SO....IDW Transformers. What is the story here and what did this universe of uneven stories do? Let's talk about it's history this won't be coverage of everything but a broad sense of where of it went. What it inspired and how it imploded.

Transformers ended up having legs in comics, after a number of years being gone from it besides the odd ad comic, they came back with Dreamwave productions, Dreamwave though....had a lot of problems. Oh dear god.

See Dreamwave was a former Image comics Studio that got big for adopting a "manga Style"......and being rather blatant plagiarists. If you look up Dark Minds you might notice it's basically Ghost in the Shell. Pat Lee was the head of it and....yeah guy is a scumbag.

but in Dreamwaves wake, here's the deal, Pat used a lot of ghost artists, most notable was Alex Milne(My favorite TF artist) and stiffed them of a lot of money Pat mostly used it to buy sports cars and other shit. Not a good guy.

So Dreamwave failed and IDW took over, IDW at the time was kind of weird in a lot of way their big title at the time when they got it to me was 30 days of night(JESUS) and I never paid attention to them till later, mostly because they didn't seem genuine.

They seemed like a company out to make movies and tv shows first.....and yeah they are. THEY went into that hard, and honestly there a lot of ways this bit them in the ass mostly in the fact that they focused SO MUCH on licensed titles they don't have big original franchises.

*Exalted why are you shitting on Locke and Key I like that title!

So do I but it's the only one IDW made homegrown to go anywhere because WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT V WARS! Like Seriously Locke and Key is great but that is ONLY one title.

Look there is a lot of books I like from the Lightbulb logo. But They were never huge hits most of the time, and many spurted out when adapted to other things. But let's get back to Transformers.

Anyway when Starting this series off they did some smart things one they got Simon Furman to help make it. and while he is now controversial at the time this was kind of smart. He was considered the good transformers writer.

Look Simon is NOT PERFECT, he has his own writing tics that you will either love or hate but for many people he was one of the big TF lore guys, and this is him building the TF lore from the ground up for a new universe, plus there was another big thing going on....

The ultimate universe was at full swing at Marvel, this inspired them to make the universe a kind of modern G1, instead of just making the g1 cast like they were they would get reinvented. So a lot of lore was changed to make IDW transformer the Ultimate universe.

They also had the remnants of various Dreamwave comics like Megatron Origin which was actually made for Dreamwave, but published by IDW, and Simon who also did work hated Dreamwave as well. So let's talks about the series. and the "Phases"

the first phase is called by fans the "-ations era" mostly for some of the titles following that naming scheme like Escalation, these books are kind of slow at first since this was when writing for the trade was REALLY starting to take over so most of the first series is...well..

is focused mostly on humans finding out about the Transformers, a Optimus does not even show up till the end and that was a choice, but this begins an arc that really tried to ground the transformers, for one the whole disguise aspect gets played up and it's a war story.

Simon also wanted to revive concepts like the Pretenders which were these odd ideas from the original g1 that didn't have a place but he was trying to basically make this a darker g1, and this effected a lot of characters...and I'm going to have to talk about her now.

So IDW Arcee, so one of the things that was published during this era was the spotlight issues that would expand on the universe and focus on lesser used character or establish bigger ones. Arcee, got her own spotlight and this was one of the first major controversies.

Okay Spotlight is a book that Simon wanted to used to explain gender for Transformers he always saw them as kind of genderless and look I'm not going to go into the pronoun thing here but that how he saw them, so he wanted to explain a "female transformer"

Now he did this by explaining that she was an experiment by Thunderwing to see what would happen if Gender was introduced to the transformers species and yeah she's basically trans and this drove her insane now you can see why this is controversial, especially now.

So here's the thing I don't think bad intentions were intended I think the problems with Arcee as a character come from one thing: Overcompensation, and for character like her I'm going to call this Pink Overcompensation and I'm going to compare her....to another one.

See Girly characters in older franchise tend to get a lot of discussion about them, how they are not as cool or badass as the others, it is a thing, so when these character are brought back there is often a phase where THEY OVERCOMPENSATE FOR THEM HARD.

Power Rangers Pink from Boom shows this in action with Kim being this secret agent biker for Zordon who get her own black leather suit and if you watch the show you start to wonder where this shit came from. Arcee in IDW shows an example of this too.

So Arcee was thought of as this lame girl character who needed to be badass, so she is now the most dangerous transformers who stands out from her race because of her gender and has a dark back story, he went about it in a bad way but I see what he was TRYING to do.

Myself I wish he just had female trasnformers and didn't worry about it, but it could be a thing were he didn't know what Hasbro would do and hedged his bet on more female characters. Either way this was a bad move and she was NEVER really fixed in a good way.

One consistent issue with IDW was the art, and here's just the truth the editors varied hard in this department, some sticking to designs and styles and coordinating that with artists others...not so much, and some of the art is just bad take a look at Silverbolt here.

Artist did stick out though for Nick Roach some BECAME REALLY PROMINENT, Nick Roache is one, his cartoony style and expressive designs would go on to help forge IDW as a unique brand in Transformers without him I think IDW would not have it's style it's known for.

and they were also able to get Don Figueroa to work on the books as well, he was part of the Dreamwave crew but he developed a HUGE fanbase as "the good one" and was a major designer for the brand and he even helped with some of the toys.

The altation isn't for everyone, it's slow at times but it's lore and worldbulding is interesting, and the way it tackles concepts considered goofy like headmasters was really cool at times. It's version of Sunstreaker was also cool...but....sadly...

It wasn't doing as well so Simon was kicked and show the door and thus lead us to the All Hail Megatron portion lovely. During this period one EDITOR would become known and he is an editor I would gladly kick in the dick this is the story of Andy Schmidt.

