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[SuperginraiX]

The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 2

http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/06/secre ... l#comments

I failed to mention it in the previous installment, but Knickerbocker Toys was a maker of “soft” toys—that is, plush toys and girls’ toys. They produced the famous Holly Hobbie dolls, for instance. In 1983, their business was sliding, though. Mysterions was a last-ditch attempt to get into boys’ toys, obviated when Hasbro acquired them.

(ASIDE: I had the pleasure of meeting the real Holly Hobbie once, creator of the eponymous character. Brilliant, talented woman. I have an autographed copy of her book.)

Once Hasbro signed off on the treatment, we began work on the comics. I assigned the series to editor Bob Budiansky. Bob was (and probably still is) smart, hardworking, creative, organized, detail-conscious and above all a good editor.

And then I’m a little fuzzy on the details. I’ve heard that Bob says a number of names we (Marvel) proposed for the robots were rejected by Hasbro. I don’t doubt Bob, who is a solid citizen as well as a talented creator and effective editor. I just don’t remember. Maybe Bob or Jim Salicrup, if you read this, can shed some light. I don’t think I was very hands-on at that point.

At any rate, Bob eventually was pressed into service creating names and dossiers for the robots and he did a terrific job.

Meanwhile, treachery was afoot….

Hasbro’s advertising agency was Griffin-Bacal. They had great aspirations regarding the Hasbro account. They wanted to run Hasbro’s entire marketing effort. And they wanted to be Hasbro’s go-to creative resource, which WE were rapidly becoming. This isn’t pure speculation. Tom Griffin and Joe Bacal were fairly clear about that at several of our meetings.

I seem to recall that there was a personal relationship between one of the Hasbro top brass and either Tom or Joe. College roommates or some such. Whatever. There was a connection that tilted the playing field.

Griffin-Bacal increasingly insinuated itself between Marvel and Hasbro. We found ourselves dealing less and less with Bob Prupis and the Hasbro boys’ toys guys and more and more with G-B and Sunbow, their executive production arm. Sunbow had been founded, I think, to oversee the production of the G.I. JOE commercials a couple of years earlier. Sunbow not only came between Marvel and Hasbro, but also between Marvel Comics and our animation studio, Marvel Productions.

Sunbow’s creative efforts, as near as I could tell, consisted of removing our cover sheets from whatever we created and stapling on their cover sheets.

As described earlier, there was generally a strained relationship between Marvel Productions and Marvel Comics anyway. Possibly because we brought in almost all their business, we did the foundation creative work for everything they worked on and we were successful, making money. Meanwhile, they created little that was useful and they were losing money by the truckload. Jealous, maybe? Whatever.

P.S. The studio actually managed to keep their staggering losses hidden for a while. More on that later.

David DePatie, in particular, for some reason, hated the comics. He hated the fact that the word “Marvel” was part of Marvel Productions’ name. While he was top dog at Marvel Productions, he refused to have Spider-Man’s image as part of their logo or trade dress. He wanted nothing to do with comics or comics people.

Therefore, I believe, he was delighted to have Sunbow elbow its way in between us.

In 1984, President Jim Galton hired an experienced children’s programming executive named Margaret Loesch, at first as Marvel’s liaison with the studio and the TV business. She worked at 387 Park Avenue South with us publishing types for a few months.

I liked her. She was (is) scary smart, knew her business like we knew ours and she liked the comics! She respected our creativity.

After a while, she was moved out to the West Coast and installed as the President and CEO of Marvel Productions. Over DePatie. Heeheehee.

Margaret “Marvelized” the studio, making Spider-Man part of their trade ID. She even had installed a sculpted FIGURE OF SPIDER-MAN CRAWLING UP THE SIDE OF THEIR BUILDING! Hoo-ha!

After a while, realizing how deep the animosity toward the comics people ran among some of her execs, Margaret invited me out to spend some time at the studio, and see whether we could forge more cooperation between our people and her people. I think I tied it in with the San Diego trip that year. 1984? 1985? I don’t remember. Possibly, I had one or more of our editors along with me.

