This is a transcript of our recent interview with Brian Ruckley, writer of the new Transformers comic series from IDW. We explore his approach to rebooting the Transformers Universe, and what he’s got in store for this reimagining of our favorite Autobots and Decepticons. So sit back and enjoy the beginning of a bold new era, on this episode of TransMissions Alt Mode!
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TransMissions (Charles): We’re pleased to welcome Mr. Brian Ruckley to join us on TransMissions. Brian is the writer of the new Transformers comic series from IDW, starting this March 2019. Brian is an author of several fantasy novels and other comics from IDW set in the Rogue Trooper and Highlander worlds. Now he embarks on architecting the newest iteration of the Transformers Universe in comic form. Thank you, Brian, for sitting down with us today.
Brian Ruckley: My pleasure. No problem at all.
TM (Charles): This is an interesting feeling for us. Because it’s not every day that the Transformers Universe gets rebooted. So we’re curious to talk to the person behind that.
BR: Well, yeah, imagine what an interesting feeling is for the writer who’s having to do the rebooting.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): So maybe we can start off just by getting to know you a little bit. So can you tell us just a little bit about yourself and what you did before becoming an author?
BR: Oh, well, before I was a writer, I spent about, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years working mostly actually, in sort of environmental nature conservation type jobs. My background was quite science-y. And I went in an environmental direction with that. And to be honest, if the writing thing hadn’t worked, I would have been quite happy to carry on with that, in a lot of ways, really. But, you know, the writing was always there as something that was at least at the back of my mind as something I wanted to do. And it eventually, I just got lucky. I guess, you say, and it worked. So I haven’t had a proper job in a little while now.
TM (Charles): Cool. Well, how did you first get into writing professionally?
BR: I’m one of those really irritating people who wrote a couple of short stories and I sold a couple of short stories over the years. And I was always thinking about it, and eventually just reached the point where I thought, okay, if I don’t give this novel thing a go, I’m never gonna actually be able to stop thinking about it sort of thing. So I wrote a novel, as you do at that point, in my spare time, on weekends and everything, and just sent it off to some agents, and got picked up by one of the first agents I sent it to, and they started sending it around to publishers. And I was lucky enough to get picked up by one of the first few publishers they sent it to. So to be honest, it sounds terrible, but it was a relatively painless experience, from my point of view.
TM (Charles): Wow, that’s pretty cool. I mean, I’m sure, it must have taken a lot of work on your part, to write a novel in your spare time while you’re holding down a day job, and then just–
BR: In a lot of ways it’s terrible, because you’ve not got any deadline either. So you never finish the damn thing until you finally reach breaking point and think I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to just send it out. So yeah, I mean, that was, I can’t remember exactly how, how much time I spent on that first novel, but it was about two or three times as much as I spent on any novels after that.
TM (Charles): Yeah. I did see on your website, you have the the Godless World Trilogy. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about that series, and maybe just a little bit about some of your other books. I guess they’re all in the fantasy genre?
BR: Yeah, more or less. I’ve had five novels, the first three of which are in the Godless World Trilogy. And that’s pretty straight up sort of, swords and magic fantasy in a fantasy world. You know, what people sometimes call a big fat fantasy trilogy. But it is kind of sort of loosely based on the sort of landscapes and the cultures and so on of Scotland to a certain extent, or at least Northern Europe. And it was all quite wintery and bloody and violent, and so on. And after that, I did a couple of standalone novels, one of which was – actually the most recent one I published was, again, sort of fairly traditional sort of magic and fantasy action, heroic fantasy type stuff. The other one I did was called the Edinburgh Dead, which is actually a kind of mash up of, sort of historical detective fiction and horror and stuff that’s all based on real life, real history stuff that went on in Edinburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries with Burke and Hare. You’ve probably heard of Burke and Hare, who were famous as body snatchers and murderers who were selling corpses to the anatomy schools in Edinburgh back then. And I’ve always been kind of into that bit of history. So I did a version of it that involved all sorts of horrific goings on, and zombie dogs and all sorts of things.
TM (Charles): Interesting, I’ll have to check those out. So I did I did look at your website, but I haven’t – I’m behind on my fantasy literature reading. So maybe this is the motivation to get back into it.
BR: Well, they’re not exactly inaccessible or anything like that. Maybe try one of the standalone books. The two standalones are called the Edinburgh Dead and The Free. And they’re not too long or anything so that they can be quite snappy reads.
TM (Charles): Cool. And so how did you get into writing comics?
BR: This this is another one of these things that makes me sound bad because I got lucky again. When the Godless World Trilogy came out, I got a fan email from someone who was just emailing me to say how much they’d enjoyed the books. And at the end of the email they happened to mention that they worked for a comic company. And had I ever thought about writing comics? Which, I mean, to be honest, I hadn’t really thought all that much about writing comics, but for years and years and years, I’ve been a huge comics fan. You know, I’m actually sitting now surrounded by bookcases that are loaded down with graphic novels and I’ve still got cupboards full of single issue comics from back in my teenage years and stuff. So you know, it turned out an editor at IDW was a fan of my novels and was asking me if I’d ever thought about writing comics. So obviously, I said yes. And one thing led to another and I ended up being invited to pitch for the Rogue Trooper comics that I ended up doing for them. Which also – I mean that kind of was the perfect thing because that’s a property from 2000 A.D., the British anthology science fiction comic which was a huge thing in my childhood. It was one of the formative reading experiences of my childhood, was reading 2000 A.D. and you know the Rogue Trooper and Judge Dredd and all these characters that came out of that.
