The Energon Pub

• It does not gel well with the at the time three years of established continuity
• Characters acted differently from the established continuity and personalities, instead of the idw incarnation of characters McCarthy used the ones he was familiar with, the toon versions
• AHM told and built and set up its own rules and universe free from the previous continuity for like 6 issues, then suddenly made references to older material breaking everything it worked towards
• Built up and followed characters that distracted from the main story, which then went nowhere
• The moments that did reference previous continuity and events where done in a hamfisted way, making it look like the story was going in a specific way and was then quickly changed last minute following the backlash
• McCarthy kept stating that he read everything Simon Furman wrote and respected his work and the pre-established continuity he created for idw, and that he was working from notes Furman gave him so it would fit in (Furman later stated that this was not the case, that he did offer to send him notes, but CyCarthy never contacted him to get the notes)
• McCarthy also stated that the time skip was out in so that Furman had enough time to finish the story arch he started
• AHM killed of the Jimmy Pink, who was basically the reader's point of view character for the idw verse up to that point, which after all the stuff that was pulled up to that point came across as a huge slap in the face

Dead Metal wrote:AHM killed of the Jimmy Pink,

All Hail Megatron has some odd discontinuities with the preceding storylines. Before All Hail, IDW's Transformers universe had very much been the vision of one creator—[Simon] Furman—and was written very tightly, with most stories across different publications interrelating and forming a complex, unfolding tapestry. To then see so much of this ignored or thrown out as another creator took the reigns of the universe proved aggravating to fans, and garnered All Hail an especially negative reputation at the time. As time has gone on and more and more creators have contributed to the IDW universe, making their own changes to what has gone before them, hindsight has seen All Hail's changes stand out far less in the grand scheme than they did when they first occurred, but as one of the more controversial aspects of a series that lasted an entire year, we here dedicate some space to noting the major offenses.

Most visibly, several characters were redesigned into their original Generation 1 forms; though done in the name of recognizability, for characters like the Seekers, Astrotrain and Ratbat, who had previously been given modern alternate forms in earlier stories, this stood out as especially technologically incongruous and illogical. On the flipside, characters such as Prowl, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were updated into new forms based on their concurrently-available Universe toys, at Hasbro's request. This mix-and-match approach to design would only increase with the onset of the ongoing series, as artistic freedom resulted in characters changing designs from issue to issue, depending on artist.

Virtually all of the new technologies Furman introduced during his run such as Ultra-Energon, the Magnificence, and holomatter avatars were entirely discarded, with Pretender technology only getting a late-on nod in Kup's "Coda" story, its conveyance of ultimate power seemingly completely forgotten by the time of Perceptor's "Coda" tale, given the depiction of Bludgeon therein. The Matrix of Leadership was promptly retconned in as a key factor in IDW's history, despite not appearing in the story depicting the war's origin (years later, James Roberts's "Chaos Theory" would expand and explain this glitch), while the paucity of energon that drove the backstory of Furman's new vision seemed a thing of the past. The creation of the Insecticons is a major plot point in All Hail, despite two of the team's members previously appearing in Spotlight: Blaster and Megatron: Origin, while past depictions of IDW's eloquent Soundwave were ignored in favor of instating his monotone speech patterns from the Generation 1 cartoon.

Despite their initial remit of trying to fix glitches, the four Coda issues did not fare too well on the continuity front, immediately doing away with Starscream's change in heart from the main story's conclusion and partially re-writing a scene from Furman's Sunstreaker and Hunter story to skew it in another direction. It was Andy Schmidt's Galvatron story from #14 that proved most chaotic, full of legitimate errors rather than conscious changes, as the writer mixed up which of the Dead Universe Transformers could survive in the living universe longer than their comrades, and invalidated an earlier reference to Scourge as a modern-day Decepticon (a nixed plot point that would have seen him presented as the Decepticon equivalent of Kup) by presenting him as another of the Dead Universe legions. This story also mistakenly reiterated Cyclonus's "patriotic" personality, which was dismissed as a facade in Revelation, but future stories would continue to run with this depiction of the character as it proved far more interesting.

