IDW Publishing has uploaded a short video interview in which editor-in-chief and Optimus Prime writer John Barber talks about the Unicron miniseries, scheduled to begin on July 11. Barber discusses, among other things, his own history with the brand in comics and the premise of the book, which promises to bring IDW’s current Transformers continuity to its end. When talking about Unicron‘s tone, he also says:
“There’s action, destruction, loss, tragedy. But also heroism and joy and laughter and hope.”
You can watch the interview for yourself after the break, and then pick up the first issue of Unicron this Wednesday!
YoungPrime
Exactly!
Autobots being constantly bashed while they save ungrateful human idiots is so tiresome. Heck, I hate X-men stories that revolve around this narrative.
"I've got super unimaginable powers but I'm not going to use them on this one dumb, evil, bigoted, human who slaughtered my friends and/or family, because I'm the good guy!" Vol. 2
Omegashark18
Would be nice, for them not to be hated every time they show up on Earth…
Sockie
People, what did I JUST say?
Cut it out. Now.
Agent 53
While they can make mistakes with their reboots, New 52 being a good example the longer a continuous story stands the more certain issues will be kept, for example Hank Pym, he struck Wasp (in what was actually an artistic error, it was meant to be accidental) and it's permanently tainted his character in a way reboots could erase.
Transformers IDW has a similar incident – All Hail Megatron. Before I get flamed to death I've read AHM and enjoyed it, but, while the Autobots made other mistakes to make it worse, earth's relationship with the Transformers was irreversibly damaged. A reboot could allow for a different take, when they reach earth.
Agent 53
I doubt that highly, look at several of the co stars of Optimus Prime and I think the entire cast of Lost Light do not have toys of their stories.
I do agree that they made a mistake with the crossovers, It works in DC and Marvel because they are already a shared universe, they shouldn't try and force a shared universe, fanfic authors get away with it because lets face it, however much there are more good ones now, most people expect little, commercially crossovers can cause lockout when people just don't want to.
What I am wondering is this: While plenty of characters don't get toys there does tend to be a correlation between the Generations line and the Comics. The post POTP line is called "War for Cybertron" is anyone else thinking/ hoping that instead of what current IDW did, starting on earth and using prequels to show parts of the war, the post reboot comics will START with the War.
Lucas35
But that never happens in IDW. Revolution and First Strike are events croossovers and if you count the appearance amount the Transformers has the longest screen time. Visionaries is also a crossover so both have equal screen time. And in Optimus Prime humans are just supporting characters, the GI Joe members are practically extras, they barely have speeches and appearances, plus most of the human characters that appear are Transfomers characters and Transformers has always had human characters in the cast.
BB Shockwave
That was one issue, and the GI Joe crossover 4 more and a few G2 issues… from the HUNDREDS of Marvel stories.
It wasn't like IDW where the transformers get lost in the crowd of Joes, Action Man, Visionaries, Micronauts, MASK agents, space knights and assorted humans and aliens I honestly don't give a fig about.
Marvel – especially after Furman came along – wisely kept the human characters to a minimum. I'd be OK with a group like the Neo-Knights being a factor, but not whole planets of aliens and armies of Joes.
I never read much of Marvel outside of the X-men who seemed largely unaffected by reboots, so honestly, I never kept as much track as with DC.
Omegashark18
I wish it was tomorrow morning already!
Jalaguy
Another day, another IDW thread on TFW2005 descends into people waving their embarrassing hate-boners for IDW around.
Yes, yes, dears, we know you think IDW makes boring garbage comics for people who hate America, that's nice.
Anyway, I'm writing up a review of Unicron #1 today, and can confirm that it's a good issue! Barber's work since he originally stepped down as editor (Optimus Prime, Revolutionaries, Rom vs. Transformers…) has been his best ever, and Unicron is set to continue that based on issue #1!
RKillian
The Optimus Prime book is lucky to sell 5K. It's been awful for a long time. The only way the art could get worse would be to put Livio Everything-Everywhere-Is-Stone Ramondelli on it. The story sure dragged on with lots of nothing for a long time too. There's only so much of "dur hur, we must work together, be patient because reasons" pontificating Optimus Prime can do before it becomes tiresome. Frankly the only reason I even pick up the books is to have an excuse to support my local comic shop. Lost Light was the only halfway interesting one; just about everything else I enjoyed reading has been cancelled.
Yeah, almost as fun as watching the I-Like-Everything-110% crowd flop around trying to pretend like anybody should value yet another ringing endorsement of a product they haven't even seen but already know is the bestest EVAR!1
GrungeWerX
I should have said maximum. 50K is wishful thinking, but I agree with you, I don't think the market is stable enough for it to maintain that sales level consistently. More realistically, as a brand I think it should be bringing in between 20-30K. I could cite some Comichron sales examples in the last year of smaller brands maintaining that range, and some consistently selling low titles climbing the ladder (like Spawn sales tripling since April from its long-held 12K standard to near 40K), but as you mentioned before, that's a topic for another thread or discussion, so I won't digress any further.
As for the topic at hand, Milne's looking to be doing some killer work on Unicron, and I've already checked out Unicron #0 and I'm pretty amped for more! I'm also curious to see how the Pyra Magna storyline pans out.
Thumbaticon
When Barber mentions "Secret special guests" while listing the art team, does that mean the back-up stories will have multiple contributors? I'm curious to see who's doing what since most of the common TF artists are working on the ongoings due to the double-shipping schedule.
Sockie
I'd just like to remind people to cool it on the personal attacks, in accordance with rules 1 and 13. As well, this thread seems to be going off-topic. If you wish to discuss IDW's sales figures, you can always make a new thread in the comic discussion forum, or use one of the pre-existing threads there that suit this topic better.
misfire19d
I agree. Several IDW people ran their mouths on Twitter which turned off some fans. This is a problem for most of the comic industry. Comics have become more about the egos of the people making them and less about the characters and their stories.
But this is just a part of IDW Transformers’ problems.