About Me

Me with my favourite character of all time

I had to check that Star Wars was only released in the UK in 1978, meaning I was definitely 5 years old when I first watched the original ‘Episode 4’. My youngest daughter being quite shocked by that fact, seeing as she finds Star Wars quite scary, ”You were five?” she asks. Indeed, it’s odd to believe that it was once a U (unclassified, suitable for all) certificate film, now reclassified as PG (Parental Guidance) and yet happily had scenes of the lead character’s Aunt and Uncle’s burning skeletal bodies. However, my personal trauma was the scene when the lead character’s robot and new friend, Artoo-Detoo got its head shot and was seemingly destroyed- 5 year old me was devastated! I loved that little robot, he was funny, charismatic and arguably the main star of the film (George Lucas had plans that he was narrating all 9, which Disney eventually dropped. Boo Disney). Such a relief when the final scenes showed Artoo had been repaired and was now all clean and shiny as reward for playing a role in the destruction of the Death Star. He carried the secret plans and was hunted down for it, after all.

Hence my love of robots began with Artoo-Detoo and that remained through the next 2 film releases up-to 1983. But in 1984, it was clear that the main supermarkets and toy-shops (ah! Such a fond memory of Boydells in Bolton, long since gone) were reducing their stock of Star Wars toys as no new films, nor further toy-line was expected. This was a bit of a shock to myself as I was still happily collecting, though times were changing and another object did grab my attention.

However, this object was a much hyped Sony Walkman personal cassette player and there was no way that I was ever going to own such an expensive item. But the catalogues for Christmas had images of a toy version of the Walkman, one that even changed into a robot. So as a compromise, I badgered my Mum and Dad to have one of those for Christmas.

This isn’t the Sony Walkman you were hoping for…..

My sister and I both have our birthdays just before Christmas and as a result growing up there was a family rule, “clothes for birthdays, toys for Christmas” so I was quite surprised when, for my birthday in ‘84, I received a toy car from the same toy range as the robot Walkman. A car that could also change into a robot. On the back of the box was a character profile and an amazing image of a battle- the robots were at war and I now had one of the Heroic Autobots, a character called Bluestreak and his background story that although he was a defined ‘gunner’, he was not very brave due to seeing his hometown being destroyed and everyone he knew being killed. This was a brutal statement and I immediately grew a fondness for Bluestreak, such that when I finally received the robot Walkman for Christmas, the Evil Decepticon Soundwave (with his condor cassette Buzzsaw), in the battles they had - Bluestreak always won!

Bluestreak- but not my original (he’s in storage). Oddly enough, not blue. Silverstreak is blue.

Hence my interest and love for the Transformers began.

In the late summer of 1985 we moved home which, as would be expected, was somewhat of a traumatic occasion. Although I had added some mini-bots to my collection since Christmas, I’d had to pack away all my toys with only a few small ones available for the last few weeks in the old bedroom. In September- and I calculate it being Wednesday 19th September 1984* - a shopping trip to Asda Supermarket in Farnworth, Lancashire after passing the aisles which seemed to be bereft of Star Wars toys, the newsagent section after the cash-desks contained a new comic on sale; Marvel UK’s The Transformers. I knew of Marvel due to occasionally having had Marvel UK’s Star Wars comics but never regularly had them. I say the comic was ‘new’, but it was clearly and boldly displaying on it’s cover that it was a year old and celebrating moving to a weekly release schedule with full colour issues and a free chocolate bar on the cover. So I’d missed a year of stories and joined with the popular Dinobots being searched out by Autobot medic Ratchet. I knew of the basis of the Transformers story from the cartoon series that had been airing over the summer of ‘85 on breakfast TV, ‘TV-AM’ (the infamous Roland Rat slot over the summer holidays). The storyline in the comic was far darker and more mature than the storylines in the cartoons, where each episode ended with the good guys winning. I joined the comic with the good guys clearly defeated.

(*calculation based on the issue date of the issue I got and the fact that we always shopped on Wednesdays at Asda!)

I tried to get the next few issues, missed a couple, but then from October 1985 made effort to have the weekly issues either with subscription at our newsagents or in later years my Nan kindly taking over buying the subscriptions and providing me a copy, sometimes handing me a copy as we passed by in the street, bless her. Thanks Nan.

