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THE FIRST DECADE
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THE TRANSFORMERS C
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When The Transformers comic-book license became
available in 2004, the founders of IDW and Chris Ryall had many discussions about whether or not the company should pursue it. They eventually decided to
throw their hat in the ring and after several meetings
and presentations, Hasbro chose IDW to continue
the adventures of the “Robots in Disguise.” Chris
discusses the genesis of the IDW Transformers universe with longtime Transformers writer Simon Furman. CR: So, I thought I would start at the beginning–probably about the midpoint of 2005 or maybe even before that. It probably is before that because I think late 2004 is when we first started talking to Hasbro and I think I even reached out to you about The Transformers before we’d ever even had official talks with Hasbro. SF: It was early 2005, as far as I remember. __________________________________ The Transformers: Infiltration, art by Milx.
CR: We read online that The Transformers was going to be available and we thought about doing it and I think our first thought was, “Well, you can’t do The Transformers without Simon Furman,” so I reached out to you. At that point, I’d heard that you had already been working on a deal to maybe even take on the license yourself ? SF: It was one of several things I was kicking around. Andrew Wildman and I pitched it but I think–the long and short of it was–it was going to be a monumental undertaking 225
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THE TRANSFORMERS C
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A
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When The Transformers comic-book license became
available in 2004, the founders of IDW and Chris Ryall had many discussions about whether or not the company should pursue it. They eventually decided to
throw their hat in the ring and after several meetings
and presentations, Hasbro chose IDW to continue
the adventures of the “Robots in Disguise.” Chris
discusses the genesis of the IDW Transformers universe with longtime Transformers writer Simon Furman. CR: So, I thought I would start at the beginning–probably about the midpoint of 2005 or maybe even before that. It probably is before that because I think late 2004 is when we first started talking to Hasbro and I think I even reached out to you about The Transformers before we’d ever even had official talks with Hasbro. SF: It was early 2005, as far as I remember. __________________________________ The Transformers: Infiltration, art by Milx.
CR: We read online that The Transformers was going to be available and we thought about doing it and I think our first thought was, “Well, you can’t do The Transformers without Simon Furman,” so I reached out to you. At that point, I’d heard that you had already been working on a deal to maybe even take on the license yourself ? SF: It was one of several things I was kicking around. Andrew Wildman and I pitched it but I think–the long and short of it was–it was going to be a monumental undertaking 225
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for just the two of us. So, there was part of me that was kind of relieved when it went to you guys. CR: It was a big undertaking for us, which is why we wanted to make sure we went at it the right way with you. So, when we started this with you, had you already had a direction that you wanted to take the property in your mind before or did the direction we took in Infiltration come out of our conversations? SF: I think it really came out of that. As I remember it, we started talking first about whether we
should try and streamline everything with a kind of “Crisis on Infinite Cybertrons.” Some big thing that just sort of blew everything apart and pulled it back together again. But I think I got as far as doing a little pitch for that and then we sort of decided that maybe that was a little bit off-putting as well. CR: Yeah, no need to torpedo everything that had come before. We would offer up our own take on it instead. SF: When we settled on doing something from the ground up, I was really pleased with that.
__________________ Sketch art by E.J. Su
CR: Yeah, I really liked the idea of harkening back to the whole “robots in disguise” idea, which they’d sort of gotten away from. SF: And we had the model of the Marvel Ultimate universe kicking around in our heads. CR: Take what works and adapt it and change it to whatever way we need and then not pay attention to the things that hadn’t really worked. Hopefully, it was creatively liberating for you.
coming from us. It was very liberating because it was like, “Wow, we can actually bring this up-to-date. We can restart it.” CR: It was nice on the Hasbro side, they trusted what we were doing. It went about at smoothly as I could have possibly hoped. SF: Yeah, it’s interesting how quickly it mushroomed from the start. It starts off with a really slow build in Infiltration #0 and then Infiltration itself and then it quickly expanded. I seem to remember we got a lot of feedback from the readers who were saying, “It’s enjoyable but where are the robots?”
