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davidmariottecomics · 2 years ago

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Transformers, Till We Meet Again

Hello! Or should I say Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong!

Earlier this week, Transformers: Shattered Glass II #5 came out from IDW Publishing. Written by Danny Lore, drawn by Guido Guidi, inked by Matt Froese, colored by John-Paul Bove, lettered by Jake M. Wood, edited by Riley Farmer, and supervised by me. It's a fun issue with Soundwave, Slicer, Ultra Magnus, and a Titan, where everything goes wrong and comes to a head. I highly recommend it. It is also IDW's last Transformers comic of 2022 and beyond as we part ways. As such, I wanted to take some time to talk about Transformers--my personal relationship with it, my many years on the franchise as an editor (and occasionally a writer), and some behind-the-scenes stuff that you probably don't know and that I won't get in trouble for talking about. I promise it won't be filled with too many TF jokes and that while it is meant to help memorialize a great achievement, it is neither sad nor regretful. You'll see Transformers again.

My Time with TF (Pre-IDW)

I genuinely cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't know about Transformers. My first exposure was through Beast Wars. I was pretty little when it started airing, but as I started making choices about things I liked and wanted to watch, it became a pretty clear favorite early on (right up there with The Lion King). A driving force of that was, of course, also the toys. I liked the show and when I was getting old enough for the toys, I started getting some. I got one of the basic figures that came packed with a VHS with the first couple episodes of Season 2 on it. It was great and I watched it a lot, but also supremely frustrating because it only included "Coming of the Fuzors, Part 1" an episode that ends on a cliffhanger for the subsequent "Part 2"!

As a brief and not too embarrassing story: My Depth Charge is still in really good shape and one of my all time favorite TF toys. I think part of why he's always been kept so nice, despite how much I played with him as a kid, is he was a reward. If you're a parent looking to toilet train your kid, apparently a bribe of a Transmetal is a pretty good way to go.

And slowly but surely, my love for Transformers got reinforced. Our local Hollywood Video had a small selection of TF VHS--I checked them all out off-and-on, but none so often as Transformers: The Movie (and, TBH, the G.I. Joe Movie too). In many ways, that was my early intro to G1. The other big pillar, honestly, since we were in a gap between comics publishers, was Wizard and Toyfare, the big nerd magazines of the era. My dad worked in comics publishing and would regularly bring them home (or I'd read them at his office) and while I was too young to get a lot of the humor, I was old enough to know they thought they were funny and to start to glean insight on what pop culture stuff people liked.

Beast Wars begat Beast Machines, which I stuck with. In 2001, the original Robots in Disguise cartoon came out--it wasn't so much a hit for me as a show, but I liked the toys. That's also the year Titan Books picked up the license to reissue some of the Marvel comics, which had been out of print for years, and that Dreamwave picked up the license to do new TF comics. Things start to get a little jumbled, but somewhere around there, I got a volume or two of the Titan stuff and a little bit inconsistently got some of the Dreamwave stuff too. I bought in big with Armada, fell out again around Energon (for toys, cartoons, and the comics). And in 2004, my dad left his job as Editor-in-Chief at IDW Publishing and we moved to Arizona, 2 hours away from our local comic shops.

Being outside a small town in Arizona in the mid 2000s was a very different experience from being in the city growing up. Besides not having a comic shop nearby or a toy store, there was only one small video rental place that we didn't really go to much (especially as we ended up early adopters of Netflix sending you DVDs in the mail) and TV and Internet could both be spotty at times. I was going into middle school anyway, so things were bound to change, but my media consumption definitely pivoted and Transformers was kinda left behind, expect for picking up vintage Beast Wars figures when I found them, the occasional dip back in with the likes of the first live action movie and TF Animated, and IDW having picked up the TF license (and also given me a bunch of their earliest issues). I started with Infiltration #0 and read every issue of every series up through to All Hail Megatron. And I only stopped, really, because I wasn't getting to comic shops very often and AHM was such a radical shift from what came before that I genuinely thought I had missed some transition series/issues and didn't know what had happened and kinda gave up. For a long time, that was kinda status quo--I'd dip an occasional toe back in, pick up a few toys now and then, but for me, TF was primarily a nostalgia based thing--reading my old comics (and pouring over the Beast Wars Sourcebook in particular--where I met my all time favorite TF, Randy), collecting my old toys, and watching Beast Wars and Transformers the Movie.

