Post No Bills: Secrets of the Almanac (ONE) Revealed

Hello there. Bill Forster here.

With  The AllSpark Almanac II (preorder it today!) coming out soon I thought it would be a nice idea to revisit the first Almanac and give fans some insight to the book, tell a few stories and document any un-found references (though there aren't many.) I’d like to say this is an attempt at doing something fun for our readers, but really to tell the truth, I wanted to write this stuff down for my own nostalgic desires. This will be in a few parts. Today however I thought I’d talk about how the AllSpark Almanac came to be and go through the first 40 pages and see what jumps out at me.

The Idea:
A few years back Jim and I were eagerly awaiting the release of the Ark II. We had no idea what project we wanted to do next. As we walked around Botcon that year we tossed ideas back and forth. While attending a panel about the NEW animated series we came up with the idea to “The Ark Animated”. It would be just like the Ark books, only in color. This thrilled me because as much as I love the Arks, the restoration drove me outta my mind. Here we would be working on a current cartoon series. The art work was all together and in good shape. After the panel we decided to speak to the Art Director of the new show. An enthusiastic Derrick Wyatt loved the idea and honored us by tell us that he used the first Ark book as reference material. How crazy is that? We pitched the idea to IDW and they loved it. They’re a very supportive team. Check out a very early brainstorm for what a cover might look like to the right.

So Jim and I started collecting images from Cartoon Network and trying to piece this new Ark together. What we found was, there was a lot of material here. Ideas started hatching and one of us said, “Why not model this after those Japanese books that document the show entirely?” Aside from a few Disney books and that Batman animated book, we really didn’t see that much in the western world. We started talking about doing episode guides. Aside from an MST3K guide I bought years ago, I had never read an episode guide that was at all entertaining. They are usually boring and simply tell you a story you already would have seen in a profoundly stale way. We agreed we needed something with more pzazz. After brainstorming for a while I had the idiotic idea to have Sari completely narrate the whole book. I knew there was some potential to an all in universe guide book. Jim wasn’t crazy about everything being Sari and it slowly became, “Well Sentinel should really talk about this!” and “It would be funny if Ratchet said that.” Before long we had it set. The episode guides, the bios, everything would be narrated by whomever would fit best.

The Cover:
Now we had a book! But it was no longer an Ark book. We tossed around new names and Jim said, “The AllSpark Almanac”. Almanac? ALMANAC? Why Almanac? Well, as Jim pointed out after the Ark books came out we would google them and have to dig through a lot of other Transformer Ark references. Almanac is easier to Google. “Whatever”, I believe was my response. And I started making sketches of cover ideas. Finally we had the idea of Bulkhead and Sari painting the cover. Marcelo took care of the rest.

The First 40 Pages:
As I sit here looking threw the beat up copy I used as reference for the Almanac 2 I am just going to systematically tell you whatever comes to mind if anything.

Inside covers:
The sketches on the inside covers where a last minute thing. Jim loves sketches and was trying to shoehorn as many in as possible. We have become masters at using our “design crowbar” to squeeze a lot of information into a small amount of space. It hadn’t occurred to us that we could even use the inside covers until after the book was already completed. But our editor Justin made it happen for us.

Page 1:
Jim and I love bookending things. Go look at the two Arks and compare them. Intro pages have a similar feel to them. So the spiffy Space Bridge as the opening image mirrored with the destroyed bridge as the last page fit the bill nicely.

Page 2 and 3:
Jim loved that long picture of Megatron’s head in Sumdac’s lab. However for the life of me I couldn’t figure out anyway to make it nice and big and not end up cropping the entire left side. Eventually I came up with the idea you see in the book. This continued the painting motive from the cover. Jim put the Hasbro logo where it would look like Bulkhead had painted it.

Table of Contents:
We argued about how those logos should be displayed more than any other page.