Margaret called a meeting. It included DePatie, Margaret, me and a few other people of hers and ours. Margaret stated the goal: working better together. I said that I thought we comics people could be a good creative resource for the studio, that we could, perhaps, do some development work for them.

DePatie, who had been simmering from the moment he walked into the room, blew up. He launched into a diatribe about how ugly, amateurish, unreadable and stupid our comics were. Complete crap. There was nothing useful that we could possibly do.

I pointed out that we had created G.I. JOE and TRANSFORMERS. DePatie said that we had NOTHING TO DO WITH TRANSFORMERS.

That took me by surprise. I had my Hasbro file with me. I pulled out my TRANSFORMERS treatment. I said I wrote this. HE CALLED ME A LIAR, insisted that SUNBOW had written that treatment, that Sunbow had done all the development. He got up and stormed out of the room.

So much for cooperation.

Margaret apologized. She said she’d address the situation. But nothing much changed during the rest of my time at Marvel.

P.S. As far as I know, with regard to G.I. JOE and TRANSFORMERS Sunbow never created or contributed anything.
_________________________________________________

Okay, now let’s see….

Other interesting (it says here) notes:

Sunbow or the studio people changed the human protagonist’s name from Spike to Buster because, I was told, Spike was too aggressive and violent-sounding. What?

They pretty much ignored or glossed over my human interest stuff anyway.

You may wonder where Stan was during all of this. Even before the studio was founded in 1981, Stan was moved out to the West Coast to try to develop film and television opportunities for Marvel. Made sense. Who in Hollywood wouldn’t take Stan Lee’s call?

When the studio started with DePatie in charge, Stan had an office in the studio headquarters building (there was another building where the some of the animators worked.) I’d spend time with Stan whenever I went to LA. He had a secretary. Other than her, I think no one reported to him. He had no apparent role in the work being done at the studio, no day to day responsibility. DePatie, I think, actively excluded him. Even Stan, I suppose, was one of us useless comics people to DePatie.

We’d go to lunch in his Volkswagen Beetle convertible. It was yellow, I think. He had vanity plates that said “Marvel Comics” abbreviated somehow—you know, MRVLCOMX or something like that. A few times he lamented to me that they just weren’t letting him help.

Idiots.

When I became Editor in Chief, and the executive table of organization was explained to me by Galton, several things jumped out. One, everyone in the comics department reported to me. Two, that nobody reported to Sol Brodsky, not even a secretary. He was his own little island, off to the side. And three, that nobody except Stan’s secretary reported to him. Not even Sol. Stan (and secretary) were on an island, too.

Why? Well, though his title was “Publisher,” in fact, Stan had no day to day responsibilities, and certainly not publishing responsibilities. Just as well. Contracts, business and paperwork would have bored him to death, I think. Stan’s job at that point was being Stan, the one, the only, the inimitable resident genius Stan Lee. He was plenty busy, don’t get me wrong. He was the face of Marvel. He worked on the Spider-Man syndicated strip. He was constantly pursuing opportunities, especially in other media, for Marvel. He helped me a million times and continued teaching me until the day he left for California.

The difference between Stan’s being at the House of Ideas, a lot of them his, and being at the studio was that we treated Stan as though he built the place, because he did. He didn’t need a T.O. to make him important. If he said something, if he weighed in on anything, we listened as if it were an E.F. Hutton commercial, and did as he said.

Out there in LA, no such luck. Until Margaret came along. Then, Stan got to do his stuff. Even I got invited to a network pitch once.

I’ll think of more tidbits later.

One last anecdote.

Marvel Productions’ work on the G.I. JOE and TRANSFORMERS cartoons was done work for hire. There was no potential back-end revenue from syndication, as there typically is with a network animated show.

