Story - Logan Rogan
Script, Colours, Letters - wadapan
Art - Andy Short
deviantART
wada sez: This is it, folks, we’re almost at the end: tomorrow will be the last post on the archive! But as for this strip—writer Logan Rogan clearly had a soft spot for Dreadwind and Darkwing, as for BotCon 2009, he self-published a full-length comic starring the characters: “Limelight: Dreadwind”. This one-page strip, however, was seemingly never completed; I found the finished lineart over on Andy Short’s deviantART, and hoped to track down the original script—but sadly, Short seems to have left the Transformers community, per his inactivity over on TFW2005, while Logan Rogan simply did not reply to my @ on twitter. Without a script to go off, I decided to try and reverse-engineer what the story in the comic might’ve been like, writing my own dialogue to suit the artwork. Keep reading for a full process breakdown.
From the character designs, it’s obvious that this strip is set in IDW continuity; Dreadwind and Darkwing appeared as part of a Decepticon infiltration unit on the planet Nebulos in Stormbringer (identifiable as the setting of this strip by the architecture of the alien city). They had a fairly minor role in the story, with the Nebulos scenes mostly serving to set the stakes for what Thunderwing might do to Cybertron. Darkwing seems to be the leader of the gang; he orders a token resistance against the monster to satisfy Megatron, planning to flee the moment things get rough.
They’re last seen in issue #3, seemingly having escaped—but in the artwork in this strip, Dreadwind is in a crater for some reason. There’s not a moment in the canonical events where this could’ve taken place, so they must’ve had one last run-in with Thunderwing as he was leaving.
I sketched out the rough shape of the script on my phone while doing some shopping. Here’s what I wrote:
Panel 1
DREADWIND: He’s coming BACK to finish us off.
DREADWIND (CONT’D): You know, I used to ADMIRE that guy. When the war was at its peak, he was like, “We are going to DESTROY this planet.” And he was so SURE of it. He literally turned himself into a MONSTER so HE could be the one to do it.
DREADWIND (CONT’D) : When you think about it, he was the ULTIMATE PESSIMIST.
Panel 2
DARKWING: He’s GONE back to Cybertron. RAZORCLAW is preparing to fight him.
DREADWIND: They’ll lose.
DARKWING: Megatron DOESN’T LOSE.
Panel 3
DARKWING: Look, we did it! Forget about phases 1-5, ol’ Thunderwing just took us straight to phase six. Mission accomplished.
Panel 4
DREADWIND: Megatron will see right through us, you know that? We FAILED to stop Thunderwing, and worse than that, we hardly even TRIED. Face it, we were never going to die to aliens or Autobots. It was always going to be our own team, breaking us down for scrap. That’s all we’re good for.
Panel 5
DARKWING: Right. Well are you gonna get up, or-
DREADWIND: -I’m up, I’m up.
Panel 6
DREADWIND: I bet all the good stuff got incinerated.
DARKWING: You never change, do you? EVER THE PESSIMIST.
My only requirement with the script was that I wanted to incorporate the title directly into the story, because I always liked it when Mosaic strips did that.
So yeah, fairly close to what I ended up with, I just tightened it up in a few places as I was getting it on the page. In Stormbringer itself, Dreadwind barely gets a speaking line; in fact, at one point I considered making Dreadwind near-silent, with most of the script just being Dreadwind’s inner monologue. You can imagine how this might’ve worked:
DREADWIND (NARRATION): He’s coming back to finish us off.
DARKWING: Looks like he’s gone back to Cybertron. They’re going to fight him.
DREADWIND (NARRATION): They’ll lose.
I liked the idea of Darkwing kind of reading his brother’s mind, while Dreadwind is so lost in his own sullenness that he’s constantly coming up with new worse-case scenarios in his head. In the end, I felt like the comic itself didn’t support the interpretation of Dreadwind as a particularly introspective character. In particular, Dreadwind later shows up (and dies) under Mike Costa’s pen, and during that appearance, he’s very talkative!
In the end, I tried to pitch the tone of the dialogue at exactly the halfway point between Simon Furman’s style in Stormbringer, and James Roberts’ style in More than Meets the Eye. The colouring style was also intended to fall halfway between Josh Burcham’s work on the former and Joana Lafuente’s work on the latter. This is because Skullcruncher, another member of the Nebulos infiltration unit, later reappeared as a stand-up comedian in More than Meets the Eye issue #45. I liked the idea that the rest of his infiltration crew are More than Meets the Eye characters by extension, if that makes any sense.
For the lettering, I simply referenced Robbie Robbins’ work on the original comic, using those rounded-rectangle speech bubbles with little nicks in the corners. I also looked to the original comic for inspiration for the colours, though obviously I can’t remotely compete with Burcham’s work. I spent a lot of time building up the atmosphere of the flames. In the final panel, there’s a dismembered arm, which I decided to identify as belonging to Ruckus by colouring it purple. To the Jack Lawrence reading this, sorry not sorry!
