess I keep expecting him to go back to the quality of the latter half of the G1 comics, but that's been 30 years.

What really sucks is that he had a lot of great ideas that needed more time to develop like Sixshot, The Reapers, Galvatron, the Dead Universe, Nova Prime, and so on instead the build up to make the Reapers something akin to Unicron they are reduced to threat that Galvatron and the Decepticons make quick work out of and Sixshot's decision to join them (or not it was kind of muddled) just to give Starscream a "hero moment" was weak and downright stupid.

Was that 100% on Furman, though? Or did other writers have something to do with it? I just don't know off the top of my head when he finished his run on the IDWverse.

It also didn't help that IDW was releasing a lot of Transformers mini-series based mostly on the LAM and stuff like their original Beast Wars series probably confused some LCS owners who didn't order them and the G1 stuff written by Furman compounded by all of the various Spotlights which came off as "this one is important and this is one is not important" to overall main plot threads that Furman was dog piled one on top one to point where you needed a damn score card to keep up.

I agree completely. This was probably as big a reason I haven't gone back to try to collect all the older IDW stuff. (I didn't start reading IDW until 2012.)

It was partly Furman's fault and partly the people running IDW at that time's fault. Regardless of whose fault it is I stopped reading them after Devastation because it was so boring and ultimately such a stupid series and only came back after reading a much more fun and IMHO much more superior series with AHM was published in trade.

So i guess I'm not kissing much? I do have the 1st few arcs in 1 big trade, from Infiltration to Devastation. No Stormbringer, though, I have yet to read it. I do have AHM and Maximum Dinobots, but after that my reading picked up with MTMTE.

I think it would have been great if Shockwave got a series all to himself, with other characters making brief cameos. Whether in G1 or IDW stories.

It would've been a good idea for Shockwave to clone himself. Imagine legions of big laser cannon Shockwaves destroying the Autobots!