Courtesy of the Triple Takeover YouTube channel, we can share for you a very interesting interview with G1 Transformers Comics Writer Bob Budiansky.
Hosts are Sixo, Liam, Jason and Maz, well-known members of the Transformers community, and they bring us a 1:44 minute interview with the legendary writer of the classic Marvel Transformers comic and, indeed, the creator of many of the series’ most iconic characters, Bob Budiansky! Bob takes us on a tour of the Marvel days in the 1980’s and recounts many of his memories from putting the series together.
Not much left to say, so listen to the podcast after the jump via YouTube, or via on Spotify, all major podcast hosts, at Tripletakeover website.
Ikkstakk
Huh. Just coincidence he decided not to use those characters much, then, I guess.
It's crazy to think that Hasbro didn't even send a note back to Bob saying to the effect of "Please be aware Sunstreaker is now the character with the rocket backpack and piledriver arms and flares, Sideswipe is now the character with the shoulder launcher." It's simply keeping one of your primary creators in the loop. It's the definition of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I get the sense Hasbro themselves didn't realize or care that they had created an inconsistency.
Sixo
So this actually came up with Bob on Twitter a few years back and here's what he had to say at the time… possibly not the answer you're looking for but there it is!
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World Turtle
I would love to ask him about his creative process for all the different personalities. What he used to help him think up or pick the various character traits.
Granted that answer might be in one of his interviews.
shamanking282
The thing I’ve always hoped might exist are extended profiles for at least the 87-88 characters who didn’t get published profiles since the comic ended. And in my greatest delusions perhaps even 89 characters.
TherealErector09
Ah, the creator of most G1 characters, gald to see him still humbled and stuff
IGEBM
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In addition, there’s a bunch of bots who Budiansky wrote profiles for (the Omnibots, the Deluxe Insecticons, etc) but who never had them published in either TFU or the back of an ongoing issue at all, and they wouldn’t be seen until he started putting them up on the Disciples of Boltax blog. It’d be nice if they were included (with his permission, of course) in a future collection as well, plus some 80s-style character models for them.
SwittCraft
Every time i read his name my internal voice is Chris McFeely saying it in his Basics videos.
Ikkstakk
I've always wanted to ask Bob about Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. We know when he was creating them based on the toys, the toys he was looking at were the ones we know today as Spinout and Tigertrack. When Hasbro swapped their bios and colors after he turned in his work, they caused the bios, stats and abilities he wrote to no longer make much sense.
He's always quick to point out that he "did his job, and Hasbro could do whatever they wanted after that." But in the early days, Bob was writing these characters every month, and therefore was subject to Hasbro's whims, and especially in this case the alterations made it potentially difficult to write those characters. And I've always wondered if that's why Bob chose to kill off Sunstreaker right away and just never use Sideswipe as more than a walk-on.
GrimCharr
I'm enjoying these podcasts. Listening to these guys who were ever present names in my childhood.
When BB was good, he wrote some of the most memorable Transformers G1 lore. But I could tell even as a kid he got burned out. Random thoughts:
As I got older, I realized the specific complaints that people in the comic industry had. They were young creatives who probably felt embarrassed to be writing comics that were toy advertising. When they maybe imagined themselves as glamorous, sneering, counter-culture creatives living like Picasso or Bukowski.
Because licensed comics paid less to artists and writers, a lot of creatives did not want them if they could easily get something else.
Which, one realizes, is pretty insidious in retrospect. Considering how much both Larry Hama and Bob Budiansky did to make those brands lasting and profitable for the companies involved.
One of the best decisions Hasbro made was to allow the Sunbow cartoons and the comic to exist in different simultaneous continuities. Which allowed Transformers to have absolutely loose canon from the start. Which has always helped in how many iterations and reboots it has. It let me enjoy both while also making my own canon in my own head, which later leaked into my own fan-fic. Gave me inspiration to make my own stories.
I really wish there had been a higher threshold for the art in those comics. I know that comic book artists sometimes are great at drawing human bodies in motion. But not always experts at backgrounds (like Bob was saying.) And many of them vocally hate having to draw cars and other real-world items which are difficult to keep in perspective. Transformers is a whole book of drawing robots and vehicles, less humans. Only a few artists in the pre-digital era were able to do that well with enough speed. Herb Trimpe was one, but he wasn't on many of the Hasbro books for long. And someone like John Byrne wasn't going to do them.
No shade on Jose Delbo and Don Perlin. But I bet both of them went to art school to draw beautiful women. Thumbing through their books, it's easy to see them indulging in every human (and especially female) shape they could. (That also was memorable to my younger self.)
If I could see some of the creatives felt that working on toy advertising was beneath them, I could also tell that Simon Furman embraced it because he seemed to love doing it.
Thundershot
The *masters are excused because they didn’t exist when the original Universe book was done, but Steeljaw, Sandstorm, and Eject WERE in the original limited series, so it’s strange to find they’re excluded from the TPB.
Driskull98
Heads up, @Black Convoy Bob's name is misspelled in both the news article and the title of it. "Budianski" instead of the proper "Budiansky".
Robomaster726
Oh yeah. It's absolutely missing characters. I mean none of the -master characters are in it, Steeljaw (yet strangely Ramhorn has a profile page).
Thundershot
Wait, the TPB is missing characters? Because those characters were absolutely in the individual issues.
IDW inserted them into the alphabetical order of the original profiles when they reprinted them (for better or worse, with varying degrees of success). So instead of starting with Air Raid, Astrotrain, etc, it starts with Afterburner, Air Raid, Apeface, Astrotrain…
Ikkstakk
Lorenzo next week?! Wow… from one of the most beloved of the fandom to one of the most hated… this show has range!
IGEBM
Yeah, I love character profiles, and the TFU ones are some of my favorites.
Come to think of it, it’d be really cool if Skybound took the profiles from the backs of #47-#79 and reprinted them as The Transformers: Universe II (or something like that).
(Granted, there’d still be tons of missing profiles, but it’s better than nothing lol)
Robomaster726
Yup indeed. This is the one. Shame there weren't more resulting in a second volume trade. I mean there are characters on the front and back covers who don't have profiles in the book. Rewind and Eject, Broadside, Sandstorm, Pipes…
Sixo
Thank you! Appreciate that. We have some more amazing interview chats on the way, including next week's ep with Lorenzo di Bonaventura & Josh Cooley!
Yep! Bob created about 250 names & profiles in total. Incredible.
I carried this book everywhere with me as a kid. In many ways, this might be Bob's most important contribution to the franchise from my perspective. Cannot overstate how much I adored it and still do.
IGEBM
I think the collection of all four Universe issues from 1987
![[IMG]](https://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/7/79/Universe01.jpg)
Poe Ghostal
Could I ask, what trade are you referring to?
BB Shockwave
Interesting, so Optimus Prime and Prowl were the only names that came from before his involvement.