Page 9:
Early on we had the notion of drawing ourselves into the book as mugshots similar to the ones used in the show. However we had no actual reason to do this other than we are just egomaniacs. We felt we needed to talk about the “in universe” idea and explain the border for out-of-universe dialog. But we needed to explain it in-universe. Strange the problems we face. We came up with the story of us being characters from a mirror universe.

The out-of-universe boxes were influenced by the Constructicons and also Lugnut’s forearms. Originally they were going to be red, but it took away from the more relevant images of the pages.

Jim’s mugshot number is Magneto’s Auschwitz number. We were a little concerned that that reference might be in poor taste, but ultimately decided to use it. Magneto’s awesome and it’s a part of his character.

My shirt looks a little like an AC/DC t-shirt, doesn’t it? I needed a simple but recognizable logo. The snake is supposed to be one of my pet snakes, my boa constrictor Charlotte. She is named after "Charlotte the Harlot" a really old, really great Iron Maiden song. I often say that my great loves in life are the “3 R’s.” Robots, Reptiles and Rock n’ Roll. ...Yeah, okay that’s 4 R’s. Another one of my snakes named 1812 appears in the Almanac 2. And yes, his name is 1812. He’s a California Kingsnake. Look for him!

Page 11 Hero:
After the book was done. I mean done. DONE. We sent it to IDW who sent it to Hasbro. Hasbro replied that they wanted a meeting and scared the crap outta us. Hasbro never dealt directly with us before. What did we do? Well, turns out Hasbro loved the book. So much in fact, that they wanted to add in some stuff about Hero, the precursor of Animated. They sent us some stuff and we crammed even more into the book.

Because of this late entry in to the Almanac I drew up an extra Kremzeek to go on the interstitial page. Originally the first Kremzeek to appear in the book would have been the “Technical Difficulty” image that appears on page 56 which was intended to start a motif.

Page 15:
One night we are sitting in Derrick Wyatt’s office down at Cartoon Network. Jim and Derrick are talking some hardcore Transformers speak (way above my level of understanding) and I am sitting Indian style on the floor skimming through hundred’s of production drawings Derrick just had laying around. You wanna have fun? Hang around Derrick. Cool stuff just springs forth. There I find a bunch of little pocket bot drawings. So I start putting them in order. Hence the idea for the little flip book thing over in the bottom corner.

Page 20:
In order to get Lockdown's "voice" I would watch Clint Eastwood movies. Then as I drove to work on my motorcycle I would shout out on the highway various tidbits about Ratchet in my best Eastwoodesk-Lockdown voice. As it turned out I got a lot of crazy looks from passing motorists.

Page 23:
So Jim and I have this long running inside joke that stems from absolutely nothing at all. We often jest that we intend to leave all reference to Prowl out of all of our books just to see fan reaction. We like Prowl, but for whatever reason he's the guy that we pick on. In this case we jokingly played with the idea that we would post all of Prowl's gear as "The Police Man" and just leave Prowl's robot model out. When questioned we intended to answer, "Prowl? Oh that guy? We didn't think he was that important to the story."

Then to add insult to injury, we would wait until fans demanded Prowl in the Almanac 2 except we would print his armor with his body Photoshopped out standing next to his sidecar. Titled: Side Car Man. "What?! That's not right? Perhaps we should watch the show." At 3 o'clock in the morning after working on this stuff day and night this seems hilarious!

Page 33:
Originally we wanted to call the hammer the Stormbreaker after Beta Ray Bill. However we learned that it already had a name the Magnus Hammer. This paved the way for mistakenly using the word Stormbreaker rather than Stormbringer as it was in the packaging bio.

Page 35:
This is why I hate technology. One day Jim is reading Derrick's Twitter page. Derrick refers to the spray as Cyber-Sol...so now we have to update the book. It gets really difficult to keep up with everything.