*What is so bad about him?
Well let's start, the guy didn't like continuity at all, he would always try to fix shit to "make it easier" and this led to one of the worst transformers comics of all time, where basically EVERY OTHER creator had to fix his mistakes. so yeah.

During his era he was also REALLY careless with design look at everyone's favorite Bumblebee. See Bee was upgraded to a new leader esque look but some book would not have him in that design at all, this is not something you should do in a visual medium.

but the reason I hate him is because of this guy stole a design. You see he actually stole Don's idea for Stealth Bomber Megatron and sold it to Hasbro. Don stopped working on the franchise because of this, SO FUCK ANDY you PIECE OF SHIT.

Okay All Megatron was written by Shane McCarthy and it was made to mostly make IDW more like classic g1 in some ways. It didn't always work because it meant reverting some smart changes(like Soundwaves update) to 80's designs.

that and the comic was long it was 15 parts, and one story and it was SLOOOOW. Like this to me this era, was one of the worst, and oh boy it was going to get worse before it got better. But one series....would change everything.

Last Stand of the Wrecker is one of the most important transformer comics, while it's influence was SLOW at first the writer James Roberts and Nick Roche's series set the GOLD standard for IDW and going forward it would be the series that all would be compared to.

Meanwhile All Hail megatron had okay sales, but was kind of a writing disaster for a lot of people ruining good characters(Sunstreaker) and introducing some bad ones(Spike though this is in hindsight) and also making the lore more G1esque by bringing in the Matrix.

it would also introduce the first IDW OC DRIFT! Look much has been made about him being a Mary Sue...and he is, he's the classic OC who is cooler then you, I mean he's basically a Gundam transformer but other creator have done good work with him plus his original toy kicks ass.

but after Shane stepped down and we get to the super low point the ongoing era. Mike Costa is one of the most controversial TF writers and this also brought what was considered a bad art style inspired by the movie. This had it's up and downs.

His run had an INFAMOUS issue where Spike a human kills a decpticon in cold blood and it's treated as a heroic moment despite Scrapper here BEGGING FOR HIS LIFE and WILLING TO GO INTO CUSTODY. It was not a good moment.

According to Mike he couldn't get into Trasnformers, he looked at the backstory and couldn't see them as characters or relatable since they live for so long, they are not human so this made it hard for him to write, despite you know a lot of other doing it for years.

So he wrote the humans as justified in being terrible but they didn't come off as that sympathetic so you can see a writer struggle in real time trying to write a franchise that build itself off of taking character like Starscream seriously. But there are high points.

eventually it was decided to change the guard a new editor came to prominence John Baber, a former Marvel dude, and James Roberts came back and while James has his own issues he brought his A game, and gave IDW a high watermark once again.

and one Mike was done Transfomers was split into two titles Robots in Disguise and More then meets the eye, and More then meets the eye, would become the Face of IDW. Everyone get out Lost Coastlines by Okkerkill River let's talk about this.

MTMTE is not perfect but I can still like it. I'm not a fan of everything in it, like fuck Starsaber, but some other stuff, I'm a huge fan of. Like this is my favorite Hot Rod, him trying to have this wonderful adventure with friends is very well relatable to me.

if you told me Swerve would be one of my faves I would have laughed. But this series brought new romantic relationships, deeper characters in some case and was a blast at times. But the series did have problems because at point you can see Hasbro wanted it for crossover fodder.

IDW tried to mitigate it because THEY CLEARLY saw that this was going to be the big book and so tried to keep as self contained as possible while Robots in disguise was the shill book. Still there is reason to like both, Cybertron being this post war place was cool.

but what killed this era honestly more then anything else, was Hasbro....wanting to test out a cinematic universe in comics. Trasnformers became big comics, and hell MTMTE actually got comics news and fan blog to pay attention to it...so time for THE OTHERS.

GI Joe especially had issues because one thing people forget about is that IDW also had Joe comics with their own continuity and Now THEY WERE GOING TO BE SQUEEEEZED into the IDW tf universe along with Rom, Action man and others.....joy.

and it kind of imploded, look this lasted longer then I thought but this was very haphazard at points plus it didn't know audience to go for since it wanted a new audience but the old audience didn't like the new books....and they would be buying the comics.

Look one of the reasons Transformers is more stable is it just never went away compared to others, even if you go with the idea of the movie MADE it big again it was still around Transfomers where really only gone from the transition from g1 to g2.

Meanwhile the new stuff was made of Gi Joe a line that WAS GONE at the time, and ones that had one toyline at best. Okay action man had multiple but he's kind of a British thing. and was not that popular. Either way this was not a good idea.

and so IDW universe folded after thing went kablooey. and it rebooted into a new universe so what is there to saw about the original?

The original could be a bold new take on characters, along with great art that told some of the best comics of it's year. During this time it was coming I said MTMTE was a Better Saga then Saga.....I'm sticking by that statement.

but it was also an inconsistent mess at points filled with incompetent editors who cared more about sales of the book over quality but....well the highpoints were good. But man there were low points.

Still IDW version 1 as it called did make a universe it was not always good it was not always bad. It's highpoints should be seen and it did effect some major aspects fo the brand, hell it got some toys. But for now IDW made a new universe, well see how that goes.

But give the Wrecker trilogy a shot, MTMTE and others you might be surprised at how good they are. Now this was not the only Transformers product IDW made, this universe they did experiment.

They did movie tie ins, and some animated tie in as well. But those are tales for another day, the first IDW universe is the most well known of these comic from IDW, but not the only ones, and those will get spotlight later on.

but for now understand the place IDW has it made new characters, gave us new mythology to draw on and made some fan favorites. It has a lot of love and people followed but it was not perfect. But hey it gave thrilling 30 Springer, and I can't hate them for that awesome toy design