13 Years of IDW’s First Transformers Run: Creators, Highlights, and Legacy

Ah, yes. The year was 2005. The treacherous Decepticons

and their heroic Autobot counterparts descended

upon the Earth and unleashed a new era of Transformers

comics through IDW publishing. Thirteen years

and hundreds of issues later, that universe has

come to a close. Yes. Transformers historian

Chris McFeely distills the entire history into

one handy guide as we remember the masterful

storytelling of the first ITW Transformers run.

Excellent. Yes. Hello, everyone. TFG1Mike here.

And you'll notice I'm not actually in this podcast.

The first time in almost six years that I have

not been on an episode of The Pull Bag. However,

please enjoy this spoilerific discussion of the

last 13 years of the IDW Transformers run with

Amy, Genevieve, and Ryan. Unleash the comic geek

in you, make your great escape into comics, and

let's talk some Transformers once again. We're

going to be spoiling the hell out of the last

13 years of the Transformers IDW run. So if you

haven't read Unicron, do not listen to this podcast.

If you have, go forth, young Cybertronian, and

listen to your heritage. Transform, transcend,

transform and roll out, and I'll catch you next

week in episode 338. Now on with the show. This

is getting expensive! I can't deal with that

now! Hello and welcome to episode 337 of The

Pull Bag. Good Lord. Mike's been doing this show

for that long. I'm your host, Ryan the Uneven

Flow Merkley, although today I'm going to be

going back to Nightbeat. TFG01 Mike is taking

the week off, so this week I am joined by...

I have summoned you here. Oh Amy aka Lady Rek

on Twitter so yeah and and Genevieve Frank aka

Jen apparently on Twitter all right and they're

joining me for an in -depth discussion of IDW's

first run of the Transformers comics, which ended

recently after 13 years. I struggle remembering

what I was doing 13 hours ago, but still. For

anyone who doesn't know by the way, I am Ryan

go by the name night beats are used to I'm also

at night beats on Twitter. I bring all that up

because I used to co -host the TF wire podcast

many moons ago and it was before there was a

large number of Transformers podcasts and we

were ridiculously popular for quite some time

and this will come into play later. I assure

you. So yeah, wanted to start with some stories

of how we got into the IDW comics or rather what

drew us to them. I have two that I want to read

that I had listeners send in. And the reason

there's only two is because I'm dumb and it didn't

occur to me to maybe ask the question well before

the podcast. But hey, I got two, that's not bad.

That's not bad for just like what, 24 hours?

I don't know, it was like a couple days or so.

So yeah, so anyone who listened to the TF Lawyer

podcast, by the way. I swear I'm different now.

Don't turn it off. And for anyone who's hearing

me for the first time, I'm sorry. So the first

one is from... Jay Blex Jay Z Blex's on Twitter

Says so I'm 31 now when IDW first announced they

would be rebooting I realized these comics have

been around my entire adult life and that just

blew my mind I got on in on IDW from the very

beginning after Dreamwave left me hanging and

I was all too happy to have new Transformers

comics again At first I was bummed Dreamwave's

dangling plots would never get resolved until

me about it, but I was sold on the clean slate

back -to -basics approach from the first interview.

E .J. Su's highly mechanical art just blew my

mind and I fell in love with Verity from page

one of issue zero. Of course, we were all confused

by the weird pacing of the miniseries format,

but I enjoyed the Asians era for what it was.

Then All Hail Megatron happened and the IDW message

board nearly tore itself apart during that year.

Well, we all hoped Costa would get things back

on track, but he turned out to be just as bad

in different ways. Who would have thawed after

that? The comics would have become better and

groundbreaking in ways we never expected from

Transformers before. It's been an absolute rollercoaster

of an era, and IDW's staff gets my kudos for

managing the longest -running Transformers continuity

and ending it on a high note instead of it puttering

out. So thank you for that also man, I agree.

Oh, yeah, I agree with all of that The exception.

All right, we'll get into that later, but I'm

not as hard on I'm not as hard on cost as I once

was but we'll Talk about that a little later

The next one was from Gareth G funk 81 Howdy

I thought I'd share my IDW Transformers story

with you. I tried the slow -going, so I gave

up. Anyways, years later, I was housebound. As

a huge Marvel UK and Wreckers fan, I was instantly

keen. That sounds familiar to somebody here.

Bought it, loved it, gave the ongoing a go, and

was again disappointed. A few years later, I

was writing comic reviews for X -Fan and one

of the... regular columnists kept saying I should

try out more than meets the eye. I eventually

picked up the annual and issue 12 and was hooked.

This was the Transformers I'd been awaiting since

I was a kid. I threw myself wholeheartedly back

into the fandom and have remained there ever

since. Comics, toys, artwork, et cetera, just

loved the lot. And thank you again. Fantastic.

And let's start with Mrs. Wreck. How did you

get in, or when did you jump on board? You're

a lifer like me, so... So, yeah, well, I was

a lifer, but I didn't, like, I fell off the wagon

for a long time, you know, after, you know, after

the cartoon ended and all that. So I got back

on board, I want to say around the spring of

2009, 2008, something like that. Basically, I

had little kids and I wanted to re -remember

Transformers. I wanted to get them into it because

I thought it would be something that we could

share together. I'd seen the movies and I really

loved what was going on. I say that now, but

seeing the movie, the first live action movie.

kind of just like oh yeah I remember those I

want to go see that and anyhow long story short

I got it up I started hearing about different

things online and I knew that there was fans

out there but I didn't know how to connect with

them and so I just started trying to figure out

how to connect with people and at the time I

got like my first iPod something was like a little

nano or something like that and I wanted to I

had heard about podcasts. So I found TF Wire.

Oh, you poor soul. And yet you stuck with Transformers.

Wow. Yeah, yeah. That was about the time that

you guys started getting really, really negative.

Like, like really just and it was kind of not

surprising to me that you guys stopped. Yeah,

we'll get into that momentarily. I assure you.

And then I also found the Moonbase 2 podcast

and a few other little But you liked us way better.

Well, at first I listened to you guys like religiously.

Yeah, where's the stop button? In fact, because

I was listening to your podcast, I actually started,

I made an online persona and I started actually

following you guys and I didn't have Twitter

at the time. I don't even remember if Twitter

existed then. I don't remember. But I actually

got on the forum and I had signed in and started

like commenting. But like I said, you guys were

kind of winding down at the time. And then I

found the Moonbase 2 crowd and I started hanging

out over on the Moonbase 2 or I can't remember

whether it was called at the time, but they had

a forum as well and I started hanging out over

there. And they were very, of course, enthusiastic.

And I... They were just getting ready to go to

auto assembly at the time because that's what

they called it back then it since is now TF nation,

but They were really enthusiastic about it and

they were I can't remember like a couple months

after they had the Convention excuse me They

were looking for people to review comics Dave

put a note out on the forum and I answered it.

And he sent me a comic and I did my first review.

And then he contacted me and said, hey, now you

got to do a podcast. And I was like, are you

serious? I was completely mortified. I didn't

know what to do with it. I was so nervous, but

I said, okay, I guess I could do that. and changed

my life forever. The next ones after that, that

I started, I walked into my first comic shop

to pick up Blast Out of the Wreckers, got my

first subscription on that, and I was just, I

was hooked. It was like an instant anti -drug,

but it was great. And, you know, of course I

was sharing stuff with the kids too, maybe not

the comics, because they were little kids, they

were little little guys at the time. Now we're

starting to I'm starting to actually share with

them what's going on and stuff like that and

as 2 .0 starts Hitting off. I'll probably like

every single time I get a comic. I will hand

it to my kids say here read this But yeah, that's

how I got it I got into the IDW comics because

of that so within like six months Seven months

eight months within a year. I was completely

on that roller coaster and loving that drug I've

been pretty much reading nonstop since last end

of the record, so the beginning of Kosta's Ongoing

Run. So I missed some of the drama with All Hail

Megatron and Megatron Origins and all of that.

I kind of came in after that. And I've been loving

it ever since. It's been fantastic. that's what

got me in. I read the Asian series first off

and I liked it and I started reading the spotlights

and of course then I started reading and reviewing

and just read everything and because I wanted

to make sure that I was well versed with everything

so I read everything after I started reading

ongoing as well and just got caught up. It's

been it's been a wild and fun ride since even

through the dark years and like that like the

other two have mentioned that you read from Twitter

or the direct messages that direct messages that

you got was yeah it's it's well beyond what I

would have ever imagined and expected and it's

been a fun ride and a little sad too because

now we've wrapped it up and we're starting again

and I'm going okay nervous but that there we

go That's me. All right. Yep, you're up. Okay,

um, so I I got into IDW twice the first time

I got in was right when infiltration Zero dropped

in October 2005 I want to say Like Like many

others I was left hanging by Dreamwave. I was

24 at the time and I fell in love with Verity

and I really loved what was going on in the Asians

in infiltration right away. And it clicked with

me a lot more than the Dreamwave stuff did. And

then by early to mid 2008, I dropped off and

I forget exactly where. I know I was reading

enough into 2008 to read Spotlight RC, but not

enough to catch Maximum Dinobots. I was sort

of in the process of applying to grad school

and then went off to grad school and then I didn't

have time. Flash forward to 2011. I was studying

for the bar exam. um in the summer of 2011 and

I was doing everything I could to fail and not

actually study so I somehow found I think that

was right when Comixosity was starting so I went

online and I binged everything I'd missed so

I think over the course of a summer I binged

you know from the late ancient from Revelations

and maximum Dino bots all the way through last

stand which I think at that point it already

fully come out and it took us And I was probably

2011 is probably most of the way through about

halfway through the through my cost as I'm going

if I'm remembering correctly because then I was

just current and stayed with it since and I've

always sort of hung back in the fandom. I've

been you know, I I saw G1 when it first aired

in 1984, sitting on the floor of my parents'

apartment. And I've sort of stayed with on and

off Transformers forever, but I've never really

gotten the fandom until, God, I only think I

got into the fandom like two years ago. At least

formally, I've lurked for a very long time. And

yeah, there was just something about, you know,

I think it... What I think really took it up

a notch for me was just that first season in

phase two of Robots in disguise and more than

meets the eye and like the pacing was fantastic.

The storytelling was fantastic. Everything was

very tight and it and it and it came together

so beautifully Yeah, I'm one of the few you know,

I've heard lots of folks say they didn't quite

love Dark Cybertron I've loved Dark Cybertron

so That's one of several unpopular hills I'm

willing to die on. Interesting. All right. My

story begins with the aforementioned podcast

we had been doing. So I had read the Shun series.

I enjoyed it. I read through till All Hail Megatron.

All Hail Megatron was the beginning of a combination

of things that kind of killed off a lot of the

enthusiasm. of tf lyre i regret the negativity

but looking back at the time i don't blame myself

that much for it so we had all hail megatron

which i didn't understand at the time but i now

understand i dislike because it was essentially

everything just reverting back to the generation

one cartoon series and i didn't know at the time

but again i know now i was just Happy to have

something different. I already had 50 hours or

so of those characters and those versions of

those characters I think I was just frustrated

by it kind of reverting back after being given

something a little different will say and Beyond

that we had revenge of the fallen which I still

mark down as Don't know if it's the worst movie

I've ever seen but it's my least favorite film

I've ever seen so that came out around the time

and oh and then we had in the toys the Classics

line at the time was being discontinued and They

hadn't announced a replacement. We now know they

would replace it with the generations and then

others But all these things kind of combined

to really hurt my enthusiasm for it And we fast

forward to March 2013, and I didn't know it,

but for the last few years or so, I had had something

missing, and it was my Transformers love slash

fandom. I was in the shadow of a really bad breakup

from an extremely long -term relationship, and

about seven years, anyway. And I was still suffering

from depression, which is now medicated, but

at the time I was looking for anything I would

end up picking up of all issues under cold blue

stars more than meets the eye number 15 written

by James Roberts This is the issue by the way

overlord running loose on the lost light and

I mean so a weird spot to pick up But I loved

it. I fell in love with it immediately. It was

everything I was looking for from the characterization

and action and everything with the Transformers.

And so I immediately started picking them back

up again. It really got me back into it and I

credit James Roberts and his writing. for a lot

of that so everybody tweet this at him so I can

say thank you to him personally and validate

my life that he points out that he's listened

to it but no I mean it meant a lot to me it was

something I was missing it was something I needed

I needed something to kind of hang on to at that

point the point of this is not to crap on the

movies I people who got into them from the live

action films and that's fine. They're just as

big transformer fans as I am It's just not something

I was enjoying and that was seemingly most of

what we were getting at that time So that kind

of hurt me so I was just nice to get something

different and yeah, if ever I hope to at some

points meets Roberts in person and just tell

them thank you because it really did mean a lot

this is a franchise I've loved, even during the

off years. And yeah, it just, I don't know, it

was something about the issue and the characters

and everything immediately resonated with me.

And I jumped back in, I read the old stuff and

I read everything from that point on. Fantastic.

Yes, it was fantastic. So, hitting on that, obviously

Robert's going to be one of my favorites. Creators

and writers on this but want to get into some

of everybody else's favorite books creators and

Artists writers. I'm just gonna flat -out say

we may as well just say we're all big fans more

than meets the eye Yes, I feel like we just And

Roberts is probably gonna be a high on everybody's

lists of favorite writers, so I Don't know. It's

it's funny in retrospect Couple things I wanted

to point out though one that I feel is really

important. One of my favorite things about the

entire series of particularly the back half was

the representation of different Relationships

shown in transformers. So traditionally the only

relationship in any transformer series will but

Real realistically relationships were never a

big part of transformers They always should have

been especially since they're Beings designed

with feelings that sort of thing so in particular

James Roberts, I'm gonna single out again but

one of the things that struck me in under the

cold blue stars was immediately the relationship

between chrome dome and rewind and the relationships

in all of these books are just fantastic and

It was one of my favorite things I want this

to sink in with people in 24 states in the United

States You can still be fired based on your sexual

orientation Think about that for a second and

by the way how stupid that is but the idea that

the the idea that the push to Allow people to

be gay Has ended and that they have all the rights

of other people is not even close to true Then

you minus roughly I would say at least 30 probably

40 years of progress and Sadly, that is the state

that people who are transgendered are in at this

point So the idea that a mainstream series which

represents these relationships and these characters

and these people More than anything else that

was really important and something I really liked

I hope going forward it continues to be a focal

point and to be blunt it's always made sense

in the transformers universe because Realistically,

we've had roughly 900 characters that are male

and I can name about seven that are female. So

I'm going to take a wild guess and say there's

probably some canoodling between the same gender

going on there. Just going to throw that out

there. But no, it was something that I readily

jumped. I wasn't expecting it at all and I readily

jumped into it and enjoyed it. Chromedome rewinds

by the way. Instead of just thinking on air.

