Quote Originally Posted by Verno View Post
These IDW people seem to be enjoying rewriting the G1 story from the start, and doing it in terms that reference previously written fiction, but twisting it to their own designs.

I guess that was the only way to avoid being hamstrung by that which has come before, by working outside of established canons, yet still being recognizable as G1.
Simon Furman was brought in to set the universe up, and pilot the first few years of stories, and basically his remit from IDW was, "Clean slate. What would happen if you started writing Transformers in 2005?" And Infiltration was his answer - Cybertron is a burned out husk and stores of true Energon are depleted, with a war of attrition being played out across various worlds with small Decepticon Infilitration teams trying strip down the planets for resources, and small Autobot teams fighting to stop them, all coordinated by Optimus from his Orbital Command Hub, and fought according to intergalactic accords and conventions. Optimus only gets involved on Earth due to the discovery of Ore-13 - Shockwave's only (known) successful attempt to create new Energon by seeding various different planets - basically turning Earth into the most import planet, resource wide, in the universe.