Skybound makes GI Joe and Transformers sharing the space feel more natural for a few reasons. One, they give each side some space. There are Transformers comics and GI Joe comics and while they share a universe, they're not always butting into each other.
The other reason is that the Energon Universe was conceived as a shaded universe from the get-go, with a level of planning for how it would work that wasn't there with IDW. IDW had a long running Transformers continuity that they, late in the game, decided to try and graft GI Joe, ROM, and other properties onto.
Huh, sounds like the opposite of how attempted reconciliations usually go. It's occurring to me that "The God Gambit" was an explicit articulation of a value-set in the Sunbowverse that stands in opposition to the post-Furman norm. But as Roberts said in Sabrblade's quote, gods and devils are exciting. They make for high drama with the biggest possible stakes. Once they exist in a narrative, it can be difficult to demythologize them without being a preachy wet blanket about it.
The early fandom- I'm talking online discussions around the G2 and BW eras- was awash with debates about which was better, Sunbow or Marvel, and Marvel seemed to win out in that discussion.
This is reflected because most attempts to reconcile them give prominence to Marvel. Both Club fiction and Hasbro's own stuff with the CoP and the Binder depict the Furman origin as the basis, adding on the Thirteen (which was a Furman concept originally anyway so it meshed with the earlier stuff), and depict the Quints as usurpers who trick Cybertronians into thinking they're their creators before they're found out and overthrown. It's trying to be everything to everyone but is definitely treating the Marvel stuff as the basis for the "true" origin.
Granted, going "the Quints created Cybertron and the Cybertronians and the myth of Primus and everything else grew around the distorted memory of those events" is just shifting the preference to Sunbow, but I find that refreshing.
Roberts is right, gods and devils and cosmic forces are exciting and that's probably why that won out as a preference of the fandom in the 90s and 2000s over the Quints, whose intro was a controversial movie and whose stories popped up in a maligned season (at the time).
And as much as I took Furman to task, he does a good job all things considered. The theology and mythology is simple, but for an 80s toy advert comic it's perfectly serviceable. The Thirteen seemed like an attempt to build on it and flesh it out, but Hasbro took control of that and their attempts weren't great for reasons
@lastmaximal pointed out.
I donno, maybe I'm getting older. It's just that the dichotomy between the mundane and the dark, eerie space mysticism of Sunbow seems more intriguing to me now. Maybe I'd still feel drawn to Furman's Marvel origin if it hadn't been expanded and over-explained for decades.
Somewhat related, something that bugs me about worldbuilding in general but certainly applies to theo-mythological aspects is when info is delivered in a way that feels narratively unearned. What's popping to mind is in The Ultimate Guide when Furman laid out a backstory for Primus and Unicron having been different aspects of an ultimate deity called "The One" that had divided itself. (Baby's first Neoplatonism?) When there's no sense of discovery on the part of a character or relevance to ongoing events, I get that too-easy feeling you mention. I have a similar complaint about the whole Ask Vector Prime project, for that matter.
Very well said. I have a huge dislike for AVP because it was just saying "stuff" in a way that meant nothing. Oh, Hyperdrive, the cancelled Euro G1 Autobot leader was the Matrix bearer in Primax 092.0 Beta? What the f does that mean?
At most AVP with give a brief rundown of something, but that's not the same as actual, meaningful fiction.
I think this feeling connects to what you're saying about how mythologies live and breathe and come to be in the real world. Like, the Sunbow show bible didn't lay out anything about the deep history and origins of Cybertron and the TFs - those were established piecemeal as various writers wrote episodes over time, each revelation serving some narrative purpose in the moment. The end result is a janky mishmash of semi-contradictory and partially-constructed ideas, but as you say, isn't that the fun? And doesn't it reflect something true in real life? Like, if you try to make a coherent map and timeline of the world that, say, the Norse gods lived in, you'll find that you have to do a lot of picking-and-choosing from the stories because the storytellers weren't trying to maintain absolute fidelity to a concretely known structure. They were transmitting values through compelling dramas.
Oh yes. Absolutely. Worldbuilding can all too often fall into a trap where everything is so neat and tidy. But look at the monarchies of the world, for example. They're all stories of shifting dynasties. Even Japan, who claims one unbroken dynasty for over a thousand years, had that claim invented to patch over a couple dynastic civil wars. Most countries undergo some kind of shift regarding religion. Be it a mass conversion to a new faith, or faith reawakening and declining in peaks and valleys as centuries move on.
I tend to take Whigs and Marxists to task for the simplicity of assuming history moves in one unchanging direction, but at least they acknowledge history moves. A lot of fictional worldbuilding- and Transformers is no exception to this- tends to default to neat and tidy status quo in terms of faith or politics or culture. There's never attention paid to how messy and complex these issues get in the real world.