My Time with IDW (Pre-TF)

Skipping ahead another decade or so, fresh out of college, I got a job at IDW. It's a much longer story, but that's the short version. I was initially brought in as an assistant for Chris Ryall and Scott Dunbier, which brought me to my first Hasbro book, ROM. Chris was co-writing it with Christos Gage and as Chris's assistant, I got looped in. And, almost immediately, I also got roped in by David Hedgecock to help him out with the fledgling Hasbro universe--starting with some uncredited assistant work on Revolution, and joining the editorial team on Micronauts, M.A.S.K.: Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, and Revolutionaries (a team-up book of characters from Transformers, G.I. Joe, Action Man, M.A.S.K., ROM, and Micronauts). I was working on Hasbro books and with Transformers, but only on the periphery. But the big thing that came of that was I started working with John Barber, who had recently left IDW editorial, but was co-writing Revolution, writing Revolutionaries, and writing Transformers/Optimus Prime. We became friendly and--in an effort to do my job well--I started reading through EVERYTHING so I could be almost as knowledgeable about all these threads he was pulling as he was. And some combination of deep diving into the IDW Hasbro catalog, my own pre-existing TF knowledge, and the lasting mind-addled facts I had absorbed from Wizard actually made me a pretty good fit for the job.

By the time we're working on First Strike, Hasbro has become my wheelhouse at IDW. But despite being a part of planning a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover (primarily), I'm still not actually working on TF or Joe proper books. That's all about to change though because IDW's about to go through some major changes in staffing. Ryall leaves (he later comes back), David Hedgecock is promoted to editor-in-chief and has additional responsibilities that limit the number of titles he can edit. Sarah Gaydos briefly becomes more involved with the Hasbro universe stuff before she goes to Oni. And Carlos Guzman, the current TF/Joe editor, announces he's leaving too. I start getting handed a lot more responsibility coming off the event, starting with Transformers vs. Visionaries (also worth noting--in the background of all this, Joe Hughes and I are getting Sonic the Hedgehog up and running). Controversial decision: we decide to kill Kup (again, kinda). And I write a eulogy where I mistakenly call Trailbreaker "Trailblazer" (I'M SORRY!). It's a book that was definitely affected by the behind-the-scenes changing of the guard as well as taking on heavier editorial direction because it's being posed as a bridge series between First Strike and Unicron.

And this is where I'm quickly having to come in to my own. The Hasbro Universe is being shrunk to a few titles: Optimus Prime, Lost Light, a couple Annuals wrapping up Till All Are One and Nick Roche's Wreckers, the joint G.I. Joe/M.A.S.K. title: Scarlett's Strike Force, Rom and the Micronauts, and Transformers vs. Visionaries--all knowing that Unicron is coming and that that'll be our big--perhaps final--event. Carlos, John, Nick, Mairghread Scott, and James Roberts have all kinda planned their stuff to the end, so I get to start continuing Carlos's plans, but it's comics and things always change.

Dawn of a Bold New Era Okay, I know at this point, we've mostly been talking about my personal relationship with TF and the landscape as I was really getting brought in--which is maybe a little dry. You're here for the juicy stuff--the secret stuff! So let's talk about when I actually came onto TF.

