Transformers: Mosaic

The closest your fanfic will get to official status.

Transformers: Mosaic is an unofficial anthology of one-page comic strip stories borrowed from a concept started by Drivaar at the Allspark message board and overseen by Josh van Reyk and Shaun Knowler, who posted their first strip on IDW Publishing's official Transformers forum on June 18, 2007. From then until the series' end in 2012, Mosaic strips were written and drawn by a large number of contributors (most of whom are fans, though a few pros have contributed), and expanded out to almost every Transformers forum online. In May 2012, van Reyk and Knowler announced the end of the project.

Appearances in IDW publications

From October 2007 to December 2008, IDW printed Mosaic strips as a backup feature in its Transformers comics. The practice was eventually discontinued, however, due to unspecified copyright problems. Published Mosaic strips included:

• "Rain", featuring Hound (published in Devastation #2)
• "Reason", featuring Beachcomber (published in Devastation #3)
• "Ghost in the Machine", featuring Punch/Counterpunch (published in Devastation #4)
• "The Curse", featuring Blurr (published in Devastation #5)
• "Feeling Yellow", featuring Sunstreaker (published in Devastation #6)
• "Rank", featuring Prowl (published in "Spotlight: Grimlock")
• "Break Away", featuring Silverbolt (published in "Spotlight: Cyclonus")
• "The Wait", featuring Scorponok, and "The Passenger", featuring Barricade (published in Saga of the Allspark #1)
• "Dark Visionary", featuring Megatron (published in Saga of the Allspark #2)
• "More Than You Can Chew", featuring Grimlock (published in The Reign of Starscream #5)
• "Creation Matrix", featuring Ratchet and Optimus Prime (published in Saga of the Allspark #3)
• "Dead Men's Boots", featuring the Wreckers (published without disclaimers in the Last Stand of the Wreckers trade, and thus made canon)

Contributions from official Transformers creatives

Oops

In February 2008, Simon Furman produced a Mosaic strip titled "Hail and Farewell", which he stated to be canon—the first Mosaic story to be so. However, that canonicity was eventually overridden by a statement from IDW that, "The Mosaics are all a lot of fun, but they're all not continuity tales." Stories included as backmatter for IDW's comics carried a disclaimer stating that they are "non-profit-making, independently produced stories by Transformers enthusiasts" and are "not affiliated with Hasbro or IDW Publishing". Of course, as the IDW continuity developed under different writers and Furman's plans were truncated, the events of "Hail and Farewell" were explicitly contradicted, rendering it something of a moot point—but years later, the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime would declare its events to have actually occurred within the Transformers multiverse, thereby canonising it, albeit as an offshoot of IDW continuity.

Later, James Roberts and Nick Roche produced "Dead Men's Boots", adapted from material from Roberts' prose story "Bullets". This was officially published without disclaimers in the Last Stand of the Wreckers trade, so is unimpeachably canon.

Writer Eric Holmes wrote a couple of strips for project, though their plots were unrelated to his work on Megatron Origin. Writer Chris Mowry and artist Andrew Griffith contributed a Cosmos-centric strip which might have been related to their collaboration on Spotlight: Cosmos, an IDW comic which never came to pass.

Official artists Robby Musso, Josh Burcham, Josh Perez, Liam Shalloo, Tom B. Long, Ryan Button and Kieran Oats all worked on Mosaic in some capacity. One strip included panels from a whole host of IDW artists, including Guido Guidi, Marcelo Matere, Alex Milne, and E. J. Su.

Legacy

While Mosaic was largely forgotten following the project's conclusion, at its peak it provided a platform for many fans who would later go on to work on official Transformers media, in a few cases as a direct result of their Mosaic contributions. In particular, the project gave Josh van Reyk and Shaun Knowler the opportunity to write Spotlight: Jazz.

Artists Kris Carter, John-Paul Bove, Joana Lafuente, Andrew Griffith, Matt Frank, Priscilla Tramontano, Casey Coller, Corin Howell, Rui Onishi, and Ed Pirrie, who had well-received work on Mosaic, all later went on to work for IDW Publishing. Chris Vera and Javier O. Reyes had minor contributions to The AllSpark Almanac II.

Fans given work by Fun Publications, such as John Flores Timothy Lim, Andrew Sorohan, Little Iron, Drew Eiden, Jake Isenberg, Thomas Deer, Brandy Dixon and Paul Vromen also had contributions as part of Mosaic, either preceding or following their licensed work.

One of the most prolific Mosaic writers was longtime fan Martin Fisher, who later went on to write a few strips for Titan Comics' UK Age of Extinction magazine, as well as an episode of the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon!

External links

• Transformers: Mosaic on deviantART
• Unofficial annotated Transformers: Mosaic archive on Tumblr, indexed by continuities, characters and creators
• Interview with Josh van Reyk and Shaun Knowler at Newsarama (archive link)
• "Hail and Farewell"