The Revenge of Yartek, Leader of the Alien Voord
Beware the man who knocks four times
BANG BANG BANG BANG. “HELLO?” Yartek continued to smash the phone against the brickwork. Some rather expensive technology started to crack and splinter under the strain.
Yartek didn’t care. It wasn’t his phone.
“I KNOW you can hear me!” he bellowed, his squeaky, girly voice echoing down the phone line. “I can hear you giggling.”
“That’s better.”
“What do I want? You know what I want? I want back in!”
“Yeah, I want to be in Doctor Who again.”
“Of course you can do it, you’re the producer.”
“Sod off! You brought the MACRA back!”
“I don’t care if they’ve got a good union. Screw the Macra.”
“Oh. Ew.”
“No, really. I’m like, the alien version of Che Guvera.”
“Yeah, I’ve sold millions of posters. Well, one.”
“Look, I’ve got this great idea. Basically I team up with the Borad and lead a crack team of dinosaur-riding Nimon through time and space to… hello?”
Yartek, former leader of the glorious Alien Voord, who once nearly ruled an entire planet sunk to his knees and started crying.
“Oh god pleeeeeease!”
The line went dead. Yartek snarled, throwing the phone angrily at the body of the man he had borrowed it from and slunk back to Voord Towers. He had called his home Voord Towers in the hope that it might convince poncy media-types that he was at the top of his game, but it was in fact just a few cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other covered in fairy lights and situated under a bridge.
…more
The Meals Of Sin
The Transformers: Mosaic project is a fan-based project to get artists and writers working together to create fancomics.
After a lot of serious, sensible pieces, I threw a real curveball and produced The Meals Of Sin, a bizarre comic featuring McDonalds Happy Meal toys having an ultra violent fight in the style of Sin City. I was hoping it would upset and confuse people, but people seemed to really really like it. Oh well!
For those of you not experts in the field of Transformers fast food toys (shame on you!), the hero of our tale is the valiant Under-3 and his enemy is the evil Rally’s Rhinox, lovingly known by the fandom as Rallnox.
Due to the immensity of the challenge, Mark Kuggeleijn assisted me with writing duties, and Andy Turnbull locked himself in a cave, shunning all human contact for ten years in order to truly capture the feel of the art.
Blackest Night
The Transformers: Mosaic project is a fan-based project to get artists and writers working together to create fancomics.
Blackest Night is another of my one-page Transformer comics, and one of the most popular to date (currently it seems to be neck and neck with Voice In The Dark). It actually isn’t anything to do with DC’s Blackest Night, but it features all the black repaints up to no good, the pun was just too good to resist.
See if you can name all the characters in it, of course if you’re not a die-hard fan, not realising who anyone is shouldn’t spoil it in any way. At least that is the idea. Some of the characters in this were black repainted keyrings from Japan, see if you can spot a keyring loop in one of the panels!
Like with many of my other pieces, I wrote and coloured it, Jake Isenberg did the art, and Mark Kuggeleijn did the lettering.
The Secret Diary of Generation 2 Jazz
The below torrid tale appeared in the TMUK: 25 Years Of Transformers magazine available at the 2009 Auto Assembly convention. It is reproduced here by kind permission of the mag’s editor, Andy Turnbull. Pictures are by the wonderful and crazy Ari.
March 2nd 1993
After years of peace, our worst nightmare has come true – Megatron has returned!
It was another quiet day on Cybertron. The Last Autobot was telling us about the time he scored the winning goal in the 1966 World Cup (he is such a liar) and Hot Rod wouldn’t leave that Primus-damned noisy Cybernet space cube alone. Just as I was about to insert the space cube into Hot Rod in a new and exciting way, the alarms sounded. It seems Megatron survived the destruction of the Ark, and teamed up with a ruthless terrorist organisation named COBRA. Luckily another ruthless terrorist organisation known as GI Joe was on hand to feed us intel from the scene.
Megatron is now a sweet green tank. He’s painted his face purple and shouts ‘Megatron Attack!’ a lot.