Besides taking over the rest of the IDW1/Hasbro Universe titles, my other big project as I'm coming into things is all the build up to my personal favorite live-action Transformers movie: Bumblebee! It's supposed to be more kid-friendly, so a big initiative is some Bumblebee stuff for kids, which ended up being the Bumblebee-Win If You Dare OGN and the Bumblebee-Go For the Gold one-shot. Those books, by James Asmus, Marcelo Ferreira, Valentina Pinto, Maria Keane, Athilla Fabbio, Josh Perez, Tom Long, and Nicoletta Baldari on covers (psst--TFWiki people, if you're reading this, the Go for the Gold cover is misattributed to Marcelo, but it is Nicoletta. k thx) were a heck of a learning experience. Like all our TF books, I'm very proud of them, but suffice to say, I don't recommend doing a graphic novel, even a short one, on anything resembling a regular comic timeline. But it was really exciting because it was the first (and currently is the only) Transformers original graphic novel. It's also one of the few Transformers comics that was also run through Volkswagen as Bumblebee was officially a Beetle.

Something that came up a few times while we were working on it was requests to actually make it more distinct from the movie. James wasn't given access to that script, but a few of the things he proposed along the way just so happened to be pretty close to what was in Bumblebee and so had to be tweaked. Which also led to the very interesting experience on the other side of things doing the Bumblebee Movie Prequel. If you've read it, you know it's a super fun, purposefully kinda campy spy adventure inspired by The Avengers (the Steed & Peel kind, not the superheroes) and like Moore Bond films. It is also working off an older draft of the movie that was more in line with the other movies. That was the last of our Movie books, which had started way back in 2007. I think it was really appropriate to both start and end with a prequel to the latest movie and, particularly with this being a John Barber/Andrew Griffith/Priscilla Tramontano joint, having it also be referential to some of our other previous movie comics.

The other kinda funky thing about the Bumblebee Movie Prequel is as it's in progress, at IDW, I've gone from editing my boss, Chris Ryall, on ROM, to editing my new boss, John Barber! The week after John starts, I think, is when the Unicron #0 FCBD issue comes out. And with that, we publicly announced that we were coming in on the end of a universe--a big event that was Transformers focused but a hurrah for everything that IDW had been building since I was a kid reading comics and everything that had been building when I came in at the still pretty early start of the shared universe. Something I ended up having to do twice, but that you can pretty clearly see in the run up to Unicron is I tried to get as many long-time people involved as possible. From bringing folks in on covers to the wrap-up shorts for the universe we had in Unicron, and the creator interviews about the history of IDW1, I wanted to celebrate the "Transformers Legacy."

I'm afraid it's been long-enough I don't have a lot of particularly funny or interesting stories from that era. Bless Kei Zama and Josh Burcham for getting Randy in Optimus Prime (even if he did immediately die). Big ups to all the creators, of course, who stepped up and helped out as we closed in on the end--some of whom came into tight deadlines or big shoes and always kicked ass. Nick Roche and I had two close-calls: 1. In Requiem of the Wreckers, there's a scene that was supposed to be Quickswitch, but we had just killed him over in Visionaries, so that was a pretty quick and dirty pivot to Sixknight. 2. There was a typo on his cover for the last issue of Lost Light and fortunately it did not go to print saying "We Achieived Something". I'm glad it was fixed, but it was pretty funny when James Roberts noticed it.

I also got to be the kissing editor! The first on-page, romantic (non-KISS Players) kiss happened in OP #21 between Aileron and Arcee, and then there were a few more kisses between bots across OP, LL, and Unicron. And, later, I got to put a kiss in Wreckers, which was very exciting!

And--one thing I pretty much never got right and which, again, I profusely apologize for--is we never properly credited Jenevieve Frank. She was supposed to get a special thanks for the last issue of Optimus Prime and I messed up getting that in print in the original run and in the TPB and my third shot where I would've gotten it right, the final IDW Collection--well, we didn't quite get to collecting it in that format. So, I'm sorry, Jen! This is one of only 3 regrets I have for the series, besides "Trailblazer" and the one I'll get to later.