TM (Charles): Right, yeah. That’s something I’m not too familiar with. But I do hear a lot of my my friends in the UK talk very fondly about those comics.
BR: Oh, I mean, it’s impossible, particularly in America where – I mean, you guys have been spoiled for choice with comics for decades, but it’s impossible to overstate how significant 2000 A.D. was for a huge, at least one generation, of British kids. It was a really formative experience for anybody who was interested in science fiction and all that sort of stuff. Especially Judge Dredd but all sorts of other stuff that was in it as well.
TM (Charles): So you’ve had some nice success writing both books and comics. So how does the – from your perspective – how does the process of scripting comics different from writing a novel?
BR: Oh, boy. I should probably whisper this, but I don’t suppose any book publishers are going to be listening. But I actually prefer writing comics to writing novels. But it is, it’s a totally different – you know – the writing muscles you’re using are just completely different, because it’s – I think it’s kind of cliched to say it, but comic scripting is much more like sort of TV screen writing or something, than it is writing prose in a lot of ways. And it’s – the pressure on you to sort of be economic, with your dialogue, and so on, is just a completely different discipline than what you get when you’re writing a novel. Because obviously, when you’re writing a novel you want every word to be there for a reason. And the whole editing, self editing process in novels, tends to be sort of cutting out huge swathes of text, and shortening everything, as much as anything. But it’s a whole different ballgame when you get into writing a comic. And the only direct means you have as a writer of communicating with the reader is the actual dialogue. And you have to be so tight with it, Just because, you know, the nature of the medium, the art has to have all the room to breathe you can possibly give it, really, given that it’s a visual medium. So you have to be so tight with conveying information and character and mood and, you know, exposition, whatever you want to get in there, if you want to get it across to the reader directly, it has to be in the actual dialogue as concisely as possible. But you also have to be sort of communicating effectively enough with the artists that you can, they can sort of convey their information to the reader as well, because so much of it in a comic isn’t what I write, it’s what the artist does, you know, hopefully, the artist understands what we’re what we’re trying to get across. And if you’re lucky to have good artists, which we have on this Transformers book, they can do so much of the work and in a lot of ways, it’s the artists who are communicating most directly with the readers. And that whole, the whole team thing is to be honest, it’s one of my favorite things about the comics writing compared to the novel writing. Because, you know, back when I was trying to write that first novel, on my evenings and weekends, I was sitting in my pokey little flat somewhere, tapping away on the keyboard in the dark on my own sort of thing for months, and months, and months. And you get no feedback you get know you, you’ve got nothing finished until you finish the whole book sort of thing. But with comics, the just the sheer buzz of the whole process being so much faster and so much more compressed, and so much more sort of interactive, because, you know, there really isn’t many things better as a writer than getting up in the morning, switching on your email, and getting emails with sort of JPGs or pencils, or finished art or whatever coming in. And that’s constant kind of back and forth, that flow is something you just don’t get with writing prose and novels and stuff. So it’s a real buzz, and it’s definitely makes you feel slightly less lonely.
TM (Charles): Very cool. So it sounds like you’ve developed a pretty good relationship with the new artists on the book.
BR: Well, it’s it’s going, touch wood, it’s going very well so far. I mean, it’s this is quite a tough gig that the artists have got. I think I’ve – it sounds like the kind of thing I would say – but I do you think sort of pretty much without exception, as far as I can think, all the artists on the IDW Transformers books so far, have been really good. And the ones on this book are great. And it’s a tough gig they’ve got because, you know, you’re working with characters that aren’t human, obviously, and don’t even necessarily have particularly expressive faces or anything. And you’ve still got to convey all this action and emotion and the character interactions and so on. And particularly with this book being bi-weekly, or what do you call it? Bi-weekly is the correct term that everyone gets confused about this – fortnightly? Whatever. You know, the artists and the editors – it’s fine for me, you know, as people often say, the writer has the easiest job on a comic, because it doesn’t take all that long to put together a comic script and so on. But for the editors and artists working on a fortnightly book, that’s a pretty punishing schedule. And they’ve got to be really on their game to keep everything flowing. Which so far, you know, it’s worked really well.
TM (Charles): So let’s talk a little bit about your history with transformers. So first of all, are you a fan of Transformers? Like, what is your history with the, you know, the toys, the comics, the TV show, the movies? Have you been into that before you got into writing the comic?
