Over the last couple of years, I wrote three disconnected stories intended to draw a line under my relationship with Transformers.
The first of these was Till All Will Be One, a no-holds-barred balls-to-the-walls deep-in-the-paint crossover fanfiction attempting to encapsulate 40 years of Transformers lore in a single story. I’m not able to talk about that one that much just yet, because its release venue, Ask Vector Prime, is still ongoing.
The second story was Toy Review: Kingdom Rattrap, an autobiographical short story intended to cover Transformers from a real-world perspective—the ways in which Transformers fandom and collecting make me feel strange and alien. Due to the personal nature of the piece, I only shared it in print form, so again, I haven’t been able to talk about it much.
The third story, End of the Earth, was my attempt to capture and communicate what the hell compels me about Transformers at all, on a storytelling level. It’s my pitch for what a Transformers film should feel like, in my opinion, the sorts of themes it should be concerned with. I wanted it to be tightly-written and above all accessible, assuming no prior knowledge. It was the first time in literally years that I’d finished a piece of writing I’d be happy showing to basically anyone.
In fact, it had been fully four years since I last released a prose story: the pilot chapter for Mobius Motorway, which I’d intended to follow with a set of three short stories; I wrote one and never published it. That feels like the last time I got to sit down and write a commentary. Revolutionary and nothing but humans on earth were five years ago.
But I’ve been busy! I’ve gotten better! So now it’s time!
The spotlights rush around an icy stage! All the characters dance and pirouette on their skates! Optimus Prime is doing donuts! Have you fastened your seatbelt? Commentaries are BACK!
You can read it here!
If you're interested in How The Sausage Gets Made, this commentary represents an exhaustive effort to explain how I wrote this novella—what influenced it, what problems I ran into, and what I was trying to say. Generally I think that from a reader perspective, good art speaks for itself, but from a writer's perspective, I find it really helpful when other writers attempt to demystify their process, so this is me doing that. There's some interesting stuff in there that I've been dying to share. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how your interpretation of the story may have differed from what I was consciously putting into it.
31 years ago, Corey Dubrasy's truck fell through the ice...
behind-the-scenes on my TRANSFORMERS × ICE ROAD TRUCKERS crossover novella
Story - Mario Coleman
Art - Rui Onishi
Colours - Liam Shalloo
Letters - HdE
Edits - wadapan
deviantART
wada sez: On deviantART, Mario acknowledged that Perceptor’s characterisation here isn’t really remotely similar to how he’s been portrayed in any prior media; historically, he speaks with loquacious verbosity and never uses idioms. Really, this feels more like a Prowl or Nightbeat strip. Now, the version of the comic you’ve just read above is actually edited from the strip as originally posted (see below), which featured some blatant coloring errors on Liam Shalloo’s part; presumably, the script for this one would’ve called for a generic Autobot in the second panel with Ratchet, and Fracas (Scourge’s Targetmaster partner) in the final panel, but presumably Liam never got the script, leading him to color these characters as the Decepticon Hun-Gurrr and the Autobot Scattershot, cross-factional counterparts who have no reason to be in this story. Onishi appears to have drawn Fracas using the erroneous character model from classic ‘80s fiction; I expect that Shalloo misinterpreted the artwork as depicting Scattershot, (who he broadly resembles, particularly with the back-mounted gun barrel), then picked Hun-Gurrr for the second panel due to his prior association with Scattershot. I’m not sure who Onishi intended that background character to be, if anyone, but the details look fairly specific; for my corrected version of the strip, I’ve colored him as Fastlane, who has those wheels on the backs of the shoulders. It’s a shame that the strip as originally posted had all these little issues muddying the story, because I think the core premise here of a Targetmaster howdunnit that asks “what if the murder weapon transformed and hid itself” is really good, and Onishi’s art is gorgeous as always.
The TFWiki comic book club tasked me once again to edit a video of them doing a dramatic reading, this time of Wadapan's comic book edit "PASS" (an edit of t...
Don’t think we’ve shared this here, but this is a joke comic rewrite of the Marvel UK issue “Peace”, retitled and rewritten “Pass” by wadapan and then dubbed by a bunch of us who were reading the G1 issues at the time. It contains many jokes, like Rodimus’s difficulty with dating, fart jokes, and Triton’s cred. We voiced Rodimus in this! So uh, trans Hot Rod everybody
Who would you say is the greatest musician in history? C’mon, I know you’ve already thought of names. Mozart. Beethoven. Frank Sinatra. Elvis Presley. Freddie Mercury. Taylor Swift. Penelope Telephone. All pretty famous! Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you thought of a hundred artists like that. The greatest musician of all time has got to be one of them, right?