Because of how comics production timelines work, though, as we were nearing these ends and coordinating shipping the final issues of Unicron, Lost Light, and Optimus Prime to land in shops in the right order, we had also already begun the work of planning IDW2. That actually took it's first steps with Carlos before he left. Working with Hasbro, we looked at some pitches that were very fun and by great creators, but that didn't quite work and brought Tom Waltz in to help write some new directives for pitches. Tom's also the one who brought Brian Ruckley in. The only thing I think I can say about some of those earliest drafts is there was a time when the role that was ultimately filled in IDW2 by Rubble was originally going to be a human. I'm glad that wasn't the case because I think it gave IDW2 a really unique identity to not have any Earth stuff, but suffice to say, there were some very different versions of what it could've been with that simple a change.

Angel Hernandez was one of those things that was so obvious it was in front of your face, literally. John, Tom, and I were looking for an artist for the series and coming up with all these names and I was walking to John's office to talk about something else when I passed a series of "from script to final page" posters we had hung up for display in the office. It was the sort of thing we liked to show kids and visitors who didn't know much about how comics get made. These pages, in particular, were from Star Trek/Green Lantern and drawn by Angel. I don't know what it was, but on that pass, it clicked: Angel was the guy for the book. We had spent all this time talking about it, but he was right there between my desk and John's office the whole time.

And so, in 2019, we launched a bold new era, IDW2. A twice-monthly series through the first 12 issues and a Transformer story genuinely unlike any other. With the new series, we wanted to bring in new creators. I am immensely proud of everything that everyone brought into the fold but special shout-outs to Brian, Angel, Anna Malkova, and Beth McGuire-Smith, who did a lot to help define this new universe early and often.

When we collected that first 12 issue as Transformers, Vol. 1: The World in Your Eyes, I was talking with Justin Eisinger in the books department about what we wanted Cryssy Cheung to do with the covers and fairly quickly settled on the idea of having each one feature 2 major players from that part of the series. In describing the first cover, Tom said that it should be Bumblebee and Rubble. I agreed. Justin and Cryssy have hit on the idea of featuring alt-modes on the back cover. So Justin asks for reference. My answer was to send a bunch for Bumblebee and to explain that for Rubble "he's a baby and then he's a corpse." Accurate (and if you haven't read it, sorry for spoilers), but something we'd joke about for a long time after.

Transformers Galaxies was our first real attempt at expanding. We got some really cool folks to work on that. A lot of the "rules" of the series actually came out of working on the first arc, Constructicons Rising, with Tyler Bleszinski and Livio Ramondelli. In developing that, we realized that to truly embrace the idea of "Galaxies", all the stories would be expanding the universe, but outside of Cybertron. There was a lot of coordination between Sam Maggs and Brian and the editorial team to make sure the Gauge story spun out of Arcee/Greenlight: Run properly, and then fed back into the ongoing at the end of the series. There was a lot of coordination between everyone to make sure that characters weren't in two places at once and the rules of the universe all followed. For example, Brandon Easton pitched his arc to be in-universe, but also in line with the War for Cybertron: Siege cartoon that he had also written for. But by the time we were working on that arc, it had become pretty obvious that the IDW2 comic and animation didn't line-up too well, so there was a bit of tweaking to make it fit better.

There were two stories that were pitched as part of Galaxies, but that ended up elsewhere. What ended up as the Transformers 2021 Annual, "Light/Star" started out as a pitch from Brian for a Galaxies arc, as did what became Transformers Wreckers: Tread & Circuits.

Also around this time, we got Riley Farmer at IDW! You should know Riley! She was the assistant/associate editor on Transformers (and eventually the editor on TF: Shattered Glass & Shattered Glass II). She's my co-editor on Sonic. She's now editing My Little Pony and many other things. She's without a doubt one of the best editors currently working in comics and one of my best friends. So, shout-out to Riley! As much as I think TF can be a trail of my own editorial growth, the same is largely true of Riley.

Writing Transformers

At one point, Wreckers: Tread & Circuits would've been issues #13-15 or 16 (pitched as three but already might've been expanded to four) of TF Galaxies. But then things changed and Galaxies came to an end at #12 and we launched Escape. Which means that Wreckers was pitched before my actual first TF series, co-written with John Barber, Transformers vs. the Terminator!

