Wait, we're not talking out you?:pQuote:
Originally Posted by kup
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Wait, we're not talking out you?:pQuote:
Originally Posted by kup
Quote:
Originally Posted by FFN
While I respect that there was appreciation for the -ion run and I myself loved parts of it, I think we're forgetting the larger picture here. Furman started with 100K + readers.Quote:
Originally Posted by i_amtrunks
Let's look at the end of his run.Quote:
Infiltration
N/A - OCT05 #0 - over 100,000
030 - JAN06/#1 - 45,468
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Devastation #6: 149 - FEB08/#6 - 12,666
Compared to AHM's first issue:Quote:
Revelations sales
Revelation
163 - JUN08/#16 - 10,806
181 - JUL08/#17 - 10,516
Source: http://tfarchive.com/comics/idw/sales.php: based on IcV2 estimates which are very respected in the comic industry.Quote:
ALL HAIL MEGATRON: 139 - JUL08/#1 15,703
By no means am I saying that AHM has improved sales but what I'm saying is that Furman failed miserably from a sales point of view. At a time when the franchise should be at dizzy heights, he's managed to reduce the comic fanbase from the 100K to such lowly heights. Dreamwave, like them or not, did not have such poor sales numbers till the very end when they were struggling to even get product on the shelves.
The only person who has responsibility for this is Furman. He writes the books and constructs the arcs. He has to take responsiblity. It wasn't as if IDW editorial all of a sudden saw bad sales and reacted without thought, they'd seen a steady decline that they had been unable to arrest. In the end, they had to try something new and my belief is that good or bad, they had to do something new. AHM was it. I'm not saying AHM's a success but it was entirely necessary and I don't think we can deny that.
Furman left IDW with no choice but to find a way to revitalise the franchise. As respected and venerated by the old school brigade, he has failed to command the respect of the reading public. The -tion series is a series for the faithful and there aren't many of us and the fact is that even more of us are abandoning the book if you look at the numbers. I for one loved his Beast Wars: the Gathering but I'm under no illusions about its failure and Furman's failures at IDW b/c at the end of the day, a comic's success is also about its sales. Creatively I'm inspired by the Gathering but I acknowledge its failure on a sales level. And I think that fans have to accept that the "-tion" series failed on that front and is itself responsible for falling on its own sword. No one else.
You do not get exposure of 100K and go down to 10K in 3 years.
Definitely not. I for one didn't warm to it just b/c it was an Australian writer. Just have a look at my posts earlier in this thread and elsewhere. Even Nicola Scott who drew Birds of Prey is Australian but I don't follow her religiously to ever cover/comic she does. I think the reading TF public is especially harsh and will vote with its wallet. Combined with the comic reading public who dabbles in TFs, its not easy to get away with "support me because I'm home grown". Also, more TF collectors these days are in it far more for the toys than the comics so the moment a comic is disinteresting, its very easy to turn your back on. Even more so when you're shelling out close to $8 for a comic which could be spent on TFs.Quote:
Originally Posted by FFN
I tire of these remarks about '84 and '86 characters getting too much attention. Fact is, they never did. Even in the cartoon, they were never developed and weren't that very distinct. Only a few ever were. I actually really appreciate more stories about the '84-'86 characters b/c I felt I never really got to know them. They had few comic appearances and their cartoon appearances weren't very material. All this talk about concentrating too much on '84 to '86 is really just "I want to see obscure characters" squeal. I'm all for obscure characters and developing them but there's nothing wrong with developing existing characters who never got much of a chance to shine or entrenching them further in the mind of readers. It doesn't bother me either way but there seems to always be a small minority (even in the broader comic reading community) that loves obscure characters. I do too but really, I think a franchise should stick to its guns and focus on building those b/c they're what the franchise is really about.Quote:
Originally Posted by kup
.
As i_amtrunks has often remarked, which I absolutely agree with, it'd be great to have both types of series available. I'd read both. I see the beauty of both and appreciate the different approaches. There's something wonderful about the simplicity of AHM.
Oh... I see what you did there...Quote:
Originally Posted by FFN
Well, I thought it was funny :p
i_amtrunks got mixed up. AHM #1 sold one copy less than Devastation #1 over the same period of time.Quote:
Originally Posted by STL
And I think failure is a rather harsh.
I'm a little over sales figures continutally being pulled out :rolleyes:
Thank Primus there aren't similar figures for Hasbro and Takara sales! :p
Furman could and did look at the G1 universe as a whole and could use elements from the whole spectrum (including G2). It wasn't forced to only use the characters that had toys on sale that year like the original comics and cartoons. Seeing characters like Hot Rod and Hardhead (in earth modes) fighting alongside Wheeljack and Prowl pleased me greatly.Quote:
Originally Posted by STL
I don't care about obscure characters being used for the sake of using something obscure (Hasbro is doing enough of that with it's pointless Micromaster homages) but I prefer to see the whole of the G1 universe to be used.
This is why Drift bugs me. There are so many characters in G1 that I can't see how you couldn't find an existing one that had the right sort of character traits (and could have been given a new Japanese race car mode).
