Devastron wrote:The AHM starts up and, for the first time, an IDW TF comic manages to bring in a greater audience than its predecessor series and hold it, hovering in the 11,000-12,000 range. That is a makred improvement from the Spotlights, Revelations and Maximum Dinobots. So yes actually, AHM was more successful than its predecessors.
I don't buy that at all. Revelation did "poorly" because the Spotlights have always sold consistently in the 9-10K range, and many comic outlets were unaware that it was supposed to be the continuation of the -ations instead of just four more "normal" spotlights. (In fact, many
readers had a hard time knowing that!) And Maximum Dinobots sufferered from distribution problems for the first few issues, coupled with the same lack of clear advertising as Revelation. Additionally, AHM followed pretty much the same curve as Devastation: starting out around 15K and dropping to 11-12K.
All signs to me seem to show that what actually happened is that 11-12K is simply the baseline market for TF G1 comics at the moment, and the -ations continuing as planned probably would have sold in exactly the same range. AHM didn't increase sales at all, it just continued the same sales IDW had already been getting, thus trashing a good continuity for no net result whatsoever.
Which brings me to my thoughts on AHM, which I might as well just port over from ongoing convos I've been having on another TF forum:
***
I mean, let me put it this way. I'm a new TF fan myself. I came in from the '07 movie, so I had no nostalgia or love of Furman or anything that already existed.
I loved the -ations, because after watching the G1 cartoon and reading the Marvel comics and finding them both rather cheesy and 80s (the former in a fun way, the latter in a not-so-fun way), and having been burned by the confusingness and... comic-booky-ness of trying to get into the usual ongoings of other comic companies, I was very pleasantly surprised by the -ations.
They took what I thought sounded like an interesting fictional verse and were handling it in a thoughtful, mature way that I hadn't come across in the other series/continuities yet that I tried after the Movie. The backlog of issues was managable, the plotline coherent and well-thought-out, the setting intriguing, the character reinventions interesting.
And with a lot of unique elements as well: the Infiltration protocols, the Autobots' different attitudes towards humanity, the presence of two major Earth organizations as more factions in the fight, the importance of disguise and political intrigue, the Dead Universe and the hints at a different origin for the TFs, the Matrix not being important, the start of the Great War being due to a revolution, lots of interestingly reinvented characters, Starscream and Megatron having a different dynamic, etc. While it still wasn't a fully "serious" scifi take on the TFverse, it's as close as we've gotten so far.
But very little of AHM feels unique to me. Not only does it actively undo almost all of the new stuff that the -ations added, it recycles both plots that have been done before in TF, and cliches from the genre in general. It feels like the G1 cartoon made "darker and edgier", with the same mindless action, cartoonish artwork, and cliche, disjointed storytelling. But it lacks the light-heartedness that made the cartoon enjoyable despite its flaws. If AHM had been what I'd first read of IDW's TF comics, I would have dismissed it as stereotypical superhero comic book pablum, just with giant robots, and given it a pass.
***
I can think of a great number of ways that the overall premise could have been done better and also tied in more strongly to the existing storyline. I mean, think about it: the Cons conquering and razing a planet was the entire point of Sixshot, the facsimilies, and the Infiltration Protocols to begin with! Why not write a Decepticons-winning premise off that existing structure? Furthermore, the massive presence of Ore-13 was a perfect excuse for the Cons to simply conquer Earth instead of trashing it. On top of that, if they could have some of the Con scientists busy refining said Ore to remove its downsides (instead of on pointless mindless drone army plans), that would give an equally perfect excuse as to what advantage gave the Cons the upper hand (instead of the ridiculous ambush thing). And then we've got Skywatch, who was designed from the get-go to find ways to fight these Cybertronians, and could have become interesting players in the resistance. And then there's the Machination, who could be an interesting side-faction, or at least Skywatch could discover them, shut them down, and incorporate their discoveries into their own efforts. (Picture government black ops Headmaster clones fighting against the Decepticons.)
And that's stuff that an amateur fanficcer who doesn't think she's all that great a writer can think of off the top of her head. A pro ought to be doing this way better than I can.
Or, the tl;dr version - there already was a perfect, well-constructed and foreshadowed setup for AHM's overall premise. But McCarthy threw that all out in favor of his own (IMHO cliche, contradictory, and overall inferior) personal setup.
I think that's what disappoints me the most about AHM... it was an intriguing idea that could have been really good and grown organically out of the existing storyline up until that point. Instead we got this mess.
***
I think that last paragraph sums up my thoughts entirely. This series could have been so good... an intelligent continuation of the existing continuity that was an interesting look at the Decepticons having conquered the galaxy. It could have been a look into their psychology as they deal with running things with an iron fist, while the Autobots and the citizens of the various destroyed/subjugated planets have to form a resistance to free themselves from the Cons' control. Instead we got a brainless cliched action B-movie pretending to be deep in places, whose few bright spots are overshadowed by its overall lousy handling.
For the first time ever in anything I've fangirled, I find myself wishing part of a universe's canon would get retconned out of continuity so we don't have to deal with the character derailment and continuity-erasing that this series brought about.
Especially the character derailment. I could spend a lot of time ranting about the crap changes that happened to Perceptor and Hunter, two of my favorite characters, for instance.
</walloftext>