BR: So that depends on your definition of the word fan, which is, you know, fan is not as simple a word as it used to be when I was growing up. I’ve always liked Transformers. I’m a fan in the sense that I’ve always been aware of them. And, you know, things like the movies, some of the cartoons and so on. I’ve always been watching some of it. But I wouldn’t claim to have been kind of an expert or anything for most of that time. The one bit of it, I mean, it sounds a bit corny, and like, I’m trying to curry favor with my bosses now. But the one thing that I was an unreserved fan of that I genuinely was reading as a fan long before I ever knew this opportunity might come up were the IDW Transformers comics. Which when I, you know, somewhat random To be honest, I just thought they looked interesting. And I knew they were getting quite a good press as it were. So I gave them a try. And I was honestly blown away by what – this was particularly More Than Meets The Eye and Robots In Disguise – it was back then, more or less at the start of those runs. And I really didn’t think I’d ever read licensed comics that were as good as they were just as, you know, setting aside the question of, you know, being about Transformers and the cool characters and all that. But just as comics in terms of the quality of the writing, and the plotting, and the art and all this sort of thing. I was just blown away. And then of course, I wasn’t current, I was reading these as trade paperback collections. Because I’m not really current on any comics nowadays, to be honest. It sounds terrible, but there’s just too many of them. So I do most of my reading in sort of trade paperback collections months or years behind the current publishing schedule. But then I did this thing which also happened to me when I was writing the novels really is that as soon as I knew this opportunity was coming up, and I was involved in sort of pitching and so on for this comic series, I more or less stopped consuming Transformers material, for at least a while. I will get back to it, but I’ve got this thing where, particularly when you’re asked to be doing a reboot and stuff, I kind of have this gut reaction that I actually don’t want to be seeing too much of what everyone else has done beyond what I already know, sort of thing, just because I know that if I was still sort of avidly consuming the Transformers comics and cartoons right now, I’d be sort of constantly finding things that I thought I aught to include and things that suddenly struck me as better than anything I could ever do, and all this sort of thing. So I’d just end up confusing myself. Which is exactly what happened when I started writing fantasy novels, because I was an avid fancy reader before that. But as soon as I was actually writing the things, my fantasy reading fell off dramatically. So yeah, I mean, I knew a fair amount about the Transformers before I got involved in this, but I wouldn’t have called myself a hardcore fan or anything like that.
TM (Charles): Okay. So basically, you heard that IDW was doing a reboot, and you were able to, like, just pitch to them directly. Is that how you got the new job?
BR: Yeah, I mean, with anything like this, when they’re got a series planned, of any sort, you know, the editors, this is actually – the the editors on this book are actually not the same editors I’ve worked with before – But, you know, it’s one of those sad truths that contacts matter to a certain extent. And you have to be known to the right people to a certain extent to get yourself on the invite list when an opportunity comes up. So I mean, I’ve no idea actually how it worked in practice. But I was just invited, I was asked if I was interested in the Transformers, and I said absolutely yes. And I was invited to pitch, outline ideas for what a reboot would look like if I got my hands on it.
TM (Charles): Very cool. So there’s been some discussion online on various Transformers groups but I just want to be clear because we want to make sure this is directly from the creator that this is a full reboot. There’s no connection to the previous continuity or universe. It’s a completely new universe starting fresh right?
BR: Yes it is. The terms of the project I was invited to pitch for were very specifically no connection, no carry over from what’s gone before. We’re starting, I mean, not exactly from square one given how enormous a franchise the Transformers is and you can’t change some of the absolute basics. Like you can’t have them not come from Cybertron or that sort of thing. But in effect yes that it was starting from square one and coming up with some kind of take that would be a bit fresh, a bit different from everything that’s gone before. Because to be honest, I mean you know, I couldn’t do what people like John Barber and James Roberts we’re doing in their series any better than they’ve already done it. So, you know, even from my point of view that it wouldn’t be terribly appealing to be trying to exactly replicate or carry on what they’d done, because I wouldn’t be able to do it any better than they did on those series anyway. So a reboot, kind of, is what IDW and Hasbro wanted, and it’s very much the kind of thing that I’d like as well.
TM (Jeremy): Despite some of the explicit stating of that in solicits and stuff, reading comprehension doesn’t seem very high among some fans.
(Laughs)
BR: Well, but you can sympathize with that to some extent. I mean, it’s a funny thing actually I was thinking about it the other day. Because there’s a certain natural suspicion even I as a comics fan and a comics reader, I have a natural suspicion when some comics companies who shall remain nameless say we’re having a reboot, we’re having a relaunch, they’ve got so many different words. So you know, it’s so hard to tell sometimes what comics publishers are actually up to, even when they’re saying words like relaunch or reboot. But it’s one of the – Well, this might be giving hostages to fortune, it might all go horribly wrong. But as far as I can see, it’s one of the absolute best things about the Transformers franchise, and indeed the Transformers fandom, is that there is actually a genuine tradition within this franchise of having reboots. And, you know, having hard resets and coming up with completely different continuities, and different versions of the characters and the stories and everything. So, in a lot of ways I do hope that it’s a fandom this actually much more receptive to the idea of having a real, genuine, hard reboot telling a new version of the story, that genuinely does not connect and isn’t tied into the previous versions, you know, because we’re not kidding about that. There’s no hidden sort of connections and so on. They’ll be all kinds of echoes, but it is genuinely starting the story telling a new version of it. And that’s not the kind of thing you get in superhero comics, for example, where everybody tends to be terribly hung up on, you know, continuity, what’s canon? What’s not? You can’t change this, you can’t change that, and it’s all got to fit together and make sense somehow. But I think the whole thing around Transformers is a bit more flexible and open minded than that in a lot of ways.