I would recommend All Hail Megatron to casual fans, and when complete it will make a nice book (shame the trade paperback is in two parts) but am much happier reading Maximum Dinobots.Quote:
Originally Posted by STL
I also enjoyed Maximum Dinobots! After reading AHM its not hard for me to conclude that this single issue is much better written than the whole first 3 issues of AHM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulbot
That's absolutely not true, STL. Again, maybe it's a you-had-to-be-there thing, but if you hadn't been (necessarily) preoccupied with sucking dummies, soiling nappies and learning to walk during those years you'd probably have noticed the overexposure and be as tired of those characters as I am and many others are. (I'm focussing for the following on the '84 and '85 Transformers, since those are the years I've been bemoaning and the main ones in All Hail Megatron [except the Autobot movie cast, who were also overexposed in the eighties, so they're basically the same anyway]. When it comes to 1986 as a whole then that's great - no one would like a series focussing on Pipes and the '86-non-Wheelie-minibots more than me, but let's face it - they're not the 1986 characters McCarthy is using.)Quote:
Originally Posted by STL
Okay, so it's a bit of a tautology to say it, but the '84-'85 characters were the only Transformers for the first two years of Transformers. The writers didn't have anyone else to use. And so they used them. A lot. They got to be in innumerable cartoons, comics, colouring books, picture books, read-along audiobooks, sticker books, paint-by-number books - they were everywhere. And then - decades later - Dreamwave and All Hail Megatron come along and do it all again. The later G1 characters never got anything like that level of exposure. Heck, Pat Lee actually thought G1 was the 84-85 characters and that G2 was "those introduced in the Transformers
movie and beyond". Then again, he also thought his 'favourite character' - Sideswipe - died in the movie and that the Transformers cartoon was so popular that it was only a matter of time before they made the toys. And this is what $#!*s me. They put the franchise in the hands of people like him and McCarthy - people who know bugger-all about Transformers and don't seem greatly interested in broadening their horizons beyond the little they do know. Transformers is at its best when it's in the hands of people who lovingly investigate everything they can about its history. People like Bob Forward, Larry DiTillio, Marty Isenberg, Derrick Wyatt, Simon Furman - people who clearly care about what they're writing. McCarthy couldn't even be bothered to read the IDW comics that came before his one, let alone explore the rich tapestry of Transformers history beyond the most obvious and easily-accessed material. Furman's sales figures might be bad at the moment, but this is a man who managed to sustain readers of a toy franchise comic book for decades. if you put the comics in the hands of someone who doesn't care about the characters then the figures will only continue to drop and the people who make up the long-term (and not just transient) fanbase won't be there anymore. McCarthy is capable of good work, like Spotlight: Blur and the AHM Autobots on Cybertron. He's also capable of utter bilge, like just about everything that's happened on Earth so far. If the G1 comics had been given to someone who didn't care about the characters in the way Furman still does; if Beast Wars had been given to hacks who didn't care what had gone before; if Transformers Animated hadn't been given to people who lovingly researched and homaged all aspects of the past then the Transformers franchise and fanbase would be a very different place to where it is today. I know I wouldn't be here. And I might not be one of those statistical readers of the IDW comics unless McCarthy or whoever ultimately replaces him learns to love the Transformers universe as a whole.
For some reason there seems to be a corporate inhouse believe that people largely prefer Superstar Funana's art and style.
Most art that you see for promotional merchandising material are Pat Lee's marshmallow bots (jigsaw puzzles, posters and other peripheral merchandise) and I don't think that the 'dull surprise' expressions in the Universe packaging was a coincidence.
However it appears that they are slowly catching on that the style sucks and are making improvements.
Although AHM has a much more cartoony and distinct style than most of the 'previous' IDW books its decent and reasonably good but its not hard to see that it is indeed inspired by Dreamwave's in house style which could have been a corporate push based on the constant use of Dreamwave art in Transformers merchandise.
+1.
I have an incredible amount of respect for Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio considering that they totally went out of their way to educate themselves about Transformers and interacting with the TF fandom. They started off knowing next to nothing about Transformers to writing what is widely considered to be one of the best stories ever written for Transformers (IMO the best TF story ever written for a TV series).
I think it has more to do with the fact Hasbro just owns all of Dreamwave's Transformers art and it happens to be the most well-known modern Transformers art, even if it is bad. The people who deal with merchandise licensees in Hasbro probably don't have an opinion on Transformers art anyway, so long as characters (more or less) look right.Quote:
Originally Posted by kup
However, they've recently been using new art by Don Figueroa, as seen on that Kinnerton advent calendar and the Hot Topic t-shirts.
Guido Guidi is a talented artist. I enjoyed his work in Spotlight: Galvatron and Hearts of Steel. However, his work in AHM is the most "Dreamwavey" stuff he's done for IDW in my opinion, and is likely the direction IDW wanted to attract the more casual fans and general comic book readers, perhaps the former Dreamwave readers IDW failed to recapture when they started out.
If it was a Hasbro corporate push, then I'd think that we'd be seeing Dreamwavey style art for Universe toys.