SF: It was interesting for me because it was actually the first time I’d ever got to start up a storyline. Before, I’d always ________________________________________ Promotional poster sent to retailers announcing CR: I guess I underestimated the come in when the whole thing The Transformers had moved to IDW, art by Milx. patience of some of the early was up and running but this readers who seemed to just want to see giant robots was completely from the ground up. No comics, no fighting. I thought the whole idea of keeping them TV, no toys even really to drive the story–it was all 226
__________________________________________ The Transformers: Infiltration art by Don Figueroa.
_________________________________________________ Next Spread: The Transformers: Infiltration, art by E.J. Su.
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for just the two of us. So, there was part of me that was kind of relieved when it went to you guys. CR: It was a big undertaking for us, which is why we wanted to make sure we went at it the right way with you. So, when we started this with you, had you already had a direction that you wanted to take the property in your mind before or did the direction we took in Infiltration come out of our conversations? SF: I think it really came out of that. As I remember it, we started talking first about whether we
should try and streamline everything with a kind of “Crisis on Infinite Cybertrons.” Some big thing that just sort of blew everything apart and pulled it back together again. But I think I got as far as doing a little pitch for that and then we sort of decided that maybe that was a little bit off-putting as well. CR: Yeah, no need to torpedo everything that had come before. We would offer up our own take on it instead. SF: When we settled on doing something from the ground up, I was really pleased with that.
__________________ Sketch art by E.J. Su
CR: Yeah, I really liked the idea of harkening back to the whole “robots in disguise” idea, which they’d sort of gotten away from. SF: And we had the model of the Marvel Ultimate universe kicking around in our heads. CR: Take what works and adapt it and change it to whatever way we need and then not pay attention to the things that hadn’t really worked. Hopefully, it was creatively liberating for you.
coming from us. It was very liberating because it was like, “Wow, we can actually bring this up-to-date. We can restart it.” CR: It was nice on the Hasbro side, they trusted what we were doing. It went about at smoothly as I could have possibly hoped. SF: Yeah, it’s interesting how quickly it mushroomed from the start. It starts off with a really slow build in Infiltration #0 and then Infiltration itself and then it quickly expanded. I seem to remember we got a lot of feedback from the readers who were saying, “It’s enjoyable but where are the robots?”
SF: It was interesting for me because it was actually the first time I’d ever got to start up a storyline. Before, I’d always ________________________________________ Promotional poster sent to retailers announcing CR: I guess I underestimated the come in when the whole thing The Transformers had moved to IDW, art by Milx. patience of some of the early was up and running but this readers who seemed to just want to see giant robots was completely from the ground up. No comics, no fighting. I thought the whole idea of keeping them TV, no toys even really to drive the story–it was all 226
__________________________________________ The Transformers: Infiltration art by Don Figueroa.
_________________________________________________ Next Spread: The Transformers: Infiltration, art by E.J. Su.
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____________________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: The Transformers Stormbringer art by Don Figueroa.
under wraps was a really sound one but there was that vocal contingent that gave us all pause. We began to think, “Are we rolling this out too slowly?” So, we took an abrupt turn with the Stormbringer story. SF: That’s right, and it worked. I think we even billed it as having loads of robots in it. CR: Robots on Cybertron and no humans. It was about as direct a message as we could try and give to people. Look, the stuff you don’t like has been removed and here’s the stuff that you say you want. I think that’s been the challenge the whole way through–how do you satisfy these different audiences? So we do a story where you roll it out slowly and have the robots in disguise and then 230
you jump to doing robots fighting on Cybertron without that element. The constant struggle is how do we present something that everybody’s going to want? SF: The interesting thing with the IDW Transformers for me was this was the first time where the Internet played a huge role in it. Everything we did was immediately scrutinized and commented on and it made us aware of how it was, or wasn’t, being perceived. CR: The hard part is keeping in mind that the vocal online contingent either way–positive or negative–is a small single-digit percentage of the overall readership. We probably second-guessed ourselves more than we needed to at the start, but you want to 231
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____________________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: The Transformers Stormbringer art by Don Figueroa.