TM (Charles): Yeah. And that’s definitely something we’re looking forward to is seeing what this this new iteration will be and how everything takes shape within this new Transformers Universe. So that’s something that’s always, I think, exciting from a fan’s perspective. And within the Transformers stories.
BR: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so.
TM (Charles): Just a quick aside. So you mentioned the the 2000 A.D. comics as an influence. Did you did you actually read any of the Marvel UK Transformers comics back in the day?
BR: Some, one or two. Not regularly. I mean, to be honest, when I was reading – when I kind of progressed beyond – well, beyond is the wrong word, because it makes it sound like a step up or something. When I started reading American comics or when I started reading comics beyond 2000 A.D., I really did the cliched thing of falling for superheroes, hook, line, and sinker. So I was pretty much a Marvel and DC superhero comic reader after that for a long time. And I really didn’t read very much UK comics at all.
TM (Charles): Okay, so you mentioned already that this new series is going to be a bi-weekly or fortnightly, I should say, series. So you mentioned how that is demanding for the artists. For the writer too? I mean, is it also difficult to keep a schedule for that? So you’ve got to basically have 24 stories in a year ready to go?
BR: Well, that’s the theory. (Laughs) Following unforeseen developments, that’s the plan, yeah. I mean, it is genuinely much easier for the writer than it is for the artists or for the editors, because there’s just the time pressure that they have to work under is much higher. But I mean, so far it’s not been a problem from from my end, and, you know, so long as we can stay ahead of the schedule, ahead of the game, then it’s fine from the writing point of view. I can see it, you know, if things start going wrong. And I mean, I don’t really believe in writer’s block, but you can imagine if you get yourself stuck in a horrible hole that you just can’t think your way out of plotwise or something like that, then it could all start to get a bit more tense. But no, from the writing point of view, it’s perfectly doable.
TM (Charles): And I think it’s probably pretty open ended, but is that the plan going forward, is to keep it twice monthly for the foreseeable future?
BR: As far as I know, yes. Unless I’ve missed an email or something, nobody’s told me that there’s any particular sort of plan to stop doing that at any specific stage. I mean, you know, I wouldn’t want to say it’s impossible, but it strikes me as slightly unlikely that you could keep that up for five years, or something like that. But certainly, as far as I know, the plan is to go for it for the foreseeable future.
TM (Charles): Okay. So what what excites you about creating stories in the Transformers Universe? And what drew you to that? You mentioned you fell in love with More Than Meets The Eye and Robots In Disguise. And we have as well, so I’m curious what like, what your motivation is for jumping into the Transformers Universe?
BR: Well, there’s a lot, I think, is extremely and unusually appealing about it all. I think, I mean, even before I was involved in these comics, and to be honest, even before I’d read the other IDW stuff. I’ve always thought there’s a really strong, just basic visual appeal of so many of these characters. They just are enormously sort of striking and visually appealing, if you’re kind of susceptible to that kind of thing. So there’s an enormous visual appeal to it, which fits beautifully, obviously, with comics. But I think, you know, when you saw the stuff that was going on, in More Than Meets The Eye, and Robots in Disguise, and all of that, it’s so screamingly obvious, that there’s so many different things you can do with these characters in this universe, and, you know, this basic setup. Whether it’s, you can do – I was gonna say domestic comedy, but that’s not quite the right word. (Laughs) But you sort of, you know, you sort of know what I mean with the More Than Meets The Eye, Lost Light, kind of really quite small scale, at least at times, very based on relationships, and a lot of humor, a lot of emphasis on the characters and their interactions. But you can also use exactly the same characters and the same setting, and even to some extent the same sort of storylines, to do you know, big dramatic epic science fiction, and it’s one of these almost open ended sandbox universes where the whole premise of the the franchise in a sense is that this is a vast universe and a vast cast of characters and a vast story that takes place over, you know, X thousand, million years or whatever. So the range of scales, of stories that you can do in there from the really quite intimate all the way to the galaxy-spanning, millennia-spanning stuff, is really unusual actually when you think about it. Because most franchises, most sets of characters and so on, are kind of geared to doing one or maybe two types of stories. But the whole Transformers thing is just – it’s got so much more scope within it to do your own – pick your kind of approach, pick your tone, pick your scale, and just go for it.
TM (Charles): Just to get a little deeper into how you started crafting the series, at least we’ve noticed some of the art that’s been shown online seems to indicate that it is, at least visually, it’s drawing from the current toy line. I mean, Hasbro does license these out to promote its toys so it’s not shocking that you’d see – Like the newest toy line that they’ve recently put out focuses on the War for Cybertron. So clearly it looks like those character designs are being used in your comic as well. Has Hasbro kind of asked you to focus on particular sets of characters that are coming out? How has Hasbro, or Hasbro through IDW, worked with you to craft, you know, where your series fits in to their vision and which characters you focus on, or has it been pretty hands off for you?
