We have quite an interesting project to share with you today. James Roberts, former IDW More Than Meets The Eye writer, is planning a book for the fortieth anniversary of the Transformers brand, covering the fandom and notably zine culture of the pre-Internet / early Internet era of the previous century.
According to James Roberts’ Twiiter it would be a large format, photo-heavy book, part reference guide, part history, containing interviews with a host of zine editors and contributors from an era where content was no easy to be shared around the globe.
Jame Roberts is also asking for contributors to this project. If you own or know of or made or contributed to Transformers fanzines published in the 20th century, get in touch by e-mailing James Roberts at [email protected].
Time will tell if this book will see the light, but we are sure many fans would be glad to share and contribute to it. Click on the discussion link below and share your impressions on the 2005 Boards!
Xero Prime
I'll have to dig them out, from primus know where, but I have a few low published non-official comics from that era.. The joys of ATT.
GrimCharr
Interesting. Partially outing my real life, here, I was on Usenet in the 90s (through a college computer lab wherein we could connect to Unix networks) and participated on the boards there. I even started spontaneously writing fanfic when I burned out on writing papers on more mundane college subjects. How I even got my start with writing fiction. Belonged to a community back then. I was then out of it for quite a while until randomly finding Transformers Prime made me seek out the current communities online.
Murasame
Sounds interesting. I would not have expected there would have been any of this before the Internet.
But I wish they would just finish the Transformers Classics UK books
YoungPrime
In all seriousness JG1 needs to then follow up with why they made Transformers dialog, plot and fight scenes like that… JRo's take of StarSaber didn't bother me because I couldn't get past the Headmaster's season. It was just too goofy, so if JRo had the same mindset then I understand why he changed some of the characters… It was "Primus hates you" on many levels..
YoungPrime
Sounds interesting.
captain N
I Hope for the 40th there\'s more then a book coming. Something better then Earthspark. Hasbro do something TRANSTECH.
[Wing_Saber-X]
More obscure G1 Japanese stuff please!
Mouthwash
Hella excited to see this come to fruition. As a post-G1-era fan,+ learning about the earlier fandom is always a treat, and zine culture in general is always fun to read about. This book would represent a very enticing combination of my interests. James Roberts heading the project is of course, the icing on the cake.
Dictionaryabot8407
OoooOOOooh! This should be cool.
BigRed
This is amazing. The brit side of the fandom was always extremely engaged yet we got very little recollection and write-downs of that side of the fanbase.
Black Convoy
To the front you go!
Girl Pants
JRo should title the zine book "Find out what I was referencing when I made IDW Star Saber Like That".
Jokes aside, this is something that would be fun to learn about. Europe has a pretty unique experience between a load of exclusive Marvel stuff, some (but not all) of Japanese G1 brought over, and then getting all that late G1 stuff (which only some of which would go anywhere else during G2).
Oniconvoy
I would be all over the zines project! That’s an era that needs a lot more coverage. Hope this gets front-paged to help spread the word.
@Black Convoy
SHIELD Agent 47
And Roberts is taking orders for notebooks volumes 1 to 4!
https://twitter.com/jroberts332/status/1697567794806628395
SHIELD Agent 47
Moderators, you may move this to "General Discussion" or "Comics Discussion" if you see fit to do so as I do not know if this project is sanctioned by Hasbro.
As you may know, James Roberts, the renowned writer of The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye at IDW Publishing in the 2010s, is a graduate of the fanfiction group Transmasters UK (TMUK), from which fellows such as Nick Roche and Jack Lawrence also got creative experiences in their younger days of the 1980s and 1990s before going on to do official Transformers work. Now, Roberts is planning a book for the fortieth anniversary of the Transformers brand, covering the fandom and notably zine culture of the pre-Internet / early Internet era of the previous century. He is appealing to anyone who may still have such old printed material in their possession to contact him so he can comprehensively cover all aspects of the fandom.
https://twitter.com/jroberts332/status/1695730796248633848
And in the meantime, I am also plugging his MTMTE notebooks. If you would like to read behind-the-scenes details on what went into the comic series, you can soon order copies from him.
https://twitter.com/jroberts332/status/1692797286500225329