#taoo

Since last week’s list was about the 5 things I’m was going to miss in the IDWverse. I’ve decided to a list about the opposite. This list will focus on the concepts, moments, and characters I despised in the IDW Transformers series. Stuff I will no doubt be glad are ending and hopefully remained in the old IDW Transformers continuity. And remember these are just my own opinions and if you like them that’s good. It just means that we have different opinions

1.       Neutral Cybertronians (N.A.I.L.s)

·         The Neutrals are the worst group of characters in IDW. They are arrogant, irritating, shallow, hypocritical, and only exist to give Autobots problems and conflicts. From the refugees to the Circle of Light, they all act so similar to one another, I only remember a few by name. The majority of them act more like plot devices than actual characters. This becomes more apparent when just about every time an Autobot shows up they treat them like monsters while the Decepticons, who have caused the majority of the damages and deaths during the war, are treated with less hostility and disdain- with the leader of the faction even deciding to befriend Starscream, you know the universe’s biggest backstabber at the time, because he believed Starscream was just misguided and misunderstood. With only a couple likable exceptions that act like actual characters, the majority of the Neutral Cybertronians are just flat self-righteous and holier than thou caricatures so unsympathetic that I will not miss any of them.

2.       No Females on Cybertron/Arcee’s Origin

·         I don’t know what it is with Transformers comics, but they seem to hate gender. In Spotlight: Arcee, the story is about how Cybertronians are normally genderless and a mad scientist, Jhiaxus, attempts to introduce gender by forcefully altering Arcee physically into a female. Besides the messed up implications, this story practically erased female Transformers from the continuity as well as placing an embargo on them for future appearances. Which was a stupid thing to do because female Transformers have been a thing since the second season of the original Transformers cartoon. While Barber, Roberts, and Scott have retconned it and changed Arcee’s character since then, things still haven’t been the same. Some of the female characters that finally made an appearance felt more like name-slap characters due to how different they act, and the amount of retcons that were done just made things more confusing; how was gender erased in the first place and what did it? All in all, can the next IDWverse not try to erase gender from Cybertronians or create an unnecessary explanation about it in the first place?

3.       Bumblebee’s Leadership

·         Before I start, no I don’t hate Bumblebee as a character. I just hated his leadership of the Autobots during IDW.  Due to the powers of Hasbro and IDW, Bumblebee became leader of the Autobots on Earth after Optimus left (the first time) and he was awful. He was a doormat that every other bot either disrespected him or did things behind his back, and all the praising he was given no matter how bad he screwed up made it even more jarring. Then came RID, when he got put in charge again and to me it was even worse. While outside forces like Metalhawk and Starscream didn’t make it easy, Bumblebee’s bad traits from earlier are still present but were cranked up to eleven as well as treating his allies like dirt. He practically sabotage himself and the Autobots’ efforts almost single handedly.

4.       Antagonistic Organic species

·         When I mean organic species, I mean humans, Galactic Council, Solstar Order, etc. I know the 4 million year war between Autobots and Decepticons would leave a negative impression on some alien species, but come on! During all 4 million years, with a few individual character exceptions, barely anyone could distinguish or realized there were different factions with one of them being somewhat nicer than the other. But what was truly aggravating were the ones that did know the difference but continued to treat the Autobots even worse than the Decepticons. It wouldn’t be so bad except, similar to Neutrals, all their complaints and arguments against the Autobots felt like the organic characters were reskins of each other rather than actual individual characters. Also the sooner IDW Spike Witwicky is gone the better- that character was an awful evil action hero wannabee.

5.       The antagonistic adaptations of Japanese Transformers characters

Starscream, the Lonely Leader.

Bumblebee♥