Oh, well Mike knows that's always been my strong

point. But yeah that made to include people It's

something I had never seen in a transformer series

didn't go so well but no, I've it was one of

the things that really got me on board immediately

with the IDW books when I came back to them.

All right, I'm done rambling. So anyway, everyone

else got any favorite books, creators, artists?

Amy, do you want to go first? Sure, I'll go next.

I'm trying to figure out how to preface this

to start, you know, like, you know, I'll I agree

with all of the things that Ryan said. I really,

really did like the fact that we had relationships

here and they were very well thought out and

engaging. And I again, You know, I, I, I, that's

exactly what I feel that Transformers was missing,

is the, the relationship element. And that really

engaged me as well. Um, at the time - It makes

the characters just feel more real, by the way.

Yes, exactly. And, you know, because they, why

wouldn't they have relationships? Why wouldn't

they, you know, have brothers and sisters and,

um, lovers? Why wouldn't they have that? because

you know they're intelligent creatures that are

emotional and you know they have they have needs

too they have you know who wouldn't you know

why would you want to you know go through your

whole life alone so anyhow um for me there's

a lot of i guess at the time when i I was running

the underbase and we were reviewing all of the

the ongoing the first ongoing that came out with

CASA and I I'll be honest I wasn't a fan of it

I I was after reviewing it and there wasn't I

wasn't really feeling like there was um pieces

of the plot that were really that I was looking

forward to finding out questions that I wanted

answers and pay out that just it just there it

wasn't jiving with me um And so I was like, hey,

guys, if we continue to have the ongoing continue

after the two years when they finally started

saying, hey, you know, actually, we're going

to wrap it up, it was about the time I was like,

if this is what we're going to have for another

two years, I don't know if we can continue to

run the underbase, because I can't do this anymore.

Not that I didn't. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't

really loving it. And so I thought, you know,

part of our passion of getting behind the microphone

is to talk about the things that we love. And

I wasn't loving it. So Wreckers came out at the

right time, or not Wreckers, ongoing. The John

and James getting on the books came out at the

exact right time. Because if not, I'd be like,

goodbye, I'm done. They he did and that they

did and it was a really amazing time to see things

start just falling into place so quickly so fast

and So one of my number one, you know memories

is seeing that happen is to see you know some

of the interviews that I got to do and and actually

talk with with with both James and John in different

different times, but just getting a chance to

see and Watch that unfold because at the time

I was running a podcast and it wasn't just James

and John I mean we would be going on to to see

Nick write the whole rest of the record series,

which was great and then Marigred Scott came

along and She Wrote a really great maybe I don't

know if a lot of people have well, I'm The Rage

of the Dinobots, which was about the Dinobots.

I don't know if it was talked about at the time,

but I had a couple people that I knew that I

wanted to review it, and they had a blast reviewing

it. It was all on the underbase. She did some

really great characterization in that with the

Dinobots, and I was really enthusiastic when

they finally brought her in, and she ended up

writing more than just a side mini. She ended

up writing in, um, in, like, she did the Windblade,

the, the, there were two mini -series, and then

she went on to write an ongoing called Till All

Are One, and she just did this fantastic job.

Charac - Charac - character, I can't say the

word, characterizing all of the characters that

she had in that. And, you know, it was just fantastic.

I was just blown away. And of course, very sad

when it wrapped up as well. So I was like, ah,

darn it. But those are really, really great moments

that that there were that I that I had. Um, geez.

Um, let's see, I could go through and. Tell moments

there's lots of them more than meets the eye.

Do you have any favorite artists or anyone that

stuck out to? You know what they're you know,

all of the artists I have to say this about all

of the artists They have a great cast. Almost

everybody is spot on in different ways. Um, you

know, we could just go down the line and talk

about every single one of them. I mean, geez,

I, yeah, I was not, I'm not going to lie. I was

going to cheat and just say all of them. Uh,

they let's just do that because they all deserve

a shout out because they were all. Yeah. And,

and not only that, but the way they just, they

were able to mine talent. I had never heard.

And it's partially because she did. Fan art,

but Kay Zama. Yeah, who ended up on Optimus Prime,

which oh our work is amazing. It's beautiful

She did a great job with that and she was just

it was like the perfect mood and everything for

that book It was awesome. And then also I want

to give a quick shout out to Jack Lawrence who

had a ridiculously difficult job taking over

for one of the artists that really kind of defines

the phase two and And some of his work near the

end of Lost Light is some of those panels and

some of the splash pages are some of the best

work I've seen in all of the IDW stuff. And,

you know, going way back to even how it started,

E .J. Sue's stuff was really strong. It just

it was all so good. Livio, you know, I could

just keep going on and on with all the artists,

but I will stop now. Well, yeah, why not? Let's

just go for it. Alex did a fantastic job. Jack

having to take over for him was tough, but he

nailed it. He did. Oh, yeah. Great job. That's

what I mean. Yeah, he had a ridiculously difficult

job. And I don't know if it was intentional or

not, but he kind of started out with. Emulating

the style to a certain extent, I thought, but

he really found his own. particularly by the

end. Actually, another one I want to mention

too, Sarah Stone. Oh, yeah. Doing a more sort

of exaggerated or animated style and it fits

Scott's writing and characters just beautifully.

Yeah, I'm sad that we only got her for four issues,

but her... Oh, I know. But yeah, I love her stuff.

Everything. Like, it's still in my memory. Sarah

Stone was also on for most of the second volume

of Windblade. She did the first four issues of

the second volume. She did at least an issue.

No, she did two issues. She finished out through

Combiner Wars. So she did one through, I think,

four of volume two, as well as one of John's

issues on Robots in Disguise, the one set back

on Cybertron in between the two mini -series.

Yep. I cheated and I looked it up. Yeah, and

I think. I think she did one more. I'm she didn't

want issue volume two of Windblade, which would

be distant stars, and she did all in volume one.

And then yeah, it was robots in disguise issue

33. But yeah, I'm sad that she ended up leaving

because I really liked her work. Well in my you

know, I didn't I tried not to go back and read

the all of it I just wanted to bring out things

that like popped right at my head and For Sarah

Stone, it was absolutely the first win blade

miniseries so it's the first time we saw anything

of her work and I just remember how just fresh

and sparkly To me it was that it was just like

oh well Sarah Stone. She's really great. We have

her on forever And, you know, sometimes it has

to be pointed out that becoming a Transformer

fan, a Transformer artist or creator in such

a way, the fandom embraces you really quick.

And I did get the sense that that's overwhelming

for some people if they're not really ready for

that. And the expectation of that can be kind

of hard too, I think, especially for Like, I'm

not saying that it could chase people off or

that it had an issue here, but I do remember

her being a little overwhelmed with a lot of

the fandom because it was just instant. A lot

of people really, really like your stuff and

that that can kind of be really hard on some

people. A lot of artists aren't out like, what

am I trying to say? They're more introverted

than extroverted. Um, not, not, that's not, that's

not the standard, but just tend to see a lot

of the artists being more introverted than extroverted.

And that sometimes can be overwhelming for an

introvert. Well, luckily for Scott, she was able

to get a replacement to Sarah Pitcher de Roche

stuff. Oh yeah. She's been fantastic. It was

also magnificent. So yeah, for my, uh, for my

money and this is tough, but if I had to pick.

One of the series that was near perfect from

start to finish It was till all or one. Yeah,

it's just really good to the whole way. Anyway,

I'm Yeah, I'm gonna shut up and stop monopolizing

everything. All right, Jen. Oh, I was gonna say

because there's more artists it's like Yeah,

Andrew Griffith he was the robots in disguise

artist the first the first the first artist that

was on that ongoing for, until it turned into

just Transformers. Casey Coller, who's only done

a few, he's done a lot of covers, only done a

handful of minis and several issues randomly,

but he's been fantastic. Let's see, who else?

Priscilla Termitano, who hasn't, we haven't mentioned

her yet. She's done quite a bit and she's also

done a lot of coloring as well. Marcello Mattier.

We had a joke on the underbase that he was a

time traveling artist. It was nice to see some

of the Dreamwave people back, by the way. I was

happy to see them get. back into it, because

to be blunt, with everything that happened with

Dreamwave, it would have been pretty easy for

them to have a negative opinion of the franchise

and everything else. What with, you know, not

being paid, having their art stolen, all the

fun stuff that went on there. Yeah. Yeah, that's

definitely... the stuff that happened with Dreamwave

will probably... we'll never get all the answers

and people will never get paid. That's sad. On

that, we also had Brendan Cahill, who was also

on for quite a while. Ken Christensen did some

artwork as well, some covers. And then, of course,

the colorists, which we can't forget them as

well, Josh Burcham, Josh Perez, Joanna Lafuente,

and John Paul Bove. I know I'm missing somebody.

Did we mention Livio? I had mentioned him, but

yeah, we can definitely bring him up again because

another one who's his work is so much different

than everybody else's It was very striking and

one of the things I liked was they used him really

well during Dark Cybertron And when they did

this during the series by the way when they had

certain, you know, anytime in the dead universe

for example It was always Livio and his work

was just so striking. It worked perfectly Speaking

of perfect by the way one other person desperately

needs to be shouted out mentioned Before the

show but Tom be long and his lettering with the

the number of characters and The way some of

them speak and the way it's set up his work is

He does the best job I have ever seen. And I

have in excess of 500, I'm working on 600, by

the way, trade paperbacks from comics. Uh, and

he is the best letterer I've ever seen. Fantastic.

Yeah. He's been a staple. You don't get a Transformers

comic without John Belong. Yes. Anyway. Yeah.

And I think we should, I think we should also

mention that, you know, Tom is also doing a lot

of the physical production of putting together

the layouts at the end Since he is staff at IDW.

Yes, so it's he's not just doing the lettering

He's like kind of pulling it all together and

you know, that's not as creative or artistic

maybe but it's like it's the glue It's the it's

the glue just like the editors are part of the

glue And I don't think you know, I think you

know, we certainly saw it during During season

one of both more than meets the eye and robots

in disguise with John barber pulling editorial

duties we certainly saw later on with Carlos

I think was the editor for the middle part of

the run after John left and then from editorial

at least and then David Marioette coming and

kind of batting clean up when it was kind of

the biggest job yet because especially with some

of the deep dives that both James and John were

doing in the latter parts of their runs. Yeah.

And two creators I definitely don't want to leave

out either, just because of other contributions.

So there's Simon Furman, who established the...

And the other one is, I know he gets butt, Mike

Costa established some of the characters that

would go on. You know, he hadn't quite settled

on them, but for example, Thundercracker is very

directly a product of his ongoing. So, I mean,

I definitely thank him for that. I thank him

for a number of the different characters that

came from it. Bumblebee's growth as well. Yeah,

Bob. Bob wouldn't exist without Micasta. Mean,

I might have not been a fan of a lot of the stuff

that he wrote but he did do some stuff that I

really did like I thought he did well with the

characters. It was yes. Yeah, it was more the

big so the big picture stuff I also will point

out that in terms of the continuity and everything

gelling and everything telling a coherent story

That was really the product of a lot of hard

work in the phase two Barbara, in particular,

tried to retcon or kind of pull everything together

and did just a remarkable job considering the

number of creators we had seen before then. I

marvel at his ability to keep everything straight.

And then Roberts would write an arc meant for,

I think he originally said 75 issues. but ended

up going beyond that. The fact that he kept everything

straight and had all these minute details, everything

from seeing Glitch perk up at the mention of

towards peace or attention to detail, and each

of them had it. Scott's work, despite being shorter,

at least in terms of the number of issues, but

everything was intricately plotted out in that

as well. I love all of this. I could probably

talk about it for days. The two last things I

want to point out as kind of highlights though,

because we only touched on them, one is Last

Stand of the Wreckers, which if you're trying

to get somebody into the comics, I find it's

usually the best trades to loan somebody. It

is phenomenal. And then the other one that we

haven't mentioned, and I think it's Barber's

best work, his Dinobot trilogy was amazing. I

loved it. I think that might be some of his best

in a much sort of smaller self -contained set

of stories, but he pulled it off so well. And

he did it all without Grimlock, which... Young

Grimlock is an important character in Transformers,

but he had been used so heavily. And the fact

that these writers relied on more unknowns and

built them up and made them become important

characters is another thing I loved about it.

I mean, I never thought I would care about Chromedome.

But now I can't imagine a Transformers series

without him. I hope he's an important part of

the new one. I barely knew who Overlord was,

you know. And to say nothing of the created characters,

be it Rung, Tarn... Nickel? Yeah, yes, Nickel.

That's a great one. Windblade, we mentioned her

as well, so... Lug and Anode, I mean all of them.

I was just like, you can go down the line. These

are characters that had absolutely, did they

even have a character sheet or anything? Some

of them were just like completely new that we've

never even heard of, so it was fantastic to think

of that. Yeah, and we're talking about characters

that all got more than the typical Generation

1 cartoon show of here's one line to explain

your entire character. Yeah, good luck with that

And yet and yet sometimes some of the thinnest

things were just used so well That was just something

that just Wow One of the yeah So yeah, actually

I'm just gonna move Before we get into the sort

of highlights, moments, and if you have any complaints

for anybody, I just want to ask Jen, anyone else

you want to point out, any other favorite? I

think we've just listed all of the books at this

point, by the way. Yeah, I think I'll start with

saying that, you know, I hate having, I hate

the concept of trying to cut. of trying to name

favorites, especially I think in comics more

than anything else because it's so much of a,

it's, and Amy and I have like messaged about

this, but it's almost like improvisational jazz.

It's, you know, these combinations of different

creators coming together and playing off each

other and they all have different strengths.

You're allowed to cheat and just do what I did

and just say everybody. I don't want to cheat.

For me, what I love most is seeing a character's

inner life through their body language. I think

that's something that Sarah Pitchery and Sarah

Stone both do exceptionally. probably better

than anyone else who's worked on the IDW books.

They made some of the characters who have faceplates

some of the most expressive characters I've ever

seen. Yes, I agree. But it's not just the faces

to me. No, I know. I think there's something.

