Well, 'happy' might not be the best word. But hear me out.
The IDW Transformers and Hasbro universe, their comics continuity, has been running for the past 13 years, and was
announced - for lack of a better term - to reach its conclusion by the time the Unicron mini-series came to its own end, taking Lost Light and Optimus Prime with it (alongside Rom, Micronauts, GI Joe, MASK, and all the various casts and stories within).
As of this week, and after an initial showing at the San Diego Comic Con 2018 IDW panel, we have finally seen the final covers for the last issues of each of the three series - but most importantly for Lost Light and Optimus Prime.
Let's go a little into the background first, though: in October 2005, Simon Furman and EJ Su brought to the stage
Infiltration #0, the revelation that Cybertronians had been on Earth for a while, Verity Carlo and Hunter O'Nion, and a new Marvel Ultimates-influenced 'Generation One' continuity - its Phase One - began.
A year later, in September 2006, Nick Roche and Simon Furman went back a little further in
Spotlight: Shockwave, an issue that will become more and more relevant to everything happening in this universe up to its very end.
Some of those stories were cut short in 2008 (and concluded in Maximum Dinobots - until we came back to it all in Lost Light), as Shane McCarthy's
All Hail Megatron saw the triumph of the Decepticons on Earth and the creation and arrival of Drift, some initial but vocal fan complaints (
not all was bad!), which only got louder for the most part with what followed from 2009 to 2011, and Mike Costa's ongoing series. Then Optimus Prime was killed, again, and Orion Pax returned - the comics split in two parallel series: More Than Meets the Eye, and Robots in Disguise. Phase Two begins.
Part of the Phase Two stories, alongside the ongoings, were the Wreckers' Saga (now collected in one
volume), the Autocracy trilogy (which we re-covered
here), and the first proper crossover event in
Dark Cybertron - which brought with it a much wider universe, and the arrival of Windblade (among others).
Since then, the ongoing series saw a third companion, in
Windblade, and eventually
Till All Are One. Dawn of the Autobots led into Days of Deception, then its second crossover
Combiner Wars up to
Titans Return, and opening the universe even further and wider in
Revolution, Reconstruction and the final big event,
First Strike, which ushered in the end of the Hasbro Universe through the unfortunate
Transformers vs Visionaries miniseries, and the resulting summoning of Unicron.
So here we are, at the brink of it all. The universe is about to end, and I just told you I'm happy for it. Let me explain why, exactly:
- Continuity - This is the bane of comics everywhere, I have said so before and I will keep on saying so until we stop considering 'canon' as something monolithic and impervious to change and modification. Continuity can be a useful tool, but taken to its extreme it's just silly, harmless, and a source of headaches - and unnecessary gatekeeping for readers who do not want to or cannot keep track of everything that happened ten years prior to the book they're reading right now. An entirely new, actually fresh start will clear everything before it - and a new continuity can be established, free from the self-imposed shackles that prevent potential fans to fully enjoy the books coming out. Hopefully, something looser, that will allow for further development as it continues.
- IDW Publishing - The IDW staff have proven themselves extremely capable of creating good Transformers fiction (other fiction too, but this is the focus here of course). Sure, there have been pitfalls along the way, mostly down to the strained relationship between licensor and licensee, and how that affected the creators in their storytelling. But they have never entirely destroyed the Transformers story that was being told. With John Barber as EIC, I have the confidence that this will continue, strongly, into whatever new venture we will see the comics embark.
- Timing - I said something very similar in a piece about the Transformers Bumblebee Movie, but it's worth repeating at this point: the entire Hasbro universe, outside of the fiction, is being reshaped. The live action movies have shifted tone and possible storytelling, with Paramount looking to start afresh; the comics are all being ended together, with stories having been developed for a long time already, by admission of the writers themselves (and TAAO and Wreckers also had their excellent farewells), and reaching a almost entirely organic conclusion; a new toyline, with some heavy fiction behind it, is being launched in Fall 2018; it's been 13 years. That's a new fan's entire life, and one now ripe for the seeding of a new story.
- New talent - A lot of the creators, with the exclusion of editor John Barber, have already stated that they are not currently planning on returning to the books. Be it artists, or writers, or colourists, or anyone else involved in the creation of the books, we currently have no idea of who will be involved, and this opens doors to infinite potential: to name but a couple of fan favourites, Sarah Stone came into the books from fan-art work; Alex Milne had a similar trajectory from deviantArt, though with previous engagements at Dreamwave; Kei Zama was extremely popular on Tumblr before doing covers and eventually interiors; most current professional creators have been fans of the franchise since they started doing art or writing of any kind; we've seen several fan creators spotlighted in comics covers across the series and the years, and the prospect of entirely new talent is tantalisingly exciting. I am ready for all of it.
- Comics precedent - This is a two-sided point, actually.
Firstly, comics history has a well proven track record of having limited series among its most influential of all time: I'm thinking of The Sandman, Lucifer, The Wicked and The Divine (end forthcoming), even Saga will end at some point (once the current hiatus is over). The same can be said for book series, and even big and small screen ones - in spite of the recent wave of rebooting and forced continuation - I mean, Marvel Transformers itself is famously a 4 issue mini-series that lasted for 80 numbers. Having an ending is good. It does not cancel out a story, it allows it to sit and mature with time and with every revisitation.
Secondly, the precedent set by the current IDW universe. The entirety of the creative teams involved have been working nothing short of miracles in establishing a seriously impressive layer of fertile ground for more stories to spring forth (not in the Botanica sense from ReGeneration One - sorry Simon). In an interview with the Twincast Podcast, Nick Roche spoke about 'a groove that was for everyone reading – and if that’s not for me, that’s fine' - starting with the inclusivity, diversity, and representation that the writers so far have established for the Transformers world, and carrying that into the next stories as a starting point. The precedent, the existing reality that made it into non-specialist media coverage, as well as triumphed within comics circles, is there, and it is a thing of wonder.
As I was working on the later stages of this comment, a
similar piece from David Heslop was brought to my attention, and I wholeheartedly recommend heading over to read that too, as one phrase in particular jumped out at me: 'by giving us an ending, we get to experience the totality of this saga’s existence'.
Experiences can indeed be bittersweet, and provoke untold levels of emotion - be that good or bad - but we have all been witnesses to something unprecedented in a licensed comic property that started out way back when to sell toys and flesh out their packaging bios. Non-Anglophone readers are slowly gaining access to those stories too, with translations of MTMTE spearheading localised publishing pushes, and
Japan receiving the full story from AHM onwards as we speak; the rest will hopefully follow too, even if much after the end of this particular era of stories.
And for that, for all of these thirteen (even just the number!) years, for all of these stories, yes - I am happy to see them come to an end. With an ending that the creators have meant and carefully planned. And an ending that I still hope will open to something bigger still in the years to come.
Thumbnail image by Alex Milne and Josh Perez
I just like the pretty pictures.
