Author's Reflections - Comic #106

 

#106

 

In the original cartoon the Constructicon characters never did get a definitive origin. In their first appearance it was said they were created on Earth after the Autobots and Decepticons crash landed. Another episode showed them years before the Transformers came to Earth on Cybertron in a flashback sequence as neutral characters before Megatron turned them evil. And yet another flashback sequence showed eight of them (there were only six of them) around a table as the creators of Megatron. This joke is another one the fans like to throw around, and that’s the entire premise of the first three panels of this strip.

 

The rest of the panels were just my excuse to re-do the first strip using photoshop to create a space background and show the characters in a better scale as they were seen in the 1986 movie. Skywarp (the black and purple jet just up above Megatron in panel 4) is shown without most of its accessories as an homage to the TF2005 Funnies Moderator Buzzbeak who created ‘Incomplete Skywarp’ for his own comics. I think out of the three ‘ghost’ visions, Cliffjumper’s is my favorite just based on the dialogue between him and Megatron!



Author's Reflections - Comic #105

#105

 

Rather than jump right into the visions, I thought I’d give each Peanut Gallery member a chance to introduce themselves as the ghosts. Cliffjumper’s here turned out great, I really tried hard to have both characters gruff personalities play off of each other. Although I wanted to use Cliffjumper, Hound and Hot Shot in the actual strip I didn’t necessarily want to leave them out of the commentary panel either. I treated it as sort of a ‘recorded from a live earlier telecast’ type of deal, and let them comment on themselves at the same time. I really ended up liking that aspect.

Author's Reflections - Comic #104

#104

 

At this point I was at a loss of exactly where I wanted to take it so I thought I’d throw in the old ‘Christmas Carol’ story as a bridge until I was satisfied with a resolution. It ended up working out great since of course I had my three ghosts obviously set up with Hot Shot, Hound and Cliffjumper so I decided I’d stretch it out to a few a strips. Megatron’s last line was originally supposed to be “…so bad it gave me The Clap” firstly in reference to a similar Futurama joke, but The Clap is the name of one of my best friend’s musical duos. For some reason I changed it to leukemia instead…I don’t have any clue why I did, and I really wish I’d have left it as it originally was.

Author's Reflections - Comic #103

#103

 

There’s really nothing about this strip that stands out in my opinion. I wanted to get Optimus out of the picture so Unicron and Megatron could have an exchange on their own, and having him tell Unicron he’d go get the Matrix was the easiest way to do that. I remember in panel 4 where Unicron is holding Optimus upside down I took a bunch of rubber bands and wrapped them around Optimus’ feet and Unicron’s hand and had to pull off some funky balancing maneuvers to get both of them to stand up. I think I established a bit of tension between Unicron and Megatron in the last couple panels, though I do wish I had have put Unicron in a ‘talk to the hand’ type of pose for the last one!

Author's Reflections - Comic #102

#102

 

Since Megatron and Unicron did all the talking in the previous strip, I wanted a dialogue between Unicron and Optimus. In Unicron’s first appearance in the 1986 G1 movie, he wanted to destroy the Autobot Matrix since it was the only that could destroy him. His over exaggerated line in panel two here is my way of replicating the way Orson Welles’ read the line for the old movie. Beyond that line I never did go into detail on why the Unicron in my strip wanted the Matrix, I think in the back of my mind I just assumed every Transformer fan has seen the ‘86 Movie and would understand what Unicron’s deal was. Unicron’s three-phase plan is taken straight from South Park’s Underpants Gnomes episode, which I openly admit I ‘stole’ in the strip. I have to say I was pretty happy with the way my little freehand doodles turned out in the three-phase plan word bubble! It was a last minute decision to throw them in there and I’m glad I did. It added a little something extra visually to the panel.

Author's Reflections - Comic #101

#101

 

When Unicron showed up I wanted to play off his appearance in strip #12, as if he was patiently waiting all this time for Megatron to call but was shunned. In strip #101 I wanted to elaborate on that idea by giving Unicron and Megatron a fight similar to one that two people in a relationship would have when one didn’t call the other when they said they would. I’m in NO way insinuating a relationship between Megatron and Unicron! The funny part (to me, or the way I intended anyway) was Unicron, always shown as the ultimate bad guy in Transformers fiction, being more hurt by the fact he never heard back from Megatron than anything else. I really liked Hound and Hot Shot’s exchange in the Peanut Gallery panel.

Author's Reflections- Comic #100

#100

 
I definitely wanted to do something big for the landmark #100. Since the last time we had seen Unicron was waaaaaay back in strip #12, I thought it would be perfect to have him show up for the event…but I only wanted him to come in at the very end. I decided for most of the strip it would work to have Optimus and Megatron be the only characters featured trying to work out a truce, then bring in Unicron at the end. I didn’t want to immediately jump into a long story arc again after just finishing the Blue Hole story one strip earlier, but since I enjoy writing, I guess my brain automatically thinks in long-term elaborate storylines. I was very happy with the way strip #100 turned out, even if it’s not the most engaging comic in my vault. I think Unicron’s one line and the huge bugged out cartoon eyes not only on Optimus and Megatron but also Hound, Cliffjumper and Hot Shot turned out really well too.