The ever popular Dinobots

I continued to have a copy of Marvel UK’s Transformers, from 1985, through my school years, through my sixth form years in 1989 (and often sneaking a read in the toilets between lessons) onto starting university in Uxbridge in 1991. By which time talk was of changes in the format, as the US version of the comic was coming to an end, though the UK would continue with a new monthly edition, with a smaller size and from my view seemingly becoming a maturer comic which fitted well with my maturing at university. Yet it was to my horror that the editorial for issue 332 declared that to be the final issue and there would not be an issue 333 as had been planned. I was devastated. It was the end of an era and my “comfort blanket” of Transformers that I’d had through some major years as a teenager, had been taken away. It was time to grow up and leave the world of the Transformers behind.

However, I reflected on having had some of the best stories being from the UK era of the Transformers. For those of us in the UK, we always believed ours were the stronger, better stories- better than the US’s comic stories (and indeed the UK writer Simon Furman and some UK artists eventually transferred over to the US comic to finish the series) and better than the popular cartoon series (which to date I still have not seen all episodes!). The UK stories featured elements of time-travel, complex storylines featuring the future including a linkage story to the Transformers: The Movie called Target 2006, an epic story which still holds respect as one of the greatest Transformers stories ever written. I remember reading in the autumn of 1986 and wondering where would I be in the autumn of 2006?

An iconic scene from Target 2006 recreated- on my desk!

For the few years at university, and being near London, I was able to visit the city centre at weekends and one of my most popular places to visit was Forbidden Planet on New Oxford St, around the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station. Many Saturdays I headed direct to Forbidden Planet for the latest releases from any of my favourite sci-fi franchises; Star Wars, Doctor Who (that I’d become a huge fan of from the mid 1980s) and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I guess it was there I found, a few years later, a comic of Transformers: Generation 2. Again a US comic and I had again missed the first few issues (which I never found) though enjoyed a newer darker tone of Transformers which fit with what I expected the issue 333 onwards was going to be like. But the new comic didn’t last long and again it seemed Transformers had ended.

By 1996, and having completed university in 1995 moving to Loughborough in the midlands for work, I happened to notice a new range of Transformers branded toys, with character names similar if not the exact same as the original characters- a range of toys called ‘Beast Wars’ with characters such as Optimus Primal and Megatron. I soon discovered the Beast Wars TV series, followed by the Beast Machines TV series. Then followed new ranges of Transformers toys and cartoons based on the original characters but with new designs; Transformers Robot In Disguise, Armada and others. The Transformers franchise wasn’t ending.

“My name is Optimus Primal.” “My name is Optimus Primal.” “My name is… <ahem> Optimal Optimus actually.”

In 2001 (by which time I was living in my own place in a little town called Sandbach in Cheshire) a company called Dreamwave had obtained license to produce a new comic book series and I managed to order those from a dealer online, such was the latest technology by that time (I had an Apple iMac- the infamous Bondi Blue translucent version- with internet access!) The Dreamwave comics had a brand new storyline, with character designs by an artist called Pat Lee that were simply beautifully drawn. It was a marvellous new era and Dreamwave developed on their comics with new stories, written by the legendary Simon Furman, based on events happening before the Transformers arrived on Earth. Known as “The War Within” it created brand new character designs by Don Figueroa for the `pre-Earth’ Transformers. Character designs and plot-lines both proving to be popular. Sadly, Dreamwave went bankrupt (and a search on the TF Wiki website details Pat Lee’s own role in that), however the licence soon transitioned to IDW Comics. Again, a rebirth, with great character design and artwork, stories by Simon Furman (which, over time, began to grow weaker relative to other new writers such as James Roberts) but Transformers was growing strong through the 2000s.

War Within Grimlock

In the summer of 2006 I moved to Switzerland and so to the question of autumn 1986, “where would I be in autumn 2006?”, the answer became ‘Basel, Switzerland’, which was a long distance from Bolton, Lancashire and something I never would ever have imagined those 20 years prior. In fact 20 days prior to the move I would have had difficulty pointing to Basel, Switzerland on a map. Meanwhile, in the Transformers franchise, excitement was growing for the up-coming live action film arriving in 2007. I remember having some pride walking in the streets near my apartment in Basel seeing a poster for the film. Sadly, the films have developed a bit of a reputation being of a “love them or hate them” situation. I’ve given my own views separately a few times (on my original WordPress blog ‘noelypb’), so won’t detail here. Suffice to say that with IDW’s comics and the Michael Bay films, Transformers was going strong during the 2000s and 2010s.

