Hollywood Reporter have posted an interesting little article ahead of the New York Comic Con, which is happening later today. This article announces that the successor to the Combiner Wars will be titled Titans Return – this is the line everyone has been calling Titan Wars since it was outed by us at Botcon 2015.
The storyline promises to bring in some big characters, including Headmasters, and also Sentinel Prime, who is the space shuttle we’ve seen lineart of. Hollywood Reporter are also reporting that this will be the middle chapter in a new storyline that started with Combiner Wars, and is set to conclude in 2017-18 with an as yet unnamed third chapter. The overall trilogy is being called, Prime Wars, and is being designed by Hasbro to unite toys, the IDW comics, and Machinima’s animation into a single multimedia approach.
It sounds like exciting times are ahead, with the return of Headmasters following the return of Combiners – one wonders what delights we’ll be able to gaze at in awe at the New York Comic Con over the next few days. Keep it TFW for our coverage of the event and all the cool stuff to come out from it.
Probe
Megatron Origins
omegamagnus
doubt
wait… where did this happen? I don't recall none of this, unless you talk about the story arc when Ratchet kills the time aboard the Lost Light telling young Orion Pax adventures and especially when he stole the bomb/fake matrix from Nominus Prime's dead body…
really, I don't remember scenes with Sentinel, or was it just hinted?
Autovolt 127
Sentinel Prime huh?
Well Not-RID is going to turn into shit again in a few months. :/
This better all happen.
Coffee
Wow, this is going to REALLY suck.
Which is a shame because I like the direction Barber is going with his own non-Hasbro-mandated story, and the fact that he's getting dragged into this twice more is just sad.
I could actually drop IDW as a whole right now. I really could.
Oh, and that's definitely Beast Wars Megatron back there. Which I would be excited for if I wasn't less than trustworthy in some certain writing ability on the staff.
Rodimus Prime
Meh, the less they tie the games, toys, etc. to the comic the happier I will be.
Steevy Maximus
At least it has been far less frequent with Transformers. The last time we got something akin to that might have been All Hail Megatron…which was in 2008 (over 7 seven years ago). Even the "soft reboot" with "Death of Optimus Prime" is now almost four years old.
I think the more likely trend will be something akin to "Colony Wars" where each group selects a Prime and we get a theme akin to Transformers Cybertron (which, granted, could still get a good number of characters fans want out)
kaijuguy19
Would be cool if that was the case. It would make for a good excuse to bring in the G1 Predacons and Dinobots even to go along with the BW cast which will help strengthen the beast theme.
SMOG
Actually, I kind of preferred Combiner Wars because it left a smaller footprint, so to speak. It didn't throw the whole universe into chaos. I was just like… there are combiners now. All the regular plots could still move along. MTMTE wasn't affected much at all. It was better as far as promotional crossovers go, because it gave Hasbro a banner they could display across the covers of all the issues, but aside from a few extra Combiner fights, the content wasn't much different.
Dark Cybertron on the other hand, was a case of STOP EVERYTHING NOW! GIANT COSMIC EVENT HAPPENING! NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!
It was much more of an "event" in the Marvel or DC mold… which is to say, also more of a self-indulgent, bloated pain in the ass that derails everything.
That's my take anyway.
zmog
Windsweeper II
By that logic any IDW death is ambiguous
Good, because if that Bumblebee is not a hallucination after all, they can bloody well bring back Dreadwind and Triggerhappy.
Windsweeper II
Totally on the nose.
Dark Cybertron was far better integrated into the existing storylines.
Before Combiner Wars i felt interesting stuff was going on in IDW-RID, then all of a sudden it felt like everything Barber wrote was dictated by HASBRO.
Hanzkaz
Originally posted by soundwaverulls :
There is that, but Hastak could take a 'better late than never' approach. It might be impractical for them to try and cram in a Beast Wars-type line with all the other stuff going on. The beast-like figures in the Headmasters line (like Skullcruncher) could even be used as a kind of experiment to test their popularity. We've just had an entire toyline consisting mostly of vehicle-type TFs, and now, starting with Skylynx, we seem to be going back to figures with beast-like traits. Coincidence?
