Defending Bob

Essay contributed by Cliffjumper. Last updated: 7th July 2003.

Anyone who's heard of Transformer comics has heard of Bob Budiansky. He's the guy who wrote all those childish Transformer stories featuring kids, remote-controlled cars, wrestling Micromasters, Brick Springstern etc, etc. If you ask a Transformers comic fan who their favourite writer is, 99% will say one man, and it won't be Bob Budiansky.

This comes across to me as a trifle unfair. For a start, Budiansky wrote some terribly good stuff. He also wrote some decidedly poor stuff - an overview of his output seems fitting. His initial story arc gave us the best characterisations that Ratchet and Shockwave would ever receive, and also some intriguing development with Megatron that would not be matched until the Generation 2 series. The introduction of Circuit Breaker wasn't the best idea Bob ever had, but to be fair she didn't start becoming annoying until much later. By the time his initial story arc [from US #5-12] the Transformers comic was a big success, with sales to dismiss the idea that the limited series' revenue was a flash in the pan. However, it was after this things began to go wrong. "Shooting Star" was an uninteresting filler story catching up with Megatron's fate; "Rock 'n' Roll Out" was a very poor outing in which the Decepticons tried to capture energy from a rock concert; and "I, Robot Master" came up with the slightly daft idea that a man in a silly suit could trick people into believing he controlled the Transformers. Budiansky took a short break for "Plight of the Bumblebee", a decent enough character piece on the titular Autobot in US #16 written by Len Kaminski, and then came his master storyline. With pressure from Hasbro to introduce more of the 1985 range, Budiansky decided to return to story to Cybertron, and catch up with the war back there. The next two issues, "The Smelting Pool" and "Bridge to Nowhere" are rightly recognised as classics, and introduced Budiansky's hardline Blaster. The next issue [US #19 - "Command Performances"] was another good action story, and the dramatic introduction of Omega Supreme probably meant everyone in America who read this issue went out and bought the toy. It also set up a feature story for Skids the following issue, easily the biggest character development he received.

But the next few issues would demonstrate the pressures Hasbro were putting Budiansky under - in four months, 26 new Transformers were introduced, and the storytelling and characterisation would never quite recover. As per the cartoon, Optimus Prime and Megatron were both killed off, though the decision was taken to keep the series in the present day. The leadership of the Autobots and the Decepticons passed to Grimlock and Ratbat respectively. The former became bullish and irritating, a characterisation which put many readers off [he was dubbed "Captain Caveman" in the letters page], and the latter was ridiculed by fans. I would argue that Ratbat is one of the most interesting Decepticon leaders we've seen - it's the only time that a Decepticon leader is shown to have risen to the post through intelligence, rather than raw power - even Shockwave, often cited as the definitive Decepticon commander, had to reaffirm his position by humiliating Megatron in physical combat. It's also worth noting that Ratbat's attack on the Autobot forces on the Moon [US #41] is about the closest the Decepticons had come to victory at this point. Budiansky's newest heroes were renegade Autobots Blaster and Goldbug, who had deserted the main Autobot force, unhappy with Grimlock's leadership. However, Blaster became increasingly more militaristic and unreasonable, a lot of reader empathy was lost, especially with Goldbug becoming little more than a foil to Blaster's rhetoric.

Even with Optimus Prime back as of US #42, the rot continued. The Underbase Saga [US #47-50] is often cited as a high point of the run, but sadly comes across as garish, padded and largely uninteresting, with the last chapter little more than a artificial massacre, as characters largely not featured for a couple of years were wiped out en masse, in a desperate attempt to lend some drama to proceedings. Budiansky's last five stories are among his weakest efforts, ranging from inconsequential to terrible, with poor concepts such as the Mechannibals given much more page space than they merited, and Hasbro's ever anxious hand forcing masses of new characters into the book, with little thought as to how this saturation would affect the quality of the title.

But why did Budiansky's storytelling deteriorate so much from the mid-teens of the run onwards? Bear in mind that to follow this theory, you're going to have to look at Transformers as a simple toyline, as Bob would have, rather than the life epi-centre your Transformers fan might. There are several factors to consider.

