AN
INTERVIEW WITH “UNCLE BOB”
Bob Budiansky wrote the American
Transformers series from issue 5-55, in doing so turning characters like
Shockwave, Ratchet, Blaster, Fortress Maximus and even hi-then-die’s like
Scrounge & Straxus into major parts of the Transformer mythos. Despite all
this, he’s much maligned for his later work and while Furman has been
interviewed a million or so times, nobody has ever talked with Budiansky over
his Transformers work.
Well, TMUK has and here’s the
interview below, as we chat with Bob over Ratbat, tech specs and Stan Lee’s
love of the Battlechargers…
How did you get the job editing and
later writing the Transformers comic?
In 1983 Marvel had made a deal with Hasbro to develop Hasbro’s new line of
toys, The Transformers, into a comic book, as Marvel had so successfully done
with GI Joe just a couple of years earlier. In November 1983, then-Marvel
editor-in-chief Jim Shooter asked me if I would be interested in writing some
material for it, specifically naming and developing some of the Transformers
characters. Shooter had already developed a treatment and some of the characters
with Denny O’Neill, but I believe they had some creative differences, so
Shooter came to me. And I know he went to a few other writers before he got to
me. At the time I was a staff editor, and I had pencilled a bunch of books, but
I hadn’t written that much, so it was understandable why I wasn’t at the top
of Shooter’s list. Nevertheless, I really appreciated the opportunity Shooter
was giving me. It was a rush job- naming and writing character descriptions for
about 20 characters, I think, and I had a little over a weekend to do it. Denny
had written a few of them- he named and wrote the bio for Optimus Prime, for
instance -but the bulk of the characters still remained to be done.
So over the next few days I named and gave personalities to the remaining
Transformers, Shooter liked them, Hasbro (which had to approve everything Marvel
did) liked them, and Shooter came to the conclusion that maybe I would be a good
choice to edit the mini-series. So that’s how I became editor.
I remember that for the writers of the mini-series- I believe Bill Mantlo, Ralph
Macchio and Jim Salicrup all had a hand in it -it was a challenge. Introducing
all these new characters and their back story all at once, trying to give at
least some of them interesting characterizations, fashioning a coherent
storyline that could run over four issues- just trying to tell them apart, all
of this was a struggle for the writers. Normally a four-issue
mini-series would have one writer. The fact that Transformers had three
speaks for itself.
At the end of the fourth issue, when we knew the Transformers would continue as
a regular series, Jim Salicrup was just about begging me to find someone to
replace him as writer (I don’t think Jim would disagree with that
characterization, but I apologize to him if I’m overstating his desire to
leave the book). So I went to Shooter and volunteered to take over the writing
chores. Since I was developing the characters already, I seemed like a natural
fit to Shooter for the job, so he agreed. The rule at Marvel at that time was
that you couldn’t edit what you wrote, so with issue #5, I ceased editing
Transformers and began writing it.
How much interaction did you have with the Transformers cartoon makers Sunbow
regarding stories and characterisation?
I remember going to some meetings early in the development of the series with
Sunbow people present. I think a couple of the later additions to the back
story, specifically when new lines of characters were being introduced by
Hasbro, may have been generated by Sunbow. I know all the characters and story
ideas for the Transformers movie came from Sunbow (I don’t know how much of it
was developed in-house by Sunbow). Otherwise, once the comic book series got
rolling, I generated almost all the names, personalities, and additions to the
Transformers back story for the next several years. After a
season or two on TV, the Transformers were relocated off of Earth. At
that point, there was very little connection between the comic book I was
writing and the TV show Sunbow was producing, other than the fact that I was
still generating the names and personalities of new characters, and that
material was passed on by Hasbro to Sunbow to use as Sunbow saw fit.
Who were the people at Marvel who created the tech specs for the Transformers
toys? Most sources say you did most or all of them, but others say that other
people at Marvel, i.e. Jim Shooter, did the original ones and no one is sure who
did the later ones.