Dinobots!
Sometimes when you lay things out they just don’t fit. Either you have to sacrifice design or size or something, but it just will not work for you otherwise. Well here’s an example. We could not fit all of Grimlock and Snarl’s images on one page each. So in a clever rouse we decide to have a Dinobot section of 4 pages instead of simply having a Grimlock page, a Snarl page and a Swoop page. This worked out really nicely when we realized we didn’t have much to say about the latter two fellas. Now we hate when we do something only once. Doing a design element once looks off. But do it twice and it looks like a motif. So we repeat this idea with the Constructicons. As you can see on the early draft of the Grimlock page to the right, the official model for Grimlock's back in dino mode was in black & white. Javier did a great job of coloring it, didn't he?

Well thanks for indulging me. I’ll write more about the next 40 pages next week. Until then if you have any questions, post them. Thanks for listening and for making the AllSpark Almanac so special!

The Ark Addendum - Goshooter & Cab Extras

Another week, another edition of The Ark Addendum.  Since this blog's resident artist, Iván, favored us with an updated Siren / Goshooter, I figured I'd see what extra material I had for him.  It turns out I had a bit.  Despite giving seven pages to the Cybertron Headmaster Juniors in  Transformers: The Complete Ark (order it today!) , I still had a bit of leftover materials, including weapons, a few isometric drawings of Cab's vehicle mode, and some close-ups of the two boys on the team.  I think everything else I had I managed to squeeze in, including alternate outfits for Minerva and Shuta, Cab's animal companions and weapons, vehicle interiors for all three, Shuta's athletic gear, Minerva's crest and more.  I hope you enjoy it!

Request: Web developers

Are there any web developers out there who would be interested lending a bit of time over the next couple of weeks?  I've got a side project, not too difficult I think, that might be fun.  Drop me a line at the transformerstheark email address (@yahoo.com) if you're interested.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 25

Just as it fell to The Walls of Jericho to establish the feel of a standard episode after The Resurrection introduced the basic premise, so too does No Direction Home lay the groundwork for season two.  It opens with the team, shellshocked, rolling in Kincaid's battlewagon.  He's taking them to a safe house, though there's a bit of action along the way.  Once they get there, they soon learn that the government is cutting the Blackwood Project loose.  Itching to strike back at the enemy, Harrison and John head to the industrial complex that was the alien base, only to find it mostly abandoned.

However, in the haste with which the aliens abandoned their lair, they left behind some technology, an engram used in the cloning process.  Kincaid and Blackwood realize this when a pair of soldiers show up, looking for the device.  The aliens are dispatched, and Harrison brings the device back to the underground safe house much to John's consternation.  Blackwood correctly deduces that the device has something to do with the cloning process, and soon he and Suzanne discover that allows for memory transference. 

The aliens that Kincaid ran off the road in the opening weren't idle.  They grabbed a human, a priest, who had seen their glowing green blood and brought him back with them. Mana used him for further experimentation, cloning him and sending him back to his mission as a good source of human bodies that no one would miss.  Since the mission is located very close to the team's new hideout, Kincaid becomes aware of problems thanks to a perceptive lunatic.  The cloned priest is identified and dispatched with the help of the engram, the original stumbles out of the alien base, and the team settles into their new home.

The Good: Kincaid seems a lot more likable in this episode. There's less "poochie" going on with him.  That's important, since we're going to be seeing a lot of him.

Norton and Ironhorse are mentioned five or six times, by Debi ("I wish I had a picture of them") and Suzanne ("Norton would want to throw a party") and Harrison ("SOME of us [survived]") and John ("I won't let you down, Colonel" ).  This feels good and natural; they've lost friends, they wouldn't be in good spirits about it.

It's good to see some attention paid to the idea that the team is (was) an official government project.  They don't just go underground, they attempt to reestablish contact.

There is a fantastic exchange between Ardix and Mana about the priest they captured.  Mana: "God... what does it mean?"  Ardix: "It's their idea of the Eternal. This is their sacred text, a mad confusion of myth and contradiction. Their God... is invisible."  I suppose to a race that coexists with their deity, our theologies must seem pretty absurd.  Fantastic delivery on the word invisible by Julian Richings.  The scene where they nabbed the priest after he spotted the bleeding alien in the car was also well done.  It felt like a S1 moment, to be honest.