The origin of that series came from, as much as anything, early solicit text. We were still on the hunt for a creative team (at that point, I was going to edit it, which obviously changed) and I wrote some early solicit text just to have it done early and realized that was the pitch. The whole thing was written to be the classic Terminator set-up, but with a late twist of the robots controlling the future being the Decepticons and the freedom fighters being the Terminators. And like that, it came together. I pitched it to John and Tom. We set the story beats and then John and I wrote it. It was fantastic getting to work with long-time collaborators Alex Milne and David Garcia Cruz. And Tom and Riley were excellent editors.

A couple pieces of extra trivia about that series: I think there's at least one kind of oblique reference in the script to the fact that when I lived in Tucson, AZ, one of the local news stations called their traffic camera system "Skynet". In issue #3, there's a jokey reference both to Terminator and a Prince song. That was added specifically because John Barber is the biggest Prince fan I know and I thought it'd be funny. It also ended up being kind of a running gag of referencing Judgement Day, the big catastrophe from Terminator. And this book was particularly special to me because way back when, TF artist Don Figueroa and my dad, Jeff Mariotte, did the Terminator Salvation movie-prequel for IDW and it was nice to write in a universe my dad did too.

And the Autobots that are seen are all very carefully chosen. Something that we see to an extent in IDW2 and later Beast Wars and in this and Wreckers is a recurring idea that your average Autobot is not a warrior, but a civilian who stepped up to do the right thing. It's why Velocity, Bumblebee, Ratchet, and Wheeljack all play prominent roles in TF/Terminator and why Circuit and Minerva are part of the team in Wreckers. Maybe someday to be seen in some form, there are a few more pitches I put together at various times that play off of that idea. It's something I quite liked and obviously would return to again.

Speaking of Wreckers, let's talk about that! So, it was pitched wayyyyy back when, before TF/Terminator, even though it came out afterwards, right? While it lines up really well with some eventual Hasbro plans--Leadfoot in the Wreckers line, the whole Velocitron Speedia 500 line, and Minerva and Skullgrin getting Legacy toys--that wasn't intentional! Some specific additions did get added right around scripting, when those things started to be in place, but a lot of them were just coincidental and it was cool that we got to have the characters in the books get some new physical representations/get the designs early so we could have them match in the series.

In terms of the cast list, a lot of folks had very particular reasons for being there. Thunderclash I loved from his appearances in MTMTE/LL. Aileron and Circuit were directly influenced by RID/Transformers/OP. Hot Shot had been the main character of a pitch that didn't move forward. And Knockout and Breakdown were pulled in from Till All Are One. Minerva, like I said, was specifically chosen because I liked the idea of the Wreckers having a medic. A lot of other folks were chosen just because I liked them and they fit as racers. And spoiler for another story that may never happen--had we gotten another series, some of the would-be-Wreckers featured at the end of issue #4 would've made it to the team (Star Saber and Leadfoot for sure).

What other secrets can I spill about Wreckers? Because it was originally pitched so early into the 2019 run, at one point Anna Malkova was suggested as the artist because she hadn't yet transitioned to being the main artist on the ongoing. I'm super happy I got to work with Jack Lawrence on it though. I love them both and I think they both worked on the proper book for them (though TBH, I'd also love to do something with Anna in the future!). When it was greenlit, one of the first things I did was send the pitch to Nick and Simon Furman for their blessing as the Wreckers guys. I'm very honored our series gets to stand alongside theirs in Wreckers history.

Outside of my crossover book, it was also in this period around the end of IDW1 through, really, to pretty deep into IDW2 that we started doing a lot of crossovers and, from that, also started doing what I think of as the standalones.

Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and My Little Ponies, Oh My!