The body language. It's how they sway. I know

what you're saying. Like seeing like wind blades

wings sort of sad sag when she's like feeling

sad eat it or tired Yeah, and it's like that

just has such a better Emotional resonance. Yeah,

that's what I was getting at. It's easier to

sort of tell it by the face Or you could do the

adult surprise Look every single issue with your

human characters like another company And I think

a lot of that comes from you know, and I don't

know if they and I know with Both Sarah and Sarah

and I think this might be unique amongst the

IDW artists is they both come from animation

backgrounds So and you can absolutely and I saw

I saw some Comic writer not in the IDW storehouse

so to speak making a thread about this is you

can absolutely see a difference in the art of

folks who've been come up through and animation

background and folks who come up through a comic

background. I think that's absolutely true because

it's almost like looking at incredible storyboards

where you see so much more of the action, so

much more life in the characters, in the spaces,

and also in the use of empty space. Tell all

our one annual that That one sort of like bottom

quarter of the page When Starscream just is like

it's back on Starscream on a white background.

It's just him saying I'm sorry and like so much

done with like With like negative space and with

like the management of where things happen on

the page if that makes sense No, it does and

the layouts as well But yeah, and then you have

like the brilliant like mechanical designs of

Alex's, which is more his background. No one

draws better hallways than Alex Milne. I agree.

His hallways are to die for. I was just going

back doing sort of like a deep dive at some of

the art a few weeks ago in More Than Meets the

Eye, season one and two particularly. Alex's

season, like his hallways in the beginning of

season two, and I, it sounds so ridiculous. But

it's just like, they're so wonderful. Lost Light.

Lost Light the ship is a character because of

Alex Milne. Exactly. Kzama. And I feel like part

of the reason I'm being circumspect is I'm friendly

with some of the artists. So I feel weird talking

about their work That's that's okay point this

out to them so I can validate my life further

I'll try Also, I mean, it's not like any of us

have anything negative to say about any of them

the art is oh Magnificent and it's it's so nice

to see you. So I collect the transformers card

game As well as play it and to see the IDW are

used so often is great. It is phenomenal and

I'm not trying to bash them. But it's nice to

see replacements for that Dreamwave stock art

that we see had seen forever and now people are

using the IDW stuff for everything and the packaging

on things the it just it pops. It's so. beautiful

and so detailed in ways that I never thought

Transformers art would be. To say nothing of

how inspiring it's been to the art community

and the Transformers community in general. You

see some of the fan works and there's a reason

it's gorgeous. It's because the work basing it

off of or that we've been looking at is so incredible.

Well, not only that is it's like art. creates

and begets more art. I mean, you see often where,

you know, people pushing, doing different things

and inspiring each other to do better and even

to do further and to go and try something even

harder. And it's just really cool to see not

even how the fans the fan art is, but how the

fan art can actually help push even the artists

that are doing the art and the books as well.

I mean, it's just it's been fantastic just to

see that synergy. And let me see back to. So

what are their what are their thoughts that I

want to share? I guess, you know, moving off

from art for a second. Oh. is, you know, for,

for me at least, I've always, you know, Brian,

you mentioned this at the top, that, you know,

we're all, you know, James Roberts is gonna show

up in all our lists, and he does for me, but

for me in particular, especially as they were

given more time to start doing their own things,

like both John's and Margaret's writing, like

just, and I'm, I'm biased, obviously, a little

bit. So I don't know if my opinion counts anymore

on this. Oh, it counts just as much. I'm biased

because Roberts essentially brought me back into

the fold. But I also did name Scott's series

as maybe the best individual contained one. Well,

I I mean I'm biased because I I worked with John

so I don't know if I'm allowed to say like, you

know from an objective standpoint that John's

one of my favorite writers when He he sort of

reached out to me for the for the little thing

I did so It's well -earned John John earned all

all that there's a reason why we call it Captain

Oh Captain Yeah, and it should be noted too that

all of these writers we've listed I'm a fan for

life. I buy everything Scott writes as she's

moved on to DC Comics and is doing well there

I have most certainly Followed John Barber writing

periodically for Marvel and other places as well.

So I've done that with Nick. I have to agree

James, if you write something, I'll buy it. Yeah,

absolutely. We're all waiting for him to drop.

Hey, this is what I'm doing next. Because you

know when he does, people will start buying it.

So, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the problem with

comics, right? Is that there's such a, you know,

if he's doing something that's probably already

been pitched and is already being worked on or

might already being pulled together. But, you

know, we won't know until the solicitations drop.

Yes, I wasn't the first person with an animal

on the mic. This makes me feel so much better.

I can call the cats in. Come on. I think Ivy's

fine. She's fine. She's she's she's fine. Yeah,

it's all good. I've even gone on to even Mike

Costa. Like I said, I know I bring him up all

the time, but I have gone on to watch and look

at other things that he's done, and I've loved

other things he's done as well. Yeah, Costa's

a very good writer. He's doing great on Lucifer,

I'm just saying. I'd put that down. Transformers

is not something that's easy to write for. Sorry,

I didn't mean to cut you off. Well, I've always

appreciated Mike's run. on Transformers and I

know that puts me in a minority and I appreciated

it as it was happening because the difficulties

that he was sort of finding, trying to figure

out the story he wanted to tell and what he wanted

to do with these characters from like pitching

a one shot to basically being told like, hey,

you're gonna do it ongoing now. It just very

much fit this mood of like this sort of You know

the war is over but there are all these soldiers

who are stuck there and they're just they don't

know what to do with themselves and you know,

I I kind of love that stuff, you know, it's it

always sort of it reminds me a little bit of

Lindsay Ellis had a video about a month ago about

death of the author And I feel like that's something

that doesn't really that It applies so uniquely

in comics because if you're a novelist and you're

writing a series, when you're done, it's unlikely

that at least in your lifetime, someone's going

to write those same characters or take your plot

points and finish them off or do entirely different

things with things you didn't even realize you'd

seeded. That's what I sort of love about comics

and especially we got to see it in like a very

tight microcosm in the IDW run is you see John

and James and Margaret and Nick going back and

picking up all these pieces that had been seated

before them and doing all these fascinating things

with them and it's you know, I I got into You

know, it's and it just sort of how that how that

builds and what they intended. I recently went

back and read Transformers ongoing Mike series.

I think it's number four where it's the Thundercracker

centric one. You can't really see him becoming

this dog owning aspiring screenwriter from that,

but you can see how it builds. Yeah, he planted

a lot of the seeds and you touched on something.

Oh good. Sorry. Oh, no, that's okay. I just wanted

to say that going to use your excellent points

to transition into some of the Highlights and

our favorite moments and then least favorites

if anybody has any but one of the highlights

for me because you mentioned it is It was pretty

gutsy of IDW to end the war. We hadn't really

seen peacetime transformers very much. And it

fascinates me how much, and I'm reluctant to

say this because this will be controversial,

but whatever. It amazes me how much more of the

characters got to come out in peacetime versus

in war. And the characterization overall, I think,

was helped a lot by it. Versus hindered and then

you look at what they're able to do. So one of

my highlights is RC's story arc period in terms

of They very much got to do with a what do you

do with the discarded weapons of war? During

peacetime and we got to see her transition from

a living weapon into somebody that could Have

love and be something more versus John did the

opposite with the dino bots in particular sluggers

Slag whatever you want to call. I'm just gonna

go with slug from now on but slug was He could

not unlike RC slug couldn't get past the war

and couldn't get over his hates and the just

a weapon. He was basically a gun that got pointed

at the Decepticons and that was it. And the Dinobots

weren't able to grow past that, him in particular,

but Arcee was. And I loved that. I loved seeing

both sides of it in both faces. That was one

of my favorite sort of character arcs was the

two of them and contained with mostly within

the same book. I think for me, one of the, since

you brought up R .C., one of the art that I think

meant the most to me in IDW personally was R

.C. Nailoron's romance. Because for as, as I

guess, you know, James may have lit the beacon

with from Dome and Rewind and Cyclonus and Tailgate,

and eventually including Anode and Lug. But because

James really embraced this idea of homonormativity,

it was wonderful for me as a queer woman and

as a transgender woman to see those sorts of

stories. There's just something a little that

that resonated with me a little bit more about

the romance between RC and aileron who are both

outsiders and that sort of John somehow managed

to capture that and it's a very it's very much

a part of you know Being LGBTQ is you're an outsider

in society sometimes Your treat your othered

if from the fact that like, you know how hard

it is to find a Christmas card for my wife from

her wife. You know, it's everything, I'm in such

a LGBTQ people, including myself, live in such

a homonormative, heteronormative world that there's

always a little bit of otherness in just being

who we are and just existing. John somehow found

a way to capture that with aileron and RC by

making them both by having them both be othered

and be outsiders for Something different than

who they were but something that was still a

part of them for aileron. It was her sort of

devout relief in devout belief in the way of

flame and Optimus is the arisen and also so and

then eventually sort of becoming disenfranchised

from that belief And for Arcee, it was being

this sort of, you know, person who made, this

woman who made everyone uncomfortable because

of who she'd been in the past, how they'd interacted

with her both during wartime and just sort of

generally how they viewed her. So seeing that,

you know, I like to joke that like, you know,

while, you know, that issue Optimus Prime 21

where Aileron and R .C. finally get together

and the kiss. Was John Barber's Hold My Beer

moment with James Roberts? Because there was

just something so huge there. It's helpful when

you're having, I think, and she's out. Kay is

a bi woman and so I feel like having her handling

that story throughout the entirety of Optimus

Prime and seeding that the whole way through,

like going back and reading it again, you can

see those, you can see it building. Yes. And

it made it so natural to and that's what it was

really great. It was like oh such a good moment

I think part of it was it was Yeah, I think a

lot of it was just the time given to it like

it just it didn't happen in an issue or so And

you know, I see the beginnings of that we got

to kind of jump in with it Whereas with this

one, you're right. It just kind of happened organically

throughout the run And I think it's interesting

because I'm going to get attacked by someone.

I've been attacked for this in the past for saying

this. But in a certain way, it's more of a romance

than any of the romances in More Than Meets the

Eye or Lost Light in the sense that we see it

built. With Chromedome and Rewind, it already

sort of existed. With Cyclonus and Tailgate,

we see it build, but it's so dysfunctional. Yes,

it's functional and it gets built or furthered

by tragedy versus. Versus. Exactly, versus finding

each other and sort of like being there to support

each other. Yeah, because they had a very dysfunctional

relationship from the very beginning. I guess

it got better, but to a certain extent he could

throw ratchets and drift. Yeah towards it in

terms of that was something that was more organic

But you kind of but that was more like the I

couple because they were so different. Yeah,

it kind of always yeah Because I have a problem

with threat with ratchet and drift It's okay

because they're a ship keys relationship that's

true because by and I don't know if either of

you be there read through the transcript of or

actually listen to The Q &A that James did back

in December or November But in that he sort of

like he sort of casually mentions that he hadn't

really made up his mind of whether he was going

to make drift and ratchet a couple. Until he

was sitting down and writing lost like 25. Yeah,

you point that out. I could have seen it either

way really exactly. I would argue I'd argue the

one that bugs me a little more. No offense to

Jane. I guess I'm hey, this is a negative now

is. He kind of JK Rowling Fort Max and Cerebros

and Co Just because he mentioned that oh, yeah,

they're in a relationship, but it didn't get

the time the time to show it Mm -hmm. Yeah, that

was one whereas at least like I say with the

ratchet and drift I feel like I agree it could

have gone either way that he could have just

not had it or Decided to you know for me it kind

of makes sense because let's say let's just let's

just go out there ratchet is always he's What

is it the the ratchet that that he built the

ratchet that we read? He's a grumpy old man And

you know he takes a while to finally decide on

things especially when it comes to relationships

He's the skeptic he would have put the brakes

on that relationship for a long long time. It

doesn't really bother me that that oh it's after

the fact like no that sounds just like ratchet

yeah sorry but it works with the character and

you're right he could have gone either way and

i'm all right with that and i'm fine with that

too i don't think there's anything that it's

fine there's just a multitude of different relationships

throughout the whole run and it's exactly to

see so many different dynamics represented on

such a diverse Writing group between you know,

so many different writers. It's just been wow.

It's it's a real refreshing to see that So kind

of on the opposite spectrum to another character

arc. I absolutely adore but for very different

reasons And it makes me feel sad is skids Skids

went from in generation one to just sort of showing

up to the generation one comics, getting a soap

wash from a stranger who finds him in a really

creepy scene. Ah, jeez. To, in this series, he

gets more characterization in about two issues

than the entirety of everything else he was featured

in. And please don't bring up skids from the

live action films. That never happened. No, it's

completely different. They're completely different,

yeah. So Skids, Jen, you and I can argue about

this. You brought up Nanaka. By the way, Nanaka,

another fantastic character. God, I love all

the characters in this. But anyway, Nanaka had

it pretty rough, I agree. I've been thinking

about this since our Twitter exchange. Skids

had a real rough arc. Skids. is one of my favorite

characters in all of this. Heading into this

Nightbeat, Fort Max, and Shockwave were my top

three. Skids is probably cracked to the top two

at this point, but... Oh, his arc, though. So,

he has amnesia. We eventually discover it's for

very good reason. He dies thinking the worst

of himself Which yeah every time so by the way,

I mentioned the transformers trading card game

mm -hmm artwork of his second last scene On one

of the cards and every time I draw it. I just

feel crappy Your heart it just like yeah But

yes kids And he gets forgotten about by his best

friend, who is the aforementioned Nanaka. His

brain gets left behind on Troja Major. He's had

a pretty rough arc. Well, I think that's part

of my... I don't want this to sound like criticism.

It's something that's always been difficult for

me about James's writing. If you really step

back and look at the arcs that the characters

are given or not given, for all the excellent

things that he's doing, Plot wise and also with

some of the smaller character moments overall

for these characters. It's like a little kid

bashing his toys together Because like because

like no no no care no individual character who

gets a lot of feature is It really gets off lightly

They all go through some really terrible, traumatic,

awful things. And which makes sense given the

story. It's, you know, they've been at war for

four million years, most of them. So, of course,

it's going to be, you know, it's going to be

a whole cast of people with a whole lot of PTSD

and a lot of unhappy memories. Yes. So I don't

really So it works it's not like It's not like

how he approaches them and all the tragedy like

all of skids is tragedy that he brings with him

and ultimately like leads him to sort of Leads

to his death. Basically is all stuff that happened

before the narrative even starts You know, it's

all stuff from before he he shows up and more

than meets the eye number one. So, you know,

everything that happened with him at Grindcore,

with the DJD, with Glitch, aka Tarn, aka the

Commandant. And something that's always sort

of glossed over is that he must have been a really

awful person for a very long time if he was partners

in with Getaway and Prowl's Black Ops team. Possibly.