Still on the aliens, I rather like Malzor's almost-but-not-quite panicked retreat from the industrial center. It makes sense; he knows or suspects he didn't get all his enemies, so why stay in a compromised position? He and Mana have great tension between them; they really don't seem to like each other much. His rushing her directly leads to the loss of the engram, one presumes. Also, nice symmetry between the aliens relocating and the humans doing the same.

I also rather like the very first scene of the episode.  The team is driving past railroad tracks and through fields.  Gradually, more and more detritus is present as they get closer to their destination. It represents a transition from the old world, of sunshine and nature, to the new world of urban decay. A subtle but welcome touch.  They're literally going to the 'wrong side of the tracks,' you see, a tiny visual gag to those paying attention.

The new safe house seems pretty cool, an old abandoned cold war bunker. Since in many ways the 2nd season represents casting off the cold war vibe of the war and turning it into an underground struggle, this seems thematically appropriate.

The Bad: The plot seems oddly disjointed.  All the stuff with the engram feels about right, but the priest plot seems bolted on.  The aliens just randomly grabbed a human, so they clone him and send him back to his job.  THEN the team manages to find out about it? Bad story structure.

An alien gets the drop on Kincaid as he attempts to flush out the clone near his base, even though Kincaid has cameras all around. Then the alien misses and Kincaid blasts him away.  Thus, with the new action threshold of this season, we get the tired old cliche of the bad guys all being lousy shots.

The last scene involves the team running back to their safe house, all of them fairly cheerful.  I'm sorry, I don't buy it.  It's still too soon.  Yes they scored a (minor) victory, but I don't think they'd react that way.

While No Direction Home is a fine episode title and a nod to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," I think I prefer bible verses.  (This isn't REALLY a bad, I guess, but I had to list it somewhere.)

The Ugly: In the abandoned alien base, we see the result of Mana's failed experiments that she didn't have time to pack up and bring with her.  Decayed bodies in alien pods makes a good 'ugly,' don't you think?

It's a decent second episode.  In some ways, this new format seems a lot more ambitious than the old one. We're more on edge, less certain of what will happen next.  There's more room for commentary and artistry, such as the directorial trick with the railroad tracks in the first scene. On the other hand, the scope of the war is narrowing from a nation-wide (never QUITE felt global to me) struggle to a clash limited to one deteriorating city.  And, as noted above, the priest plotline didn't feel truly integrated with the meat of the episode, the engram plotline.  Still, I think on the whole the good outweighs the bad.

War of the Worlds, the series - The Second Wave script changes

Thanks again to The Sultan of Sarcasm, the biggest War of the Worlds series fan that I know, we have even more script changes.  This time it's The Second Wave, the second season premier. 

Here's the first one scene:
INT. GATHERING HALL- NIGHT

ANGLE ON THREE OLD-STYLE HUMANOID ALIENS with radiation burns standing in the middle of the hall, terrified.

WIDER ANGLE shows the hall: The Morthren watch impassively. Malzor stands on the stage. The three ADVOCATES stand in front of the stage, facing Malzor. An air of dark ritual. A witnessing of the ultimate punishment.

MALZOR
(to Advocates)
You have failed at your appointed task. The Immortal is with us and his place is not prepared. Your cowardice condemns you. (loud) The Immortal casts you out, you and your warriors. See!

Malzor points, and the Advocates turn to face the first three victims. A tubular device that hangs above the victims surges with gas...glows red...then white...then a beam of energy blazes down to engulf the victims...

They WAIL...falling to the floor...they arch their bodies as three-fingered hands burst out...grasping for freedom. The energy reaches maximum and clears- leaving only glowing green slime that spreads across the floor and is gone.

Malzor gestures and the next THREE VICTIMS are led in and positioned at the same spot.

MALZOR
The Immortal casts you out!

