Orin_Thomas wrote:Listening to the interview, it sounds like Chris Ryall had decided that Furman Transformersverse wasn't "good enough" and needed to be shaken up to get more people in. This might have worked, if the "shaking it up" didn't involve such utter rubbish. All Fail Megatron took 12 issues to get us where? A set piece battle in New York? All that mucking about and all the autobots needed to do was hitch a ride on Omega Supreme?
Ironically, the -ations verse is what got me hooked on IDW's TF comics in the first place. I liked that it was the most mature-seeming of the TF continuities I had come across at that point, and put the various elements of the TFverse to intelligent use. On the other hand, if AHM had instead been my first taste of modern TF comics, I would have never bothered getting into it.
What's even more ironic is... they curtailed the -ations just as all of the setup was just about ready to pay off and get exciting. Furthermore, the setup seemed to all be leading into pretty much exactly what AHM's concept was: Decepticons winning and conquering Earth, Autobots down and out, humans forming a resistance. Consider:
The Cons conquering and razing a planet was the entire point of Sixshot, the facsimilies, and the Infiltration Protocols to begin with. There could easily have been a Decepticons-winning premise off that existing structure, especially since the massive presence of Ore-13 was a perfect excuse for the Cons to simply conquer Earth instead of trashing it. Additionally, if they had the Con scientists busy refining the Ore to remove its downsides (instead of on pointless mindless drone army plans), that would have been a perfect excuse as to what advantage gave the Cons the upper hand (instead of the ridiculous ambush thing or the Autobots being brain-dead about security).
Then on the human side there was Skywatch, designed from the get-go to find ways to fight Cybertronians, positioned to be interesting players in any resistance. There was also the Machination, either potentially interesting side-faction, or Skywatch could have discovered them, shut them down, and incorporated their discoveries into their own efforts. (Picture government black ops Headmaster clones fighting against the Decepticons.)
And so on and so forth. Basically, I get the impression that if IDW had kept their eye on the ball, they would have gotten the exact same sort of story AHM was anyway. The difference is that it would have been done far more competently, with more interesting elements that would have grown out of the existing storyline naturally. Instead they screwed it up, and screwed everyone out of the satisfying end being leading up to with all the previous issues. </rant>
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