Okay this one took a little longer than expected to get to, but here it is.

While IDW's run at Transformers managed to have plenty of highlights (and I highlighter my personal Top 5 in a previous thread) there were also a few moments that really rustled my jimmies in a BIG way. These are moments that either left me confused, annoyed or just outright hated.

So without further ado lets get into it shall we?

5. Don Figueroa's Return
Stormbringer was my first intro into 'The Don'-s art, and by PRIMUS it was gorgeous. Only Alex Milne comes even close in my opinion (Milne I think even surpassed him over time). So to hear that he was coming back for "The Transformers" (when IDW decided to just have an ongoing numbered series) I was excited.

Until I saw the art.

Don had attempted to mesh the Bayverse stylistic choices with the G1 aesthetic, and, well..... yeah. No. It didn't work for me. At all. I mean, the alt modes were fantastic, but the robot modes, especially the faces, were just a slagging mess. These weren't Bayverse comics, they were G1 styled chunky stomping robots with very human facial features we'd all gotten used to.

Admittedly, things did get better, but the damage had already been done. Sorry, Don. This was a plumb LBW for you.

4. The Continuity Conundrum
All Hail Megatron not only kicked off a new period for Transformers and polarised a lot of people, it started a trend which continued for many years within the Transformers IDW universe; a severe lack of continuity for plot, characterisation, and even how the characters looked. From an art perspective, while I get the premise behind artistic license, when you have concurrent series presenting such completely different styles (such as the Bumblebee miniseries and the Transformers ongoing), it becomes VERY jarring and not cohesive to follow. And then when certain plot points just become dropped, change completely, or do a complete one-eighty, you can be left scratching your heads for a long time.

Thank Primus for John Barber. He seemed to wage a one-man war on loose ends and the series as a whole really flourished for it and I for one (and I'm sure other fans) breathed a collective sigh of relief.

3. Mike Costa
Words, words, words. Wordy wordy words. Whole panels filled with words. Whole conversations. And primarily with humans! This is how I remember Mike Costa's take on Transformers.

Okay I get it. Lets work some political undertones in there. Reflect on us as humans with all our flaws and weaknesses. But this isn't a comic just about politics (although I feel that later, when it was split after The Death Of Optimus Prime, the Robots In Disguise comic did this fairly well). Its about big transforming robots. Give them characterisation, give them action. Don't just sit around talking! Please!

There just wasn't enough balance during Costa's crack at IDW. Sorry, Mike. It just never worked for me.


2. Heart Of Darkness
Sometimes a mini-series comes along that expands on the ongoing story, ties in both new and existing much-loved characters, has some gorgeous art, and really resonates with you.

For me, that was Rom Vs Transformers: Shining Armor.

But it definitely WASN'T Heart of Darkness.

For starters, I just couldn't get on board with the art style. It was all rounded and chubby and cutesy looking. The colouring was all bright and almost happy-like. For something called 'Heart of Darkness' this just didn't fit!

Then combine that with some aspects of how they treated the Dead Universe. To me, Simon Furman had given the premise of a large dark expanse of dread which defied logic or explanation, but it managed to corrupt everything it touched from the 'normal' universe. Thanks to Heart of Darkness though we get the D-Void. A massive entity of..... eyes and tentacles? So basically a Hentai monster? Which just wants to feed on everything? Really? Why did we need THIS as an explanation??

I kept reading Heart of Darkness in a hope it might redeem itself. But no. From the way they treated Nova Prime (he got some much better more screentime during Dark Cybertron), to massive plotholes like Thinkbox the Headmaster which had to be sorted out later, and that art and colouring.... it was memorable to me for all the wrong reasons, like a train wreck where all the carriages were cargo containers full of CHUG figures.

1. Hunter O'Nion's Treatment during All Hail Megatron
AHM for me was a very polarising moment. I get that IDW were trying to boost sales and get away from the intricate, interwoven storylines of Furman's -ation series by performing a 'soft reboot', but as later work by Roberts, Roche, and Barber showed, many many fans LOVE intricate detail. So when Shane McCarthy took the reins, the impact was... less than stellar for me. I'd loved the redesigned alt modes of the characters and they'd all been tossed aside. I felt the storyline was reduced to a classic cartoon 'Megatron attempts to win at everything and Starscream is his scheming second in command' role. I continued to read, and SOME parts I could get behind, but how poor Hunter O'Nion was treated was truly abhorrent.

Hunter was to me the 'everyman', a conspiracy theorist closet nerd looking for the truth until the truth found him. Unexpectedly caught up in the transformers Great War when it had made its way to earth, he was the Spike for a new generation. I felt that he was designed to be this way. Later he would develop some Mary Sue like qualities when he became bonded with Sunstreaker after being submitted to the Headmaster process but it worked. Despite their clashing personalities they had some great moments which continued into Maximum Dinobots and I really connected with him.

So to find out that Decepticons had managed to get the upper hand via Sunstreakers betrayal, and that Hunter had been tortured and used by Bombshell as a 'backdoor' into their systems was truly horrifying. And then they just end his life. Snuffed out just like that. They didn't even attempt to save him, say goodbye, nothing, it all happened off-screen.

I hated it.

And THEN they made the situation even WORSE. Later in the AHM Coda story 'Replay', they managed to COMPLETELY alter a scene in which it appears that Hunter FORCES Sunstreaker against his will to participate in the Headmaster process, rather than actually agree to join forces.

In all of IDW's run, through multiple authors' interpretations of certain characters, I don't think I've ever seen another figure treated as badly as Hunter was. And it will forever be my number one pick as the top thing I hated in all of IDW's run.

So, what are your thoughts? Care to share what it is that you hated during the IDW run? I'd love to know, and others may too!