ANGLE ON Malzor watching as the executions proceed. Mana enters from the back of the stage and stands by Malzor. The lights from the execution play on their faces. Softly...

MANA
A terrible sight. We must all take the warning...

MALZOR
We won't fail.

MANA
I'm waiting for the human subject. Two came here and one went free. Now, the Blackwood creature himself has escaped your warriors.

We sense the hostility and rivalry between these two. Malzor glances angrily at Mana.

MALZOR
How do you know this?

MANA
So it's true.

MALZOR
(after a beat)
My plan is more subtle than you think.
Their fatal curiosity will bring me the
one I want...

The light of execution dims, and dark shadows flow over Malzor's face as we...CUT TO....

---

Here's the second scene:

ACT TWO

FADE IN:

EXT. INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX- NIGHT- ESTABLISHING

No cloud and light effects. A quiet night now.

INT. GATHERING HALL- NIGHT

ANGLE ON THE IMMORTAL: Utterly still and radiant. Then the radiance dims a little.

ANGLE ON THE STAGE: The ATTENDANTS move to The Immortal and stand before him, two facing It, one facing the Hall. This one gestures. The moment of arrival is over.

ANGLE ON THE HALL: The Morthren rise, their eyes fixed on the Immortal. Malzor comes forward to the foot of the stage. For all his power, he's like a child before the deity. Uncertain and afraid.

MALZOR
Immortal One: Your subjects greet you after your voyage.

The Immortal's VOICE-MUSIC rises softly. The words are heard as a soft near-whisper that hangs in the air, not directional, seeming to come from everywhere, or like a voice heard in the mind. The voice of a being that has moved beyond emotion and desire. Pure.

IMMORTAL
I was in the void. The void is in me.

MALZOR
Your journey was long...

IMMORTAL
It was long. It was over before it began. Time and space are nothing to me. The only journey is that of the mind as it seeks perfection within itself.

It is clear that Malzor, like all Morthren, doesn't hope to understand most of The Immortal's utterances. He responds as best as he can, while trying to expres his absolute compliance to the deity's wishes.

MALZOR
Your place is prepared. This is Morthrai now.

IMMORTAL
I am Morthrai. Morthrai is eternal. Yet a new Morthrai is created every second. In my mind. As I rise towards the final perfection. Void.

MALZOR
I understand...

IMMORTAL
No. You exist in the darkness of space and time. You see nothing. At the end of your span you will join with me. You will be one with me. You will understand.

A SIGH of yearning rises briefly from the Morthren at this reference to their highest goal, their heaven: the merging with The Immortal at the moment of death.

MALZOR
It's my only wish...

IMMORTAL
(rising power)
Each has a task. Those who fail will fall from me. Fall through black eternity. Everlasting separation.

As merging is heaven, so separation is hell. A MUTED WAIL rises from the Morthren. The Immortal's radiance starts to waver and dim.

IMMORTAL
Cleanse. All. Impurity.

The Immortal is withdrawing from the Gathering Hall. The Morthren prostrate themselves as the stage is engulfed in light. The ATTENANTS move back and are received into the light. The Immortal's VOICE-MUSIC rises then recedes and fades into silence.

ANGLE ON THE HALL: The light sinks to normal. The Morthren stand silently. The stage is now empty. Malzor is shaken, but recovers quickly. He's survived this first encounter. He faces the awed Morthren.

---

It would seem that each of these changes moves a bit further away from the mythology of season 1.  The first scene emphasizes the triune nature of the aliens, at least the aliens who were the S1 antagonists.  We also learn that two humans came, and one went free.  Presumably this was Max and John Kincaid.  It seems that at one point, they had been to this very facility. For some reason, that got changed in the final script to have Norton detect them.  Probably it was to give the character SOMETHING to do besides die, though it makes the Clone Ironhorse's line about Kincaid being a clown somewhat nonsensical.  Afterall, they weren't chasing his lead, they were chasing one of Norton's. 