BR: It’s mostly been very hands off. To a certain extent, the way the characters are depicted in the comic is slightly above my pay grade. But as I understand it, yes, most of the depictions are going to be based on effectively where there’s a recent toy or an upcoming toy, then that will be, at least the base, the starting point, if you like, for a depiction. In terms of the actual sort of cast and how that fits together with Hasbro’s interests and priorities, they’ve actually been incredibly sort of flexible and open ended about almost everything to do with the series. And they genuinely you know, the whole thing of this, this does not have to explicitly and specifically tie in, in a continuity sense with other stuff that’s going on. But I mean, they obviously don’t want it to contradict any of that too extremely. But the cast is a kind of a mixture, the way it’s worked out, of some characters that I particularly wanted to include, because they’re particular favorites of mine, or there are particular things I wanted to do with them, and some reflection, absolutely, of current toy lines and so on. But none of it’s been at all prescriptive, to be honest, really. It’s been a fairly easy going and straightforward process, sort of fitting different bits and different interests together. And I don’t think – the one thing that I think came from Hasbro and IDW, and to some extent me as well, was trying as far as you can, to not get too carried away with having a vast cast right from the start. Because there is a temptation, when you’ve got so many cool characters. And you know, you’ve got so many ideas for things you can do with lots of these characters, you could really go overboard and I think everyone involved wanted this series to be something that, you know, longtime fans, like you guys could find stuff in and see stuff in hopefully some stuff you haven’t seen before. But also something that would be accessible to people who maybe aren’t quite as familiar with everything, all the stories that have been told, and all the characters that have been used in, you know, not just comics, but all sorts of other Transformers media. So to a considerable extent I’ve tried to keep the cast relatively focused, at least early on. And it’s, you know, it gradually opens – well, not that gradually. But it does open out quite a bit as we go through the issues. But keeping that core cast fairly focused early on was quite important. And some of that cast is undeniably sort of a reaction to the current toy line, some of it is ones I wanted to have in there. So hopefully it’s a healthy mix that balances everybody’s interests and priorities.
TM (Charles): Cool. And you mentioned you stopped reading the previous series when you were focusing on pitching the new stories. So do you have, I guess, in your particular new vision, how are you – I guess, it’s a difficult balance to try and really avoid retreading previous ground and going in a different direction. So how mindful or conscious are you of that when you’re when you’re crafting the new stories and have you found that difficult or has it been relatively easy to make a separation?
BR: Well, the first thing is, I rely on my excellent editors to tell me if I start repeating something too horribly, precisely, just because I didn’t know that it’s been done somewhere else or by someone else. But I don’t – so far I’ve not had too much of an issue of sort of finding myself getting stuck in repetition. But that’s partly because I’m not too worried about – not exactly repeating stuff – but I’m not too worried about echoing stuff because we do want a lot of this to be familiar in at least its outline, you know, I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We’re trying to put a new spin on it, if you like, and tweak various things. So the will be stuff that is kind of similar to, or sounds vaguely familiar to people who know all the past stories, even if this is a slightly different version of it. But I will hopefully not be directly repeating anything and if I inadvertently start doing that I’m sure people will tell me.
TM (Charles): Yeah so Starscream might probably end up betraying Megatron at some point in your new series?
BR: Ahhhh, I think you might find out roundabout, I don’t know, somewhere around issue eight or nine Starscream is starting from a slightly different position than he usually does.
TM (Charles): Ohhh, Interesting, okay. Now I’m intrigued.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): So, before we go a little deeper into the new series, I was curious, I know Hasbro has got lots of different things going on. So I didn’t know if maybe they were even trying to coordinate with their other media properties. Like they just recently announced a Netflix [Transformers] series coming out next year. Was there any communication or coordination with you for maybe having, you know, having the same time frame or same time period between that series and your series? Or is it just like completely not on your radar?
BR: No, it is on the radar. There has been communication, some of which leaks down to my level but not necessarily all of it. But again, it’s not something that either we or Hasbro are sort of setting out to make precisely match up in any sort of continuity type way. But there’s a degree of coordination absolutely about sort of, particularly about the timing of how the comic series might actually you know, we are thinking about where we might be in the comic series when that animation hits the screens and all this kind of thing. But no particular constraints have been put on us in terms of having to match up in any particular specific ways with that other stuff.
TM (Charles): Okay. Alright so let’s talk a little bit deeper about the new series. So before we go a little bit further I do want to mention to all the listeners, you should be listening to this after the first issue of Transformers comes out so we actually have read the first issue so we might get into some small spoilers for the first issue. So if you haven’t read it yet or haven’t picked it up you just might want to stop the podcast, read the comic first before you go any further.
BR: Absolutely. Stop listening now.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): And then restart later after you’ve read the comic.
