My first attempt to make a political statement in comics. Bobimus Prime was, if you didn't get it, a thinly veiled spoof of Jeb Bush and his potential involvement in the Florida election scandal following George W. Bush's victory in 2000. It wasn't trendy to criticize Bush back during this time period. In fact, it could lead to some nasty social ostracizing, so I am impressed that I went for such a spoof. However, I'm not particularly pleased with how this all came off. The lighting/contrast is wrong, Poseidon and Prime are both annoying, and the joke comes off more dark and cynical than funny. Still, at least I got to shoot Daniel again.
In hindsight, I find Poseidon's reference to the '80s Tom Cruise film "Risky Business" rather amusing. Only 28 episodes ago, Poseidon didn't even know what a "Value Meal" was. Now he's a die-hard fan of Mama's Family, Designing Women, Transformers: The Movie, and "Risky Business" (a film that, to this day, even I haven't seen). Strange, though, how all of Poseidon's knowledge of Earth culture seems limited to 1980s television (and movies re-run on 1980s television). Perhaps he caught a few time delayed transmissions on the way to Earth.
The "Risky Business" type dancing is, of course, a reference to the famous moment where a young Tom Cruise dances on his wooden floor, sliding around in socks and underwear to the music of Bob Segar.
Episodes 32 and 33 were posted on March 29th, 2003.
I definitely have a love/hate relationship with this episode.
I should begin by saying that I hate the first four panels. They seemed to make up a funny joke while still in my head, but when it comes to talking head episodes (episodes where there is no movement), the conversation takes center stage and, thus, pacing is everything. For some reason, I was sure while creating this that a pause in the second panel would make the comedic timing better. In hindsight, I have no idea what I was thinking. The punchline in panel four is ultimately way too rushed.
I do have to say, though, that I love panel #6. To this day, it's one of my all time favorite photoshopped panels, only second to Fred on TRL with Carson Daily in episode 34 and the Robots Without Faces driving that car in Episode 83. To this day, I don't understand why I never received a single comment about this panel.
That final panel marks the beginning of my love affair with Fred. Prior to this point, he'd simply been the somewhat funny, somewhat menacing bad guy. Now, when faced with the contradiction of wanting to dominate a democratic culture, I began to see the comic potential in Fred needing to lower himself to our cultural wave-length. The once proud conqueror would have to win over the democratic masses. I still feel that I could have done more with Fred before this comic ended, but this was still the beginning of something special. I believe it was around this point, after the ACT discussion forum was added (two weeks after this episode) that I started the now defunct "Ask Fred" section of said forum. Unfortunately, Fred didn't get all that many questions. No one else ever seemed to appreciate Fred half as much as I did.
Fred's album cover is a parody of Justin Timberlake's "Justified" album, which was topping the charts at the time of this episode's release. Here's the original cover:
That may sound a bit harsh, but this begins a sequence of events that, looking back, I just don't enjoy at all. By this point, ACT had developed a small following and, not surprisingly, Poseidon had proven to be the favorite character. Sometimes, judging by the way fans were talking, he was the only character in the comic. A good artist resists such fan pressure and creates what he wants/needs to create. I was no such artist.
So began a rather over the top attempt to push Poseidon even further into the forefront of the comic, and I definitely feel that I overdid it. Yeah, this is a funny web comic, not to be taken too seriously (at least until the very late episodes), but Poseidon as the would-be bad guy felt entirely too gratuitous and, therefore, incredibly tacky.
Interestingly enough, I have never owned a Matrix of Leadership accessory. The one Poseidon is holding was photoshopped out of an ad for the Japanese "New Year" edition of Optimus Prime, which included such an accessory. At the time, I was rather proud to have utilized a prop that I'd never actually touched.
I am glad that this episode touched upon a small glitch in the premise -- it wasn't hard to find Twinkies on Earth. This episode presents the reasonable explanation that the Autobots simply didn't get a chance to obtain them once they finally figured out where they were. Even I'm not obsessive enough about this comic to go back and see whether or not this explanation holds up across story arcs after this episode. However, for all you sticklers out there, just remember that, while we know that Prime has finally obtained the Twinkies by episode 100, we don't know how long he's had them.