Here's kind of a strange thing to think about: When we did Star Trek vs. Transformers, Transformers/Ghostbusters, and My Little Pony/Transformers, none of those were actually the first time TF crossed over with those properties. Back in 2011, IDW did a very interesting crossover series called Infestation--a semi-crossover between Transformers, G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and IDW original properties Zombies vs. Robots and CVO. And MLPs showed up for a panel or so in Tom Scioli and John's excellent Transformers vs. G.I. Joe series!

These were all great fun to work on and are one of those cool things where you get editors who maybe don't usually work together co-editing a book, or editors who used to work together reuniting, or maybe my favorite version--Megan Brown asking you to give one read at the script stage and one read of the final PDF and call out notes, but she really edited both MLP/TF series!

Crossovers are always an interesting experience, but I think I only have two crossover things worth sharing that I'm able to share. One is when Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, and Luis Antonio Delgado were first tapped for TF/Ghostbusters, they did a promo piece with an early concept of Ectotron. I own that piece as a T-shirt I bought at Gamestop, despite the fact that it was not the final Ectotron design. Licensing is complicated--comics are complicated--and it's always fun when you find stuff like that which came from an earlier version but made it to production. The other one I can think of is Transformers/Back to the Future had a bit of weird timing to it. I co-edited the series with my pal Chase Marotz, but slightly before the last issue went into production, Chase changed departments at IDW. While it didn't really affect the book, it was interesting having an extra learning curve of figuring out the BTTF approvals system for the last issue, because Chase had been dealing with it the rest of the series.

Besides the crossovers and IDW2, we were also looking for new ways to bring TF to people, which lead to so many amazing books. I finally got to work with Simon Furman, as well as the phenomenal Guido Guidi and John-Paul Bove, on Transformers '84 (a series that drew from both the original Marvel G1 and Marvel UK). I got to fulfill my childhood dream of launching a new Beast Wars series (with favs Erik Burnham & Josh Burcham) that eventually got picked up by editor Jazmine Joyner (who I spent this weekend hanging out with and who helped me double fulfill my dream by letting me write a story in the Beast Wars Annual). We did the amazing swords-and-sorcery story, King Grimlock, with Steve Orlando, Agustin Padilla, and Jeremy Colwell. Riley took over and did two Shattered Glass series with Danny Lore, Guido, Dan Khanna, and a bunch of other amazing contributors. And I got to team-up with my old buddy Nick Roche, the first IDW TF artist, E.J. Su, and colorists Rebecca Nalty and Brittany Peer (at the end) for Last Bot Standing, a series that acts as an excellent sign-off to everything we did. A last TF story, even though it wasn't our last and, frankly, it's TF. The stories never end.

I was hoping to get some other stories in, but frankly, we're running long already. The only bits I'll mention in particular are 1. Jaz managed to do something I could not. Initially, we were only using American Beast Wars characters for the series, but Jaz, Sam Maggs, and Lanna Souvanny managed to do a story all about Skold and Powerhug! 2. Speaking of Beast Wars, I believe in the big battle spread in the final issue, Josh Burcham's got a Sonic the Hedgehog joke with Armordillo (another favorite character of mine). 3. Last Bot Standing developed while Nick Roche and I were working on Scarenthood, his excellent creator-owned series with Chris O'Halloran (and in which Becca and I have a brief cameo). 4. Signal Lancer has a very brief role in Wreckers: Tread & Circuits. He was also, at one point, slated for LBS, though he didn't make the final cut. 5. In the first draft of the lettering for the Veteran in LBS #3, none of the haikus were formatted. They were just lettered regularly. If you think they're obnoxious to read as haiku, they are actually harder to read without the proper formatting. And 6. Again, to add context for the TFWiki folks--Nick and I mutually agreed that a haiku of "Damn"s was more reasonable than a haiku of "Shit"s.

What Could Have Been

Okay, so, I can only say so much about anything. If you checked out our awesome Transformers: Best of the Rarities (including some real treasures that haven't been seen before and may never be seen again), you might've noticed something about Transformers: Collision Course. A few finished covers for that series were included, and obviously, it was never published. What I can say is that much like when building up to Unicron, the goal was to bring in as many longtime contributors as possible, some in new ways. It would've featured elements from everything seen on the covers. It would've gotten kind of weird, in a very fun way. What it would've been actually was pretty different than originally conceptualized. And it would've said goodbye. Maybe some other time I can share more, but that's about all I can say now.