BR: Yes, absolutely, yes. Sorry, I left that bit out.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): Alright. So your series starts really early. It’s before the war. I mean, tensions are a little bit high but it’s – Cybertron is still at peace. But of course, you know it’s Transformers. At some point, there’s going to be Autobots and Decepticons, there’s going to be a giant war. So I was curious –
BR: You don’t know that. You can’t be certain.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles) Okay, fair enough. I won’t –
TM (Jeremy): We could have guardians and renegades.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): Well, that’s for Tom Scioli. (Laughs) But how far have you got things mapped out? I mean, as a Transformers fan, there are certain expectations like, do you – I mean, you don’t have to give an answer to this – I know this would probably give away the whole deal. But you know, is there eventually a plan to push the timeline forward, even going to Earth?
BR: So there is going to be a war, you know, quite right.
TM (Charles): Yes. (Laughs)
BR: I don’t know how you figured that out from the first issue. But you’re quite right. And I know how we get from the first issue to the outbreak of war. But I’m not gonna say how long that’s going to take. But it’ll take a little while to get to the outbreak of war. As far as the Earth thing is concerned, I, at the moment, have made no specific proposal and haven’t been asked for a specific proposal for how or when there would be any Cybertronians showing up on Earth. Which isn’t to say that, you know, I don’t have ideas about how that might come about, and so on, and when it might come about. But it’s not part of my currently projected plans that I’ve actually got sketched out in my head. So although it absolutely could, can, and I imagine will happen at some point, it’s some way down the line as far as I’m concerned at the moment.
TM (Charles): Okay. So how far ahead are you in writing? Like, in terms of issues are you on like, issues six now, or?
BR: Funnily enough, I actually did some issue six today, yeah. But I’ve done a bit of seven as well. I haven’t actually scripted beyond seven but I have what you would call extensive notes and an outline and all this kind of thing. So in terms of where my head’s at, it’s in the second arc of the story at the moment. But I do actually have sort of third [and] fourth arcs somewhere in my head. I just haven’t written them down yet.
TM (Darryl): Something that we’ve noticed as we review comics is that comic writing has become much more of a written for arcs as opposed to every now and then, you know, you have just one off issues that just almost mean very little to the ongoing story. But everything nowadays seems to be written for the trade. Is that something that you’ve come across, and have noticed as well, Brian? Or is that something that you’ve been told to do is write in arcs that can be transposed to trades?
BR: I don’t actually remember whether I was explicitly told to do it. But I mean, I’d be crazy – I don’t think anyone can deny that you’re right, that a lot of comics are written in arc form. And I think that’s partly a response to the sort of rise of the trades. I think it started a while back, partly because a lot of writers were coming into comics who were, I think, quite consciously trying to do comics as TV sort of thing. They were very influenced by the sort of structure and rhythms of TV, serialized TV, and I think that had a slight effect in terms of making people want to write slightly longer form stories that, you know, because of the way comics work tended to fall into four or five or six or whatever, issue arcs. And so it absolutely does happen. And I kind of, as I say, I can’t remember whether that was actually an instruction. I’m not sure it was for this in particular, but it’s kind of the way I naturally approach it anyway. But I can, if it’s any comfort you to, I can say, we are absolutely going to have single issue standalones that do relate to the overall plot as well as arcs.
TM (Darryl): That does comfort me, actually. Because I mean, and, and don’t you think I missed the, the joke you made about me, Jeremy, I got that, that I don’t read well, but I did catch that. (Laughs)
TM (Jeremy): What? No, that was a comment to someone on Facebook.
TM (Darryl): Oh, well, I got that too.
(Laughs)
TM (Darryl): But in the past, people told me that I don’t generally get the Transformers books, because they go over my head. And that’s true, as lot of them were written very deep. And I’m much more akin to a very action packed book. And when everything’s written for the trade, you get very long stories, very drawn out stories. And generally, the middle of these arcs are very boring for me. So they’re always full of a lot of exposition, and very little action. So when everything is starting to go to, you know, writing for the trade, it becomes, you know, I want to read the beginning, I want to read the end. And then the middle is just, I can almost put it away because I know it’s just going to be exhibition [sic] for stuff that’s going to come later. But I’m very happy to hear that you’re going to have some one off issues here that are going to be, you know, almost written just for me.
(Laughs)
BR: Well, yeah, you tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. (Laughs)
TM (Darryl): I’m gonna. That’s what I’m gonna say. Oh, here’s the issue Brian wrote for me. Thanks!
BR: Fine. I’m okay. With that.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): All right, getting back on track. (Laughs) So in issue one, we meet Rubble. He’s a newly born Cybertronian. He’s our point of view character.
BR: He’s mine.
TM (Charles): Yes, he’s a completely new character. He’s not a previously used character. I guess it feels like you’re using him as a way to help us as the readers learn, I guess, the ground rules for the Transformers in this new universe? Would that would that be a fair statement?
BR: Yeah, sure. There’s a significant amount of that in there, yes. He’s there for particular reasons to do with the plot as well, which will become more apparent in future issues. But yeah, absolutely. The idea of having a character who’s discovering the world is a kind of obvious and easy way to create that impression of not only this is seeing something through fresh eyes, but giving you a nice excuse to do a bit of exploring of some of the wonders and the strangeness, and all that sort of thing.