"Phublaaaat." Probably the only thing I like about this episode. Why does it sound so right (and, therefore, so wrong)?
Episodes 30 and 31 were posted on March 22nd, 2003.
Ah, the first instance of Daniel abuse. It's not particularly witty, clever, or original, but it is darn fun. If you look closely, you'll notice that the giant laser wound he takes to the chest leaves no marks. His enormous trademark gaping chest wound (presumably left by this attack) isn't visible until Daniel's next appearance in episode 32.
Daniel abuse aside, my favorite part of this episode has got to be the 3rd panel. Bulky as it is, the G1 Optimus Prime toy was remarkably poseable in certain places, so Prime occasionally struck surprisingly cool poses throughout ACT's run, from lifting a computer terminal in a fit of rage to plowing himself into Fred in the heat of combat. I think this was my favorite Prime pose of all, though. That head, tilted back in a moment of agonizing frustration, is just priceless to me.
If the Autobots of ACT weren't heroes, and the Decepticons were more endearing than evil, then there was no reason for ACT to favor one side over the other. At least, that was the attitude I had in mind as I began telling these parallel stories, one featuring the Autobots and Prime's death/ressurection, and the other featuring the Decepticons and the introduction of Waruderos and sons.
Of course that fizzled soon after this episode, as I began to realize that I simply could not make Waruderos and the princes likable.
A lot of that is the fault of this episode. While it features some fun sight gags, a lot of the original concept does not come through, and (most importantly) it accidentally turns Waruderos into some kind of creepy perv, which was not my intention.
The original idea was to make another gag about alien robots attempting to comprehend our popular culture, correctly assessing that we consider pop icons like Justin Timberlake as important and worthy of our attention as foreign powers like Saddam Hussain and Osama Bin Ladin. How Waruderos and the princes would interact with each was really supposed to be secondary.
The final gag (on top of the very idea that Justin Timberlake would be grouped in with these other individuals) was supposed to be a dispassionate and culturally ignorant Waruderos attempting to blend in with a bunch of concert tramps, completely unaware of how ridiculous he looked. This was the same idea I tried with Poseidon back in episode 8 with the hat and the "brewski" comment. It failed back then, giving us the impression that Poseidon was a bit of a troublemaker, and it failed with Waruderos, instead leading us to believe that he was some sort of alien robot transvestite coming on to Justin Timberlake. After this episode, it was hard to see Waruderos as anything other than creepy. He never really gets any limelight again after episode 31.
The most disappointing part about Waruderos not working out is that the failure prevents the Decepticons from ever taking on the kind of equal presence that I'd envisioned for them in the comic. Barry and Garry hadn't really established their own characterizations in any sort of endearing way, Battle Buffalo was an expository non-entity, and all four of these newly established characters completely fizzled. I still had some hope of keeping Justin Timberlake around for laughs, and I'm not sure why I abandoned that direction in hindsight. It had serious potential.
However, the Autobots were certainly more compelling at this point (well, at least Prime, Poseidon, and Daniel were), and the rest of this story arc even presents a threat from within their ranks instead of from the Decepticons. Fred and the gang really start to get phased out in this arc, just as I was trying to include them more.
This was another early attempt at using photoshop, and it does look a bit raw. The George W. Bush panel was actually quite difficult to do, as there were surprisingly no pictures of Bush sitting at a desk anywhere online (ironically, there were many pictures of him golfing). So I had to take an image of him speaking before congress and impose it on a picture of the oval office. The scale was a bit off, but I found this funny and kept it. It almost looks like a child playing president.
Episodes 28 and 29 were posted on March 14th, 2003.
While I happen to find this episode quite funny, I also feel some shame in knowing that I included it more for the sake of pleasing Transformers fans reading ACT than for my own creative satisfaction. Back then, the easiest jokes to make in Transformers circles were almost always at Daniel Witwicky's expense. He was the obnoxious kid from Tranformers: The Movie that always found the most inopportune moments to whine. Perhaps his most infamous whining moment was "Prime, you can't die."