Possibly, having said that, we've seen Prowl

be able to manipulate even the best people. Prowl

and Shockwave are responsible for 90 % of what

happens in the series. They're the masterminds

behind it all. That's true, but there was a time

where Prowl said to Skids and Getaway, Hey guys,

could you do me a favor and go mentally assassinate

the chief justice of our legal system? To be

fair, they were right, because terrorists does

not know anyway. Well, but then again, they made

it slightly worse because it sort of unhinged

him because that's when he started the whole

drilling thing. So it's a whole society of messed

up people. But having said that, I could also

see it as You know, and this has never been addressed.

It's certainly plausible that Prowl is the one

that had Skids' memories buried and potentially

could have said something along the lines of,

oh, you know, make him a little more susceptible

to me suggesting things. Oh, yeah. He would totally

do that. He would totally do that. Sorry. I mean,

there's very little Prowl wouldn't do. No, it

seems that way. But you know, the good thing

is, is that, you know, I just want to point this

out real quick. I'm all right with not everybody

having a happy ending. Like a lot of things and

James does service happy endings to quite a few.

It makes sense to me in the contrast of that,

that there's going to be quite a few that are

also going to have very sad endings. And so I'm

completely fine with that because that's life.

We don't always get a happy ending. Sometimes

we do, sometimes we don't. Absolutely. Like I

said, it's not a criticism, it's more... A point

to point out. Well, a point to point out. It's,

you know, every single... It hits on one thing

I will raise as a criticism, and that is you

can't bring up IDW in this series without bringing

up this sort of editorial interference. On occasion

or company interference and that sort of thing.

So The major notes or the major instances of

this are of course the end period And the other

one was all hail Megatron where they essentially

removed one that essentially they removed Furman

and decided to sort of redirect now To a certain

extent, the end to me was a lot more egregious

in that Roberts touched on this, that he was

forced to kind of speed up his ending. And there

were certain things that didn't happen. Like

poor Nightbeat getting any type of eulogy. Rung

just goes, ah, we lost poor Nightbeat. Like,

oh, come on. James, at least four issues of the

funeral for me, buddy. Come on. No, I mean. Speaking

of bias. Yeah, no. I was sad to see how Nightbeat

ended. That was like, oh, Nightbeat, what? He

got sort of a happy ending, though. He solved

the last mystery. Hopefully he was right, by

the way, or else it's real bad. But in any case.

I think, James, I think I saw that him mention

this either on Twitter or in the transcript about

how Nightbeat had figured out that Rung made

the Matrix. But he hadn't figured out that Rung

was Primus. Well, I'm going to pretend he was

completely right, so there. Half and half. I'm

good with the half and half, to be honest. No,

the sped -up ending is sort of the one thing

that kind of irks me a bit, because it would

have been nice to have seen and know more about

Scorponok and what he was planning with regards

to the new generation of Transformers, be it

the ones that could just regenerate themselves

or the Flesh hybrids and seeing where that was

originally meant to go. So that was a bit of

a downer It's funny because I wonder if it's

because he was one of the ones that made the

decision or not, but Barbara Barbara was able

to tie up a lot of his stuff Really well in the

time allotted. Well, I think part of that is

because John John realized that he was ready

for to do Unicron. Yeah and because any you know,

what everyone forgets is that Both he and James

had I Think initially when like at some point

there's something said somewhere that they both

would like had these hundred issue runs in mind

that would eventually meet back up and there's

actually I picked up one of James's drafts of

his original script for More Than Meets the Eye,

I think 21, where there's some notes that he

put in in track change comments about how the

portal that Adaptus would ultimately create would

probably be the way Unicron entered the universe.

The idea for it to be a transformed function

of Cybertron wasn't part of the original idea.

So, I think part of why that might have happened

is because James ended up turning over half of

his cast, and particularly one of the leads in

his cast, over to Margaret for both the Windblade

miniseries and Hill All or One. And he also had

revolutionaries. That eight -issue series after

Revolution that he did. which follows Cup and

Action Man and Black Rock and a few others as

they're sort of like playing adventurers trying

to like tie up some of the loose ends that they

figured out after Revolution that leads into

First Strike. So I think that to me always that

explained to me why John seemed more ready for

the end because he was more ready for the end.

He knew he was ready for Unicron. He knew he

kind of tied the bows on everything he'd meant

to do So when it was when it was time to plot

out the last couple things he's realized like

oh, I'm done Yeah, I would agree one of the things

it makes sense just because John is also he was

editor and then he was an editor and then he

was editor again and He probably saw more of

the moving pieces than James did Just by sheer

just because he was in that position. So it makes

sense to me that, you know, he would be able

to wrap that up a lot differently. I agree. The

one thing I'd say too is I thought James still

did a very good job of wrapping things up, especially

with the accelerated timeframe. I've seen some

not so good thoughts from people on what he could

have done. My least favorite was somebody pointed

out, oh, he should have just changed his plans

when he found out he'd only have a limited amount

of time. No, I've watched enough science fiction

and stuff that got canceled early to know that

that's not a great idea. Don't just change your

plans and everything else. Also, don't extend

the series an extra season when it seems like

you're canceled Babylon 5. Or other shows that

went on too long. By the way, you mentioned revolutionaries.

Visionaries want to point out, too, when we're

pointing out creators. I completely forgot Mags,

who had a nightmarish scenario of having the

edict to kill off Cup, who is an absolute fan

favorite, and do it in a series that's not predominantly

the Transformers. And I thought it was very good

and it was done to the best of everyone's ability,

but oh, I do not envy that position that Mags

was in. I thought she did really well for it.

Well, Matt, I've been a fan of Mags for a while.

I've read a lot of her creator -owned books.

Yeah, she's very good. Quantum Teens. I've been

reading the Kim and Kim ongoing. Attorney Girl

was phenomenal. But, and I loved the Visionaries.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It made a lot more sense

once we were told a year and a half later. a

year later that it takes place in between Optimus

Prime 21 and 22. Which is why she had such a

small sort of seemingly isolated cast, which

is why the pacing felt really weird coming out

of first strike. Now you say she did well in

a really lousy scenario, but it's another sort

of example of the editorial kind of interference

or stuff that. cut short. I mean it's I would

say arguably it's more digestible and more more

readable and less obtrusive than DC or Marvel

editorial interference. I was gonna argue more

so more so than the say Marvel G1 comics and

some of the edicts and everything that came out

for those. No it's still solid it's just it's

something that kind of weighed heavy on it overall.

I mean the entire reason for Titan's return and

for revolution was sort of editorial. And it's

not that it necessarily turned out badly or anything

like that. It's just we had all these kind of

redirects and I understand that as a writer you're

put in some pretty rough spots. Some of the writers

I thought had to, you know, do back flips too.

fit everything in and the fact that they were

able to and maintain quality is something that's

that astounds me. Well I think that's where everyone's

at a little bit of a disadvantage to John and

to Margaret as well is that since John is based

in San Diego and is like sometimes payroll, and

when he's an editor, he's been payroll for IDW.

He's been closer to the conversations, so he

knows what's coming. Back to my jazz combo analogy,

he's Miles Davis. He's John Coltrane. You can

put him anywhere. He's Charlie Parker. He's an

improvisational master. he can make anything

work. Because he's used to that, because he's

edited comics for so long, because of the way

he writes, since he doesn't, he does more, he's

like Unicron and Rom versus Transformers were

both done like Marvel style, where he just sort

of gave Alex and the other artists outlines of

what was supposed to happen on the page, and

then he sort of figured out the dialogue later.

And that's, you know, and that's a skill that

Margaret has as well from being an episodic TV

writer because she worked in the writer's room.

I don't know if she's writer's room or just did

individual episodes. I think it was both for

prime. Yeah, I think she's done both. She's done

both. So it's it's you learn a lot to basically

say like, hey, what's what's everyone else been

doing? What's going on? Let me figure out how

to make this work, which is why you know I think

it's what made it hard for some people to Keep

up with both their series and the latter part

of phase two But it's also why even when they're

getting thrown like oh, yeah Do a thing with

combiners do a thing with like Titans return

We have this other thing coming up do this too

that their narrative still work in their individual

book. Yeah So I think that's and I think James

got a little spoiled from being. God, that sounds

so negative. I don't mean to be so negative about

Dave, but I feel like James got a little spoiled

because he was given carte blanche to be free

from. Either IDW or Hasbro mandated events for

most of his run after dark for all of his run

after Dark Cybertron, he had to give up the protective

bots, but other than that. You know, he didn't

have... He was free. That's okay. He got them

back just to trap them in a loop and have Star

Saber just run through them. I think they're

all alive except for poor Rook. Yeah, they're

all okay except for the... Yeah, no, that's what

happened. They got better? They got better? I

tell you, they took a beating anyway. But...

I mean, who did? Yeah, no, that's true. That

reminds me of another one. So alright, I'm gonna

shut up after this one. I want you two to raise

some favorite moments or that kind of thing,

but The sideswipe funeral Mentioned before I

feel like the Dinobots trilogy was Barbara's

best sort of overall work, but an individual

issue. Oh, it was so well done and Sideswipe

gets more Sideswipe's existed since G1 and he

got more in that single issue than he's had in

20 You know some odd, you know god. No, it's

been longer than that. Anyway, 30 some odd years

He usually was this the guy standing around holding

a gun And it got bigger and bigger every issue.

Or talking about his bro, or his brother talking

about him, or... To have that type of a wrap

-up was just like, ugh, it was just heart -punching.

Again, good. And I have to say, there are a few

issues that I've ever cried in, and that was

one I definitely did, because it was just like,

ugh! Yeah, Arcee's reaction got me too, because

it was just like, ugh! Man. It was good. Had

issues that made you feel something. One of the

ones I distinctly remember too is when Ten was

getting beat up after Ravage gave away where

he was and he's getting pummeled by the DJD and

others and I remember thinking like, oh, come

on, don't do this to him. And I was saying it

out loud. I didn't even know it was, but I was

so happy when he got rescued by Drachet. Awesome.

The ship that almost couldn't. Amy, do you want

to do some moments or do you want me to go first?

Yeah, sure. I'll do some moments because I clumped

a lot of things together because for me, it was

like the whole complete story. I can't just pick

out one little thing, but I went through and

I just started looking at the different, more

than meets the eye, robots in disguise, till

all are one. Optimus Prime, and I just did a

little paragraph of each one. Lost Light as well,

and of course all the way on to to Unicron. I

just like, okay, let's just start from the beginning

and start throwing things in there. So I really

liked Shadow Play. All of the gotcha moments

that were just like any time where there was

like when characters died or almost died. I mean,

it's just like things like that that were just...

We've already mentioned a couple of these. The

Shockwave senator thing, that was the first reveal

that we got of Shockwave. And yeah, he just continued

to be the mastermind all the way through to the

end. But that was a really big, blew my mind.

I did not see the comics the same way ever again

after that. And there are only a handful of those

times that actually happened. This was the time

when James did it. John did it again in... Optimus

Prime, or I don't remember if it was Optimus

Prime or Unicron, and it blew my mind a second

time. Yeah, I mean, it was really good. When

Rung lost his head and Overlord took over the

Lost Light, that was fun. I don't know if fun

is the word for that. It was not fun, but it

was just like... I think both of us have talked

about this on Twitter, by the way. Overlord is

so much joy. I hate him so much. Don't get me

wrong. He takes so much joy in being such a delicious

jerk. Especially my favorite bits for him were

probably when he was teamed up with the DJD and

he was just, for lack of a better word, he was

just a prick to them. Just constantly making

comments and that kind of thing. He was such

a delightful jerk. which since you mentioned

Overlord, I think for me, for me when I was trying

to figure out the moments, I was trying to figure

out the ones that like just had the biggest emotional

impact for me. And seeing Overlord in the basement

of the lost light, back in more than meets the

eye six, I want to say. Yeah, something like

that. My heart skipped a beat because It had

been such, I recently reread Last Stand. So knowing,

I like saw it and was like, oh my God, everyone

I love is gonna die. That's what everybody thought.

That's what we thought when we saw that. We're

like, oh crap, don't wake him up. Do not wake

him up. And then it happened and you're just

like. Instead, only a handful of the characters

we love died. Yeah, rewind maybe. Well, yeah,

the rewind is always a weird question for me

because I mean he is dead, you know the I Mean

no, we do get so yeah. No, I mean, I mean I'm

talking about rewind 1 .0 because really 1 .0

I Because he is deceased period. Well, no James's

intent was always to bring him back for the Crucible

And to have that sort of big reveal of Chrome

Dome having been involved in the disappearance

of Dominus and him having to choose which rewind

would be canceled out since they couldn't both

exist. And again, it's like all from this like

one Q &A month or two ago, James confessed that

he hadn't that he hadn't decided not to do that

till he sat down to start starting to write Crucible.

So I guess you could say that authorial intent

was rewind one is still alive and then got saved

from being alive by last minute editorial moment

on James's part. Well, he's dead now. Yeah. Hopefully

and then poor pipes who stayed dead forever Forever

like I said sometimes people don't have happy

ending But by the way pipes getting stepped on

also a card in the transformers trading card

forever That was another that that was another

big emotional moment because you know It's impacted

the whole fandom forever. We'll never forget

Pipes. And Pipes was made so adorable and so

likeable just to die. Yeah. But there's more.

I mean, there's, yeah, go ahead. I'm going to

be honest, most of my big heart, like heart skip

to beat moments were from Till All Are One and

Robots in Disguise and Optimus Prime. Yeah, I

haven't gotten there yet. I know. Sorry, I'll

shut up. That's okay. Oh, I just have trouble

picking individual moments out of Till All Are

One just because it was so well designed overall.

I just put the whole thing on there. I just said

everything about it. Yeah, and Starscream's arc

and then how it would end in the pages of Unicron

was just... Starscream as a character has been

written really well in a number of different

Transformers iterations. But for my money, this

is the best of the versions of Starscream. His

arc and how slow a burn it was. I'll say this

about what Scott, what Marigold did with Starscream.