Although it’s possible that Jim Shooter had something to do with it at the
beginning, I believe I created most if not all of those tech specs for about the
first five or six years worth of characters. I modelled mine after the specs
that fellow Marvel Editor Mark Gruenwald had created for his Marvel Universe
series for Marvel characters. I also wrote just about all of the packaging copy
for the Transformers toys that Hasbro put out during those years. All that
material was eventually reprinted in the Transformers Universe comic book
mini-series.
After the deaths of Optimus and Megatron, you took a slightly controversial
approach in making Ratbat the fuel auditor leader of the Decepticons and
Grimlock into a tyrannical leader of the Autobots. What was the inspiration for
this?
Remembering precisely what inspired me almost twenty years ago is a challenge,
but I’ll give it a try. I think the main thing was I wanted to shake things
up, and defy readers’ expectations. I didn’t want to focus on the same two
characters every issue. I couldn’t. I was always under pressure from Hasbro to
introduce new characters, particularly the characters based on the new toys
Hasbro was releasing every year. For example, the Dinobots were a big deal,
perhaps the first new set of Transformers after the initial
couple of dozen. So I highlighted them for a while and gave Grimlock a
big role in the storyline. I liked playing around with the idea that not every
Autobot was equally sensitive to humans. Whereas Optimus Prime was the idealized
leader of the heroes- brave, protective, noble, self-sacrificing -Grimlock and
his gang of Dinobots had personalities not quite as multi-faceted. They were
mainly concerned about being in charge and kicking some Decepticon butt.
You devoted a lot of time and character development to the characters Blaster
and Shockwave. What drew you to these characters?
This kind of goes back to my last answer. I just wanted to develop other
characters and not always focus on Optimus Prime and Megatron. I think in the
earlier issues that I wrote I was able to more successfully do that. As the
series developed, I was introducing so many new characters that it became a real
challenge to focus on anyone for more than an issue or two. As for why
specifically Blaster and Shockwave- I dunno. The toys probably just looked cool
to me, so I chose them. It could have just as easily been two other characters.
A criticism often thrown at the comic is that Starscream was hardly used. Was
this due to lack of time & space, or did you just not find the character
appealing?
I don’t think I had anything specifically against Starscream. I just chose
other directions to go in creatively. He did play a major role in the early
issues of the series and in the Underbase storyline, though.
What were your experiences with Hasbro?
I had a great time working with Hasbro. We didn’t always agree 100% of the
time, but more often than not we did. I worked with some excellent people there
who were very supportive of and receptive to my work. I think the first time I
went on a business trip to the Hasbro headquarters, I got some razzing because I
was wearing a jacket and tie. They were expecting a Marvel creative type to look
a bit less formal. After that, whenever I visited I dressed down.
In the story “Return to Cybertron”, you had the Decepticons melting down
Transformers in the vast Smelting Pools. What was the inspiration behind
the Smelting Pools?
Again asking about specifics from almost twenty years ago! I do remember that
that two-parter was among my favourite Transformers stories that I wrote. I’m
pretty sure the final scene in Terminator (where Arnold meets his melter), which
was in the theatres around then, was at least part of the inspiration for the
smelting pools- the idea that a robot would be destroyed in that manner. And
I’m sure there were other inspirations. I think I had a Clint Eastwood-type
character in mind when I was scripting Blaster in those stories. But it’s been
a while- maybe I was thinking of Woody Allen.
What were your thoughts on the later Transformers figures- the Headmasters,
Targetmasters, Pretenders etc?
I don’t have any real feelings for these characters, at least none that I can
recall now. By this point in the series’ development, when it seemed like
every other month Hasbro was rolling out new action figures and I had to figure
out ways to add them to the comic book’s storyline, these new characters often
seemed to be just clogging up the works. Enough already! I already have more
than enough characters to feature in the book. Those were at least some of my
thoughts, maybe all of them, about those characters.
Did you have problems with having to introduce new characters in with such
frequency?
See my previous answer. You bet! Just when I was developing a storyline and some
characters in some direction that I though was interesting, BOOM!- I have to
suddenly find room for another dozen. It was like having endless waves of
uninvited boat people wash up on your shore. For me, at least, it made writing
the book ever more challenging as my tenure on it lengthened. I think sometimes
I dealt with bringing new characters into the book better than others. But
don’t ask me which were the ones I did well and which ones I didn’t- I
don’t remember!
