What I'm simply trying to say is that there are a lot of fans who live in denial about how brilliant their run was when all it did was tank. There has to be a reason for that. And this bashing of AHM, I feel, is completely unwarranted. What I've tried to point out is that IDW needed to go in a different direction and we need to grow up and accept that. Successful or not, AHM was that step in a different direction. It was necessary but too many seem to be so absorbed with the continuity issues of a miserably tanking series by Furman.
Sales aren't everything but you've got to appreciate it must look pretty bad for IDW to have sales dropping like flies when TFs have an all new level of publicity and success. It'd be downright incompetent to allow Furman continuing without trying something new.
I don't either but as I tried to point out in the other post, IDW had to try something and it went for the big gun approach which is used commonly across the comic industry by others like DC or Marvel. New Avengers w/ Spider-Man and Wolverine made no sense to me at all. But it worked b/c it took the big names along with a big creative team to make it work. G.I. JOE to me seems to be similar. So what's wrong with a writer grabbing a bunch of recognisable G1 favourites? Do we want a team of the Firecons and Triggercons to really attract a readership? Good luck. I think there needs to be balance between new and old but I have no issue at all if IDW want to try the big fun formula. Good luck to them and I understand why there was a need for a shake up.
I really don't like the term "fanfic" being used in such a derogatory manner. It smacks of a very snobby reader who thinks they can define what is good fiction. You could easily apply "fanfic' to what Furman was doing with his Spotlights and "-tion" series too. It could be viewed he was way too busy with too many plotlines going on, had too much love for that random character that no one cares about who is all of a sudden the big bad or the big hero, no concept of pacing etc,. But no. It'd be better to say he poorly constructed the stories.
Perhaps a better word is "amateurish" but I think that McCarthy has to have some grasp of fiction more than us as its not like we got the call up to write Transformers. AHM, to me, reads like a popcorn flick at the movies. It's there for the thrills and its not very much deeper than that though it does have moments. Not that there's a problem with that, perhaps IDW is aiming for a different flavour to what Furman originally had. I mean, the last thing they'd want is to try and revitalise their line with the same vibe in the comic as the one before it which led to such a decline in sales numbers.