I wanted to do a character study of Dreadwind by taking his pessimism seriously, drawing a parallel between him and Thunderwing. Much of Stormbringer has an oddly straightforward environmentalist bent, and I wanted to inject some of my own cynicism regarding the future.
In the first panel, I wanted Dreadwind to say “he actually did it the absolute madlad”, but it just didn’t feel right for him to use the word “lad”, it would’ve been too human in that moment.
I liked the idea that, from Darkwing’s perspective, they kind of end up in a best-case scenario: they survive Thunderwing, and he practically does their job for them, cutting short what could’ve been years of boring subterfuge. Of course, Dreadwind would never see it that way!
The irony of the story, as I’ve scripted it, is something that would’ve been impossible for the story to account for as originally written in 2007—namely, although Dreadwind is mostly wrong in his predictions (Thunderwing is really gone, Megatron is really going to win, the Decepticons seemingly won’t care about anything that happened on Nebulos), he’s right in the worst way: both Darkwing and Dreadwind really will end up being ripped apart by their fellow Decepticons and used for spare parts, and it will be personal.
On another level, I think I wanted to inject a little bit of my own mixed feelings towards the Mosaic archive as a whole. Like, in the context of this project, I’m just a talker—people like Rogan, and Short, and all the others, they were doers. But now’s not quite the time to get into it. If you check back tomorrow, I’ll have much more to say on the experience of curating this archive. See you then...
Story - Zac DeBoard
Art - Kei Tomoe
Letters - Franco Villa
Edits - Juan Pablo Osorio
“Chopper” design - Andy Short
Whirl design - Paul Vromen
deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk
Later revised and annotated for Transformers: The Lost Seasons
wada sez: The last of three Sunbow-version-of-Animated-character strips. On the Machine Wars Starscream color scheme used for Scrash, DeBoard said on Seibertron: “I believe Scrash's coloring was a way to differentiate between he and Skyquake (even though they were pretty much consdered to be the same character), as well as being a shout out to MW Screamer.” Onslaught’s seeming death here appears to be an choice, as he’s alive and well later in the Sunbow timeline—but Cattleprod points out that the Combaticons first appeared reduced to personality components after a failed coup, so presumably this is intended to lead into that, with Onslaught just heavily damaged but alive. The blue character is an OC based on the Diaclone helicopter who, in later official sources, would variously be given the names "Fumes", "Rotorbolt", and "Skyklik"—the creators of The Lost Seasons apparently used a common fan-name at the time, "Chopper". I've tagged him as Rotorbolt, because of the Wreckers connection. On the strip’s ending, DeBoard said: “Personally, I love ol Luggy and I just assume that while his body may have been destoyed, his spark survived....like they put it in a machine like they have a Garrus 9 or something.” He explained the strip’s plotting as follows: “Again, this is just "in my head" but Megs was probably obsessed with The Autobots on The Ark (at least for the moment) and didnt bother to take attendance, so to speak, and therefore didn't notice Lugnut. Another thing to keep in mind is...we were kinna working within a set continuity and trying to fit stories and characters where we can. Obviously Lugnut wasnt in G1 originally so it's a tricky thing to do. I just kinna thought it was a pretty neat way to introduce him and explain his "absence" from the show. Believe me, I try to take all of this stuff into account when I write, but if I overthink it, I'd never get anything written! Hehe. As for the faces of the "transplanted characters. It seems to be harder to translate the facial features of the TFA bots into a G1 style (for instance, I felt Lockdown's face in the Drift mini was just horrific), but I think Lugnut came out very well in this. [...] We are floating around some more stories featuring G1 Lugnut so hopefully he will be fleshed out more in later stories. Personally, I hope to bring his personality closer to the fanatic he was in TFA, which is what made him one of my favorite characters. With the space limitations of the Mosaic, we really didn't get to do a lot of it (though it was more prevalant in the script).” This strip evolved from an earlier script of DeBoard's, which went unused: “Unfortunately, I realized there was already a Mosaic piece essentially telling this same story. This one however was set in the G1 universe”—I’ve reproduced the full text below, alongside the usual Italian translation. The earlier strip with a similar idea was “False Saviour”, in case you were wondering.
Before I was little more than a thug. Making a living by robbing those less fortunate than me. Feeling I was destined for a greater purpose, I had applied numerous times to the Cybertron Military Academy only due be denied due to what the Head of the Academy deemed was an aggressive attitude.
This would haunt me in my future endeavors as I could find little work.
Eventually I found the Arena.
It was there than I unleashed my aggression and anger, my strength was unparalelled and I became known as the Kaon Crusher.