I've never been a fan of Starscream. I've actually

hated the character forever. But she made me

love him in a way that I don't think I ever could

have loved that character. And I love Starscream

now. Like, I've never been a big fan until she

got a hold of him. And I just there. She just

did such a good job on that character that I

just I love that guy. I love Starscream. I've

never been a fan, but I love Scott's version

of Starscream. I have been a Starscream fan girl

since 1984. Always, always, always hoping he

would do the right thing at like. be all he could

be and stop being his own worst enemy. And Till

All Our One Annual had me in tears. It's like

the Starscream story I'd waited my entire life

to read. And I'm not ashamed to admit that like

from from the like week after reading Till All

Our One Annual by phone by phone. from texting

with a friend of mine about our mutual Starscream

feelings has now permanently learned in predictive

text like Margaret, Starscream, and Windblade.

I can't type M -A -S -T or W -I without getting

an autofill for those three. That's awesome.

I love it. Oh goodness. So going back to it,

like when characters die, let's see. The tailgate

arc where he gets impaled by Cyclonus's sword,

that was fantastic. Red alert! where he had all

of his issues from all of the stuff that was

done to him and how he almost killed himself

and didn't die, but that was a really good arc.

The whole bits and pieces of Whirl and Cyclonus'

interactions were going. They never had, they

had a friendship. And I thought, oh, is this

going to go, is this going to go more than a

friendship? But no, it was a friendship all the

way through. But like you remember the very first,

the very beginning, World was playing with dead

heads and cyclonus caught him and They had this

thing where he was I'm gonna kill you To see

their relationship evolve over the whole thing

was just amazing and world does try to kill him

Yeah, he does but oh, yeah They end up he ends

up being the the guy that he turns to when tailgate

and him are on the outs And he tells him not

to hurt himself and just like, Oh my gosh, it

was just amazing to see these two characters

interact because we're all having the emotion

of, of, of the, what the, what he has. Let's

just say that was what he has to have any care

at all, or to say anything nice to cyclones who

threatened to kill him. And it's like respect

points. Their, their relationship is really strange.

But it's so every single time they had any interaction,

it was absolute gold. I loved that guy. I love

these guys. They're great. Um, the length wise,

you'll know what that means. Yeah, that was really

good. Ratchet lost his hands and then got them

back. That was really brilliant. I loved that.

Megatron joining the team. Oh my gosh. That was

great I mean even all the way through to the

very end and we haven't even had a chance to

even talk about that whole thing if you told

me that Megatron would be You know one of the

best parts of season two of that. I would have

said You're nuts. I love character studies. Like

I love some of my favorite shows or stuff like

Breaking Bad and the shield Not to mention, I

love The Punisher because it's a character study

of deeply flawed, horrible characters. That's

what Transformers became, and Megatron's arc

as well was really well done. And actually, Jen,

you mentioned characters not coming out well.

Megatron's arc... For what he did and who he

was ended fairly well not to mention. It's kind

of open -ended. We don't know What the and by

the way, I'm fine with that what the decision

from the black box consortium is or was but I

thought I thought I saw somewhere that James

had confirmed that it was execution He can't

say that. Dang it! I mean, maybe, but it's never

shown. I don't know. But in any case, either

way, I mean, he got... I have to agree with that.

I don't like it, but I have to agree with that.

After reading, if you doubt my logic on that,

go reread Chaos Theory, the two issues that James

wrote. definitely in there. In my mechanical

mind, if I had a choice, I would say that Rodimus

would have made a really, really good presentation

on how he should be outcast back to the Functionist

universe. I think Rodimus, yeah, would have made

a pitch. The big question to me was what kind

of sway would Magnus and potentially Prowl have?

Because we saw Rodimus trying to convince Prowl

to argue on his behalf, and I would pretty much

guarantee Magnus slash Minimus would argue for

Megatron, and we all know he's very good with

the law. That's true. Well, I don't know, I've

always taken... Because Rodimus puts Megatron's

Rodimus star... on Ratchet's memorial at the

end of Lost Light in that flash -forward scene,

I always interpret it as execution, which in

some ways is probably better than life in prison.

And I can see, if we're thinking about this,

the Galactic Council's whole bag was, their whole

racket was... We protect you from the scary Cybertronians

and those and like that awful Megatron So they

have to please you know from just thinking about

whatever galactic politics are They have to Make

sure he's punished for his constituency to feel

vindicated for their constituency to feel vindicated

I just like the fact that James left it hanging

so we can have these conversations and these

debates for the next 20 years! I mean, hey, if

we go on about red, black, or red or blue in

Frenzy and Rumble, why not? Let's debate. Did

they kill Megatron or not? Well, I think that

at the beginning of season two and once, at some

point even before Megatron popped back into Lost

Light, I had remembered this, like it was during

the Everlasting Voices arc, is I remembered this

one panel from early season two, More Than Meets

the Eye, where Megatron is beseeching Optimus

to put him on the lost light. He's like, put

me on it. I'll find the Knights of Cybertron.

I'll find us a new home. And then I'll gladly

cheer with the people as I march to my death.

And that's pretty much what happens at the end

of Knights found, Cyber Utopia found, New Home

found. The only thing that's left is cheering

with the people on his way to his death. He's

fine But I like I like that like I said, I like

that I like that we can all sit here and say

yes But this yes, but that yes, but this it's

just I'm glad that he that that James didn't

put it in the book and say hey It's funny. Yeah,

it's funny. Here's the it's funny to me because

it mirrors the end of Breaking Bad where you

know, presumably Jesse is imprisoned for the

rest of his life But we didn't see it. So, you

know, maybe he got to be happy and become a crop

duster in New Zealand. That's the exact words

of the creator or writer, by the way. But realistically,

yeah, probably didn't go well. Well, I mean,

that's the genius of James's ending is. Even

if you want to assume the worst happened. There's

still the whole quantum duplicate lost light

out there, you know Doing movie nights and shenanigans.

Yes And he got his yeah and to be fair if that

is Megatron's end as you mentioned He did kind

of get what he wanted in the end not to mention

He got an extra number of millions of years in

the functionalist universe So he got his chance

to redo a lot of it and he got to make amends,

you know, he Like, something that I always thought

would happen, and it was very neat to see that

it actually happened, was the way, all the different

ways James and John subverted everything we've

always known about Transformers. At the end of

the day, Megatron was fighting Primus to stop

Primus, you know, big, functionist Primus. from

destroying all organics and killing all non -Cybertronians,

and Optimus was trying to stop Unicron from killing

Cybertronians because Cybertronians kept killing

humans. From the point of view of humans, Unicron's

almost the good guy in IDW. Maybe not humans

on Earth, but humans on non -Cybertronian colonies.

Fair. All right, any more positives anybody wants

to point out? Moments or issues? Like I said,

I go through each one of them. I'm almost done

with the more than meets the eye one. I'm sorry.

The getaway arc, holy crap that character. He

got what he needed. But yeah, if you thought

Prowl was bad, get away. Ooh, goodness. And of

course the necro world arrival. But robots in

disguise, we had... Prowl flipping a table a

lot. He did that The prowl estator That's yes,

that was fantastic like that one after like Devastators

taken offline from bombshell being killed and

it's prowls monologue and it's just like Whenever

I get angry, whatever I like lose track of who

I am. I think of like I think of Spike Wit Wiki

and like I start to hate again and you just see

Devastator come back online and it's like this

moment where you realize, oh, the six people,

it's a combiner that has something in common.

They all hate one guy a lot. It's true. And it

was just that like sinking realization. Just

like, oh, oh, this is going to work. Oh, this

is terrible. Goodness. And anytime he was standing

on a balcony, which is kind of an inside joke

on the under base. We had a lot of things to

say that Prowl was always standing on a balcony.

Um, the time that Josh Perez supposedly got the

eye color wrong in the early year of robots in

disguise. And it wasn't, it was like the whole

bombshell arc where he's taken people over. Uh,

I had a, a nice little conversation. I was on

the inside on that one. I knew that like almost

a year before it actually happened. Cause I asked

questions. And I just, I kept it to myself and

just to see people's reactions. Cause nobody

saw that one coming. I mean, I think maybe one

person on some forum somewhere said, I bet this.

And I was like, I just quietly stayed silent

and watched that unfold. And that was really,

really great to see people just go, Oh my gosh.

It was great with that. The death of rat bat.

Wow. That was a good one. And Arcee being the

secret assassin of Prowl until she wasn't anymore

I was like I I know that she has she's had a

very colorful past but oh my goodness that was

that it was a good kind of To see her evolve

from that has been great because that's where

she was Yeah, and to break away from just being

used by everybody as a weapon essentially. Yeah.

Yeah When Megatron came came out of the wilderness

after everything because rebooted he's falling

apart and in pieces it's just like oh yes but

then he tried to take everything over again that

was great that was a wonderful arc um starscream

being the chosen one and then turning around

and killing metal hawk what is the biggest betrayal

oh my goodness but i really liked how dark cybertron

ended even though we lost bumblebee and shockwave

was supposedly Dead. They got better. It got

better. But that was a nice little surprise.

Yeah. To be fair, out of that, though, we got

the entire Bumblebee as a ghost story, which,

holy cow, did that work well. That worked out

really well. Bumblebee is another character that

he ends up being. He's been in every iteration

of Transformers. He's constantly used, but just

gets so much personality and character here,

he exudes it. Yeah, well and he was basically

in charge on Cybertron after the whole chaos

thing. They voted him as the guy that they wanted

in charge. And to see him struggle with that

was really kind of cool to see that. I really,

really liked that in IDW's run of that. But the

payoff that we got from Dark Cybertron, it doesn't

really pay off until we get to the end of Optimus

Prime and Unicron when we find out more stuff

about Shockwave and Bumblebee comes back. And

it was just like, that was such a long play.

It was such a good payoff to have those two come

back. In the in the iterations that they came

back as and to see what they did And to see all

the problems that that just how dark Cybertron

ended caused all of these issues Yeah, the long

play was really great, I really liked how they

did that a lot so Then we went back to earth

and there were a few moments there, too And then

of course switching till all or one I loved all

of the wind blade the first mini which I'd already

mentioned Um, and then we've also talked about

Starscream already. So, um, the ghost bubble

me moments as well. And then I also put in here

the characterization of the Dinobots, the Constructicons,

having Alita one, the secret political manipulations

of the whole dynamic that was going on at the

time until all are one. It was great. Liege Maximo.

I was like, Oh my gosh, this is great. It was

real fun to read all of that. And that's just,

I'm being very brief. There was, I mean, I would

definitely recommend anybody to go read all of

Till All Are One. Lost Light, being stuck on

Necro World, Megatron co -captain dynamic was

really great. I loved the Functionist universe

arc where Megatron gets left there because of

Terminus. That was so good. I just really loved

that. tailgates being stuck in a hole. Geez.

Oh, we mentioned Nautica and Skids, the dying,

all of the dying things. I was just like, ah!

All of the good stuff! Um, for me, I liked Optimus

Prime more toward the end of the series. I think,

um... Had a hard time because like I think a

lot of the crossovers and we might have mentioned

this that this if I was gonna say any Negative

about stuff The crossover events. I know that

sometimes they were but it was editorial or the

powers that be kind of breaking and saying hey

let's do this we want this and IDW got an opportunity

to be able to put actual issues of their comics

in with the toys but to do that of course they

had to have crossover and have this whole event

that made it so that they could do that and it

all worked out. And it was kind of nice to see

IDW comics in with the toys, even though sometimes

some of the stories didn't always sync up with

what was going on on the boxes and things like

that. I remember reading about stuff going, oh,

well, that kind of contradicts a few things.

But it was just really good because that also

was able to bring in new fans. I mean, I think

of all the kids that might have potentially gotten

a Transformer comic associated with the toy that

they got. And so there's good and bad to having

the crossovers. One, sometimes the editorial

edicts kind of changed things and was sometimes

it was clunky and it kind of interrupted the

storylines that we really wanted to read about.

But at the same time, the benefits in the long

run, I think also help kind of. Outweigh that

as well because I mean if you go and ask any

one of these guys any of the creators that most

of them will say hey I read Marvel when I was

a kid or you know I saw g1 when I was a kid all

of our experiences of getting into transformers

started when we were kids and so I think it's

really important to see that to have a comic

actually sold with a toy and potentially kids

out there. I mean, they pretty much seeded a

whole new generation of Transformer fan who will

maybe come back in the next 10 years to be doing

exactly what we're doing today, running podcasts

and talking on forums and helping to create the

next generation of stories for Transformers for

years to come. So I'm kind of - Letting a monotone

host rambling coherently. Oh, by the way, one

moments with it, too, I think, just because until

those last few issues, not everything clicked.

Everything kind of clicked together near the

end, where Barbara had all these, oh, moments

and that kind of thing, like shockwave explaining

how he created a lot of the mythology. And a

lot of the religion contained within the transformer

series stuff like that to You know the epilogue

at the end answered a number of questions as

well, too and was by the way It was the epilogue

to the IDW universe. I didn't know I needed yeah,

it was just it was perfectly done and If you

told me that's how they're gonna do it. I would

have said ah, this isn't gonna end Well, but

no I would have been completely wrong it It was

perfect. Anyway, continue. Sorry. That was as

I think you bring up a really good point because

like in Essentially like most of that issue that

where he reveals everything. It's just him telling

him. He's his evil plan He you know, it's just

really cool to see all that and because again

This is that was another issue toward the end

that just blew my mind I can't go back and read

all of these stories now without thinking about

oh my gosh All of this stuff is so, and I'm sure

that he just was looking through this. It was

like made the connections himself and said, oh,

this will be perfect. This will, this will make

it work. And just to see how he, again, like

we've said, how he takes all of these different

threads that come from completely different places.

thread them all together and wrap it up into

a big bow and reveal everything in one issue

blew my mind. I mean, when I've gone back now

and reread stuff to get ready for other podcasts,

I'm thinking in the back of my head, oh my gosh,

Shockwave did this. Shockwave did this. Oh my

gosh. You know, so it reframes the whole story

in a completely different way that I cannot see

it the same way again, whereas before I had no

idea. Now it's like, I think I've got the little

wheel in the hamster wheel in the back going,

Shockwave did it all, Shockwave did it all. And

you know, it's just, it looks, you look at something

completely different forever after that. And

those are all the moments that really, really

stand out to me. In IDW and it happened more

than just five times because I've got a handful

of you know Experiences on my list where I'm

like going. Oh, I just can't there's this podcast

It's not long enough to be able to gush about

all of the good stuff that came out You know,

we've only mentioned just a small fraction. I'm

sure there's somebody out there going what you

didn't mention this Forgot about ravaging that

I wanted to mention like and he mentioned open

endings, too Yeah, was he telling Megatron not

to turn back to be in Decepticon or was he telling

him? To you know not to be an Autobot. That's

another unanswered question So yeah, and I like

that. It's unanswered. It just works really well

mm -hmm and Amy like picking up on your point

about like the shock like Shockwave ripping off

the mask, that's one of my top IDW moments. The

whole following, that whole arc is for a lot

of different reasons, I think one of my favorite

arcs in the whole run. But just like that splash

page at the end of Optimus Prime 18, I want to

say when Shockwave rips off the mask. And it

had been built up so well for so long, and we

didn't even realize it. Like, Bumblebee as a

ghost, but actually in the Crystal City, like,

sort of opened up this whole idea of why didn't

Shockwave survive, too? And it was there, and

no one was asking the right questions, almost.