One of the defining traits of your stories was that you would bring in a
human character to interact with the various Transformers. Why did you use human
characters so often?
The Transformers were on Earth! Why shouldn’t they interact with humans? I
think I had the most fun having the two very different species cross
paths in various ways. If the Transformers weren’t going to deal with humans,
why have them wind up on a planet full of them? What would be the point of that?
I guess the people at Sunbow asked themselves the same question at some point
and decided they didn’t like the answer, because they eventually took the
Transformers off of Earth in the animated show, right? (I confess, I didn’t
watch the animated show, so I could be wrong.) I really felt that was what made
the idea of writing a Transformers comic book interesting to me- the idea that
these two species that are so different would suddenly find themselves in the
same world and would have to figure out ways to deal with it.
What was the idea behind the infamous Carwash of Doom story?
Again, the years have done a pretty good job covering that trail in my memory,
but I suspect it was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was a parody of
that movie. I believe we even had the letterer letter the story title in a
similar style to the movie title.
What were your feelings towards the title near the end of your run?
Relief at the prospect of leaving! After 50 issues or so, I was running on
fumes. Toward the end of my run, the book’s editor, Don Daley, persuaded me to
stay on for a couple of more issues than I wanted to, even got me to pencil some
of the last issue that I wrote. But I was ready to jump ship. I wanted to move
on to other projects. All the time I was writing the Transformers I was also a
full-time Marvel editor, so I didn’t have a lot of time to do much else
creatively.
In the final of the Underbase storyline, you killed off a vast amount of the
older characters. Was this due to a mandate of Hasbro or did you just want to
clean house?
First of all, what exactly is death to the Transformers? Can’t they just be
rebuilt? So whether they were permanently dead or not is debatable. At least
that’s the way I looked at it. Aside from that, I’m not sure exactly what
went into who died or why. It’s been a while. I suspect I was thinking the
following:
1) I’ve built up to this big Underbase saga.
2) I want to have real important things happen in it to justify the magnitude of
the storyline.
3) I have way too many characters floating around this series.
4) Hasbro won’t mind if I “kill” off a bunch of them, especially some of
the ones they’re not producing as toys any more, because a way can always be
found to bring them back.
I was a fan of the DC series Metal Men in the 60s. Those guys got trashed and
rebuilt almost every issue. I figured this is the 80s, the technology is better.
Rebuilding a mangled Transformer should be no prob. But I wasn’t even planning
on bringing any back at that point (or myself, for that matter, since at that
time I was thinking of leaving the series). Truthfully, with so many
Transformers still in the series and new ones always being added, who would miss
the ones that were “killed”? More importantly, if they were still alive,
when would I have time to give them any significant space in the series? So,
yeah, maybe I whacked a few fan faves, but I think in most cases they were
characters that had faded from the spotlight or had barely been used in the
series and I had no plans to use them again. So they were already just about
dead.
Is there a story or character you wish you’d had time to pursue?
If there was, I don’t remember. It’s been a while.
Finally, what have been your experiences with Transformers fandom and would
you write for the characters again if you had the chance?
While I worked on the series, my experiences with the fans were overall
extremely positive. The bulk of the fan mail we received was generally
complimentary and showed a great interest in the characters and storylines. Stan
Lee even wrote us a glowing fan letter after he read issue #23, Decepticon
Graffitti! No higher praise than that, in my book. When I met fans at comic book
conventions, they seemed enthusiastic about what I was doing in the book. Since
I left Transformers, I haven’t really dealt with Transformers fandom. I get
the impression there is still a high level of interest in the Transformers,
especially on the Internet. But other than responding to an occasional interview
like this, don’t interface with the Transformer fans any more.
As for writing the Transformers again, I never say yes or no to an offer until
after someone makes it. So I suppose I’m open to the idea of writing the
Transformers- at least until someone actually asks me to do it.