The Path from Cisdudeformers to Transladyformers: Why Challenging the Status Quo Matters
So, I had the chance to attend a John Barber Q&A panel last month at TFCon Toronto, and ask a question that had been on my mind for a while: were the introduction of Cybertronian colonies and female characters in the works before Windblade, or was she the catalyst?
Now, a bit of context for those who weren’t around for the whole story. A few years ago Hasbro put up a poll on their website for a fan-created Transformer. This character would get to headline in their own comic, and get a toy made of them. The poll asked voters to select from a variety of options: their faction alignment, their alt mode, their weapon of choice - but one notable thing was missing from the poll;
Transformers has always been male character dominated, and in this case it was a foregone conclusion that the new character would be male. However, noticing the absence, fans petitioned for the inclusion of the gender option. Hasbro did so, and the results of the poll showed an overwhelming vote for a female transformer.
She became Windblade - an Autobot who fights with a sword and transforms into a jet. The first, or second [depending on your opinion of Arcee] female Cybertronian character to be introduced into the IDW comics.
But this lead to a problem - Simon Furman, in his establishment of the IDW comic verse, had explicitly written out the potential for female Cybertronian characters. They didn’t exist, because Cybertronians are genderless - with the exception of Arcee - who was given transgender surgery against their will (does this raise confusion about how you can transgender a genderless being, and then apparently have all the other characters react to them differently because of said surgery they shouldn’t be able to recognise the significance of? Yes. Am I going to focus on the mess that is Spotlight: Arcee? No, not today) and by genderless we mean all act and communicate with each other in traditionally masculine ways, use male pronouns and have body types based on male body types - to the point of including facial hair in their designs.
So then where did Windblade come from, if not Cybertron? The comics introduced the idea of colonies - war refugees who fled the war ravaged Cybertron and formed homes elsewhere, with their own unique cultures. Windblade herself is not Cybertronian, but Camien - from the colony of Caminus.
Windblade headlined a four-part miniseries, in which IDW organised an all-female creative team to take the helm, and is still a major player in the ongoing comic universe. Other female characters have been introduced, including a fan-built combiner of six ladies (Hasbro put the gender option in by default this time), a slew of lady characters of varying import, and most recently, two transladies.
Now back to the question for John Barber: were the introduction of Cybertronian colonies and female characters in the works before Windblade?
John Barber gave a sigh and admitted that in hindsight, they should have done in sooner. He expressed a wish that they had brought female characters in during The Death of Optimus Prime, when the signal called all Cybertronians to come home - how there was no reason they couldn’t have slipped it in as a non issue straight from the beginning of his run as editor. He spoke about the creative team’s push to keep putting female characters into the comics, rather than leaving it at Windblade alone - and the team wide drive to not only include female characters, but make them significant, important characters.
He outlined the thought process behind the creation of the colonies and the decision to make them all mixed genders - beginning with their ‘how not to’ guide. He referenced the Legion of Super-Heroes - a spin-off of Superboy from back in the 1950s. Because of the time period, all the heroes and other characters were white, and in an issue in the 1970s, to explain this, the writers claimed that in this universe all of the non-white people lived on another planet that the cast never spoke about or visited. Yikes. He spoke of the Othering effect this has, and how they wanted to avoid making Camien an all-female colony for the same reason. In the end, all the colonies are mixed genders, and the characters in-universe remark on the oddity of Cybertron having such a high male-identifying collective.
He spoke at length, and while most of his answer I can only paraphrase, but there was one line that stuck with me:
‘We didn’t know how important this was, until we saw people’s reaction to it.’
And that, honestly, that’s the kind of thing I wanna nail up on the wall and draw people’s attention to. We hear a lot of backlash to the idea of equal opportunity schemes in the workplace and in media. ‘What difference do you expect to make if you’re forcing people into diversity’ - but here’s the thing, it’s not about ‘forcing diversity’, it’s about creating motivation to displace the status quo. I’m not implying people do nothing out of malice, but that’s the way the status quo is - it’s easy to maintain. Most changes aren’t made until an external factor force them. In this case, no one at IDW felt putting female characters into the comics was a priority, until it was in their faces with a deadline and contractual obligations.
But change they did. The IDW creative team has given an excellent example of what can happen when this kind of blind spot is brought up, and while they could have gone the defensive route - giving Windblade a miniseries because they had to, before shoving her back into oblivion, they embraced it. The comics have run wild with the colony worlds to explore, with the sociopolitical commentary about xenophobia and immigration at their fingertips, and the ability to create waves of new characters simply because ‘here’s another colony we didn’t mention yet’.
The IDW Transformers creative task have done good on this one - they get it. And it was good to see such honesty on display in Barber’s explanations too - dude has obviously done his homework. Serious props to everyone involved.
But the takeaway from all of this is that change starts small. A petition to amend one question on an online poll has built a whole new world of characters and colonies for the IDW comics to explore, and it’s changed the way the IDW creators view the property as well. If that hadn’t have happened, who knows where the comics would be right now - one small change can have huge consequences, but first you have to challenge the status quo.
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