>>7955188As a whole you're in for a treat, with some lighthearted moments here and there. Wasn't keeping track of the writers as I was reading, but going over things now... you have some campy space stuff, quite a few weirdo human antags, but you also get some good stuff with Blaster, Bee/Goldbug, and Grimlock. But yeah, he was given many comboner teams, quite a few -masters and pretenders, whereas Furman possibly had less of that to deal with, or chose not to. Definitely the Furman stuff is my favourite imo, but Budiansky can still be appreciated p well for what it is.
>feeling more like THEY'RE the filler in between the "real" UK stories than the other way aroundBut yeah, I guess this is an example of where necessity is the mother of invention. How to come up with fun and compelling stories that doesn't contradict anything we have thus far? Focus on some smaller cast or select guys and flesh them out a bit more instead of dealing with big teams and risk continuity errors! And I can't/won't go into examples, but Furman built on a lot of themes/avenues that Bud laid out.
>for a while in organised fandom he was the Fallen of the writing world, his stories dismissed or ripped into as being juvenile and sillySo you're not really alone in this, but yeah it can get a bit campy