Bob Budiansky

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This article is about . For other uses of "Bob", see Bob (disambiguation)|The name or term "Bob" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Bob (disambiguation).}}
{{#if:Bob Budiansky"Looking Back With Bob Budiansky" interview|
“ ... when [fans have] contacted me for one reason or another, like for an interview for instance, they don’t understand how I’m not as passionate about the Transformers as they are now, even though I worked on them for so long. All I could basically say is, "Well, I enjoyed working on them while I did it, but it was a job, and then after I finished that job I moved onto the next job". ”
{{#if:Bob Budiansky|

—Bob Budiansky{{#if:"Looking Back With Bob Budiansky" interview|, "Looking Back With Bob Budiansky" interview}}

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Not actually Kirk Cameron. You can tell because he writes about Earth being millions of years old.

Bob Budiansky (born March 15, 1954) was the writer of most of the Marvel US Transformers comic book series and the creator of much of the mythos, characters, and names behind the first several years of the franchise.

In late 1983, Hasbro approached Marvel Comics to create a storyline around a series of transforming toy robots they had licensed from Takara. Editors Denny O'Neil and Jim Shooter created some of the early background for Transformers, including several names, but much of the material for the first 28 characters was rejected by Hasbro. Revision duties were passed to Bob Budiansky, a writer and penciler who had only been promoted from assistant editor to editor earlier that year.<ref>Marvel Comics Bullpen Bulletin for July 1983, as presented in "Star Wars" #73.</ref> Budiansky renamed most of the characters and revised the personalities... with a week's deadline during Thanksgiving.<ref name="moonbase2">Bob Budiansky interview at Moonbase 2</ref> Though Optimus Prime was named by O'Neil, Bob Budiansky is responsible for the names of Megatron, the Dinobots, Sideswipe, Wheeljack, and countless others.

Due to its success, The Transformers four-issue miniseries became an ongoing. None of the three writers had been able to 'get' the Transformers mythos during the miniseries, and Bob Budiansky spent a lot of time directing the story as its editor—and even he thinks it was a total mess because nobody could keep track.<ref name="Interview at Rusting Carcass">Interview at Rusting Carcass</ref> Because of this, after he was replaced as editor (due to Marvel internal rules) he was made the writer from #5 on: he was the only one who knew enough about the mythos! It was in these years that he developed popular characters Shockwave, Ratchet, and Grimlock into the roles they're famous for today; the only characters at this time he didn't create were the movie ones, who were specifically created for the film by Sunbow. He did, however, create the concept of the Autobot Matrix. Budiansky continued to write bios and name characters until at least the end of his tenure on the Marvel Comic book<ref>Bob Budiansky interview at Comixplex on March 16th, 2021. He says he thinks he continued for a "couple of months" after leaving the comic, but not much beyond that</ref>, working off pictures of the toys and what they could do, with names based on whatever the hell he'd just read or seen or heard about that week. When new concepts like Headmasters or Pretenders were created by Hasbro, Budiansky would be given the job of working out story treatments for them and adding them to the Transformers mythos.<ref name="moonbase2"/>

Bob in 2009.

During his run, Bob was constantly kept up to date on Hasbro's plans: information about new toys and their model sheets were sent to him, he attended meetings at their Rhode Island HQ, he visited their annual toy exhibitions. Outside of pimping their wares, Hasbro left him alone. It was up to him whether or not he wanted to follow the cartoon's lead, he wasn't told to keep the target audience in mind (he made the decision himself), and he was even allowed to not use the future-set movie cast.<ref>Metal Machine interview</ref>

{{#if:Simon Furman, BotTalk 2001 interview<ref>https://www.bottalk.com/2024/02/simon-furman-transformers-interview.html</ref>|
“ I think Bob did stirling[sic] work under difficult conditions. He really did have a huge amount of back story and characters to compress into a single issue. With the UK stories... we were lucky -- Bob had done all the hard work for us. ”
{{#if:Simon Furman, BotTalk 2001 interview<ref>https://www.bottalk.com/2024/02/simon-furman-transformers-interview.html</ref>|

—Simon Furman, BotTalk 2001 interview<ref>https://www.bottalk.com/2024/02/simon-furman-transformers-interview.html</ref>{{#if:|, {{{3}}}}}

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Towards the end of his time on the comic book series, Budiansky started to feel fatigue. It was complicated and frustrating, from a story-crafting point of view, to introduce so many new characters in so few issues. At Budiansky's recommendation, the writer of the Marvel UK Transformers comic, Simon Furman, took over Budiansky's duties on the US comic.

An artist as well, Budiansky also drew several covers for Transformers and penciled the first half of his final issue.

As the quote notes, Transformers was a job he enjoyed at the time but is still just a job he did years ago. Not that he isn't pleased to have a {{#expr: 2026-1984}}-year old franchise as his legacy! Until he got onto the Internet and searched his own name in the 90s, he didn't realize it was still such a big deal with fans and was both amused and bemused to learn the truth. In the early 2000s, he started to give interviews to fans and websites. This led to him coming back briefly to adapt The Transformers: The Movie for IDW and he was given an option to pitch to them again, but decided not to as he was far removed from the current Transformers status quo.