Dead Metal wrote:It would have been fine as its own isolated story.

The reasons why people hate it are as follows:

• It does not gel well with the at the time three years of established continuity
• Characters acted differently from the established continuity and personalities, instead of the idw incarnation of characters McCarthy used the ones he was familiar with, the toon versions
• AHM told and built and set up its own rules and universe free from the previous continuity for like 6 issues, then suddenly made references to older material breaking everything it worked towards
• Built up and followed characters that distracted from the main story, which then went nowhere
• The moments that did reference previous continuity and events where done in a hamfisted way, making it look like the story was going in a specific way and was then quickly changed last minute following the backlash
• McCarthy kept stating that he read everything Simon Furman wrote and respected his work and the pre-established continuity he created for idw, and that he was working from notes Furman gave him so it would fit in (Furman later stated that this was not the case, that he did offer to send him notes, but CyCarthy never contacted him to get the notes)
• McCarthy also stated that the time skip was out in so that Furman had enough time to finish the story arch he started
• AHM killed of the Jimmy Pink, who was basically the reader's point of view character for the idw verse up to that point, which after all the stuff that was pulled up to that point came across as a huge slap in the face

Again, as its own thing it was pretty good, but due to the fact that it was sold as a continuation of three years worth of material, while contradicting or ignoring most of it, people hate it. That's what's wrong with it.

For comparison's sake, it works about as good as a sequel to the previous stuff, like the Joel Schumacher Batman films do to the Tim Burton Batman films.

fenrir72 wrote:Btw, if the original IDW take prior to AHM...........not sell well for Hasbro, why attempt it inthe first place?

Sabrblade wrote:

fenrir72 wrote:Btw, if the original IDW take prior to AHM...........not sell well for Hasbro, why attempt it inthe first place?

Things can wind down over time. The Furman era was doing well for a while what with stories like Stormbringer being really popular. But it's because that things wind down after awhile that Hasbro keeps reinventing and rebooting the brand with new series and new redos that aim to keep things new and exciting and to prevent stagnation. AHM was meant to reignite the fading IDW G1, but instead it ignited a different fire in the fandom.

fenrir72 wrote:That's just it Sabr. If it ain't broke...........why fix it?

Sabrblade wrote:

fenrir72 wrote:That's just it Sabr. If it ain't broke...........why fix it?

And that's just it. At the time, it was breaking. Furman's run was doing well for a while, but eventually began to lose steam. Hasbro/IDW saw this and wanted something new to revitalize the comics from growing further weary. In theory, their logic was sound. What was executed, however, just managed to tick people off instead.

But if they hadn't done what they did, the comics might have just ended with the Furman era and we mightn't have gotten to the point we're at today with MTMTE, RID, and Windblade being some of the best-received TF fiction ever produced. So in a way, AHM might have possibly saved the IDW G1 comics from falling into obscurity, even if it resulted in so much negative reception.

Sabrblade wrote:

Dead Metal wrote:AHM killed of the Jimmy Pink,

Hunter O'Nion.

Sabrblade wrote:

fenrir72 wrote:That's just it Sabr. If it ain't broke...........why fix it?

And that's just it. At the time, it was breaking. Furman's run was doing well for a while, but eventually began to lose steam. Hasbro/IDW saw this and wanted something new to revitalize the comics from growing further weary. In theory, their logic was sound. What was executed, however, just managed to tick people off instead.

But if they hadn't done what they did, the comics might have just ended with the Furman era and we mightn't have gotten to the point we're at today with MTMTE, RID, and Windblade being some of the best-received TF fiction ever produced. So in a way, AHM might have possibly saved the IDW G1 comics from falling into obscurity, even if it resulted in so much negative reception.

fenrir72 wrote:I'd much prefer DW's MTMTE which got canned thanks to P. Lee's mismanagement.

Well at least IDW has kept the franchise fresh and interesting. Btw, last IDW I did read was LSOTW then those comics that comes with the figs so I'm a wee bit in the dark with the current continuity.

ZeroWolf wrote:On the other hand though, seems like there would be enough support for a DW inspired series.