I mentioned regrets earlier and this is my third one. Not that we didn't publish Collision Course (even if it might've bumped me above Carlos Guzman as the person to edit the most TF comics)--in some ways, I'm glad we didn't. I kinda don't mind not saying an official goodbye. My regret is there was always more to do. There were plans and things we'd like to do and I hope some of them find a home sometime. But the big loss is I wanted to work with so many more people. Writers, artists, colorists--folks who I'd have loved to work with for the first time and folks who I've worked with so many times but would've done TF with forever. None of that's going away--I'll still find ways to work with those folks--but had I had 100 more issues, I still wouldn't have had enough time to work with the many, many amazing folks on all sides who made TF magical (or who would've and the timing didn't work out).

And so, finally, thank you! Thanks to Kelly Johnson, Michael Kelly, Ed Lane, Tayla Reo, Ben MacCrae, Matt Clarke, Mark Maher, and the team at Hasbro, Isabella Weiss, Beth Artale, Carlos Guzman, Sarah Gaydos, Chris Ryall, Denton Tipton, Chase Marotz, Tom Waltz, Megan Brown, Bobby Curnow, Jazmine Joyner, Andy Schmidt, Tom Long, Jake Wood, Johanna Nattalie, Shawn Lee, Neil Uyetake, Chris Mowry, Christa Miesner, Gilberto Lazcano, Nate Widick, Justin Eisinger, Alonzo Simon, Zac Boone, Lauren Lapera, and the whole IDW crew past and present, Simon Furman, John-Paul Bove, Andrew Griffith, Brian Ruckley, Casey Coller, James Roberts, Livio Ramondelli, Josh Burcham, Alex Milne, Nick Roche, Fico Ossio, Priscilla Tramontano, Sebastian Cheng, Candice Han, Sam Maggs, Sara Pitre-Durocher, Winston Chan, Angel Hernandez, Agustin Padilla, Eduardo Alpuente, E.J. Su, Heather Breckel, Aline Baumgartner, SidVenBlu, Luis Antonio Delgado, Dan Khanna, Dan Schoening, Erik Burnham, David Garcia Cruz, Ed Pirrie, Ben Pirrie, Matt Froese, Rik Mack, Gigi Dutriex, Danny Lore, Rebecca Nalty, Steve Orlando, Ochopante, Phil Murphy, Valentina Pinto, Umi Miyao, John Yurcaba, Kei Zama, Guido Guidi, Evan Gauntt, Jack Lawrence, Evan Stanley, Thomas Deer, Jeffrey Veregge, Tom Scioli, Marcelo Matere, Marcelo Ferreira, Anna Malkova, Beth McGuire-Smith, Stefano Simeone, Josh Perez, Kate Leth, Cohen Edenfield, Saren Stone, Brendan Cahil, Brenda Chi, Cachet Whitman, Ron Joseph, Nelson Daniel, Gabriel Rodriguez, Chris Panda, James Raiz, James Marsh, James Biggie, Jim Wilson, Jim Stafford, James Asmus, George Caltsoudas, Mairghread Scott, Freddie E. Williams II, Andrew Wildman, Stephen Baskerville, Ian Flynn, Nicole Goux, Nicoletta Baldari, Nick Brokenshire, Sebastian Piriz, Jeremy Colwell, Max Dunbar, Francesco Francavilla, Corin Howell, Philip Johnson, Maria Keane, Brittany Peer, Red Powell, Juan Samu, Cavan Scott, Blacky Shepherd, Reggie Graham, L. Kershaw, Ashe Phillips, Zoner Siyu Hemu, Tyler Bleszinski, Brandon Easton, Billie Montfort, Peri Mercer, Shane McCarthy, Don Figueroa, Patrick Ehlers, Dan Watters, Nahuel Ruiz, Geoff Senior, Nick Marino, Andrea Bell, Lanna Souvanny, Ryan Miller, Chris McFeely, Jim Sorenson, Tony Fleecs, Adam Bryce Thomas, Mike Johnson, Ilias Kyriazis, Stephen Byrne, James Stokoe, Cary Nord, Mateus Santolouco, Marcelo Maiolo, Alex Horley, Paul Harding, Bryan Lee, Dave Wilkins, Cian Tormey, Gavin Spence, Gavin Fullerton, Philip Knott, John Allison, Mina Won, Rui Onishi, John Wycough, Martin Gee, David Rodriguez, Aubrey Sitterson, Sean Ryan, Cullen Bunn, Mags Visaggio, Lane Lloyd, Gavin Guidry, Leonardo Ito, Christina-Antoinette Neofotistou, Christos Gage, Matt Frank, Christian Ward, Luca Pizzari, Hal Laren, Diego Zuniga, Suna Margevich, Zerob, Lantana Gao, Jamel Jones, Ronda Pattinson, Colm Griffin, Camila Fortuna, John Jennings, Andy Duggan, Emilio Lopez, Anthony Pugh, Sebastien Stone, and the likely dozens of other creators who I never got to work with but who touched this big beautiful series! Extra special thanks to Riley Farmer and John Barber who absolutely deserve their own callout. And thanks to the people who facilitated my love of TF over the years so I could bring my passion to this series for so long, from my parents, to my partner Becca (and their TF who's in the last issue of Wreckers, Honk)! Finally--seriously, finally--thanks to you! Thanks for reading TF at any point in the IDW run or for, god help you, having read through this whole long post.