BZZT! Wrong!
I found him. The best musician ever. I found him in a bar, under a bridge, in Edinburgh, on the 22nd of December, 2022. It was a packed night, that night. At the very back, a space was cleared, and a circle of musicians sat around a table shaped like a ship’s wheel. The room swayed, and murmured, and clapped politely. The man before me ordered a lime soda, and I had the same. The condensation obscured the contents of the glass. I glanced around the room, and a boy in one of the booths made eye contact with me. He moved over, patting the space he created, so I sat next to him.
They took turns. Two songs each, then on to the next. I won’t waste your time with the first guy, or the French lass that sang after him, or the lass after that. I remember their performances intimately, and they were nothing special, nothing at all.
But then he took the guitar.
There was nothing humble about him, this man, as his turn began. He’d been awaiting it patiently, and when the time came, he made no apologies, no introductions. The singer leading the circle addressed him as Paul, the famous Paul—surname Trevor, I later learned—but he said nothing, just tuned the guitar by ear, strummed it once, and began to play. He played four songs that evening.
In deference to the season, Paul first sang “Halsway Carol”. You’d be fooled for thinking it a traditional piece—I was—but in fact it had been composed only a scant decade prior, by a man named Nigel Eaton. Nigel Eaton was not the greatest musician of all time though; Paul was. He sang with a smoker’s voice, at the quarter-full glass of stout on the table. He had this huge beard, like Father Christmas, and he sang like Father Christmas himself might sing, having seen every good deed ever done by humanity. At the very first note, I sat up.
Sing for the coming of the longest night
As the first verse ended, the door banged to permit another latecomer, a gust of winter air biting their heels. As though this incantation had summoned them. The brief intrusion of ambient voices and vehicles from outside made for a vulgar accompaniment, but Paul ignored it, and I was soon entranced once more.
A summer’s light
never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night
That was it, wasn’t it? The hot, solar glow of the wall of sound on any studio recording, of the best seat in the biggest concert arena, could never compete with this, the reflection, the echo, moonlight. Through Paul, his pockmarked and cratered face, this composition—nothing special—was transmuted into the altogether sublime.
The second song was older, much older. It was popularised by Shirley Collins in 1964, but the version Paul knew was different and better.
If all you young men were hares on the mountain
How many young girls would take guns and go hunting?
It continues in that vein, a series of wildlife metaphors, increasingly lewd. It’s a role-reversal: what if women were the suitors, and men the objects of their desire? Wouldn’t it be the height of foolishness, to go traipsing off into the hills, after some guy? Paul’s fingers caressed the strings like waterfalls, untameable, and yet not a single note was out of place. He was a heartbroken teenage girl in the body of an aging alcoholic. Nothing could break the spell. I really believe that he could’ve turned everyone in that room into rabbits, if he’d wanted to.
“He’s fantastic,” I couldn’t help but remark to the boy next to me, as the applause was dying.
Sitting opposite, his girlfriend nodded in agreement. “Aye!”
“And such a lovely song, too. See, that’s what being young is all about: doing stupid things for love.” I looked between them, sitting across the table, when they so clearly wanted to be in each others’ arms, and gave them a knowing smile. “I’d make the most of it if I were you!”
She just laughed. “You mean like the song? I don’t think it’s got much to do with love, pal.” Before she could elaborate, the next singer began, but I was hardly listening.
To think that the greatest musician of all time was right here in Edinburgh, all along, and it was like nobody knew it. I myself had only stumbled across him by pure chance! I was enthralled. When his turn came around again, Paul’s third song was even better, the best of the four he sang that night.
I returned to the bar a week later, hoping to hear Paul play again, but he wasn’t there that week. Nor the week after. He was found, dead, washed up on Silverknowes Beach.
𝄇
The second thing you should know about me is that I’m a time traveller.
ENCORE is my new short story. You can read the rest of it at the following link:
Who would you say is the greatest musician in history?