The second scene emphasizes the nature of the Immortal, living deity of the Morthren.  While I think the name Eternal is probably a better name overall, in the context of S1 the name Immortal tells us exactly what the aliens were fighting for all along.  It's a shame that this got changed.  On the other hand, having the Immortal's words be indecipherable whale-song (Star Trek IV, anyone) probably was a good idea.  It makes it more oracular, and serves to cement Malzor's role as his high priest and chief interpreter.

The photo is by Bruce Macualay, and was originally published in Starlog magazine.

Review: Marvel G1 #56: Back from the Dead

Back from the Dead is the fifty-sixth issue of the US G1 run of the Marvel Comics Transformers series.  It is the first US issue penned by Simon Furman, who had been writing the UK Transformers series for quite a while.  To help ease the transition, José Delbo and Dave Hunt stay on as penciler and inker, respectively.  Jim Massara provides letters, and the ever-present Nel Yomtov does the colors.  The cover is by Dan Reed, his first US Transformers work.  His work would be familiar to UK readers of the Transformers comic, though. Oddly, Mr. Reed is an American expatriate living in France. 

Starting, as we tend to do, with the cover, we're treated to a fairly prosaic scene.  Given what I know about Mr. Furman's storytelling technique, I'm sure this was intentional.  The Air Strike Patrol attacks a human airstrip, while uniformed humans flee.  After the past two months of Micromaster adventures, this seems like more of the same.  It's a rather nice rendering of this scene, though, with a powerful and eye-catching explosion in the background and two of the micromasters in robot mode in the foreground.  "Attack of the Air Strike Patrol!!" it proclaims, as if that is the highlight of the book.  Spoiler alert: it's not.

The issue itself gets off to a much more unusual start.  Ratchet is surrounded by damaged Autobots, stumbling towards him like zombies.  Blaster's head, mounted on a mechanical arm, is an especially creepy image.  They blame Ratchet for their failure to fix them, and threaten to tear him limb from limb.  The narrative caption says that Ratchet will never forget this day, for this is the day "the dead walk!"  Very effective.

Of course, this all turns out to be a dream, brought on from overwork.  Optimus Prime interrupts this dream and orders ratchet to get some rest. Optimus worries that he's pushing Ratchet too hard, but also needs to get his warriors back online. He muses that, though Megatron is long dead, the legacy of his evil lives on.  Meanwhile, Ratchet bemoans the lack of modern medical equipment that exists on Cybertron. Cybertron... But before we make the transition to Cybertron, let us pause to consider how dense the first three pages are.  Ratchet and Optimus Prime are reestablished as characters, Ratchet's mental state is depicted for us, we're reminded of the evil that is Megatron... Furman doesn't fool around. 

On Cybertron, the Decepticon Micromaster Sports Car Patrol is given a mission, though we don't know what it is except that it requires subtlety and sneakiness.  They trade Decepticon symbols for Autobot symbols, and then a mysterious figure gives Whisper of the Air Strike Patrol the go-ahead.   Soon, the earthbound Micromasters are attacking an air force base, ostensibly to capture a mid-air refueling plane. Though Getaway doesn't particularly want to get involved, Optimus orders a strike force to descend to Earth on a shuttle to deal with this new menace. This, unfortunately, leaves the Ark virtually unguarded. Prime lands and confronts the Decepticons, who call Scorponok for reinforcements.  Ominously, they say that they love it when everything goes according to plan, indicating some master manipulator at work. Who could it be? The tension gets higher and higher, and for the first time since the Underbase we really get the sense that we the audience have big things in store for us.

Ratchet, who hasn't yet taken that rest, worries that Autobots going into battle means more casualties for him to repair. He catches how selfish this sounds, though... right as something tickles his peripheral vision.  He doesn't quite see the Sports Car Patrol, though, allowing them to put their plan in place.  Blackjack reprograms the ark's systems, causing the various Autobots on life support to begin to attack him. At first, he almost welcomes oblivion, but then he fights his way to the emergency cut-off switch for the repair bay. Only, he can't press it... it would end whatever chance for survival they have. After all, he realizes, in the final analysis... he's expendable. This creepy sequence is somewhat undercut by the dream that started out the issue.  It's a bit of a narrative weakness to go through the same sequence twice.  I could forgive it if we had some other hints of precognitive dreaming from Ratchet, but as it is it seems a bit coincidental for my taste.