Accounting for network animated shows is typically done according to an accepted formula that amortizes, or spreads the costs out over a prescribed number of years to book a significant portion of the costs during the syndication period, when most revenues are earned.

In 1986, the owner of Marvel was Cadence Management Incorporated. CMI consisted, more or less, of the Cadence Industries board of directors, who had taken Cadence private in a leveraged buy-out. (They screwed over the stockholders. Then they screwed over one of their own. Originally the “Gang of Seven,” there were only six of them at the end. But that’s a tale for another time.) Jim Galton was one of the CMI principals as well as President of the crown jewel of Cadence companies, Marvel. CMI was in negotiations with New World Pictures to sell Marvel.

It was October. I was at the Frankfurt Book Fair. So were a number of other Marvel people—licensing execs, support staff and Jim Galton.

One day in the middle of the fair, Galton got a phone call at the Marvel “stand,” or booth. He looked upset and left in a tremendous hurry. Went back to his hotel, packed and got on the first flight to LA.

Seems that New World’s due diligence had uncovered the fact that the accounting for the G.I. JOE and TRANSFORMERS cartoons had been done as if there would be syndication revenues. But, oops, there weren’t any to be had. So all those amortized costs had to be re-booked to current operations. That meant that the big losses the studio was showing were actually waaay bigger than Galton and his CMI cronies knew, and that was going to make a biiig dent in the sale price.

Oops.

P.S. Snide types at Cadence’s offices had always referred to the studio as “Galton’s Folly.” And it was.

[sdsichero]

Interesting. Wonder if there is another side to it.

Always thought Sunbow and Claster were somehow linked but maybe not.

[SuperginraiX]

Interesting. Wonder if there is another side to it.

Always thought Sunbow and Claster were somehow linked but maybe not.

Apparently, Sunbow was a master at the photocopier and stapler.

[sdsichero]

Transformers 3 review from IGN...

Short summary, best of the 3. 3D is great. 3.5/5 stars.

http://movies.ign.com/articles/117/1178885p1.html

[Reveal] Spoiler: Click to Expand

Transformers: Dark of the Moon Review
They've Fallen, but can the Transformers get up?
June 27, 2011
by Jim Vejvoda

Time will tell whether Transformers: Dark of the Moon really is the final Transformers film for both director Michael Bay and star Shia LaBeouf, but it's certainly the best one in this hugely successful, but widely loathed franchise. It's devoid of Decepticon testicles, Autobot heaven, offensive robots -- and Megan Fox.

Here's the plot to the threequel in a nutshell: A sweet prologue (marred only by a phony-looking digital JFK) recounts the war for Cybertron and the real reason behind the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1960s. Cut to the present where Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) struggles to find his first post-college job, while the Autobots led by Optimus Prime and the U.S. military's NEST team led by Lt. Col. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) work in tandem to take out the remaining Decepticons around the world. However, the evil 'bots eventually get the upper hand and begin an invasion to conquer the Earth with Chicago as Ground Zero in this final war between the Autobots/humans and Decepticons. There's more going on, but for the sake of spoilers we'll keep it at that.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon definitely has more of a plot than either of its predecessors. There are genuine stakes this time, and it's the first Transformers film where you actually get some sense of physical or emotional consequence to the events that transpire. (That said, the timing of the villains' scheme makes no sense given all that's happened in the series thus far.) Mostly the film works because of its kick-ass 3D action scenes. Transformers 3 could very well be 3D's savior in light of its waning box office appeal in recent months. The 'bots battles have never been more vibrant or entertaining than they are in this installment. Unlike say Green Lantern or Pirates 4, Transformers 3 really is a movie you need to see in 3D. The 3D action highlights transpire mostly during the film's final hour in Chicago, such as the wingsuit jump sequence and the set-piece where Sam, his new girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) and the now-retired Epps (Tyrese Gibson) are inside a collapsing skyscraper.

