I remember that back in the day someone criticized Skybound's use of the sunbow G1 designs, mentioning that they didn't think the story justified its use. I highly disagreed with it back then, because to me Skybound was kind of like a Sunbow G1 fanfiction, one that wanted to take elements of it more seriously (I mean, Issue 1 is basically a retelling of the first episode of the cartoon), so it made sense to me that they have picked those designs.
In retrospective, I realized that person was right, because now Kirkman can't stop insisting that the Energon Universe is its own thing and that the readers need to stop expecting characters to be their versions from other continuities, but— dude, Transformers EU started clinging itself from the sunbow cartoon, can you really blame the public if you are depending in their already existing fondness of the characters to make your story work? Like– the first characters looked like their versions from the cartoon and the new characters look exactly like they did in their original media. If you want your work to stand on its own, at least change the designs a little. I mean, Arcee was a Lamborghini and her robot mode look exactly the same, giving her new kibble would have give her more identity, it would have make more people think "this is Skybound Arcee" instead of "ah yes, Arcee from the Sunbow cartoon". Of course you can take inspiration from other series, Elita from TFA is obviously inspired by Ariel from G1, but she still looks like her own character that belongs in the TFA universe.
And this is when the personal style of the series comes into play. Skybound doesn't have one. You could say that the shadows and how gritty everything looked qualify, but that's DWJ's own artstyle you can find in his other works. (And since him and Corona left it doesn't look like that anymore so lol) Honestly, having one would do wonders for Skybound. I wasn't a fan of what they did with Lockdown in Cyberverse, but his design becomes the least of my problems when I see how everyone else looks. Idk, to me it's a bit dumb to complain about the characters in your continuity being compared to their original versions when you are doing nothing to make them stand on their own.
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