There's very little originality in this episode. I've essentially duplicated the original movie scene and focused on the same tired old fan joke of how some whiny little kid manages to upstage Optimus Prime's dramatic death. The only newness I bring to it is the idea that no one has any idea who this kid is or what he's doing there. In TF: The Movie, they all just sort of tolerate Daniel. In this version, the only reason no one's beat the living heck out of him yet is that they're still trying to figure out what the hell he's doing.
As a result, while I find this episode a bit generic, it did open a vast doorway into possibility as I kept finding more and more ways for the Autobots to ostracize, terrorize, and stigmatize Daniel. The fact that he's played by an Episode One Anakin Skywalker figure only makes this more fun.
I suppose this must have been the episode where Flamewing and Turkey were finally integrated into the Autobot collective, though I think the original idea was just to have them as concerned acquaintances at Prime's deathbed. I never got tired of the visual gag they provided. In hindsight, however, this episode really restructures the Autobot team into their most remembered lineup, with Flamewing, Turkey, and Daniel all joining in this episode.
The shadowy line running across the first panel always bothers me in this episode. It's a mesh safety band attached to the base of my digital camera that was supposed to be worn around my wrist (thus preventing an accidental drop). These were the early days of digital cameras, and mesh safety bands were considered necessities at the time. Wearing the band correctly frequently led it it getting in the way of my shots (I ultimately removed it). In this case, I didn't even realize it was there until I'd completed the episode. At first glance, it looks a bit like a rafter.
You'll notice that Trailbreaker is looking up for all of the final three panels. This was not intended. Trailbreaker's head was quite loose and must have slipped back while I was shooting. Of course, Trailbreaker was being overlooked even back then, so I didn't notice this fact until a long time after.
Goodbye, Convoy was the name of a special Japanese Transformers giftset commemorating the death of Optimus Prime. It was a damn obscure and highly irrelevant reference for an episode title, even in a cartoon about Transformers.
I'd recently acquired a Diaclone colored Ultra Magnus from ebay and really liked the look of the Blue Optimus Prime cab that came with it. I immediately began considering replacing the ratty old G1 Prime I was using in the comic. This one was far more distinct for the comic (who's ever seen a blue Prime before?), had more distinct facial details for close-up shots, and, from a vanity perspective, would let my readers know that not all my TFs were crappy and beaten up. So I quickly decided to return to the cliff from episode 24 and actually have Prime go off the end, allowing him to be rebuilt as the blue Prime.
Sometime soon after ACT began, I became very interested in the contradiction that Prime was a mouthless robot searching for a Twinkie. I'd been waiting for an opportunity to draw attention to this for weeks now, and this confrontation with Poseidon on the cliff seemed like an excellent opportunity.
I think it's incredibly important that Prime willingly jumps off the cliff, here. This episode allows me to pull back on Poseidon's character a little bit. Clearly, he's reluctant to tell Prime how much he sucks as a leader, which suggests some degree of kindness. By the end of the episode, he isn't disappointed that Prime has jumped, but at least Poseidon didn't do the pushing. There's still enough hope left for him that he can remain a likable character.
I have absolutely no memory of how I posed Prime for the fourth panel. My best guess is that I'm holding him with my left hand and used photoshop to remove my hand from the picture. I don't think I could have held Prime in that pose with silly putty, especially since his foot doesn't seem to be resting flatly on the table.
Incidentally, "Come, oh happy death," is Juliet's line when she kills herself in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. Juliet couldn't have her soul mate. Prime couldn't have his Twinkie. It's the same thing, really.
Episodes 26 and 27 were posted on March 8th, 2003.
I still wasn't sure what new conflict I was going to introduce for this story arc by the time of "Another Evil Scheme." Sure Poseidon was about to toss Prime off a cliff, but this was intended more as a one panel gag at the time. I didn't really intend to go anywhere with it beyond giving Poseidon more opportunities to obsess over the movie throughout the arc.
