User:Nova81426

Hi, I'm the swell guy that created this place. Well, not really. My name is Brian Sokol, and I started Teletraan 1 in 2005 so that my friend and I could have a hobby to work on. Unfortunately for the wiki, after a week we were offered the opportunity to take over a comic book store. That became our hobby (and job) and we abandoned the wiki.

A few years later, I came back thinking it would be as I left it. To my pleasant surprise, it had actually flourished. I decided it would be best if I left it to the excellent community that built it.

It's been 10 years since I started the original wiki, and I thought it would be a good time for me to finally make an account on the "new" Transformers Wiki. Though I haven't been contributing, I have been reading the site frequently for the last decade, and it's truly become an excellent resource. I honestly believe that Transformers fans have one of the best wikis in existence. I'm not here to try to "take over" or anything like that. I don't feel like I have a claim to ownership. I just want to be a part of the community. 10 years ago, as I was writing an email to Wikicities asking them to make a Transformers wiki, I couldn't have imagined how awesome this place would become.

If anyone has time, I would love to hear some stories about the history of the wiki. We can discuss on my talk page.

About Me

I guess I should tell you a little about myself. 10 years ago, my junior year of college was ending. I was working on a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science. Today, I'm a senior web developer and consultant working in Chicago. I'm married and have 2 kids. I still love Transformers. I still collect the toys, watch the shows, and read the comics.

Toys

I've collected significant portions of every toy line, but I'm not a completist. My favorite lines are Beast Wars, Animated, ROTF, Prime, CHUG, and Masterpiece. Aside from Masterpiece figures, I usually don't collect anything from TakaraTomy. I think I have about 10 non-Hasbro official releases. I have some convention exclusives and subscription service figures, but I don't collect them regularly. I do collect third party unlicensed figures on occasion. You can see some galleries of my collection on my website. I only have a small number of them on display at any given time due to space considerations.

Comics

I started reading the comics near the end of the Marvel run. I was a little kid in the 80s, so I was a bigger fan of the cartoon than the comics. I've since gone back and read most of the Marvel run, including Generation 2. I've read everything from Dreamwave and IDW.

At first, the Dreamwave G1 comics were amazing. Just seeing the old G1 characters back in action was great. The War Within was an excellent mini-series. Looking back though, the Dreamwave comics weren't that great.

IDW is the opposite. It started out slow, and I was skeptical that they would ever be worth reading. The story was just so different from G1. They persevered, and today's comics are fantastic. More than Meets the Eye is one of the best comics on the shelves today.

Cartoons

I've seen every American episode of Transformers except for Rescue Bots, Cybertron, and the 2015 Robots in Disguise. Beast Wars is still my favorite show, but I highly enjoyed Animated and Prime. My deep dark secret is that I've come around to liking Beast Machines in recent years. I'm working on watching the "Japanese G1" episodes.

Conventions

I've attended several conventions that were held in the Midwest, including BotCon 2002, OTFCC 2003, OTFCC 2004, TFcon USA 2014, and BotCon 2015.

Movies

Obviously, The Transformers: The Movie is the best, but I also enjoyed Transformers and Dark of the Moon. Age of Extinction was ok. Revenge of the Fallen wasn't great. I recognize that the live-action films aren't "good" in a strict sense, but I still enjoy them on occasion.