The first is Bob himself. Budiansky was a penciller and an editor. His work on Ghost Rider is good, and something I'm planning to scan and put online somewhere. His editor work on the Kree/Skrull War limited reprint series is excellent, especially when he manages to condense the first 3 or 4 issues into a superb 20 page prologue - while his editorial CV includes acclaimed runs on titles such as Daredevil, followed by a stint as Marvel's Special Projects editor, including series such as the Infinity sagas. Transformers was his first regular gig as a writer. Most writers after five years on a monthly US book is going to get itchy feet. There are your exceptions to this, such as Claremont and even Furman, but everyone falls off sooner or later. Who knows, if Furman had still been writing Transformers by US #130, maybe he'd have dropped the ball? Now, after a year or so, sales were still high. Toy books are looked down upon inside Marvel US [even today, only Transformers, G. I. Joe and maybe Star Wars get any sort of respect from comic fans - there aren't many fans of Rom, The Micronauts or Shogun Warriors out there...] and despite his sterling work, Bob doesn't get promoted to a respectable MU title, not full-time. He's going to loose heart and stop putting as much effort in. For the amount Bob respected Transformers, see how many related interviews he's done. If Budiansky has appeared at a convention or two, it's been low-profile, as I haven't heard of it. For Budiansky, the Transformers comics were a job; for Furman, they were more of a vocation - aside from Transformers, Furman's work is not very well known, with a couple of cult UK series [Death's Head, Dragon's Claws] and a few stints on second-string US books [She-Hulk, Alpha Flight, What If?] - it's Furman's biggest, and arguably only real, success. It's also worth noting that Marvel UK were prepared to humour Furman by commissioning titles like Death's Head and Dragon's Claws, realising how indispensable his work on Transformers, their flagship book, was.

The second is Jose Delbo. As a competent artist, Bob is going to lose heart big-time if his hard work scripting comes out looking as, frankly, ugly, because he's got a guy who obviously didn't read 'How to Draw Transformers'. Now let's not get me wrong here - I can't draw to save my life. But Jose had a full-time, monthly gig on a national Marvel comic. If I was Bob, I'd start thinking 'whatever I write, it's going to end up looking horrid, so why bother?'.

The third is Hasbro. As a toyline-based book, Budiansky's not going to have a lot of creative control with regard to what characters show up. Hasbro put out, what, on average 30-40 Transformers a year, with 12 issues of the comic. There's little doubt that Bob was told who to include, when, and how often. I theorise that his much-maligned "I am X, and I do this" speeches whenever anyone new turned up were tongue in cheek, a way of saying "there Hasbro, did what you wanted". It's not hard to see much of Budiansky's later work as slightly post-modern, ridiculous stories about a ridiculous idea - I mean transforming sentient robots from another planet who have names which sound cool in English, how daft is that? Furman in the UK was under no such pressure - the US reprints had promotion of new toys covered, and he could basically do what he liked with the rest of it. If some toyline was telling Claremont which X-Men he could use and when, and giving him 30 odd new mutants a year he had to slot into his work, that comic would have suffered too. Furman had near total freedom - the closest Hasbro UK ever came was requesting the Earthforce stories based on the European Classic line, which gave Furman existing characters such as Prowl, Grimlock and Wheeljack, and allowed him to write brief 5-page character pieces. Other occasions can be theorised - "Worlds Apart" was probably at Hasbro's suggestion to give the Headmasters and Targetmasters a headlining story when they were released, as the US Headmasters series was relegated to back-up material, while the 'future' stories may have been requested to give a showcase to Rodimus etc. as Season 3 was basically unshown in the UK, and even this worked in Furman's favour, as he was able to tell stories without having to bring things into check with the US reprints. Furman's UK only stories were generally something he had total freedom in, and here the weekly format worked in his favour - something like Target 2006 quite simply wouldn't have worked in the US format, as it would have taken six months to tell, during which time the events of TF:TM would have been and gone, and Hasbro would have had new toys that would need shoe-horning into the plot.

Another factor is the profile of the cartoon in the US. After the first year of the comic at most it was secondary to the cartoon. For an example, I give you the sheer number of American fans on the internet who haven't read the comics, or even aren't aware of them. With the comic out every month, but the cartoon on regularly [daily at some points] and easy to access, it's going to become second string. Do you have any idea of the kind of opinion comic writers have of most cartoons? Especially at this time? It'd be pretty annoying to Budiansky for a cheap animated show to eclipse his best efforts, so why give his best? Over in the UK, we had the comic weekly, and the cartoon buried in Saturday morning TV. No contest. With the high profile of the cartoon in America, it's an obvious observation that most US fans would have taken the cartoon as the 'right' continuity [indeed, a large number still do, but that's for another time], and not bother spending a dollar or so on something which contradicts what they know from TV.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Budiansky is a great writer hard done by, or that context excuses poor quality. It's just that it would be nice if people think before they slate him. It's mainly just theory, but it makes sense to me.

Since I wrote this article, Bob Budiansky gave a rare interview at The Hub which reaffirmed much of the theory above.