Since the end of the war, Optimus had been much less visible, retiring to a life of peace and calm. When he saw the reports however, he grew agitated, jumping up and down and demanding his own voice unit. I think he may currently be painting his trailer black. An elite team has been dispatched to take out Megatron.
The Final Lesson
The Transformers: Mosaic project is a fan-based project to get artists and writers working together to create fancomics.
Below is my piece, entitled ‘The Final Lesson’ featuring the super-duper obscure character The Student from the Marvel UK comics. Of course, it is written from the point of view that the reader will have no idea who he is, so all the information you need is there.
I wrote and coloured it, Jake Isenberg did the art, and Mark Kuggeleijn did the lettering. And I think it came out really well. Check the bitchin’ moustache at the end!
Auto Assembly 2009
Last week was my birthday! Was I going to have a big party? No, I was in fact off to the biggest ever European Transformer convention, Auto Assembly. Go me!
In my defense, I’d been super excited about this for months. I’d been to conventions before, but not a Transformers one on this scale – a record attendance (over 500 people) and for a full weekend, it would at least be unique. There was also a load of people I knew that were attending, being the perfect chance to catch up with them. And for those that didn’t go, shame on you.
Friday night was mostly a ‘getting to know you’ event, with various people milling about. I met up with various people as planned, and took a look at all the wares on the various stalls. They were all set up on Friday night, but couldn’t start trading till Saturday morning. And given some of the rather insane deals, predictions of a rush to get in were well founded.
Who likes Pretenders? Me! Me!
Foolishly I volunteered for the ‘fan dub’ event. This was a good idea in theory – namely get some people on stage to do voiceovers for an episode. Unfortunately the episode in question was ‘The Rebirth’ with its six million characters, and no-one really knew what was going on. I shall never look at that episode ever again (and for some reason, all Nebulons go ‘MIMIMIMIMIMIMI’ instead of talking normally, who knew!). Most people then left for a trip to see Revenge Of The Fallen at the cinema again, but I didn’t. Because I don’t hate myself that much. …more
Up Is Down, Black Is White
The Transformers: Mosaic project is a fan-based project to get artists and writers working together to create fancomics.
Below is my piece, entitled ‘Up Is Down, Black Is White’ with art by the fantastic Bryan Sevilla. Seriously, how good is that art!
Click the image for the big version!
A Voice In The Dark
The Transformers: Mosaic project is a fan-based project to get artists and writers working together to create fancomics.
Below is my piece, entitled ‘A Voice In The Dark’, featuring the very obscure characters Sky High and Submarauder. Submarauder isn’t even named, which is a deliberate choice on my side. I wrote and coloured it, Jake Isenberg did the art, and Mark Kuggeleijn did the lettering. And honestly, it is probably my favourite piece yet, which frustrates me because however much I try, I can’t write anything better!
Click the image for the big version!
Super Robot Transformable Tomas
Like most kids my age, I grew up reading the delightful Thomas the Tank Engine books by the Rev W V Awdry, and watching the accompanying television series narrated by Ringo Starr about the adventures of the scampish train Thomas and all his friends.
Thomas would have adventures where he had to deliver some cargo, or had to deal with a nasty carriage. But there was always that niggling thought – what if Thomas the Tank Engine had not been developed in rural England? What if it had been created in Japan, and Thomas, Percy and James merged at the end of each episode to form an unstoppable robot engine of destruction to crush their enemies?
Enter SUPER ROBOT TRANSFORMABLE TOMAS …more
Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
I’ve seen the new Transformers film, so what do I think?
For a start, it measures up (or down) to the first film. Nothing in it particularly surprised me which was a shame, but there was nothing that had me wanting to gouge my eyes out either. The pace is faster than the first, and there are less ‘boring bits’ but at the same time there’s no genuinely rousing moments, such as the ‘Arrival of the Autobots’ from the 2007 installment. The plot is wafer-thin, an excuse for the characters to go chasing around the world and shoot things. I shan’t spoil it since I don’t really believe in spoilers, but there’s also not that much that can be spoiled. The Decepticons and Autobots both want a doo-hicky, the Decepticons also want Sam, they have a fight in the desert, the US Army is awesome, join the army. …more
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