What's his name? Onyx always being on his hind

legs and everyone thinking that like, I saw Kay

joking about it once about how she would tell

people how he just really liked to be very majestic

and seem big, but it was because he was shockwave.

And same with when Sarah drew him as well, it

was always like, he's shockwave, he doesn't have

four legs. Wow, ah Just little things the little

things that it just kind of stand out now that

you know, it's like wow Yeah, but you know even

the twisted relationship that shockwave had shockwave

had with Optus Prime as far back as you know

chaos theory it's just Shadow play, I mean, it's

just all of these little things that you learn

as you read. I mean, you have to read it from

the very beginning and all the way to the end,

because that's the only way to really get all

of the pieces and to see everything happen, link,

link, link, and then all of a sudden, boom, and

you're like, oh my gosh, everything just falls

into place, and it's just like, oh my gosh. It's

amazing to see that. This is what I feel. that

is going to be the biggest hard, difficult thing

for the next IDW 2 .0 to do is to follow on the

bootstraps of this and have these type of moments

happen because they're starting from issue one,

which will know absolutely nothing, and to build

to moments where they can do things like this

and change your reframing of everything that

has been told. I want those moments again. I

want to be able to see that we might have to

wait five, maybe six years, maybe even longer

before we get things like that, but I hope they

still figure out as writers how to... get those

payouts the little things along the way the little

adventures and then of course the long plays

because those are really I think what really

draw such a diverse group of people we want to

be we want to be wowed but we also want to have

the the little moments as well and so it's it's

it'll be they've got a really high standard to

live up to and and I think that just adds to

the I'm worried but We'll see. I guess, but yeah,

I had to have to mention that a lot of the my

favorite moments are the quiet ones. The conversation,

actually the conversation between Skids and Megatron

about what it is to be an Autobot near the end

of the. Yeah. The arc that I can't remember the

name of with the alternate lost life slaughterhouse

I knew if I said the word slaughter it would

come to me. So anyway, there was that and not

to mention the conversation between Megatron

and the aforementioned ravage when they're in

the cell Where Megatron, you know is asked the

question is is the revolutionary Megatron just

resting or is it gone? but A lot of the moments

you mentioned as well, Amy, Whirl and Cyclonus,

all of the times they interacted are, with the

exception of Killmaster, all of their interactions

weren't necessarily action sequences, but they

were stuff I looked forward to. And I think it's

interesting that in a series that... I mean,

Transformers was founded on the whole Autobot

Decepticon war back in G1. But in a series that's

really been about that primarily, it's the quiet

times that, for me at least, really stood out.

Stuff like Soundwave's origin with normally his

cassettes, now sort of his friends and equals.

I loved that. That was a good two -story arc,

yeah. Yeah, he learns to control himself. uh

through them and you know they're discarded because

their alt modes were beasts so it was assumed

they were unintelligent you know the panel of

sound wave from dying of the light when right

after brad just dies where he just like drops

to his knees oh that was awful it was awful and

beautiful at the same time yeah yeah goodness

What else? I don't know what I have to add that

hasn't already been said. I will say, because

we've sort of danced around it, that the lead

-up to and then eventually the panel of Megatron

first putting on Bumblebee's autobrand, that

will always stand out to me as a very big emotional

beat. Because it's almost, to me, it's... I guess

to me, the thing that I've loved most about IDW

is building up the things that subvert your expectations,

where you're almost afraid to hope for them because

you're just like, no one at Hasbro would let

them do that. That's crazy. Famous last words.

Megatron the Autobot worked so much better than

it had any right to. I mean, I have never cared

about Megatron before Megatron the Autobot. This

is my favorite version of Megatron. I've never,

with the exception maybe of Beast Wars, which

is a very different character, but in general,

like Megatron here, this is the most interested

I've ever been in any version of him, Beast Wars

included actually, but it just... He is fascinating

in this and it's something I hope, you know,

we mentioned about the future. It's another thing

I hope in the future they can make him as interesting

a character and as deep a character versus, hey,

this is my plot to steal a solar panel this week.

Yeah, that was basically season two of the generation

one cartoon by the way some sort of solar Some

sort of solar power is gonna get stolen by Megatron

Yeah, they did make him a very sympathetic character

that you could feel like, you know He could be

a friend of yours But I liked that they pointed

out the opposite still like the conversation

between getaway and skids That at some point

it's just numbers and statistics because he's

killed so many. Yeah, and then the other one

the final panel on board or on Necroworld with

the spark flowers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I love

the lead up to that so much. And then that final

panel where he's discussing or not him, sorry,

the Necrobots discussing, you know, your past

catching up to you potentially unawares. And

it just it was beautifully done. Mm hmm. Speaking

of season two more than meets the eye I'd also

throw in the reveal of the mutiny in dying of

the light 50 because it had already Well being

the emotional sort of I Guess I I don't even

know what I wasn't okay after IDW 50 I like came

home and I was just like I Because I usually

read because I I buy digitally through comic

thought through comic capacity So like I would,

I usually read it on break from work sometime

during the day. So I came home from work that

day and I just like kind of crawled into bed.

I was like, nothing's okay. And it was so, oh,

and it was so few issues after more than meets

the I 47, which I was also not okay after, um,

where, um, cyclonus and tailgate seemed to die

after as far as like, that was another one. I

was like speaking as I was reading. Yeah, not

to mention not before then too. We also had the

trauma of seeing why skids is the way he is man.

That was a rough run and then we Thankfully got

a bit of a respite with the scavengers. Oh, man.

I should have mentioned them to my bright. Yeah

But anyway, sorry we have the scavengers and

one of the my favorite things Roberts did Was

interjects a fairly serious. I felt discussion

about mental health and the way we treat I'm

just gonna say people but obviously in the book

it was about Grimlock and the way we treat them

and That was a really good mini arc as well Also,

I love Fort Max so it's nice to see him, but

um Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that Fort Max

did Too that was yeah. Wow goodness. Oh There's

just so much there. Yeah, like I said, there's

there's not enough time I know this could have

been yeah, this could have been ten podcasts,

but I wanted to put something together especially

with Historia just released People if you haven't

picked it up already, I highly recommend it it

is by Chris McFeely who is wonderful and It's

a discussion. Well, not a discussion summation

to a certain extent because no book or podcast

can sum up 13 years of work really quickly, but

it's very good. And I wanted to release it because

of that. I wanted to release it as well because

the final trades of this IDW universe are on

their way very soon. Man, I'm sad about this.

Anyway, continue, sorry, I didn't mean to jump

on you again. What else will I throw in there?

Oh, the Bruticus splash page from their only

combined. That was, I mean, someone should throw

Sarah a ticker tape parade for that one. That

was just, because I think Margaret even said

somewhere, that she usually tries to give some

idea for layout and whatnot in her scripts. I

think in an interview she said somewhere, it

was just like, I got nothing, good luck. What

else? Apparently, they did have good luck. I

mean, Lost Light number 8 was a very big one

for me personally. a node and lug coming out.

Also, because I'm like the only person in the

fandom who loved a node from the moment she showed

up, which I don't know what that says about me,

but... Yeah, I didn't have the issues with her

that a lot of people did, and there's this, and

I disagree with this completely by the way, there's

this idea that people and fans who have read

lost light in particular, and more than meets

the eye in particular, are afraid or don't criticize

Roberts and some of the writing and some of the

characters and just become rabid fans of it.

I have found the exact opposite. I have seen

every little bit of his work dissected in a variety

of different ways. So no, I think if anything,

the in general the fans have been more critical

of a lot of it and yeah node is one of the ones

who was but she grew I There's always a danger

when you're introducing a new character that

late and as well as into a cast book wind blade

had sort of the She got kind of lucky in that

they gave her the mini -series right after to

explore the character further post Dark Cybertron.

Ado never got that. She just got dropped into

this cast that we'd spend years with. And it's

not easy. So as another example I mentioned before,

Under the Cold Blue Stars was the first issue

of More Than Meets the Eye I read. I hated Swerve.

I really did. I disliked him so much. It wouldn't

be until I went back and read the earlier issues

that I got more of a handle on him, but it was

similar for a node. I feel like that she just

gets dropped in into a cast that's already been

established. I always found the I always found

the hate for a node to be, but even before. she

and Lug came out eight months, eight issues in,

that the initial response to a node and Lug was

so negative, considering that Skids was dropped

in from the beginning, and he was, Skids and

Tailgate in particular were both sort of dropped

in and became quick favorites. Nautica and Riptide,

and to a real extent, Getaway were dropped in

in season two, and Became and some of them you

can state favorites Almost hated. Yeah, I there

I I have friends who love getaway. Um It was

another one of those characters you love to hate

I mean he was necessary But man, he was an asshole

I've I've grown to appreciate getaway. I'm not

gonna say I'm a getaway fan cuz getaways the

worst but I've kind of learned to love Getaway

for being the worst. Yeah The so I do feel like

there's always new characters added for me a

node was just basically the female Starscream

I always wanted nice because she's sort of like

a She's sort of this chaotic, neutral, she's

this chaotic character who's very similar to

Starscream and in the sense that she's a smart

ass, can I say ass on this? I did, now I've said

it like twice, okay. She doesn't really care

about what other people are doing, she just sort

of has her own agenda. And her own agenda is

like, Very cute and very unambitious her own

agenda is basically like I want to steal some

stuff and I don't want to like and I want to

retire I Think a lot of the criticism to comes

she made the cardinal sin of she's not from generation

one because wind blade has been really heavily

criticized for Not great reasons my personal

favorite being people calling her Mary Sue, which

she is not I mean she's Ridiculously naive about

the war Yeah, and I was about also I mean it's

not in it It's not in a way that's not believable

in terms of she wants to believe the best of

people She just hasn't been around this group

for you know that was at war for millions of

years and have Quite literally become the worst

that the race has to offer So there's that I

I'd say some of the criticism and if you're discussing

a new character I think slide is deserving at

least some of it because slide gets a very quick

redemption arc That I kind of wish could have

played out a little longer Because I find that

slides just kind of still unlikable still gets

to merge with Victoria? I don't know, maybe it's

just me. I like Slide because she's unlikable.

Because Slide's almost, no, because Slide's almost

the voice of reason. She's the one who sort of

recognizes that like, hey, you know, she's almost

a little bit like swerve, where she's upset she's

not one of the main guys. Because well that could

be world too but I mean but I mean swerve at

least like Swerve at least says says something

to that extent in Dark Cybertron. It's like I

thought I was I'm one of the main guys How come

you don't know who I am crosscut? It's like nope

never heard of you never heard of any of you

or his relationship with blur Mm -hmm blurs death

by the last heck with it anyway So I I mean there's

I feel like that's sort of the problem, is like

when you have characters who've had this much

built up, is there's no number of pages that

would have done any of their deaths service?

It's difficult, yeah. I mean, Ironhide... Save

for a whole issue. Yeah. Yeah, Ironhide getting

off to that quickly. Trypticon was one that kind

of struck me. Not to mention the fact that I

cared about Trypticon, who, again... I know.

Usually pretty kind of mindless that kind of

thing But I really liked his character here and

he was another part of the dino bot arc in terms

of he was another one trying to get past his

prejudices and to be better, you know be better

than he was and better than a lot of the A moment

of silence followed No, I'm sorry you dropped

out there for a second. Yeah, you know, it's

okay. Oh, I just dropped off I was just saying

that he had trypticon Was attempting to be better

than the rest or better than he was and better

than the rest of their race and and like I think

that's that's sort of the only thing you get

with a 13 -year continuity like this with you

know three, four, 500 issues in it is you get

all the opportunities to sort of play and sort

of develop these characters. And I don't know.

I mean, and that's sort of why I loved or I appreciated

slide. She annoyed me, but I appreciated her

because she she was the only one. She was sort

of the flip side. aileron like aileron found

a way to sort of lose her faith in the arisen

and in the primes and in the way of flame in

a way that still found her this weird like she

she was she wasn't conflicted because she knew

the ends justified the means in serving optimists

and and being an Autobot whereas slide finding

out that the that the magical arisen wasn't all

that great and was willing to forgive and forget

so soon after humans and um and junkieons had

attacked them and killed Slide's partner that

like the way she sort of held on to that bitterness

I felt was very believable and sort of showed

that like you know In a certain way, Slide was

the only one who's the voice of reason. Because

if you showed up for this grand cause and your

significant other partner's twin sibling, it's

kind of unclear what the divisions are, was immediately

killed, you'd be kind of upset. It'd be hard

to keep following this. this big self -righteous

red truck everywhere. Speaking of, yeah, the

red truck, one character we haven't talked about

at all was Optimus Prime himself, really. And

Prime's been a lot in Transformers media, mostly

comics. But this one to me, Was the best version

of that because. More than any other he really

tried to decide to do things quote unquote for

the greater good yeah. He at times failed in

that. But he kept trying no and you understood

his decisions though and his decision process

it wasn't just. Indecision for the sake of indecision.

Or to create sort of conflict or that sort of

thing. He Frequently was confronted by decisions

that were incredibly difficult and it made sense

He decided for what he did and a lot of those

scenarios It's just he had he was basically doing

triage. He had to try to make the best of constant

terrible situations and he wasn't always perfect

and Well, that's what I love about Optimus's

arc, because I think more so than most of the

other characters, John was able to really take

what Simon had initially done way back when in

the Asians and in Optimus's first spotlight,

and make a whole arc for Optimus that really

ends in Optimus Prime 24. where you have in Optimus

Prime's first spotlight him hemming and hawing

over this idea that he's now starting to get

this idea that Nova Prime wasn't all that great

and the whole Prime lineage is corrupt and maybe

being a Prime is really not a good thing. all

the way to Optimus Prime 24 staring down Unicron

and his little monologue at the end where he's

just like, yeah, I'm going to have to make really

tough decisions that are going to be awful for

a lot of people because it's for the greater

good. And that's what it means to be a Prime.

