I have to agree with you on those points. The Dinobot designs are tragic, what are these Animated Dinobots V2??? The Same with the massive continuity holes forming in the IDW universe, they started of as tiny black holes and then grew and grew, soo I fear the whole universe will collapse in on itself and be sucked into.. um the dead universe I guess. I really wish they had run this before AHM, or cut of AHM as a seperate universe my enjoyment of both books is signficantly dampened by this continuity schisim.
As for Furmans writting personaly I much prefer the galxy spanning multiple thread stories of the previous years, felt like there was always something to grab my intereset granted It got a bit out of control but it had nice epic feeling.
Really? I liked that it started with Hotrod all messed up, it instantly grabbed my attention and propelled me back into the story. Also I feel thats what should happen when one goes up against somone as mighty as Scorponok and I'm happy to let my immagination fill in the blanks. Besides any fight with Hotrod is an anticlimax because we know Hotrod survives.Some of my beef with the plot though is there is no fight between Hot Rod and Scorponok. Scorponok goes from the end of #1 to the start of #2 to just kicking Hot Rod’s butt. Its way too jarring a transition to me and I can’t help but feel that a writer as longstanding as Furman could drop the ball like that.
Overall though it's pretty average so far, this may be the 25th Anniversary of the Transfomers but IDW's books are not currently grabbing me.