I definitely saw Fred as the major antagonist of ACT, so I knew bringing him back into the fold might lead to something good in this story. Before I did anything else, though, I felt it was important to explain exactly why an ultra powerful robot capable of single-handedly taking down the Autobots didn't just walk into their headquarters (he knew where it was!) and do just that. Going back to the original Transformers cartoon (and others like it), how many times did the Autobots or Decepticons find an amazing way to defeat the other side, get thwarted at the last second, and never try the same idea again on another day? I clearly remember one early TF episode where the Autobots are able to shrink themselves down and secretly enter the Decepticons' bodies. Something causes them to abandon the plan before they can tear out all of Megatron's wires, but why not try it again the next day?
...because then they wouldn't be pimping it with style.
No self-respecting hero or super villain tries the most practical approach. Fred and Battle Buffalo recognize this.
In hindsight, I'm not as pleased with the second half of this episode. Fred's army seemed too small at the time, so I introduced four new characters that I never ended up liking. The whole gag was supposed to be poking fun at Michael Jackson naming his sons Prince Michael 1 and Prince Michael 2 (who does that?), but it was a cheap shot, and it was only good for one poorly delivered gag.
I wanted Waruderos and his sons to seem more alien and scary, thus the computerized fonts for their dialog. In hindsight, it's just too hard on the eyes, though. Fred and Battle Buffalo's whispered conversation is no easier to read. Poor decisions all around on this one.
The one choice I made in this episode that I like in hindsight is "Evil is Sexy." If it was now established that my computer was Fred's headquarters, it seemed natural to customize the area a bit. I don't remember what our real desktop display was at the time, but I did change it to "Evil is Sexy" and back again whenever it was time to shoot a Fred episode after this.
Episode 24 brought me face to face with an interesting dilemma. For the first time since ACT began, there were no conflicts nor pressing threats on the horizon. The NECTBA Unicron was defeated, Fred and his forces were out of the picture for the time being, and Galvaphil wasn't going to be much of a threat compared to the NECTBA Unicron menace. This was the first time that I actually thought, "Damn, I need to come up with a new conflict."
This neat break between plot lines led me to organize the existing episodes into story arcs for the first time. Now, instead of having to navigate through an enormous list of episodes, a reader could just pick up at the beginning of a new story. I went back and "created" the first three story arcs, beginning the fourth arc with this episode. If memory serves correctly, I left this arc untitled at the time, unsure of where the plot would eventually go.
The final title chosen for this story arc is a parody of the famous David Bowie album, "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars."
Naturally, the plot for this episode is yet another attempt to maintain some connection with the Transformers fan base. I force one more TF: The Movie reference in Episode 27 and then drop the references afterward. I don't regret these forced moments in hindsight. I think they made for a few very good laughs. Eventually, it was just time to move on, though. I couldn't confine this comic to Transformers movie references and still expect it to stay fresh and interesting.
This was, perhaps, an uncomfortable stretch for Poseidon's character. Sure, he was immoral and selfish, but how far was he willing to go to get what he wanted? This entire arc takes Poseidon into some very morally uncomfortable situations, turning his back on his teammates, and even his entire race, for personal gain. To this day, I'm still not sure whether or not he would have pushed Prime off that cliff if given the chance.
In hindsight, this is the first sign of an even larger problem with Poseidon, though. Here, he takes the central stage in the new arc while Trailbreaker and Dark Grapple are reduced to talking heads that provide nothing more than necessary background info. They are devoid of personality and importance in contract to the quirky bad boy of the group. 56 episodes later, I finally took drastic measures in order to correct this imbalance. Of course, this episode only marks the beginning of the trend.
Episodes 24 and 25 were posted on February 28th, 2003.
This is still one of my all-time favorite episodes. The pacing is dead-on, and the contrast between my new photoshop skills and the comically simple eyebrows on the NECTBA Unicron in panel three makes me chuckle every time.
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