And I don't care how history looks at me. And

then there's the coda of Unicron 6, where Optimus

is still very much bought into this idea that,

like, you know, he's been designed to be the

Arisen, and Arcee's trying to correct him as

they're plunging into the heart of Unicron. It's

like, actually, I knew the Arisen, and you're

not him. So I think that's sort of, you know,

that, you know, of all the, it's the best example,

I think, of the overall thing that makes this

first IDW run so special is all these characters

through a lot of, and you know, it's seeds that

were planted, but it was James, John, and Margaret

deciding to sow those seeds and to take them

further and to do their own things with them,

but without ignoring what was done before. That

makes this sort of you know kind of a franchise

something very special that we haven't had yet

in the franchise Yeah, and it's weird the you

know we keep talking we keep talking about a

lot of the We're talking about the best moments

Characterizations that thing and that thing yeah,

and those things Wow But a lot of it does come

from that Last two seasons slash the last phase

of the IDW universe and It was just so well constructed.

We've mentioned it before the attention to detail

I Hesitate to bring this up Because it's not

something I like to think about but when you're

talking about attention to detail I look at something

like say Simon Furman's origin for RC I don't

think Furman is a bad person or was trying to

do something questionable. But I think the later

grouping of writers just had an attention to

detail that is unmatched. And the fact that Barber

wanted to go back and mitigate, I guess, as best

as possible. Well, I'm going to jump in here

because John was, so let me start off by saying

because I've said this many times, I've been

on this soapbox for a very long time, that speaking

as a trans woman, I've always found RC's spotlight

to resonate with me. And I realize that there's,

you know, if there are negative things to say

about what it intends, it says them about Simon,

but ultimately the story stands on its own. And

it's a character who went through a transition

who was dealing with the ramifications of that.

And, you know, I've... had other trans people

accuse me of feeding into bad stereotypes and

examples for this, or at least one very vocal

person. But I'll say this is like transitioning,

like socially and medically transitioning, that

the first couple of months, that first year is

pretty much like Spotlight RC. Like anytime someone

says she, you're wondering what they mean. you're

wondering if they're putting too much emphasis

on it. You're getting used to just sort of navigating

life, especially as an adult, especially as,

not to talk too much about myself, but I transitioned

at 36. And, you know, that's a lot of adult mileage

behind you. So you don't really get to have a

clean break. You just have to kind of go on living

your life. So. I do feel like at its fairest,

I think the best or maybe worst you could say

about Spotlight RC is it's a ham -fisted retelling

of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the original film

version. So one of the things, and the only reason

that sort of going back and I guess this brings,

My involvement in John had never intended to

really go back and address that head -on He's

a cisgender guy He didn't really feel like given

the time pressures of writing a comic and the

number of characters He was dealing with that

he could do it and do any justice to it So about

a year ago 10 months ago, I went on a little

bit of an online rant about how when phase two

begins, RC's story could have gone a number of

different ways and still been an authentic trans

narrative. The easiest would have been for her

to be a trans guy, someone who was really a guy,

which would explain why RC had so much discomfort

when female pronouns were used. But that narrative

would have been impossible to tell in my view

after several years of phase two of RC being

okay now being called she and it became even

more complicated later on when she developed

a romantic relationship with Aileron and her

partner called her she. So to me that sort of

Over time, the door was basically closed on John

to do anything and have it be easy or have it

be not easy, but have it not really bend over

back. Smooth, smoothly, and not have to really

bend over backwards other than trying to provide

new context to RC's initial spotlight. really

tie her into a more of an authentic narrative

of a transgender woman. And that's only possible

really because of how much care and thought that

John put into Arcee's characterization and into

the fact that Margaret did so well sort of building

this idea of just naturally forged female Cybertronians

who were just very at home and being female,

to Nick in Sins of the Wreckers throwing in what

probably at the time seemed like a throwaway

line to him about R .C. when she was in that

tarantulas' guilt machine, remorseling about

how she could ever follow him, him presumably

being Giaxis. And then finally you have the wonderful

way in which James with Rachel Stevens helped

sort of had a node and lug come out to an old

friend of theirs. So it's only with all those

balls in the air that you can really make it

work that it was even possible. And then John

had to catch all the balls. Which is, I think,

a pretty hard thing, would be a hard thing for

anyone to do. For some reason, well, I foolishly

at the end of my little online tirade added the

John Barber. Maybe it wasn't a foolish thing.

I mean, I try not to when I'm going on a rant

about something that creators are working on

to at them, because I feel like... I'm trying

to have well now it's like weird because like

all the creatives I know like follow me. So like

now I can't say anything So Sometimes you yell

at the internet about what you want fiction to

be and the person who's writing that fiction

Send you a direct message and ask that they can

talk to you on the phone so which I think that's

what happened and one of the things that it was

very interesting because I knew some of the ending

to Unicron way back in March, for example, that

R .C. was going to survive and that there was

going to be enough stuff to survive for it to

matter that R .C. survives. And one of the things

and like it was before and he didn't reveal it

to me because I'm not under an NDA, so I'm sure

Hopefully I don't get an angry call from John

in like a day or two, you know, whenever this

airs. Everything's already, yeah, I don't think

that you will just because everything's already

published now. You're not spoiling it. Oh, no,

no, no. Oh, no, I know that. But I mean, like

in terms of like, you know, the talking about

how the sausage is made, so to speak. OK, gotcha.

So hopefully I'm not I'm not speaking out of

class too much. We brainstormed for a while about

how could it be done rather than trying to retcon

Spotlight RC out of existence, but to embrace

it and say, let's put a new backstory before

Spotlight RC that makes Spotlight RC, hopefully

on a future read, a better read. discussing about

the parameters of where he felt he could play

with that. We came up with this idea of, or this

was sort of my input, of R .C. going to Gehaxis

and saying, hey, I feel like I might actually

be female. Could you help me with that? And Gehaxis

being sure and then doing a bunch of stuff she

never authorized and didn't tell her about. And

That's actually something that a lot of transgender

women in particular went through in the 80s and

90s, and still sometimes today where they go

to medical providers, usually surgeons, who claim

to have an expertise in something but really

don't and do something awful and then don't even

care after the fact when their patient's coming

to them and saying, I feel terrible, this doesn't

feel right. It was my sort of, it was our sort

of thought that, like, for RC, that could be

Gehaxis trying to change her CNA to female. Because

why would you, like, humans don't have female

DNA. You know, in the sense that it's just like

what your DNA says doesn't necessarily, isn't

the end -all be -all of what your gender is.

So why would it be any different with Cybertronians?

And then, And then I sort of pitched the idea

that maybe since you need to show her why she

went on the rampage against G -Haxus, not because

he forced the transition on her, but more because

she had trusted him and he had betrayed her by

helping her transition and doing things that

she hadn't asked as part of her transition. That

was sort of the new spin for why she was on this

rampage in Spotlight RC. And it's interesting

because, like, seeing John building up to it

in Unicron and, like, mentioning, you know, name

-checking CNA with, like, what Gehaxis had done

to Monstructor as sort of his signature on his

test subjects was kind of neat to see as a reader.

Because I didn't know where he was going to necessarily

place some of this stuff. And then the other

piece of it was also coming up with a reason

why she would suddenly be better by phase two.

And by better, I mean like not on a murderous

rampage anymore. And part of that was because

Gehaxis was seemingly dead. But the other part

was off scene shortly before Spotlight RC. a

node tried to help her and helped her a little

bit and then a node disappeared. So that was

sort of the genesis of that. And I think it was

important to both John and I not to try and embrace

Spotlight RC in some way. So. I'm sorry, that

was a very long way to go. No, that's fantastic.

No, that's fine. No, I think that's absolutely

awesome because like, you know, here's the thing,

and this is something that I frequently really,

really, my respect level goes up for everybody

that has to be on something where you have other

people come in and write something and trying

to make it work in the long run. trying to, again,

this whole idea of reframing your idea of what

the story is so that it makes sense. But here's

the other thing is that also doing justice and

respect points to those people have come before

who maybe didn't realize even, I mean, because

I don't think that Simon, I'm not going to speak

for him. I know there's been a little kind of

bumps between creators on RC. the spotlight as

it is, but I just don't think that there, you

write something sometimes, at least this is the

feeling that I got of it, is that you were, there's

a lot of stuff that was intended, a lot of stuff

that wasn't intended. The world, of course, has

changed a lot in the last decade since that issue's

come out. And the fact that John's purpose wasn't

to, let's just rewrite it completely out, but

to find a way to... Be respectful to what's come

before and make it work for what we have for

today. And I think that's a really good attitude

as a editor and a writer on books where you can't

control where things have started. And sometimes

you don't even get to see where things end. It's

kind of a good idea. I mean, I personally like

the idea that John went out of his way to find

a way to honor something to embrace something

that could have been Pandora's box and make it

work. And that makes me like the whole arc much

better. Knowing that let's think about how, how,

how could this really work? And just to hear

the level of detail and the willingness for him

to go out of his way to talk to somebody who's

complete stranger, who it could have been like

an angry phone call. And it wasn't, you know,

you had to put yourself out there both on his

end and on your end and make it work. And out

of that conversation becomes. An idea and a story

gets kind of worked out, you know, and the thing

is, is that a lot of creatives do that there

where they're like, you know, a lot of pitches

happen in bars and start with conversations.

You know, it makes complete and total sense to

me on that. And those are not. Like, there's

not a little writing, you know, hey, let's sign

this release form that says you won't talk about

this to anybody else. No, it just, what happens

happens. You have a conversation and it changes

things. And sometimes for the better. Go ahead.

What struck me was how much John sort of trusted

me and and revealed to me. And it was and it

was sort of interesting because I think he is

now that he's editor in chief, he's a little

bit more sensitive. Yeah. Because this was before

his ascension to EIC was announced. So I think

now he's a little bit more sensitive. The first

time I saw the results and saw what actually

became of our conversation was when the five

page preview dropped in November of last year.

Nice. And it was sort of funny because I just

like, oh, wow, that's exact. Oh, wow. He actually

just like. took all the ideas that we came up

together and he said, oh my god, it's in there.

Fantastic. So that was really neat. But I also

sort of, and I don't want to give myself too

much credit because I think, as I recall, John

had been, he had been very, he hadn't wanted

to go and address phase one RC at all. He felt

like he'd done a good enough job showing her

being positive, that it didn't need to be done.

And my sort of point to him was, and I think

we did more good than harm, is if you do nothing,

RC will always be a problematic fave. Because...

And even at that time, I was hearing whenever

anyone spoke about R .C., or I would even talk

about my love of R .C., because she's been a

very important character to me for a while, people

would say like, yeah, but her awful spotlight.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a hard thing to

get over. I mean, it is. It's very, I mean, whatever.

Whatever might have been intended or unintended

about that it It doesn't matter because the author

can't control it after it's done. Yeah, that's

true Yeah, ten years ago when I was in when I

was in grad school. I went to ended a symposium

on administrative law That was the keynote speaker

was deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

and someone one of the professors at my school

was asking him a pretty detailed question about

this old about this pretty famous Supreme Court

case in administrative law that's formed the

backbone of administrative law for the past 35

years 30 years something like that and it was

written that decision was written by another

Supreme Court justice and when this professor

asked to see Justice Scalia. You're on the court

with him. Why don't you just ask him what it

means? Scalia's response was, it doesn't matter.

The guy who wrote it doesn't know what it means.

Why would I go down the hall to ask him what

it means? The words are the words, and I'm going

to interpret them how I choose to interpret them.

And I think that's something that's always really

stuck with me, that it doesn't really matter

If you mean something with good intentions or

bad intentions, it matters that it's the words

on the page and what gets left behind. I guess

to bring this full circle, that's my greatest

hope for transformers, comics in the future,

cartoons or movies. is that someday we'll get

creators who are pushing the sort of inclusive,

authentic stories for the broadest range of people

possible that will make future fans, or maybe

even us 20, 30 years from now, sort of say with

a chagrin. It's like, well, James, James Roberts

or John Barber hasn't really aged like their

comics haven't really aged that well. They're

they're a little problematic by today's standards

And I don't mean that as to say that there's

anything really problematic about them It's just

just you know how far we've come to you know,

I hope we go farther that I Don't want them to

seem problematic in retrospect. I want us to

get to a point where this franchise and really

everything gets to a point where What we accept

as great today looks like, looks not that remarkable

in the future. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, so

allow me as a white male to correct you. No,

just kidding. No, that's a really good point.

And in that respect, I look at something like

Star Trek. where a lot of the things that were

extremely controversial in the original series

are less so now, but alternatively, it's still

not perfect, to put it mildly. You know, it's

the... The kisses? Yeah, I was going to suggest

the kiss between Uhura and Captain Kirk is viewed

as okay now. But having said that, there's a

lot of places where it's not okay. I brought

up the statistic early on that in 24 of the US

states, you can still be fired for your orientation.

For anyone who doesn't believe that happens,

I suggest checking out Reddit's legal advice

because it happens a lot. And more to the point

though, just A couple, I want to say it was a

couple weeks ago or so, there was somebody that

posted she had been fired from her job because

the boss didn't like the fact she was in an interracial

relationship. And by the way, it was legal that

she was fired for that, which is absolutely asinine,

but it's still - We've come so far, but we still

have a whole lot. Further to go. It's been a

glacial pace moving forward, and I agree. I hope

within my lifetime that that happens. Coming

back to Arcee, I'm really glad that John did

that. I'm glad that the conversation between

you and him did happen and that these little

details were put into the story. I probably would

not have looked at it or seen it the way that

you would have, but I'm glad that because you

said something like her story feels so much more

finished. Like I don't, I look at Spotlight and

it's softened it in a way that I don't think

it could have been softened in the other way.

And I'm glad that that, that John went out of

his way to, to find a way to do that. And that,

that makes me love her arc that much more. So.

I'm glad you were on to talk about it as well.

Yeah, I'm really glad that you get that Ryan

suggested this because like I was kind of hoping

that we would hey Maybe she'll have a chance

to talk about this then. I had a few different

people that I was thinking of. Jen, you were

my first choice. Oh, I'm never anyone's first

choice. Well, you absolutely were both of ours.