under wraps was a really sound one but there was that vocal contingent that gave us all pause. We began to think, “Are we rolling this out too slowly?” So, we took an abrupt turn with the Stormbringer story. SF: That’s right, and it worked. I think we even billed it as having loads of robots in it. CR: Robots on Cybertron and no humans. It was about as direct a message as we could try and give to people. Look, the stuff you don’t like has been removed and here’s the stuff that you say you want. I think that’s been the challenge the whole way through–how do you satisfy these different audiences? So we do a story where you roll it out slowly and have the robots in disguise and then 230
you jump to doing robots fighting on Cybertron without that element. The constant struggle is how do we present something that everybody’s going to want? SF: The interesting thing with the IDW Transformers for me was this was the first time where the Internet played a huge role in it. Everything we did was immediately scrutinized and commented on and it made us aware of how it was, or wasn’t, being perceived. CR: The hard part is keeping in mind that the vocal online contingent either way–positive or negative–is a small single-digit percentage of the overall readership. We probably second-guessed ourselves more than we needed to at the start, but you want to 231
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___________________________________________________ The Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave, art by Nick Roche.
make sure you handle it properly and you don’t annoy the old fans but also cater to new fans. SF: Sure. One of the things I think worked really well are the Spotlights. CR: I think that originally came out of the fact that we have these big team books but there’s such a huge roster of Transformer characters and all of these people are e-mailing us saying, “What about this guy, what about this guy?” You know you can’t shoehorn them all into the overall storyline without forcing it, or growing it too large, so we used the Spotlights to try and focus on some of the fanfavorite characters. I think that really played into your strength of telling these self-contained stories that really gave you a sense of 232
________________________________________________ Opposite Page: The Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave, art by Nick Roche.
who the character was and really gave you the room to sort of develop the character without having to have all this bigger storyline going on around it. SF: I think the only problem we made for ourselves with that was that we really hit the ground with one of the best ones and it was hard to keep it at that level. Because really everybody loved The Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave. CR: That one’s still mentioned as a favorite. I think, especially with you, who’s been doing this for so long, you’re constantly being asked to top yourself or do something completely different than people have seen before and keep on giving people something new but not too new. _____________________________________________ Next Spread: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #7, art by Guido Guidi.
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___________________________________________________ The Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave, art by Nick Roche.
make sure you handle it properly and you don’t annoy the old fans but also cater to new fans. SF: Sure. One of the things I think worked really well are the Spotlights. CR: I think that originally came out of the fact that we have these big team books but there’s such a huge roster of Transformer characters and all of these people are e-mailing us saying, “What about this guy, what about this guy?” You know you can’t shoehorn them all into the overall storyline without forcing it, or growing it too large, so we used the Spotlights to try and focus on some of the fanfavorite characters. I think that really played into your strength of telling these self-contained stories that really gave you a sense of 232
________________________________________________ Opposite Page: The Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave, art by Nick Roche.
who the character was and really gave you the room to sort of develop the character without having to have all this bigger storyline going on around it. SF: I think the only problem we made for ourselves with that was that we really hit the ground with one of the best ones and it was hard to keep it at that level. Because really everybody loved The Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave. CR: That one’s still mentioned as a favorite. I think, especially with you, who’s been doing this for so long, you’re constantly being asked to top yourself or do something completely different than people have seen before and keep on giving people something new but not too new. _____________________________________________ Next Spread: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #7, art by Guido Guidi.
