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We had the pleasure to talk to the writer and artist of the new Transformers series from Skybound, Daniel Warren Johnson, to get to know more about what to expect in the coming months along with an explanation for the big spoiler moment. Below is a summary of what was discussed.
Firstly, it was interesting to see that while Johnson grew up with the Transformers brand and was heavily influence by Geoff Senior for his art style, he has been removed from the modern Transformers content and discussion. So don't expect new characters to show up, even those which have retroactively become part of "G1" fiction, like Drift, Barricade or Windblade. The stories will instead have characters he is ore familiar with, though there may certainly be some G1 deepcuts.
The first issue had a passing remark regarding Megatron's absence and Johnson was not going to tell us more about that. BUT he did explain to us why he picked Bumblebee as the character to bite the dust in the first issue. At a basic level, the scene was made to establish to both new readers and the human characters in the story who were the good guys and the bad guys and how ruthless the bad guys are. Plus, since this comic is meant to be as accessible as possible, Johnson wanted to have well known characters, including the one who dies. This had nothing to do with Bumblebee's overexposure in the past 15 years, though it is interesting to note that Johnson never had a great affinity to Bumblebee growing up.
While the book has a very familiar premise for anyone who grew up in the G1 era, the book is meant to be accessible to all and Johnson asks us to leave everything we know at the door. The story he will be telling is fresh and new. It will be written as a series of arcs, with no end planned at the moment. At the same time though, Johnson is adamant to make each issue feel satisfying in its own right, as we saw with the first issue, with a full character arc for Jetfire. This is something extremely important to him.
A change we felt was significant was the talk of time. In most Transformers fiction, eras are measured in "millions of years" be it the Cybertronian war or the time between the Arc crashing and the bots awakening. Johnson changed that to "hundreds of years" in the dialogue since it felt more logical, but the impact story wise is minimal. It wasn't that big a decision for him and Hasbro had no notes on it. Speaking of Hasbro's involvement, they did give him feedback about the way he draws Optimus' hands. While they would want them to look less human, Johnson is sticking to the Geoff Senior school of robot hands, which are simply human hands with some rings drawn on the fingers. It is also less taxing for him, since he does have the double duty of being the writer and artist.
Speaking of that double duty, it gives an added layer to what we see in the comic and which characters appear. For instance, the cassette Soundwave chooses to deploy is Ravage. Johnson, as a writer, wanted to include this character that he loves and Johnson as an artist really wanted him in the story because it adds a different kind of element to draw. Him being an animal makes him fun to draw and adds contrast to the more blocky shapes of the other bots.
Those were the main parts of the interview, if you want to watch the full interview, you can do so below. But please be aware of some issues with framerate and the interviewer going on some random rants/tangents.
We have good news for those liking the retro G1 Reissue line, which has the G1 toys in a cartoon inspired deco. Firstly, they are a main subject of an interview between the ToysareRuss Youtube channel and Hasbro's Transformers marketing team. They go over what we can expect from the line going forwards.
Also, as most of us guessed and hoped, we will be getting a Skywarp. This is great news for all of us wanting to complete a set of seekers in matching deco.
The code for Skywarp was found by JTPrime17.
Tra Gen Retro Skywarp
Product number: F6952
Here is a gallery of the original G1 Skywarp toy for those interested:
Regardless of what you think of the Rise of the Beasts film, it shows that the director and writers did see the robots as the titular characters that they are rather than giant props in the background. Steven Caple Jr, the director was a fan of the source material and did good on his word to provide a Transformers movie with a focus on the Transformers as much as he could (we previously wrote why that's usually not the norm in these films). So it begs to reason why Wheeljack was such a change from his previous look, especially when he had a more accurate look in the Bumblebee movie. Well, it turns out that this decision and push was out of his hands according to this interview from UPROXX. From the interview below, we see that this more nerdy look came from the higher ups, be that Hasbro or Paramount (not that it matters, both companies must sign off on these decisions) and that Wheeljack's look was changed so that he can be more different from the rest of the cast, both in look and the personality inferred by the look. Also, we've gotten early designs of the film which show that Wheeljack's new design was done at a very preliminary stage of production, before Caple was even attached to the film. And it remained this way. Along with Wheeljack, ee have other "previs" designs to share with you from Fred Pashe, who also worked on Beast Machines back in the day. Enjoy!
"When I got into the film, they had already wanted the Wheeljack part of this picture, but they wanted to redesign it and actually lean more into the science and nerdy part of Wheeljack. They felt like the Wheeljack – I don’t know if this is the studio or Hasbro who was here before me – he was kind of falling into the lane of the other characters. Kind of tough. Ironhide, and those kind of vibes. Just didn’t feel like enough variety across the board. And so, for me as a fan, I was like, “All right, how can I keep some of the essence?” But I was like, I’m going to just dive deep into the lore and just gave him his whole sort of personality and a different look as we start to now develop and move on. But yeah, that was it. It was no shade or callbacks to the other Wheeljack at all. But people started calling Pablo Wheeljack, which I thought was kind of funny. And Cristo likes it too. He’s like, “I’m down for that.” Cristo Fernandez, who plays him, which is cool."
We thank White Bear PR for putting us in touch with Jongnic Bontemps (aka JB), the composer for the film Transformers Rise of the Beasts. While we of course hope you watch the interview, we have a summary of the key points below. While we do mostly talk about the film itself, there are some interesting bits that could interest those wanting to compose in hollywood as well as parents who would want their kids more engaged with the musical instrument they are learning. Also, please note that this interview was done before the movie's release.
Summary of key points:
- JB grew up with the Transformers brand and his favourite transformers toy was G1 Optimus Prime (with trailer)
- We go over the basics of composition, how even though it involves an entire orchestra, it all starts with a single melody and then the various instruments are included at various moments or renditions
- JB discusses how they got Steven Jablonksy involved in the score and the transition from themes of the previous films into this new one.
- JB does include parts of the Unicron theme from the original 86 Transformers movie within the film. He also notes the irony of how those chilling notes for this immense being come from a tiny glass harmonica (originally)
- JB then talks about the leap of faith he took and the massive investment he made to show the studio his vision of the theme for this film and how what you hear in the film came to be.
- We end on a extra tip for parents who are bringing their kids to music lessons and want to keep them engaged. The key is to make them play something they like and weave that with the more classical compositions they need to learn to hone their skills.
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