The minute you said it, I said, absolutely, get

her on. This has to happen. Yeah. You can attest

that she was the first choice. I don't know who

you would suggest, but the first one is that

that was the only one that I don't know. other

with us but that was the first he suggested I

said oh absolutely it has to happen so yes I

do want to mention so we're closing in on three

hours wrap it up alternatively though I could

talk about this for days like there's still so

many moments that I wanted get into, but I'm

definitely not going to. So yeah, in the interest

of finally closing things out, uh, what is everybody

assuming you want to list them here? What's everybody's

social media handle? If people want to say, Hey,

this was a really good podcast. You should just

ditch the boring dude. I don't think people would

say that about you, Ryan. Hey, I guess you've

forgotten about the TFYer boards, huh? Very funny.

No, I do want to say one more thing real quick,

though. This is something that Jen and I got

a conversation about, and it's changed my view.

Well, I've thought about it frequently since,

and so it's so stuck in my head that I want to

at least put it out there as like some conversation

between the two of us where you said, that the

conversation between Optimus Prime and Megatron,

and this kind of just kind of wraps it up for

me, in the theme, thematically what was going

on, Optimus Prime becomes everything that Megatron

was afraid of, and Megatron becomes everything

that Optimus Prime hoped for. Yeah, I did say

that. You did. You did. I really, because the

difference between, you know, things that happen

with Optimus Prime and the things that happen

with Megatron, how their arcs wrap up, and it's

just, it's been very thought -provoking. I've

thought about it so much since we had a conversation

about that, the differences between how things

wrapped up for Optimus as opposed to how things

wrapped up for Megatron. And the contrast between

the two is just, it's been amazing and so I just

wanted to put that out there because I thought

They are some of the main characters they are

always usually focused on because, you know,

one's the leader of the good guys and one's the

leader of the bad guys. But that, just to see

the shift in how things are, I mean, they are

very much in this whole run, very gray characters.

They do things... Sometimes they do good things

they have good results and sometimes I do things

and have bad results and and vice versa on both

on both of their sides But I always thought it

was very poignant that you said that and I thought

It's just kind of blew my mind since then And

I also had to put a shout out to we haven't mentioned

it yet But I also liked the the ROM Transformers

Shining Armor Mini that they did as well because

it does come into play. It absolutely does come

into play with Unicron. So that was the last

thing I really wanted to put out there. But if

you told me I would care about ROM or the visionaries

by the end, I would have said you were nuts.

But no, everybody that worked on those as well.

Yeah. I didn't take to a lot of the crossover.

Some of my did and some of my didn't. Some of

them. Were there and then got cancelled really

really fast and so I never really connected to

them and I You know it was kind of half -and

-half. I liked some of it. I like another part.

I didn't like I did like mag stuff And a lot

of it came into play with Unicron and I made

me go. Okay. Well, I guess I don't know I I'm

kind of warming up to the whole crossover thing.

I've been kind of lukewarm about what's going

to happen in IDW 2 .0, if they're going to make

a more expanded universe or not. We'll see. I'll

just have to wait. Yeah, I'm in a weird place

where I'm not a big fan of a lot of them, but

they turned out way better than I would have

expected. Yeah. And it worked out in the end

and everything kind of came together fairly well

by the finale. So I have a hard time criticizing

it slash defending my position slash blind hatred

of it originally yeah give me a 12 -issue max

like visionaries maxi series written by mag starring

beer Elena like that's what I want yes I would

be totally signed up for that and I wasn't very

big fan of cup dying either but I really I could

imagine yeah it worked it was a record I would

have preferred if he had passed in the Wrecker's

trilogy. It would have made sense, but it's all

good. It is what it is, yeah. It's all good.

Okay. All right. All right. So now, social media

for anyone who wants to put themselves out there.

You can find me online, on Twitter mostly, as

Lady of Wreck. You can find me online, on Twitter,

I guess. Probably anywhere Jen apparently all

one word Yeah, and I of course am at night beats

and So yeah, this would been great. Thank you

so much to both of you for joining me I do not

get to talk about the transformers comics nearly

as much as I want to which is pretty much all

of the time like all of the books I read for

13 years Mostly consistently for 13 years this

was Kind of my jam. I always wanted to talk about

it think about it and then especially in the

last few years of Robert's barber and Scott and

as I said before I'm lifelong fans of each of

those and I'm gonna try as much as I can to follow

a lot of the artists as they continue on as well

But yeah, what they achieved is astounding to

me. This is by far the longest run of a transformer

series. It had an ending which most of the transformer

series didn't get until until a much later date

or other circumstances, but this one actually

completed and it reads really well as a coherent

Breathing living and believable universe and

It's you know, thank you to every single person

associated with IDW from Simon Furman all the

way up to John Barber You know every person who

worked on these issues. Thank you so much It's

it's just astounding to me the number of people

that came together and were able to make something

Like this it's Now it's humbling and yeah, thank

you to all of them Thank you to IDW for producing

and releasing everything over those years hopefully

it continues and Yeah, hopefully, you know 30

years We'll all be discussing we'll come back

in a year and say hey first year Yeah, we'll

discuss the new series in 30 years from now and

then compare them. No, anyway No, that's fantastic

though. I mean, like I agree everything that

you just said is, you know, yeah, everybody it's

it's been it's absolutely a work of love that

I feel like I will continue to go back to this

and read it again and again. And I mean, I have

definitely already. Yeah. The trades are already

so my most read. I mentioned I've got Hundreds

of trades, but these are constantly in rotation

You know, I'm I go to the shelf and I take one

out and then put one of them back Constantly

doing that I have a hollow place in my house

where all of my trades are so and I'm Still trying

to get some of them signed. So we'll see how

that goes, but there's a reason for that You

know, this is you're right. You're absolutely

right. This is it's been a wonderful run and

It's why I have so many mixed emotions about

starting over. I'm sure a year from now will

be just fine. But like right now, it's like that

whole just waiting. It's like to wait. It's like

going. It's like graduating. It's like you graduating

high school or graduating college. It's like

this huge, amazing, large part of our lives is

over and something new is coming and maybe it'll

be bad. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be

better. But we don't know. And right now. We're

stuck in this interstitial period. Yeah. And

the thing is, is that every couple of years,

like even if you, even if we don't like it, somebody

is going to come along in the future and write

something that we do. So, I mean, that has always

been a given. I mean, I see, I saw it in my lifetime.

I had people talking about it when I was podcasting

back on the underbase saying, well, if you don't

like it now, just wait a couple of years, you

probably will. And they're right. That's always

been. That's the bright side of comics. Yeah,

I mean if you don't like it come back in a couple

years You might actually like it and then you

might go back and read the stuff that you thought

you didn't like and find Oh actually wasn't nearly

as bad as I thought it was because I've read

a few things that when first first read I Didn't

like it now. I'm like. Oh, this isn't that bad

actually. I don't know why I didn't give it a

chance so I have about 40 years Punisher comics

and there are a handful of runs I flat out don't

have, because I didn't enjoy them, didn't think

they were well done. But I just wait until the

next person takes over to wait and see. And it's

the same with X -Men, same with Daredevil, a

lot of the other characters that I really enjoy.

And yeah, that's exactly it. Maybe there's an

iteration that's not for you, you know, for Transformers.

Not a big fan of the live action films, up until

Bumblebee. Oh, and 2007s, I did still enjoy that.

But anyway, but. Maybe that's for somebody else

and you know, hopefully They'll be able to get

back into it. It's like there's no perfect There's

no one And transformers by the way is real bad

for this might I add there's no right way to

get into transformers. Yeah You see it so often

with g1 that if you didn't watch g1 or don't

watch it now You're not a real fan. That's not

even slightly true. I Mean G1 just doesn't even

hold like I love G1. I grew up on G1 I saw the

first movie in a theater and I cried. Yeah, it

traumatized me actually I've I've like Nick Roche

and I have been team Rodimus since 1986 And I'm

not kidding by the way, I was literally traumatized

by it I blocked out the memory of seeing it originally

for about for roughly nine years and then came

out in Canada on VHS again and I picked it up

and I realized I've seen this before and Like

slowly I kind of piece together the memory that

oh my god this messed me up. So anyway Laughing

at your pain or anything, but yeah, he thinks

that's fine. I love it but no, I mean and When

I'm introducing people to the Transformers now,

this is probably the series I Would use and I

remember I famously did an episode of the alts

or what attack is it not? Oh man, I thought it

was ATT is an alt toys transformers. That's how

old I am. I was on that good old use net. No,

anyway, it was the ATTF origins, which is another

one of geek cast radios podcasts, which was a

transformers origins podcast. And one of the

questions is what transformers generation is

your generation and why? And everyone would probably

expect me to say, well, G1, that's what I grew

up with, et cetera, et cetera. I answered the

IDW one, and it really is. Like, this is the

one that, you know, I have collected the third

party and the Hasbro Transformers that look like

the IDW versions. That's the version that now

resonates with me. And I'm, you know, I'm hoping

I can move on and the next one will as well,

too. But yeah, I go out of my way to try to find

versions of these characters that are similar

to the ones from these comics and I don't think

I'm ever gonna get rid of any of the figures

I have of them I just have I have such fond memories

of all of this be it a character I hate get away

or the characters I love Chrome dome nightbeat

Never time I didn't talk about hardhead who I

always had a soft spot for and he died anyway

All right. I want to thank both of you again,

though. I wrap it up here for the full bag Make

your great escape into comics We'll catch you

next week with a brand new episode of the geek

cast radio networks first comic review podcast

It probably won't be like three or four however

many hours And if you're really lucky, it'll

be Blanchard and not me on it. So anyway, thanks

again anyone who made it this far hit me up on

Twitter at night beats and Yeah, that is all.

Goodbye We'll see ya. Bye. Thanks so much for

having me Click stop recording. Okay. Yeah, there's

just no other way to cut it off We just have

to do it because we'll just continue to gosh

No, I want you so three hours three hours. We're

already at three hours right now I mean, I know

it's it's it's dark here and I and I'm thinking

like it feels like it's been ten minutes I could

literally just go back through more memories

and characters and I Loved the series so much

gonna be a good podcast. I bet we're gonna get

a lot of people downloading this so I hope so,

yeah. I plan to tweet it out when Mike puts it

up. I'll definitely put it out there, too. I'll

put it out there, too. I keep thinking like I'm

going to joke that I didn't record or something

like that. No, no, don't do that. No, it would

stink to lose that time, but I'm not going to

lie. I wouldn't be heartbroken if I had to re

-record this ever again. This was, man. This

was a lot of fun. Yeah. Podcasting is addictive

Jen, just to let you know. Yep. Just to let you

know. Oh no. I already have so little time on

my hands. I can't take other new endeavors. It's

okay. We'll just keep you on the, you know, the

list of people that we'll contact. Hey, you want

to start talking to some Transformers? It makes

me want to start Transformers podcasting again.

I agree. Like full time, especially since...

Yeah. Especially since I'm older now and a lot

more positive and kind of open to change and

that kind of thing than I was back then. Or the

fact that we're just in a spot right now where

we're getting ready to start off in another series.

Well, and we just started the new movie series.

And the movie series as well, yeah. There's plenty

to gush about. I saw somebody post this and I

agree completely that I wish I think it might

have been you actually That I wish bumblebee

was the movie we had gotten in 2007. Yeah Yeah,

it feels like we'd be so much more advanced but

it's I Don't know. It's tough as much as I love

bumblebee They're still they're still better

like in terms of representation progressive that

kind of thing I'm sad that it feels like we haven't

built on Mad Max Fury Road as much as we should

have with regards to female characters. That

movie is just a masterpiece. I still watch it

every month at least once. It's really interesting

that you mentioned that Bumblebee wasn't as progressive

and forward -thinking as it could be. could have

been because Rachel Stevens actually went on

a little bit of a rant on Twitter about that.

I saw that, yeah. It was one of those things

where it's just like, I love Rachel because she

goes on rants that I agree with, but I'm also

at the same time just like, I agree, but I don't

know. My bar is so low, why are you upset? Why

is your bar so much higher than my bar? Yeah,

I think that's the thing. It'll be different

for different people. And, you know, it's definitely

a huge step forward for the franchise. But on

the other hand, I get so depressed that it's

a huge step forward for the franchise. Oh, my

God. It shouldn't be at worst. That's where it

should have been forever ago. It should have

been. the step that we took in 2007, but I think

my rant went on was that it couldn't have existed

because they wouldn't have put a female as the

main lead back over a decade ago. It could have.

If it had done, then it would have been amazing

to see just how the franchise would have changed.

If it had started then and did that, that would

have been Mind -blowing but they they just even

the industry even the movie industry has changed

a lot in the last decade Which is good. I mean

this is still yeah, this is absolutely excellent

that they did that Yeah, there's still so much

work to do like I look at something I mentioned

before Star Trek. I'm a huge Star Trek fan Yeah,

but the fact that just discovery is the first

show to actually feature two males kissing man,

that's It's frighteningly bad for a series that's

known for progressivism and that kind of thing.

Like, there's still so much work to do. And then

I watch stuff like, you know, I champion it a

lot, The Expanse, which, holy cow. Oh, yeah.

The Expanse. Uber. I'm waiting for the next season.

Uber diverse. Yeah. The writer's room is all,

I mean, it's just, there's only the two authors

that are male. The books and they went out of

their way to hire and all they go out of their

way to hire the most diverse Group they can because

and they've said it before and they said it about

the books Like I wish this was an option because

now we have so much more Experiences our characters

feel so much more real. Yeah Versus it's just

two straight white dudes trying to write everything.

Yeah It's funny. Like what a non fan they are

for themselves from that But, you know, they

looked at the TV series as a chance to do it

over again, and that's why... But that's the

responsible thing to do. That's the responsible

and ethical thing to do when you're a creative,

is realize, hey, my voice isn't everybody's.

And if I want a long -lasting story, I've got

to include these other voices, and if I don't

have the experience for that, then I need to

bring it in. And that's that's one of the things

I love to like drummer on the show is so much

better than the book version because the show

version is played by a native Native American

Canadian and I mean she has you know that voice

And she has that knowledge of this is how this

character would react, you know, that kind of

thing. And it's just improved it. And yeah, I

wish more places would see that. Like, Transformers

would be a great place to do that. It's a pity

you Autobots die so easily, or I might have a

sense of satisfaction now. He's riding the Sprite.