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SF: It’s always a difficult balance and sometimes you’ve got to just believe in what you’re doing and stay true to it. CR: You were handed the keys to this huge house and asked to really decorate it from the ground up and I think you did a masterful job doing that. SF: Well, thanks. I’d love to say it was planned but it was one of those things that was very organic–it evolved as we were doing it. You know, Stormbringer wasn’t even in our minds at the beginning, the Spotlights were an answer to a question. And we’ve ended up with this nice rotation of single-issue Spotlights and a larger series and smaller miniseries and it just seems to work really well. 236
CR: And now going into things like your upcoming book and then Maximum Dinobots and then we’ll figure out a way to reconcile this with what’s been going on with All Hail Megatron. SF: I think it’s all workable and what I’ve seen of All Hail Megatron, I’ve enjoyed. It took a while to get going but it now seems to be getting people on board. CR: Yeah, I think that is a reaction to people being so comfortable with you that anything that didn’t just pick up the pieces from your storyline–and we deliberately tried not to just pick up the pieces directly because that didn’t seem fair to you. We thought, “Well, let’s take this turn and see what we can do.”
SF: I’ve kind of enjoyed the move sideways, if you like, on these more contained projects. The funny thing with the ongoing was you felt the need to sort of keep all these little different fires burning and with something like Maximum Dinobots, it feels nice just to tell a story. CR: That was something you were able to do with the Beast Wars books, too, although then you were having to juggle another huge cast of characters and trying to find ways to fit in all the fan-favorites.
CR: Absolutely, so do I. So, after two decades of doing this, is this still fun for you? SF: Yeah, it really is and, I’m not just saying this, the IDW run has been the most inspiring of the lot because it really does feel like something where I came in at the beginning and helped build it from the ground up. I feel that, even now after two years or more, we’ve got so many places still to take it and so many possibilities that, yeah, it’s really exciting and I’m having a blast with it. IDW
SF: I hope we get to do some more Beast Wars down the line.
_____________________________________________________ Transformers Beast Wars: The Gathering, art by Don Figueroa.
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SF: It’s always a difficult balance and sometimes you’ve got to just believe in what you’re doing and stay true to it. CR: You were handed the keys to this huge house and asked to really decorate it from the ground up and I think you did a masterful job doing that. SF: Well, thanks. I’d love to say it was planned but it was one of those things that was very organic–it evolved as we were doing it. You know, Stormbringer wasn’t even in our minds at the beginning, the Spotlights were an answer to a question. And we’ve ended up with this nice rotation of single-issue Spotlights and a larger series and smaller miniseries and it just seems to work really well. 236
CR: And now going into things like your upcoming book and then Maximum Dinobots and then we’ll figure out a way to reconcile this with what’s been going on with All Hail Megatron. SF: I think it’s all workable and what I’ve seen of All Hail Megatron, I’ve enjoyed. It took a while to get going but it now seems to be getting people on board. CR: Yeah, I think that is a reaction to people being so comfortable with you that anything that didn’t just pick up the pieces from your storyline–and we deliberately tried not to just pick up the pieces directly because that didn’t seem fair to you. We thought, “Well, let’s take this turn and see what we can do.”
SF: I’ve kind of enjoyed the move sideways, if you like, on these more contained projects. The funny thing with the ongoing was you felt the need to sort of keep all these little different fires burning and with something like Maximum Dinobots, it feels nice just to tell a story. CR: That was something you were able to do with the Beast Wars books, too, although then you were having to juggle another huge cast of characters and trying to find ways to fit in all the fan-favorites.
CR: Absolutely, so do I. So, after two decades of doing this, is this still fun for you? SF: Yeah, it really is and, I’m not just saying this, the IDW run has been the most inspiring of the lot because it really does feel like something where I came in at the beginning and helped build it from the ground up. I feel that, even now after two years or more, we’ve got so many places still to take it and so many possibilities that, yeah, it’s really exciting and I’m having a blast with it. IDW
SF: I hope we get to do some more Beast Wars down the line.
_____________________________________________________ Transformers Beast Wars: The Gathering, art by Don Figueroa.
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