Dominic wrote:It is not just a question of using the characters as cannon fodder. It is a question of IDW not doing anything good with "Beast Wars" in the 10+ years they had the license. At this point, I have to remind myself that BW was good 20+ years ago, because it has been so long since the characters have shown up in anything worth while.
I'd have to disagree with you. "The Gathering" was something good IDW did with BW. It had a lot of potential to tell future stories, and possibly even tie up a few loose ends from the cartoon. Unfortunately, Furman completely wasted that potential with "The Ascending". But, I have to wonder if IDW directed him to wrap it up, since they didn't seem all that interested in doing an ongoing BW title.
Between Fun Publications and IDW, BW is arguably one of the weakest parts of TF by percentages of content released.
I think part of it is that BW was so self contained in the first place. Not that there aren't other avenues they could explore, but it's hard to put something in that setting with out stepping on the story of the cartoon, which set the bar so high in the first place.
I picked up "Optimus Prime" 22 and 23 over the weekend. Standard tie-in issues. If somebody were reading "Optimus Prime" but did not want to buy in for the main event, they would either have to just push through the last few issues or assume that some other stuff happened off panel. Barber seems to be using these issues to tie off long-running plot threads.
Some of this is actually setting up for the Unicron event. Remember, issue 22 had been delayed and takes place before Elonia was destroyed in Unicron #0.