I wouldn't put it past Hasbro to 'pretend' that the new Beast Wars began when all these new beast Headmasters turned up. Sometimes what's expected from Hasbro is quite different from what we actually get (ie. the long awaited Headmaster Nightbeat is apparently a little guy without a body).
Personally, I'd like them to use an all-encompassing (organic, mechanical, transmetal beast TFs) Beast Wars line as an excuse to give us Titan-class Trypticon.
Or we could get Headmaster Beastformers. We could have newcomer Optimus Primal becoming the Headmaster of a giant gorrila-bot….
PredaconElder
It's all all about "corporate synergy". That is all they teach MBAs.
Did I mention apparently MBAs are so dumb they have them take their tests in a group?
SMOG
Yeah, it's true… the crossover marketing effect has been sort of inconsistent. I wonder how it's determined. Notably, Trailbreaker and Cyclonus are in later waves of the Combiner Wars line. Maybe Hasbro only really cares about that big initial push?
zmog
soundwaverulls
The thing is, Titan Returns is happening in place of the BW anniversary. There's no point in celebrating the anniversary in 2017 when it'll already be over.
Hanzkaz
I'm just speculating, especially considering we've got the Beast Wars anniversary coming up (and the fact that we're getting the more mechanical TFs showing up in this toyline, paving the way for their more organic counterparts, later.). Then again, I never dreamed we'd get a entire new Headmasters toyline, so anything is possible.
Star Saber
Not all the toys reflected in the stories though – Cyclonus for one never got pulled off the Lost Light. Let's also not forget guys like Rodimus, dead characters like Pipes or Trailbreaker. I wonder if the requirement is only for a bare minimum of characters to at least push the story.
SMOG
I sad to say, this was my second thought after looking at these pics too…
First… "Holy crap! Look at those wonderful toys!!"
Then… "Oh man, the storylines are really going to hell if they're going to have to mirror all this…"
The best Transformers comics tended to derive from periods when they weren't being treated mainly as an outlet for selling toys. That's when the writers had the most creative freedom to tell solid stories, which in a comic book… is all I f***ing care about. If I want commercials, I'll turn on the TV.
I love the toys. I will probably buy pretty much all of these… but at this point I'd be completely happy to leave the comics to do their own thing, and let the toys do their own thing. Hell, make a new series or cartoon to market the toys, but don't mess up the comics when they actually have the potential to be good.
I'm fine with popular comic characters getting their own toys… but not every toy gimmick has to find its way into the comics. It just encourages bad stories.
I really hope so too… but with so many characters being affected by this stuff, you know there's going to be spill-over, and nd the fiction itself is going to still get impregnated with the more toyetic nonsense. Like, what the heck is going to happen to Blaster? Remember how in Combiner Wars, they suddenly had to pull the Protectobots and Sunstreaker and Mirage off the Lost Light… after just putting them on the ship a few months earlier?
But yeah… hopefully they'll let Roberts and Roche do their own stuff in their own little corners, and shunt the bulk of the marketing fluff into the other series.
zmog
3.8TransAM
Say Hasbro how is the "Combined Universes" abortion working out for you now?
So why are you trying to do it again?
Leave the comics alone……10k a month in sales is not your priority is it? They make toys in the tens of thousands.
How about a television show people give a shit about? Or toys we actually want that don't feel cheap. Or work on the massive ass QC problems that keep occurring?
Megastar
Interesting…
SouthtownKid
Yeah, I am a big fan of the TF comics and toys reflecting each other. That's a big part of what the brand is about, imo.
BUT
Huge event crossover comics are the death of good storytelling pretty nearly 100% of the time. At any publisher. We've seen it over and over and over at Marvel and DC. Every series' real story gets interrupted for something that alllllllllmost always turns out to be complete garbage.