Author's Reflections- Comics #80 & 81

#80

#81

#80 & 81

Since the readers on TFW2005 seemed to like the Peanut Gallery characters I thought I’d give them their own little adventure within the storyline. Cliffjumper wanting to poke the hole with a stick was totally random but something I thought was funny (thankfully some of the readers said they did too!). The explosion resulted in the Champions being introduced. I went through several different ideas for these four toys before settling on what made it into the strip. The most prominent one that has stuck in my head was introducing them as the ‘Kosherbots’ and give them Jewish stereotypes as characterization, but a) I thought it might be offensive to some and b) the no religion talk rule on the chat board gave me serious second thoughts; even though I wasn’t going to come out and have any type of religion jokes it would be obvious enough it made me worried. So thankfully I came up with the idea of portraying them as self-proclaimed super heroes. “By the Files of Mount Hard Drive” is probably one of my personal favorite lines so far, even if it did go unnoticed by readers. I really liked how Hound, Cliffjumper and Hot Shot just didn’t want to deal with them so sent them in Optimus’ direction. In the original script I has written in that Hound would fully give them the name Optimus Prime, but changed it when I had the idea for the next strips…



Author's Reflections- Comic #79

 

#79

This strip is pretty much just a short bridge between the original introduction of the Knockoffs and the next phase of the storyline. Flattened Starscream turned out pretty well, and we hear the last about Shockwave for awhile but there’s nothing else outstanding about the comic. The Peanut Gallery panel was what forwarded the plot along.

Author's Reflections- Comics #74-78

#74

#75

#76

#77

#78

#74-78

Since the next few strips deal with the same plot I’ll group them together. I also got these knockoffs at a KB Toy outlet, though they’re of much worse quality than the others and pretty inarticulate. I tried not to make them real ‘evil’ characters, even if I did put Decepticon stickers on them. I did my best to portray them as more whiny and second-rate crook-like. For those not familiar with it, the Valkyrie joke comes from the Macross/ Veritech transforming jet design being used for the Jetfire toy in the 80’s. Hasbro had wanted to include the character in the Transformers TV show (character design sheets have surfaced on the internet in past years) but were threatened with a Lawsuit by Bandai if they did so due to the rival Robotech cartoon. Hasbro changed the cartoon model (similar to the Classics Jetfire toy) and renamed the character Skyfire in order to introduce the new character. Knockora-Offina is my not so subtle way of classifying the characters from the Blue Hole as Knockoffs. The dialogue about why there’s so few of them left and their primary export being tears is probably my standout favorite part of these strips.

Author's Reflections- Comic #73

#73

Right off the bat I threw in a Futurama reference with Megatron’s Crushinator comment. Here we see the first appearance of the initial group of Knockoffs. I got these at a KB Toy Liquidation Outlet for super cheap. They’re of terrible quality but interesting to mess around with. The short Knockoffs (now known as ‘Double Turn’) random lines are straight from real-life exchanges with my friends in the past. I had already put Autobot and Decepticon labels on the Knockoffs I had bought in preparation for this story arc so I realized I had to come up with an excuse for them. The explanation of the characters having them to signify if they’re good or bad worked out alright. Not one of my better ideas, but I could have done worse I think. Up until this point Hot Shot had remained fairly neutral for the most part so I thought I’d have him and Cliffjumper gang up on poor Hound a couple times just to mix things up.