In any event, Ratchet's sacrifice isn't what Blackjack wanted, though. They wanted him broken, but alive. The 'Con in disguise shuts off the zombies, then introduces himself to Ratchet.  They say that they're here to bring him to Cybertron, on Prime's orders.  Ratchet, wisely, decides to call Optimus Prime to confirm this story but can't raise him.  Ratchet then impulsively decides that he'll do it, and brings Grimlock, Jazz and Goldbug along with him.  "Why aren't they coming with us," he asks, and it's not sure what "they" he's refering to.  The Autobot bodies seem like a logical candidate, though that won't turn out to be the case.  All the Decepticons come with him except Blackjack, so that doesn't quite work either.  But no time for quibbling, for the next and last page reveals the mastermind behind it all... yes, Megatron is back from the dead!

It's a very strong issue.  We start to see plans within plans, which leads us to want to see where things are going.  Optimus Prime was flawlessly manipulated, behaving exactly as predicted.  The real hero of the story, Ratchet, manages to forge his own destiny, though, by refusing to terminate his zombie comrades.  It's great to see Megatron back, after a thirty issue absence. Though we never got to know him all that well in his initial appearances, he still looms large in the mind.  It was smart of Furman to remind us of him earlier on in the issue.  The issue is not without its flaws, though.  There are numerous errors in the art and dialogue. Normally I'm fairly forgiving of these, but they actually impact my understanding of the story, which is a big no.  Also, as mentioned, Ratchet dreaming of the very thing that will effect him seems clumsy.  If Blackjack somehow knew about those dreams... but, there's no reason to believe he did.

This is Simon Furman's first ever US comic, and it seems to augur well for his run.  The dialogue definitely shifts from Budiansky's characters, though not in a bad way.  Furman seems to be a fan of Claremontian storytelling, both in how he structures his dialogue and in the sorts of plots he sets up.  It's interesting to note that the pagecount has dropped from 22 down to 16, with six Universe profiles to make up for the gap.  It seems clear to me that Furman was brought in to preside over the termination of the Transformers comic.  It's a testimony to his talent as a writer that this pagecount would gradually creep back up, though aside from a few milestone issues it wouldn't get back to a full 22 count until the G2 run.  As much as I love Budiansky's quirkiness, I adore the large cosmic tales that Furman chose to tell.  I'm a sucker for space opera, and Furman definitely nudged the franchise closer to that direction.


"Next issue: Megatron! 'nuff said!"  Back from the Dead is available for sale in IDW's Classic Transformers Volume 4.

Iván's Gallery: Goshooter

After a break of several months, guess who's back? That's right, Iván has started some drawing again, which allows me to bring you another installment of Iván's gallery.  This week, he tackles Goshooter, AKA Siren.  Here's what he has to say about the piece:

 

 One friend, at work I wonder how to draw Transformers.

So I did this.

It was a panel from one page to a Masterforce comic, what I have in head for some time.

Not that you look like you, maybe too serious, is not what we are accustomed, except for Don who lately decided to draw more style "movie", though I do not completely to my taste, too far from G.1.

In any case, as can be seen, preserved the basic physical features of the series.
Also I work hard the line, details, and shadows, so I think it is a drawing color if given, can only win because he has a good base.

I think this type of style or design, when combined with a human style, in the artistic direction of the style of JG. Jones and Bryan Hitch, in addition, would make a Transformers comic was seen with ... "different eyes".

And not get me wrong, but the type of illustration with "line art" is not that I do not like simply prefer this other because it has other connotations and conveys a number of other things to the reader.

In any case I hope you enjoy it.