Story - Shaun Flaherty
Art - Michal Solarz
Colours, Letters - wadapan
deviantART
wada sez: I found the clean lineart and original script for this strip chilling on Shaun Flaherty’s deviantART, and figured I may as well finish the job. This is another straightforward story, starring Quickstrike after he joins the Predacons in “Coming of the Fuzors”. The monster he runs into is itself a fusion of Terrorsaur and Scorponok, who fell into the lava inside the Predacon headquarters during the quantum surge, and were last seen Transmetallizing... Rather than drawing inspiration from their toyline-only Transmetal forms, Solarz has drawn a horrific monster with all the organic material burned away. For the coloring, I went for a heavily gradient-based approach to crudely evoke the CGI rendering of the cartoon. I decided to color the Terrorsaur/Scorponok fusion as white-hot metal, rather than bringing in any tones specific to those characters; this was as much a shortcut as it was a storytelling choice, honestly. I’m pretty pleased with how the lava effect came out, I’ve never done something like that before! Finally, I took the opportunity to switch out the fonts from the dialogue, and to add a title to the first panel, using fonts that recall the actual opening title credits from the cartoon. As Quickstrike’s original toy has a lot of sentimental value for me, I was really glad to be able to bring this strip to life. If I’m being honest, though, I find the writing a little strange—in the show, Quickstrike is a very talkative villain, but here he’s a meek and silent victim. Weird choice. The artist has also pushed the Beast Wars characters towards a much more robotic style, with things like Quickstrike having a separate conduit connecting his cobra head to his torso, and Megatron’s bladed weapon appearing as a grabber claw. This second change in particular is notable because the original script actually calls for Megatron to stab the monster, not shoot it! You can read that below, and see the original art.
CAP:
"Welcome to the Darksyde, Fuzor.
CAP:
"Try not to get lost."
Panel 2. Over Quickstrike's shoulder, we see a pool of lava. In one spot, the lava burbles.
NO DIALOGUE
Panel 3. A grotesque, Transmetal amalgamation of Scorponok and Terrorsaur bursts from the lava toward us. It breaches the panel borders as if it is leaping out of the page to attack us.
NO DIALOGUE
Panel 4. Toward the left side of the panel, Quickstrike steps back defensively; his "hands" shield his face. He is just out of reach of Scorponok/Terrorsaur's claw. Toward the right side of the panel, we discover that Megatron has driven his whiplash cutlass through Scorponok/Terrorsaur's mangled torso, preventing its attack.
NO DIALOGUE
Panel 5. A close-up of Megatron. He looks down at Quickstrike, smirking.
MEGATRON:
I believe you belong to me now.
Panel 6. A close-up of Quickstrike. He looks up at Megatron, meekly.
SFX/QUICKSTRIKE:
gulp
MEGATRON (OP):
Yes...
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 - Daniel Bartlett
Art - Charger426
Letters - wadapan
deviantART
wada sez: Wait, what? The one who lettered this strip was... me?! That’s right dorks, I’m no longer satisfied with copying and pasting material from elsewhere on the internet. I’m dragging these Mosaic strips kicking and screaming across the finish line for your viewing pleasure, even if it means I have to crack out the Blambot fonts and the autoshapes. So I’m thrilled to say that this particular strip is seeing the light of day for the very first time! I’d come across a “sneak peek” on Charger426′s deviantART, which looked for all the world like finished inks to me. I reached out to him, and to my delight, it turned out that he not only had the original script, but that he’d coincidentally started coloring the piece at long last, using some gorgeous traditional marker work. I offered to handle the lettering; inspired by the title, I looked at graphics associated with hot rods to select an italics font and add a flame effect. I ended up slightly repositioning the final panel to make room to incorporate the title directly into the narration. Obviously the story here is pretty nonspecific and straightforward, but I’m 99% sure it’s intended to be set in IDW continuity, as the script goes out of its way to specify the green/white narration boxes—something famously seen in Spotlight: Kup. I ummed and ahhed over putting the Mosaic logo on this strip, ultimately swaying towards just writing “The Transformers”, as most of IDW’s stories were branded. See below for Daniel’s original script and Charger426′s full process breakdown!
Panel 1:
Kup in a crouched fighting stance, back to a wall
Text box: (Green w/ White writing for all) I’ve been at this for more stellar-cycles then I can remember
Panel 2: (Inset into Panel 1)
Split picture of Optimus Prime and Springer’s faces
Text box: I’ve had some solid trainees, and those who have gone Above and Beyond.
Panel 3, 4, & 5: (Inset into Panel 1)
(3) Hot Rods face, (4) Sideswipes face, (5) Sunstreaker’s face
Text Box: These three Need some work; Ones reckless, ones stubborn, and ones arrogant.
Panel 6:
Kup facing Hot Rod, Sideswipe, and Sunstreaker as they Zero in to finish him off
Text Box: They’re nothing but a bunch of Turbo Revving Punks…
Panel 7:
Hot Rod holding his head on the ground in a knocked down position, Sunstreaker looking at Kup from the ground (as he walks away) and Sideswipe laid out.