Bay's action scenes here are bigger, better and more brutal than any in the first two films, even though it's still tough at times to tell the robots apart in battle. That said, the 'bots have far more distinct personalities than in the past movies. When a 'bot dies here, you feel it unlike when Jazz bought it in the first film. But more humans perish here than robots, with scores of poor Chicagoans blasted when the Decepticons establish base camp in the Windy City. (The Chicago invasion sequence alone makes the film worth the price of admission.) The Decepticons are legitimately scary at times here, such as when they invade the homes of their human allies, an assassination sequence that's creepy as $h*!.

On the performance front, Shia remains the reason why the viewer is even interested in whatever human element this VFX-driven franchise offers. It was nice to see Sam still having to struggle to prove his worth despite having saved the earth twice before. Victoria's Secret model-turned-first time actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley makes you forget all about Megan Fox within moments of seeing her onscreen. Where Fox's love interest was skanky, Rosie's is charming, sweet and, yes, hotter than hell. Patrick Dempsey makes for a great douchebag as Carly's boss Dylan Gould, who is unsurprisingly not as nice as he initially seems. Dempsey could have really twirled the proverbial mustache here, but he goes for the sleaze rather than the camp.

As they have twice before, Duhamel and Gibson reliably provide the action movie muscle in their underwritten, one-dimensional roles. Frances McDormand tries to class things up and bring an edge of seriousness to the proceedings as National Intelligence Director Mearing. It is indeed strange to see two Coen Bros. staples like McDormand and John Turturro playing major supporting roles in a Transformers film. Speaking of Turturro, he once again chews the scenery as former FBI agent Simmons. While he's not in the film as much as he was in the second one, Turturro's hammy turn is still enough to mar the proceedings.

The backstory between Simmons and Mearing was unnecessary and annoying, but not as much as the inclusion of John Malkovich and the ubiquitous Ken Jeong, both of whom quickly outstay their welcome with protracted, awkward and unfunny scenes. While not as grating as either Anthony Anderson or Ramon Rodriguez were, Alan Tudyk pops up as the extraneous comic relief this time. And, of course, Kevin Dunn and Julie White reprise their schticky roles as Sam's parents, albeit in a smaller dose than before.

The robots remain the real reason why people go to see these movies (sorry, Shia) and, thankfully, they're better served here than they were last time around. Optimus Prime is finally depicted as the badass robot warrior fans of the animated series remember him as, and his battles here are the best he's ever had in the trilogy. Megatron is also back, badly disfigured by the Egyptian battle at the end of ROTF. Starscream, Shockwave and the Wreckers have their scene-stealing moments, while Wheelie and Brains are thankfully not nearly as goofy or prevalent as recent TV spots have suggested. The biggest 'bot role here besides Optimus is Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy. He's great as Optimus' mentor and the Autobot discovered by the Apollo 11 astronauts during the film's pre-credits sequence. (There are some Star Trek nods that will make fanboys chuckle.)

Michael Bay and Co. strive to redeem themselves here for Revenge of the Fallen. Did they succeed? Mostly. Of course, those who loathe the series won't be convinced no matter what, but that begs the question why they'd even bother to see the third film let alone go in with an open mind. There are pacing problems and pockets of goofy humor in the first part of Act Two that threaten to derail the film, but it wisely course-corrects enough to save itself. Its last hour is the full-on human vs. robot war film that the Terminator series has always promised but never delivered. Transformers: Dark of the Moon may not be a great film, but it is largely great fun. In a summer movie season that's only had a handful of films that have really offered that, it's nice to see the Transformers exit the screen (at least for now) on a high rather than low note.

[sdsichero]

Here you go Zechs, production art from Josh Nizzi...

http://www.joshnizzi.com/

[sdsichero]

http://www.hasbro.com/kre-o/en_US/

[fieldy snuts]

Here's the good news from Dark of the Moon being out though...now that High Moon Studio's pumped up the game adaption they can finally get back to the sequel of War for Cybertron

If only someone would adapt THOSE designs into a franchise

[Zechs]

Here's the good news from Dark of the Moon being out though...now that High Moon Studio's pumped up the game adaption they can finally get back to the sequel of War for Cybertron

If only someone would adapt THOSE designs into a franchise

How is the movie game? I'm tempted to get that.