Outside of Transformers Budiansky is perhaps best known for drawing Ghost Rider, creating Sleepwalker and writing the entire series, and serving as group editor-in-chief of the Spider-Man titles between 1994 & 1995. In addition, at one point he was assigned to Marvel's "Special Projects" section; this followed his promotion to "executive editor".<ref>Marvel Comics Bullpen Bulletin for December 1991, as printed in Excalibur #47, cover date February 1992</ref> He was also tasked with overseeing a number of other limited series, such as an X-Men/Micronauts crossover.

Transformers comics credits

[edit]
{{#if:Bob tells it like it is, at Metal Machine.net|
“ If there are older Transformers fans who feel my stories were too geared to children—hey, good insight! That was the audience I was playing to. ”
{{#if:Bob tells it like it is, at Metal Machine.net|

—Bob tells it like it is, at Metal Machine.net{{#if:|, {{{3}}}}}

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Marvel The Transformers (US):

Editor - Issues 1–4
Writer - Issues 5–15, 17–32, 35–42, 44–55
Penciller - Issue 55
Cover Artist - Issues 14, 29, 31, 45, 47

Marvel The Transformers Universe

Writer/Consulting Editor - Issues 1–4

Marvel Transformers: The Movie comic adaptation

Editor - Issues 1–3

Marvel Headmasters mini-series

Writer - Issues 1–4
Cover Artist - Issue 1

IDW Transformers: The Animated Movie comic adaptation

Writer - Issues 1–4

Convention appearances

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{{#if:Bob on 90s Internet fandom, at Moonbase 2, 31.10-31.51|
“ "I discovered there were all of these websites, these discussion boards... [people] were passionate about [Transformers], emotional about it. I was despised! People hated me! *laughs* ... still carrying grudges about the fact I wrote 'Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom' or something!" ”
{{#if:Bob on 90s Internet fandom, at Moonbase 2, 31.10-31.51|

—Bob on 90s Internet fandom, at Moonbase 2, 31.10-31.51{{#if:|, {{{3}}}}}

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Budianskyisms

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Though not as prominent or well-remembered as the so-called "Furmanisms" that successor writer Simon Furman would popularize, Bob Budiansky also had a few turns of phrase that he repeatedly fell back on:

Enjoy a nice serving of Brown Betty, with DEATH!! But mostly, eat death.
  • "Have some (X), courtesy of my (Y)!"
where
"X" = some form of damage, dismemberment or death
"Y" = the special weapon of the character in question
Examples:
"Have some metal-eating slime, courtesy of my slime gun, Autobots!" —Blot Brothers in Armor!!
"Have a mechanical malfunction, courtesy of my concussion cannon!" —Breakdown Heavy Traffic!
"Just a case of bad balance, courtesy of my electro-scrambler." —Blaster The Bridge to Nowhere!
"Energy feedback, courtesy of my electro-scrambler, tinhead." —Blaster Totaled!
"You're going on a one-way trip, Monzo, courtesy of my anti-gravity gun!" —Skullcruncher Love and Steel!
  • "I hope you (A) as well as you (B)!"
where
"A" = perform some action, typically shooting
"B" = boast, brag, or some other meaningless non-action
Examples:
"You boast better than you shoot, Dreadwind!" —Goldbug People Power!
"Grrr—I hope you shoot straighter than you think, Weirdwolf!" —Skullcruncher Trial by Fire!
"Only if you aim as well as you brag, Brawl!" —First Aid Used Autobots
  • "This wasn't in (Z)!"
where
"Z" = amusingly bureaucratic item with no bearing on the situation at hand.
Examples:
"This...this wasn't in my job description!" —anonymous railway worker Child's Play
"This wasn't on the trail guide!" —anonymous skier The Man in the Machine!
"None of this was in the rehearsal!" —Sky Lynx The Cosmic Carnival

Notes

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  • As Budiansky's quotes above show, for a while in organised fandom he was the Fallen of the writing world, his stories dismissed or ripped into as being juvenile and silly. His reputation in fandom has gone up since the start of the 21st century, something he attributes to doing interviews.
  • In addition to writing the main character bios, Budiansky also wrote the truncated versions seen on the original toy packaging.
  • Budiansky's stories almost always have a human guest star involved and the Transformers getting involved in human affairs and finding them odd. He's stated this was because he thought the most interesting part was seeing these two vastly different races and worlds colliding with each other - or, more bluntly, "The Transformers were on Earth!".<ref>Budiansky interview archived at One Shall Stand</ref>

See also

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Editorial staff of Marvel Comics' The Transformers
Marvel U.S. editors
Marvel U.S.
editors-in-chief
Marvel UK editors

References

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<references />
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Interviews

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