wadapanさんのイラストまとめ

sketched a cheeky Ro-Tor from memory during tonight's Robots in Disguise stream to test out a new pen - he wasn't in the episodes we watched, but he's the one whose design I know best (and I STILL messed up his chest details). Stick 'em up I guess

if anything, this goes to show how much Simon Furman's "-ations" comics have fallen off the radar recently - which is a huge shame, because having just read them I think they're some of the best Transformers fiction out there! I'll have to post a proper review later this week...

it's not an EXACT match, but a few of the details line up, the colour's right, and Roche has a tangible connection to this source. That's more than can be said for our previous best guess, some 80s package art/merch, which Roche didn't even recognise! https://t.co/fk0xTaUCxA

at the time, I'd already set out to read every Transformers comic ever, and began keeping an eye out for guns. And finally, in Spotlight: Hardhead - a Nick Roche-drawn comic from 2008!!! - in the hand of fellow mystery-solver Nightbeat...

the sincere appreciation for what's come before always shines through. The Bumblebee prequel's a spoof of Bond films, but it also gets what made those stories fun! And unlike in most other tie-ins, the manic energy of characters like Sam Witwicky and Jetfire is captured perfectly

the issue with "read this before the movie" prequels is that, by definition, they can't do much except pre-empt story beats that (probably) didn't need elaboration in the first place. It's all redundant, guaranteed to be overwritten by future films (or even script revisions!)

okay, I think people are DEFINITELY sleeping on @TheJohnBarber's TF movieverse comics - I just got done reading all the tie-ins from the first three films, and it was astonishing seeing the entire thing be elevated the moment he came onboard as writer. Thread...

so there's an easy narrative in "he wanted to replace that dumb cartoon name with a cool new name". But if you look back at the comic, notice how all the dialogue conspicuously avoids referring to Optimus by name at all!

see, most people assume that Optronix originated with Simon Furman - in his War Within series - because Furman's never held the cartoon in particularly high regard, and (as you probably know) the name "Orion Pax" originated in the Sunbow episode "The Search for Alpha Trion"

so hey, a fun bit of fandom history I've discovered: back in the early 2000s when Dreamwave was big, Optimus' name before he became "Prime" was, for a time, "Optronix", rather than the now-commonly-accepted "Orion Pax". But where did these names come from?