[Cat-Scratch]

Here's the good news from Dark of the Moon being out though...now that High Moon Studio's pumped up the game adaption they can finally get back to the sequel of War for Cybertron

If only someone would adapt THOSE designs into a franchise

Damn straight.

[fieldy snuts]

How is the movie game? I'm tempted to get that.

I returned it to EB/Gamestop for their return within 7 days for full refund policy. Though not because it sucked, it was actually good. My biggest complaint is the campaign being too damn short.

The story bridges the gap between movie 1 and movie 2...so it's not really a game adaption like the last two. My biggest complaint. Very short. Though the multiplayer mode might give a few people some extra play time.

The gameplay is pretty similar to War for Cybetron except you play one campaign while randomly going from Autobot to Decepticon throughout, which is pretty frustrating. The one difference between this and War for Cybetron is Stealth mode though which overhauls the vehicle mode: you have the ability to strafe and lock onto targets making vehicle mode shockingly more effective than robot mode at times.

[sdsichero]

TF3 concept art by Wesley Burt

http://conceptartworld.com/?p=8388

Some decent looking stuff. I don't like the face aesthetic they use in the TF movies though.

Also...
'Transformers: Dark of the Moon's' Powerful Visual Effects: 5 Things to Know About How They Did It

[sdsichero]

Playing with Hasbro's Kre-O Transformer kits: don't call them Lego

I like the Kreons better than the constructs.

[fieldy snuts]

I just caught up on Transformers Prime. For a show called Transformers Prime...it's more like the Arcee and Jack show guest starring Bulkhead.

Not bothering with this anymore.

[Zechs]

I just caught up on Transformers Prime. For a show called Transformers Prime...it's more like the Arcee and Jack show guest starring Bulkhead.

Not bothering with this anymore.

I thought it was pretty meh. It has some ideas but meh. I did enjoy Megatron in Bumblebee's mind episode and Ratchet but yeah.. it's kind of um what's the word I'm looking for.. awkward the relationship between Jack and Arcee.

[sdsichero]

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Transformers-Chojin-Master-Force-DVD-Release-Date/15718

Transformers: Chôjin Master Force - New Date for 'Complete Japanese Transformers Collection' AND 'Master Force'
Printed catalog Shout! sent to a customer says to expect these both in early December
Posted by David Lambert 7/25/2011

Great news comes from many sources. Today we have a ton of news thanks to one of our readers, Mike Kenny, who e-mailed to tell us he'd bought a couple of DVDs from Shout! Factory, and when he received them "In my package I also got a 2011 Video Catalog from them detailing all the titles they have released so far as well as the remaining titles for the year." Mike was kind enough to scan several sample pages from the catalog, which you can see at the bottom.

Among the not-yet-announced street dates Mike found in this catalog was a December 6th scheduled date for Transformers: Super-God (Chôjin) Master Force. This 4-disc release will cost $29.93 SRP. Shout! Factory hasn't formally announced the title yet, so the date and cost could possibly change. We obviously don't have any other details for this item, nor box art. Stay tuned, however, and we'll keep you updated as further developments occur! Again, our thanks to Mike for taking the time to fill us in.

Also coming on the same date of December 6th will apparently be a release of The Complete Japanese Transformers Collection, the previously-delayed 13-DVD set with The Headmasters, Super-God (Chôjin) Master Force and Victory. These 3 Japanese-aired Transformers show are coming on DVD to North America from Shout! Factory, but keep in mind please that none of the Shout! releases (the big box OR the individual sets) have an English-language audio soundtrack on them. They only have the original Japanese soundtrack with English subtitles. The 13-disc set still shows the same $99.99 SRP as before, according to the catalog scan seen below.

(see link for catalog scans)