Story - Rob Queen
Art - Paul Vromen
Colours - Eman B. Zubia
Letters - HdE
deviantART | TFW2005 | BotTalk
wada sez: Did you think I was done? My torments never end: I’m doing all of Transformers: Multiverse too! A direct continuation of Mosaic spearheaded by a few contributors, Multiverse is literally just more of the same. Indeed, this first strip was originally created for publication as a Mosaic; you can see the version with the original branding below. Right off the bat, we’re hit with a blisteringly collar-tugging story which appropriates a brief one-panel cameo in Last Stand of the Wreckers of Marvel UK character Flame during the Aequitas trials to provide thinly-veiled allegory on the Vietnam War. The title of this strip, a location invented for this story, is a bastardised reference to Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. Look, I’ll admit that I know next to nothing about the Vietnam War, so I’ll leave justifying this strip to the original author, Rob Queen, who posted a lengthy commentary on deviantART explaining the inspiration, which I’ve now mirrored below. Queen implies he asked Nick Roche to draw this strip for him, but was turned down. Notice the cameos for Vector Prime and Alpha Trion on the board! Multiverse mastermind Brandy Dixon did her own take on the colors for this strip, which you can find below.
You have no idea how much i means to me to get this up. A couple years ago, a friend of mine needed some research help for a paper she was doing on the Vietnam War. As I was doing my research, I stumbled upon something interesting.
Ngo Dinh Diem was supposed to be a puppet. His charge was to rally the people of Vietnam to Democracy. Situated in the Democratic capital of Saigon, he quickly proved to not only be unmanageable but ruthless, uncompromising, and bloody. It was not long before he was put into power that his masters, the USA, realized that they may not have found the best individual for the role. Too late to save the cause, President Kennedy had Ngo Dinh Diem assassinated. Some feel that it was the President's inability to establish a worthwhile (read: successful) war regime that led to his own assassination shortly following Ngo Dinh Diem's.
After I slowly reread the bludgeoningly amazing work called "Last Stand of the Wreckers," I saw the single panel of Flame. In Aequitas. Standing trial for his atrocities. "How could this possibly have gone down?" I asked.
And then I knew.
He was a puppet that cut off the hand up his ass.
But unlike Ngo Dinh Diem, Flame was a tragedy because he was too loyal to the cause.
When Nick Roche said that he couldn't do this, I started a search to bring this image to life. When I saw Paul Vromen's art, I knew only he could do so the way I wanted it. The care, attention, and detail he put in continues to blow me away. I love how evil Xaaron looks in Panel 7. I love the subtleties of his work. I love how uncompromising Flame is, how stoic Prowl manages to be. The angles... everything.
Paul's frequent collaborator of hue is Mr. Zubia, who has impressed me as a wonderful talent that I will eagerly approach for more pretty colors in the future.
Apologies, on the other hand, go out to the enigmatic HdE. There was simply too much that I wanted to put in here. Too many words. Too many details. Too many words on the screens behind Flame. I am eternally grateful for his editing judgement, his guidance, and little lessons like "Less words! Less words!" (paraphrased, of course).
In spite of how much I love this, it's not done. I can't help but feel that this one panel can only scratch the surface of the story I want to tell. I would love to make this a real story. By real story, I mean 6 issues. Published by the Idea and Design Works. Anyone think a petition could get Mr. Barber's attention?
Finally, a last apology. I apologize to everyone - American, Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. - who was involved with the American Vietnamese War. This includes families, survivors, and all who did not receive a hero's welcome. Not only was the war a failure, but if we look at Vietnam now, we will see that the USA did, in fact, win. It just a lot longer than anyone expected. We won through a means that bloodshed could never have: through diplomacy, success, and a few well-placed products. On behalf of everyone who was forced by fear into that terrible disaster - and unlike the puppet-master Emirate Xaaron - I am sorry.
Transformers: Multiverse #13 - "The Origins - Part 1"
Originally posted on January 30th, 2013
Story - Rob Queen
Art - Jeremy Tiongson
Colours - Brandy Dixon
Letters - HdE
deviantART | BotTalk
wada sez: Reader, there was no Part 2. Per remarks by Rob Queen on his own repost for the strip, he’d originally hoped to have an official IDW artist draw the strip, but obviously this didn’t happen. This is the first strip in the archive to be inspired by More than Meets the Eye; part of what I find interesting about Mosaic as a time-capsule is that it perfectly predates the enormous influence James Roberts and John Barber had on the franchise and the fandom. If Mosaic happened just a few years later, it’d be 90% MTMTE by volume. Even this strip feels quite tonally different to most modern fanworks in this vein! Even at the time, Brainstorm’s briefcase was obviously foreshadowing for something in the comic, so I’m not sure why Queen thought he could safely comment on it; suffice to say, Prowl did not commission it.
Story - Rob Queen
Art - Koen Luyten
Colours - Philip Knott
Letters - HdE
deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk
wada sez: Chop Shop was characterised as a scavenger and kleptomaniac in his original Tech Specs. Many of the items on Chop Shop’s shelves are a little hard to make out, but they include ships from various sci-fi franchises, possibly a red Seeker of some kind, a Soundwave, a photo of Megatron, an Xbox, and a Grendizer way down in the bottom-left. A “samoflange” is a component of the ThunderTank from ThunderCats, which gained infamy online after a blooper track from the show made it online wherein Lion-O exclaims, “What the fuck is a samoflange?” There was a minor lettering touch-up to this one after its publication; you can see the original version, which has a few little errors, below.
Story, Art, Letters - Rob Queen
Colours - Caroline Richard
deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk
wada sez: Overkill and Grimlock have been drawn specifically as their near-contemporaneously-released Universe and Masterpiece toys respectively, with the plot riffing on those upgrades. The way Caro has signed her name using a default font is really cracking me up. Clean inks below.