And, as quickly as I embraced my newfound outlet, I soon found myself longing for more.
Was this all I was meant for? Mindlessly destroying mechs for little more than a thrill?
Blastburn lies defeated at my feet and I feel nothing. I walk away, feeling just as beaten as my foe.
"Your designation Lugnut?"
I nod.
"It is."
"My commander has had an optic on you for over a Vorn. He has seen your indifference and longing."
"What do you or your commander know of me?!"
"He believes he can provide you with a sense of purpose--a new life, if you will."
The blue mech (Soundwave) has my attention.
"And what do you call your glorious leader" I say to him mockingly.
"His name is...Megatron."
At the end would be a close up of Lugnut's single red optic, with an image or a shadow of G1 Megs in it.
Story - Matthew Simon Hessey
Pencils, Colours - Andy Short
Inks - Shane Anderson
Letters - Phil Bustamante
deviantART | TFW2005 | BotTalk
wada sez: Death’s Head is the iconic bounty hu- I mean, “freelance peacekeeping agent” from the Marvel UK comic, who Simon Furman spun off into the wider Marvel universe. This strip stands out as being hard to place in IDW continuity, certainly anywhere in relation to Megatron Origin, as Triggerhappy was alive and well in the present in Stormbringer. In a toyetic touch, he folds his twin guns from alt-mode over his fists. Death’s Head II is seen in the background of the final panel; though as one deviantART commenter pointed out, it’d be Minion at this point in time. I’ve mirrored Hessey’s original script below.
“Yes?”
PANEL 1:
(CYBERTRONIAN FORM TIRGGERHAPPY IS RUNNING THROUGH A DESERTED STREET IN CYBERTRON, HE IS LOOKING OVER HIS LEFT SHOULDER, HE LOOKS PANICKED)
TRIGGERHAPPY: Leave me alone! I’ve done nothing wrong!
DEATH’S HEAD 1 (OFF PANEL): Really? Megatron and his credits say different. Yes?
PANEL 2:
(TRIGGERHAPPY IS TURNING ROUND A CORNER)
TRIGGERHAPPY: Megatron? But I’m on his side… I… I… he couldn’t have known. It wasn’t important anyway!
DEATH’S HEAD 1(OFF PANEL): All information is important. Tell your excuse to the now offline Decepticons. Or, more likely, tell the Autobots, yes?
PANEL 3:
(TRIGGERHAPPY IS LOOKING UP AT THE SIDE OF THE BUILDING IN FRONT OF HIM, THERE ARE BUILDINGS ON BOTH HIS LEFT AND RIGHT SIDE, QUITE CLOSE TO HIM, BOXING HIM IN)
TRIGGERHAPPY: Frag! No room to transform. I can’t…
DEATH’S HEAD 1 (OFF PANEL, BEHIND OCATNE): …Escape? No, you can’t. Just like the Decepticons you doomed with that ‘unimportant’ information of yours.
PANEL 4:
(TRIGGERHAPPY HAS TURNED AROUND, FACING WHERE HE’S JUST RAN IN, DEATH’S HEAD’S SHADOW IS VISIBLE IN FRONT OF TRIGGERHAPPY. TRIGGERHAPPY HAS ALL OF HIS WEAPONS OUT.)
TRIGGERHAPPY: That’s it! I’m done running, I’ll just have to take you out like the Decepticon I am.
DEATH’S HEAD 1 (OFF PANEL): Unlikely…
PANEL 5:
(TRIGGERHAPPY IS FALLING BACKWARDS, A SINGLE BLAST FROM DEATH’S HEAD’S WEAPON TEARING THROUGH TRIGGERHAPPY’S FOREHEAD)
DEATH’S HEAD 1 (OFF PANEL): …yes?
PANEL 6:
(ON TOP OF A SMALL BUILDING IS DEATH’S HEAD 2, HE IS LOOKING DOWN THE BARREL OF A SNPER RIFLE-ESQUE WEAPON, THE WEAPON IS POINTED AT DEATH’S HEAD 1, WHO IS WALKING AWAY FROM HIS ATTACK ON OCTANE, THROWING WHAT REMAINS OF TRIGGERHAPPY’S HEAD IN THE AIR, LIKE A BALL.)
DEATH’S HEAD 1: Hm. Strange, I would have thought the Autobots would like to protect such a valuable informant such as yourself. Guess I was wrong, yes?
See at http://www.heightcelebs.com/2016/09/andy-short/
for Andy Short Height
Andy Short's height is 6ft 1in (1.85 m)Andy Short (born 26 March 1991 in Worcester) is an English rugby union player for Worcester Warriors in the Aviva Premiership. First Name: Andy Last Name: Short Born: 26 March, 1991Birthplace: Worcester, England UK Height: 6ft 1in (1.85 m)Weight: 205 lbs...
