Monday, December 2, 2013

Author's Reflections - Comic #115






#115
 
I was still at a loss where to take the story so I had no script or pictures ready and I remember thinking I’d take a few weeks off to get everything figured out. Then I came up with the idea of featuring Ultra Magnus, Kup and Springer in their own little story that pertained to the underlining story arc as well. Ideas came pouring in, but I needed a way to introduce them into the story. Since I hadn’t planned on posting the strip for awhile the idea of ‘showing’ the three characters in a darkened closet and letting the dialogue move the story along. In fact I vaguely recall running home during my lunch break at work to take the picture for the Peanut Gallery panel so I could get going on it the same day. I won’t go into detail right now about who the mysterious voice was that showed the three out of the closet…it took me 255 comics and nearly two years to find the perfect opportunity to make the big reveal, but I knew exactly who I wanted it to be at this point. I’ll be talking more about that in  255 more commentaries!

Author's Reflections - Comic #114







#114
 
At this point I wasn’t completely sure where I wanted to take the storyline. I threw in this strip to give Megatron and Unicron some more interaction, but it didn’t really do anything for the storyline further than that. At the very least it completely gave the ‘Christmas Carol’ storyline some closure, and the Peanut Gallery panel was pretty amusing…but otherwise it still doesn’t do anything for me better or for worse.

Author's Reflections - Comics #112-113

#112
 





#113
 







#112-113

Looking back on them, I honestly could have lumped both of these strips together into one comic. With Rodimus still carrying the Matrix I thought it would be fun to add some conflict between him and Optimus, who was technically still in charge despite not holding the Matrix. Rather than portray Rodimus and an unsure borderline whiny character like he was in season 3 of the G1 cartoon I made him totally confident and enjoying his role as leader. It was really the turning point in Hot Rod/ Rodimus Prime’s characterization in my comic…up until now he was seen as an eager youngster eager to please Optimus in comparison to the power hungry sarcastic character who’s fed up with his leader’s incompetence he’s seen as now. But, as usual I’m getting ahead of myself and that’s something that can be discussed at further length later on.

Author's Reflections - Comic #111








#111

 
I decided to throw Ultra Magnus, Springer and Kup back into the mix of things and it made sense for fellow G1 season 3 character Hot Rod/ Rodimus Prime to be spending time with them since I had established that Optimus didn’t want much to do with them. This strip segued into an inadvertent little sub story featuring Magnus, Kup and Springer, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit despite the three of them not being some of my favorite childhood characters. I think that’s probably because they weren’t the standard Transformers I’d been used to writing for in the strip, so it gave me a chance to establish some new characters, as average as they may be. This is the first appearance of Optimus’ infamous ‘prodding stick’!

Friday, May 17, 2013

Author's Reflections - Comic #110







 
#110
 
I thought a good ending for the short ‘sub-story’ would be for Hot Shot to inadvertently talk Megatron out of the truce. It worked out in Unicron’s favor, who was the one who initiated the whole three ghosts storyline, and it really doesn’t sit right to have Optimus and Megatron be friends so I really never intended that to last long anyway. I really like Hot Shot’s line in the Peanut Gallery here.

Author's Reflections - Comic #109







 
#109
 
I wanted Hot Shot’s introduction to be short and funny. It wasn’t as short as I would have liked and not quite as funny either. But I still thought Hot Shot giving Megatron a ‘finger gesture’ and the lines “You’ll poop your processor” and “Up shut” were pretty good. Hot Shot has said ‘up shut’ a few other times since I first used it here.

Author's Reflections - Comic #108








 
#108
 
I like Megatron and Hound’s dialogue in this one as well, but I like Cliffjumper’s better. I did enjoy writing Hound’s increasing frustration with Megatron as the strip goes on, and the obvious joke of Starscream trying to take over every time Megatron was away worked really well for this particular strip. The reason the other Decepticons aren’t in the background of panel 6 is that I had taken all the pictures for the ‘three ghosts’ story at the same time and when I downloaded them and started to put them together I realized I had forgotten to take the picture for it and had to go back the next day and do it. I didn’t want to set all the other toys up again so I just took the picture without them. 

Author's Reflections - Comic #107






 
#107
 
The only standout line in Hound’s introduction is of course “Peace through Boobies”, a play on the quote from the original Megatron toy’s packaging tech specs. I honestly thought I was being clever with hot Shot’s line, but I had forgotten there was a similar joke (played out in a much longer way of course) on a Family Guy episode. You definitely can’t win them all!