John Barber Confirms: Final Day as IDW Publishing Editor-in-Chief is Tomorrow

Novaburnhilde

Welcome to TFW2005, around these parts blue text is often used to denote sarcasm.

I see. Thanks for the tip.

Rodimus Prime

Going out of business is definitely a change.

What’s with the blue text?

The IDW comics haven’t been good in a long time. A good change of pace is needed at this point.

Nova Maximus

We sure we read the same IDW Optimus?

Prime Optimus is the closest to an Optimus that is "perfect", and IDW Prime is definitely not that.

I get what you mean, I suppose over 3 decades of bias against him, it's just a reflex to automatically dislike him.

The funny thing is as soon as I hear Peter Cullen’s performance, I do like him. One thing I liked in the Baymovies was the retractable face plate because I generally don't like them on Transformers.

You'll probably think I've a screw loose but I really like Prime in the Netflix trilogy. I liked that he was unsure of himself.

As for John Barber, I did like his early work on Robots in Disguise but I felt it went downhill when he relocated them to Earth.

I did like his movie tie-in comic books.

VVa

No accounting for taste.

Sorry but I always found Optimus to be annoyingly perfect, Wheeljack and Perceptor as annoying know all scientists, Kup as the annoying know it all and G1 Bumblebee as the annoying sidekick. I actually like RID and Bay Bumblebee.

Rattrap just annoys me on every level and Alpha Trion was the first cosplay Transformer and I detest facial hair on robots. Along with Kup, Wreck-Gar and Orion Pax, I find them to be ugliest G1 designs.

If you like them, good for you but I don't.

As long as he's happy… That's all that Matters.

Cal

For a guy who wants this continued in private, you sure like discussing it in public. So I think I'll do the same.  

I know about Sega's mandates and they don't interfere with how Flynn started afresh with IDW. At least there he was given carte blanche to write whatever story he wanted without being beholden to previous continuity. He could have reintroduced the Blue Blur in a fascinating new origin story, but what he gave instead was the most boring, generic, exposition dump I have ever read in my life. Check the review. There's no build-up to Sonic's first appearance. He's just there on the first page and is like "Hey, there's a town under attack!" Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight… end teaser. Now are you going to tell me Sega mandated THAT? Then Flynn writes the exact same thing in the next issue, only replacing Tails with Amy. Then he does the same thing again in issue 3, this time with Knuckles! What kind of shitty writing is this? Are you going to claim that Sega forbids creating suspense, diversifying the narrative or exploring character motivations? We never get a hint at why Sonic prefers the solo act, the point is completely glossed over and makes him unrelatable. I swore off IDW Sonic after the first arc, but I've heard similar complaints from readers who pursued further, such as resolving the metal virus arc with the CHEAPEST deux ex machina by having Super Sonic fix everything. This is NOT the result of a suffocating IP holder, it's the result of a writer with no goddamn talent.

This is why I still support Penders' writing. The work he did on the Knuckles comics expanded the echidna's role far beyond what Sega could have dreamed. It's a history that spans thousands of years and many generations of Knuckles' lineage. The more you read it, the more invested you become. If you call this "fan fic writing", then it is GOOD fan fic writing. I'd much rather have this than Knuckles sitting alone atop the Master Emerald just waiting for something to happen, wouldn't you? (And on the subject of the Ancient Onyx, it was a necessary change because the Master Emerald is a separate gemstone located elsewhere. It's a minor point.) The "course-correction" you advocate is destroying all these elements that made the comic interesting, ultimately leading to reduced sales and Archie Sonic being cancelled. While Sega's mandates didn't help matters, Flynn should have been fighting for the inclusion of family, romance and expanded societies instead of capitulating to Sega's demands like a fucking shill. Instead he lied to fans about reintroducing the Freedom Fighters because he openly disavowed them as a symptom of 90's environmentalism despite their popularity. He has no respect for the series' roots, no respect for the community and no respect for the integrity of his writing. Say what you want about Sega being uncooperative, but to portray Ian Flynn as an innocent victim, slave to their every whim is fucking irresponsible.

TheTornSideswipeFan

I think it was a serviceable story coming off the growing pains of a writer that essentially was still having to write safe stories since the off-the-rails content that was made by Penders essentially tried to create a bad fanfic out of the franchise, and when Sega basically did something similar that made Penders go "How dare they steal my ideas?!", plus even IDW Transformers had growing pains after it's transition from Dreamwave.

And let's not forget it was Sega that said "Sonic can't cry, Sonic can't lose, etc." as a result. You can say that Flynn's writing in the Mecha Sally arc was a slog and basically was made as an undoing of the world read about, but it's also because of Penders that Flynn had to play damage control and make the safe stories you declare to be bad and invalidate his contributions, and it's still Sega that basically said "Sonic can't lose" and made the stories still seem bland as a result. There's only so many ways one can make a character face inconvenience without it breaking the rule of "losing".

Penders was basically the one who drove the series too far and put the series into fanfic overdrive, especially with his "contributions" to the Echidnas (Need I point to the Black Onyx when it should have been the Master Emerald that held Tikal and Chaos, yet because of Penders and his "lore expanding", they basically had to come up with a macguffin item because Penders need to bloat the story under his name). What you consider his vision to expand beyond the games was a bad fanfiction writer basically being given too much creativity to a point of actual detriment, and Flynn's "reducing of the worldbuilding" is course-correcting, if anything.

We're digressing from the topic of IDW Transformers and this is becoming more of a "Complaining about Sonic Content" debate rather than an actual Transformers conversation, however. If you wanna make it a point to tell someone the "10001 Reasons Ian Flynn is a hack writer" reply you'll be slaving on the keyboard to type in order to enlighten us, save it for private messages or twitter.

You guys realize that this isn't a Sonic website, right?

Prime Noble

I wasn't a fan of his writing Transformers. He didn't seem to know how to write Prowl…

He absolutely knew how to write Prowl, he made creative choices that you didn't like, that's not the same thing as "not knowing."

But like others said, no accounting for taste. The tastes in this thread are all over the place, and I think I'm glad none of us are responsible for deciding the future direction of the brand.

Hoffman

I can't imagine that there are grown ass people who get angry about Sonic fiction.

If there are grown ass people getting angry over toys, that isn't out of the question.

Prime Noble

He had an uncanny knack for focusing on Transformers I can't stand such as Rattrap, Kup, Alpha Trion, Wheeljack, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime.

No accounting for taste.