TM (Charles): And we’ve already got a little bit of a tidbit because it seems that new Cybertronians get to pick their alt mode. So that’s an interesting wrinkle that you’ve introduced. So that makes me hopeful that we’ll actually get Rubble maybe a redesign in the new in the near future even, I mean, even a new name, I don’t know. So that’s – I’m just curious about the journey we’re going to take Rubble on.
BR: Yeah, well, that’s what I want all readers to feel like so you just carry on feeling curious and we’ll see where it goes.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): I guess related to that, do you have a notion of Cybertronians having a “childhood”? Do you see Rubble exploring that or is it – ?
BR: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s a bit of a gray area because I mean, visually, Angel Hernandez, I think, has done a lovely little design with Rubble, because obviously, that’s, you know, all the visual side of things is very much not my area of expertise. But it’s a lovely design, because it does have something slightly childlike about the design. But from from the general point of view, he’s certainly written, I hope it comes across, to be a bit naive, a bit – childish isn’t quite the right word. But you know, he’s new, he’s –
TM (Jeremy): Innocent.
BR: Innocent, yeah, exactly. So if Cybertronians have a childhood then I think it’s not really a physical childhood as much as a psychological one. Where you know, their minds perhaps take a bit of time to mature and to get a sort of more adult grasp on the world around them and how it all works.
TM (Charles): And we also noticed in this first issue there’s some non-robotic life on Cybertron. So will we see more of that going forward?
BR: Yeah, the, uh –
TM (Charles): The Voin Scavengers are the ones we saw.
BR: Yeah, there’s some other varieties of organic life knocking around the planet as well. But the Voin are gonna show up in a few issues here and there. But I think quite early in the next few issues you’ll see a few other examples of organic life that’s hanging around doing various different things on Cybertron.
TM (Charles): And we noticed that Voin Scavengers they look, except for the, I guess ,octopus floaty thing, the animals looked a little bit ape-like. But it reminded us of, I guess, a character from the the old G1 cartoon named Primacron. I don’t know if your head went that way at all, or if that’s just a coincidence?
BR: No, that’s basically a coincidence. The deal with the Voin is actually that the squiddy thing in the globe is the Voin, and – at some point, I’ll explain this in the comic, but I’ll spoil it for you guys – The somewhat ape-like things are kind of organic genetically engineered slave organisms that – although they look a bit like apes they’re not really sentient in themselves – they’re sort of subservient to the squid thing in the globe. They’re like it’s hands effectively.
TM (Charles): Oh, interesting. All right, well you’ve made me curious about that too. So I guess we’ll have to keep reading for that.
TM (Jeremy): It is neat to see some more unique sci fi elements that haven’t been in Transformers show up.
BR: Well i think it’s something I’m quite keen to do. I mean, it’s going to be kind of, bit by bit, rather than bang bang bang. But I’m quite keen to to get little bits here and there that just say, you know, this is science fiction and it can be quite weird sometimes and it can be quite epic and big scale and all this kind of thing. So there’ll be little bits here and there probably gradually building up as we go that draw on the sort of limitless possibilities of the kind of stuff you can have going in on in a science fiction universe.
TM (Charles): And of course it’s no surprise that we see Optimus, well not Optimus Prime, but Orion Pax and Megatron, as very familiar characters and the Transformers Universe. So one thing that I did notice and it seems it’s very conspicuous is that there don’t really seem to be any faction symbols on anyone except for Orion Pax. So we see an Autobot symbol on his shoulder, and Megatron does call him an Autobot. But Megatron is not a Decepticon, he’s an Ascenticon. Or he’s leading the Ascenticons.
BR: Yes. He’s the sort of de facto leader of the Ascenticons, yes.
TM (Charles): Yeah. So I guess I’m curious if we’re going to get into more about the meanings behind those faction symbols and will they be very prominent in the series?
BR: Eventually there will be very prominent faction symbols for sure yeah. But there are some other characters knocking around in due course who have the Autobot symbol at this stage. But the idea with the factions at the moment is that you know, things aren’t quite as they sometimes are in the Transformers Universe. Not yet, anyway, so there is absolutely an Autobot faction, and there is an Ascenticon faction, and there are one or two other factions involved in politics and so on on Cybertron. But there are no Decepticons.
TM (Charles): Yet. (Laughs)
BR: Well you said that I didn’t say that.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): I guess it’s also interesting to see because it does make it clear that we are in a new universe here, because Optimus, or I should say Orion and Megatron, they are clearly not the same characters they were in the previous IDW series so you know Megatron is not this gladiator, miner, I guess lower class resistance fighter and Optimus is not a police officer. They’re both kind of political entities now. They’re both senators serving and in some governmental role on Cybertron. We do get a little as you said, a little bit of an echo of Megatron, who is dissatisfied with the status quo and he’s agitating for change so it’s not a surprise to see that as being, you know, a little bit of the initial genesis for the coming conflict. But we also did notice that in this first issue we had a different artist just working on that particular scene which was I guess, Cachet Whitman. And we’re curious how, like, going forward, if we’ll have kind of a parallel story in future issues? Or is the series kind of a single – ?