Personally, I got married in Basel and we had our first daughter a year later. In 2010 we moved to the French-speaking part of Switzerland and our second daughter arrived a few years later. My wife isn’t into science-fiction, which is perfectly fine as we share other interests and she’s got me to develop an interest in history. My eldest has grown to like Doctor Who with me, we’ve seen some Star Wars together and both daughters have seen some Transformers with me though I think they haven’t really understood what their Dad sees in it, which again is fair because the real reason was the comics back in the 1980s and that excitement of having a new issue week after week dropping through the letterbox in the porch, which they cannot ever experience. Transformers has always been a large part of my life since 1984 and although I’ve remained a large fan of Star Wars, Doctor Who and even Star Trek, Transformers has been my main interest. However, with the visibility of the live-action films I became disappointed with the focus on the same characters, plus the divergence in characters, character design, plot-lines from the fan-favourites that had been known from the 80s cartoons, the comics and even the more recent IDW comics.

In recent years, with that frustration, I became interested in writing my own stories. The franchise owning toy companies, Hasbro in the US and Takara Tomy in Japan, had learned over the years there were generations of older fans that had begun to collect Transformers and rarer, more obscure versions, with memories to their younger years and the comics, cartoons. Ironically called “Generations” some of the releases were versions of toys recoloured in a different scheme than the original toy (known as “redecos”) and given a separate name, in some cases a whole new character profile. I must note here that I’m greatly indebted to the “TF Wiki” Transformers Wikipedia fan site which must be the most comprehensive and well-formatted fan Wikipedia site I’ve seen- far better than anything for Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek etc. From that site, I determined that there must be hundreds if not thousands of distinct Transformers characters. The difference between Transformers and other franchises is that Transformers (the original stories) often focussed and evolved, changing the characters within. This was practical based upon waves after waves of new toys arriving year after year in the 80s. This meant many characters simply disappeared from stories, many being “badly injured” or even killed due to the war and replaced by new characters and that included some of the most popular characters such as Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. Although over time the toy companies realised they had popular characters and brought them back in newer toy forms, many more new characters emerged over the years. This was distinct versus other franchises where a handful of characters were the main focus. For Star Wars being Luke Skywalker et al. In the comics worlds, Superman, Spiderman, Batman being focal points. It’s only in recent years that larger franchise environments have been created- the larger world of Star Wars (the Mandalorian, Andor), the MCU (Marvel Comics Universe) etc. However, Transformers always had that potential.

The Mandalorian, part of the extended universe of Star Wars

My aim with Transformers: The Alternates is to write stories based on those characters that have been created without having much focus. I calculated that all the original 1984 releases have been redeco’d in some form with new colours and I wanted The Alternates to be focussed on this new variant team. In addition, many of the character profiles created have hinted at mental health issues that the new characters suffer, which links back to the first Transformer I had, Bluestreak, and the issues he faced. I want to build some of those dilemmas into stories as well to bring focus to characters’ problems, something that can be achieved by writing with robot characters that reflect upon human issues.

In recent years, Star Wars (amongst others) have blended the lines between black and white, good and evil. For example, with the tongue-in-cheek meme for Luke Skywalker being a young boy radicalised by a terrorist organisation that killed thousands when he blew up the Death Star (Andor recently showing the Rebellion as a form of terrorist organisation). Oddly enough, in our modern would and modern climate (circa. June 2025 as I write this) what defines “good and evil” seems equally blurred. Hence for groups that are specifically defined as “Heroic” and “Evil”, recent storylines (including the recently released Transformers One animation film which I rather enjoyed) have also blurred the lines on how Heroic some Autobots have or have not been. This is also an area I plan to focus on in the Alternates.

“Well that’s just … not Prime!”

From a young boy I loved to write and draw. An original dream was to have my own comic book with some characters I created. Nowadays, a dream is to write my own book one day and I will use this forum as an opportunity to develop my skills in writing. Using franchise characters that already exist is an easy pathway to writing, which I’ll utilise for now, though maybe I’ll build into this site a wave of new characters, a new “franchise” that I do already have in mind. Who knows, because those characters I created back in the 80s still exist……