With that, I'm calling it for the year! It's unlikely you'll get anything til January, but I guess not completely impossible if I want to share some wrap-up/resolutiony type stuff before the new year starts. If this is it for 2022, thanks for joining the first year of my blog and my website and the first few months of my newsletter and my Tumblr if you're reading there! Happy holidays and see you next year!

Things I've been enjoying this week: Jaz Joyner came and visited yesterday and that was awesome! Honkai Impact (Video game). Chainsaw Man (Anime & Manga). Spy x Family (Anime). Star Saber (Toy). The Simpsons (TV show). Lego Masters (TV show). The promise of reading time that comes with an extended holiday break. And, of course, Transformers.

New Releases this week (12/14/2022): Transformers: Shattered Glass II #5 (Supervising Editor--Our last TF book).

New releases next week (12/21/2022): Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island #3 (Editor)

Final Order Cutoff (12/19/2022): Godzilla Rivals: Round 1 Collection (I didn't have anything to do with this, but I feel obligated to plug Godzilla!) Godzilla Monsters & Protectors: All Hail the King #5 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog Vol. 13: Battle for the Empire (Includes the milestone issue #50 - Editor)

Announcements: Becca and I have started applying for cons in 2023! Hope to have some updates on those soon!

In the meantime, you can pick up some of my work at the shop on my website and you can get Becca's stuff at their website. Pochita keychain pre-orders are only open for a couple more days, so get on it! Supporting us now can help us get to those cons!

And with Twitter going sideways yet again, as a reminder, you can find me on other socials through my website or at my Linktree.

Lastly, a plea for my peers with hiring power in the industry. There's literally a list above of some of the most kick-ass, dedicated, and amazing creators I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I want all of them to continue to thrive, so please, if you have stuff, hire them for it. Even if I am also trying to hire them. Make a better offer. Steal them from me. I'll be salty about it, but also, will sleep happily knowing that these folks are getting the recognition they so richly deserve. Also, hire Becca while you're at it. We're both hoping to be able to announce some new comics stuff in the new year, but take advantage of getting them before they blow up!

-David

#transformers idw #transformers #idw comics #last bot standing #king grimlock #beast wars #comics #goodbye tf #comics secrets #but not actually that secret or spicy #wreckers #wreck and rule

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