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Your Future Nostalgia. Today. | ||
| www.asmzine.com / www.alteredstatesmag.com | |||
| August 8, 2008 |
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Interview by Matthew Karpowich, Reporter, and
Andrew Sorohan Part 2: Transformers - General QuestionsMatthew Karpowich: What were your impressions when writing your first issues of Transformers? Did you have any idea that you'd be writing about these characters years later? Simon Furman: None at all. It was a job and I was glad to have it. I had no concept - throughout TF UK, TF US, TF Gen 2 - that there was this huge and enduring fan base. Sure, I was aware (certainly after a year or two on the UK strip) that people read and cared about what we were doing, but I assumed it was a transitory thing. If someone had told me back in 1985 that I'd still be writing TF in 2002, I'd have laughed. Andrew Sorohan: The Transformers stories you wrote for Andrew Wildman tended to be more interpersonal, with tight character inter-actions, while the stories you wrote for Geoff Senior tended to be action-packed and fast-paced. Did you write your stories to fit an artist's style, or are these differences simply due to the differences between artists? SF: There was a certain amount of playing to the artist's strengths, but that implies a lot more forward planning than there actually was. On the UK comic, I'd just write a batch of scripts and then have them assigned to whatever artist was available. It was rare you'd get the same artist on both parts of even a two-part story. On the TF US comic, once Andrew was onboard, I simply wrote. I knew he could do small and personal as well as big and epic, so there was no problem. When Geoff stepped in to do #75, it was simply a happy coincidence. It suited his style, perhaps more than it would have done Andrew's, but then I'd love now to have seen what Andrew would have done with that issue. I was just lucky, I guess, to have had two such talented artists on the book. Matthew: You wrote over a hundred issues of Transformers between your UK and US runs, but did you ever have any input on the line besides scripting comics? For instance, did you write the later Transformers Universe entries? What about the bio/tech spec cards found on the Hasbro toys packages? Was Marvel still contributing to those by the time you joined the US comics? SF: All the bio/tech spec/Universe type stuff came from Bob Budiansky. I was never involved. All I ever did was take the odd peripheral character (like Bludgeon or Thunderwing) and slightly upgrade them for the purposes of the stories I wanted to tell. Andrew: You were editor of the UK reprints of US stories. In some cases you were forced to re-write entire sections of dialogue so that the stories would fit into the UK stories. Were you ever tempted to re-dialogue entire issues for the fun of it? SF: No, and to be honest I'm not sure it would have been much fun. In and of themselves, the US stories I thought were pretty good in their own right. The only problem came with fitting them in with the UK stories, lacing the one into the other seamlessly (which it probably never was). The only real problem we had was the US issue/adaptation of the cartoon episode, The Big Broadcast of 2005 (?). That flew in the face of all our UK Galvatron-centric continuity, so we had to create a framing sequence that explainned it all away as junior fiction. Now that was fun. Andrew: Of the various restrictions placed on your writing by working on a "toy comic," the most obvious was having to introduce whatever new gimmick or toy Hasbro was introducing. Were there any gimmicks in particular you really disliked, or really enjoyed using? SF: Often, it wasn't so much the gimmick that was the problem, but the timing. Take the Special Teams, which debuted in UK #63. In terms of what we were reprinting from the US series, the Aerialbots (and so on) first appearance was some way off, but Hasbro UK wanted the Special Teams in. So, their appearance became a Matrix-induced dream of the future, courtesy of Buster Witwicky. The same with Headmasters, really. I dunno, these stories always felt a little forced. The gimmick I thought was scraping the bottom of the barrel was Action Masters, the ones that didn't transform. And yet, strangely, they became the backbone of quite an important storyline in my US run. Matthew: You've written numerous stories starring Grimlock, leader of the Dinobots. This might seem out of sorts, but - what exactly do you think his name means, if anything? SF: I do think the name, especially with TF characters, should reflect that character's nature. And Grimlock somehow just sounds surly and intransigent. What it means, I have no idea, but for The War Within (my Dreamwave retro-Cybertron series) I did ask Don (Figueroa) to give him a grapple gun type appendage, to maybe explain the 'lock' bit of his name. Matthew: Next to Grimlock, Swoop appeared to be your favorite Dinobot, and was in a number of stories - but his toy was never sold in the UK. Did this ever create problems with the Hasbro UK, who probably wanted more toy characters featured? SF: Hasbro UK had no problem with us using Swoop, and generally didn't give us major problems about who would could or couldn't feature. Swoop was in the US continuity, and so was in the UK continuity (as we had married the two). Swoop was a cool toy, I had one back then and have one again, just as a sort of desk top ornament. Andrew: One of the best Swoop stories was "Grudge Match," in which Swoop tries to get back his Cybertronian name from Divebomb. The story seemed to come from a revelation in issue 44 of the UK comics that Swoop's name on Cybertron was "Divebomb." I've wondered now for years: did you actually know there was going to be a Transformer called Divebomb or did you just luck out with this one? SF: It was pure fluke. I think it's in UK #46, that Prime mentions his original name. And it was much later that the Predacons debuted. But hey - I've never been one ingore a glaring story idea! 1 | 2 | 3: Transformers - Specific Questions | 4
ASM would like to thank Simon Furman for taking the time to answer these
questions. We would also like to thank The Obscure Transformers Website
(http://www.obscuretf.tk)
for their help with this interview. And be sure to visit It's Walky!
(http://www.itswalky.com)
for daily fun and angst.
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