BR: No, the whole idea is to have Angel and Cachet splitting the art duties on individual issues. But it’s all one story. But it obviously makes sense from a visual and just from a flow point of view, to divide – to have them working on, sort of separate scenes if you’re going to change the art inside the issue. So they’re not parallel stories, it is all one story. But the bulk of each issue will be Angel Hernandez and Cachet will be doing a few pages in each issue, which will usually you know, we’ll make it work by doing scene changes and stuff.
TM (Charles): Okay. I guess in previous announcements, IDW mentioned Ron Joseph. Is he no longer working on the series? Or is he working on it as well?
BR: No, I believe he had to drop off, for reasons that were to do with personal circumstances rather than anyone on either side actually wanting to drop off unfortunately. So it’s kind of a shame because he was very up for it, and was obviously a very good artist. But I think Cachet was always going to be involved in the series at some point. So that involvement just moved forward a bit, really. So it’s actually been quite a smooth transition.
TM (Charles): Okay. So I guess one additional thing, in the story. I mean, it’s already been mentioned in the announcements that the initial conflict centers around a murder mystery. And we do learn the identity of the murder victim in this first issue. Which was I mean, I will say, reading the issue, you kind of figure out who it’s going to be. And even that was a little bit of a surprise.
BR: Yeah, I think most people reading the issue will realize who it’s going to be. I mean, I haven’t actually been keeping up with whether anyone has been speculating online about who the murder victim might be. But given that it was announced that a murder was a significant part of the plot, it’s not the kind of thing you can really make too much of a surprise, beyond who it actually is. So I don’t know whether the identity of the victim will come as a big surprise to people or not, or a terrible disappointment. (Laughs) I don’t know really,
TM (Charles): It’s just interesting because I felt like it was simultaneously kind of a nod to More Than Meets The Eye readers or fans, and also just to say, okay, we’re not going in the same direction. So, you know, sorry if you were attached to that particular character.
(Laughs)
BR: Yeah, okay. Careful not to get into spoiler territory, too much. No, there is, I mean, to be honest, it’s not, absolutely not the main reason for what happens to happen, but there is, you know, in retrospect, there is a certain – it is a clean break sort of thing in a way. Which wasn’t uppermost in my mind when I was actually writing it. But, you know, in hindsight, it does kind of work in that slightly symbolic way. But I hope it doesn’t annoy too many people.
(Laughs)
TM (Charles): And I guess you also dropped two little nuggets in this – One thing that I always appreciate in the Transformers comics is the amount of world building and kind of, you know, expanding the universe a little bit. So two little nuggets that I noticed that you dropped in this first issue were Termagax and The Rise. So anything you want to say about those two things as we wrap up here?
BR: So, well The Rise – you’ll be hearing quite a bit about The Rise over the next few issues. They’re kind of, not a faction, exactly, but they’re a bunch of Cybertronians up to no good. Termagax will actually show up eventually, but she is the actual founder of the Ascenticon faction. So why it appears that Megatron is currently in charge of it is something that we might get into before too long.
TM (Charles): All right. Well, I guess one thing I just wanted to quickly – so you mentioned, you had been aware of Transformers before and you know, you’ve gotten into the comics and everything. But have you collected any of the toys? Do you mess around with the toys?
BR: I’ve got two Transformers toys.
TM (Charles): Okay, Which ones?
BR: Well, I’m just looking over my shoulder because embarrassingly I’ve forgotten – you might be able to tell me if I describe it. I’ve got an Optimus. But the other one is I think a Micromaster. I think it’s a very simple little movie Decepticon that’s blue and turns into a helicopter. Does that ring a bell? I’m pretty sure it’s a movie one.
TM (Charles): Might be a Barricade if it’s a – or not Barricade, Blackout. Blackout was a movie helicopter.
BR: That might be it, yeah. I’m embarrassed, I can’t remember. I was given it as a present.
TM (Jeremy): If Hasbro does make a Rubble figure, are you gonna buy a ton?
BR: Oh god, that would – I’d be surprised if it ever happens. But there are, I mean, Rubble’s not the only new Transformer I’ve made up for this series. If any of them ever turned up in toy form, that would be quite remarkable, really.
TM (Charles): So I don’t know how aware you are of like, Transformers, conventions and the fan scene. Do you have any plans?
BR: Yeah, a bit. Possibly. Probably not involving trips to the US unfortunately, at the moment. But there is stuff that goes on slightly closer to home that I am in contact with people about, shall we say. But nothing confirmed yet.
TM (Charles): Yeah. So I guess TFNation is the big UK convention there. So –
BR: Yeah.
TM (Charles): Alright. Well, we’ll keep our ears to the ground if there are any announcements about that coming up.
BR: Yeah, I mean, I’d like to go. I’ve done conventions before for my novels, and actually for the Rogue Trooper comic and stuff. And I do like it. I am quite into that sort of, the whole fan culture thing. So I’m certainly not averse to it. Just trying to make the schedule fit with family and all this kind of thing. You know what it’s like.
TM (Charles): Yeah, definitely. Alright, well, I think we’ve, we’ve wrung you dry with all the questions here. So thank you so much for it.
BR: Oh, it was a pleasure. It was good.
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