So there we are. The end. The End? They always said ‘It Never Ends’ and for Transformers that seems to be true. But for the Original Transformers storyline/continuity it very definitely has. Issue 100 of that seminal book final hit the stands on Wednesday 19th March. A very significant day for all those legions of people who, over the last thirty years, have enjoyed the ups and downs of the world of Autobots and Decepticons. After the hiatus of some twenty years it was a privilege to be involved in the continuation of The Transformers (not sure when the The was dropped) With the IDW book, Transformers Regeneration One. When it all finally ended I thought it would be great to write a piece about what it has been like for me to be involved in the book. After all, for many it is who I am. But rather than write one final farewell – which I did for issue 100 – I thought I would get some thoughts down as and when they occur. This is the first of those;

For me it started out as just another comics gig. A book that I knew nothing about and that only felt like a stepping stone onto other books. I wanted to draw Superheroes. This is something that I have mentioned in many interviews and Q&As. I was happy to be working for Marvel Comics but I didn’t want to do toy books. I wanted to draw Spider-Man and all the other characters that I had grown up with. At that time I guess I had been reading comics for, say, 20 years. When I consider that that was about 26 years ago it really does create context. Transformers have been a part of my life for longer than Marvel had at that point. Transformers has been there for all but a couple of years of my professional life as a comic artist. Its fair to say that without Transformers I would probably be yet another casualty of the big comics crash in the mid nineties. Many of us working in the comics industry back then were hanging on by our fingernails as we saw title after title get cancelled. Same happened to me. My final book for Marvel was the final issue of Force Works. I felt like it was unfinished business at Marvel but it was time to get out as the empire crumbled around us all. That is when I moved – sideways I guess – into Computer Game design and TV concept work and storyboarding. Things have been great for me in those areas but it is as a result of working on Transformers for Marvel and more recently for IDW that has enabled me to have a presence at some amazing conventions and that is great. So Transformers, it was very definitely time to move on. Time to draw a line under that work. But I salute you. Without you I wonder what life would look like now.

Quelle: Andrew Wildman

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