Mike Costa

This article is about the real-life writer. For the fictional writer, see Michael Costa.

He still prefers writing humans, despite having interacted with our fandom. Man has an indomitable spirit.

Mike Costa is a comic book writer for IDW Publishing, and was the main Transformers scribe from November 2009 to December 2011. Costa followed Shane McCarthy as the predominant Transformers writer, and his work preceded two ongoing titles by John Barber and James Roberts. His work focused on the Transformers' relationship with humanity, via a "decompressed" style of storytelling. He also liked to do different genres in different stories (calling the space opera story "Space Opera" is a bit of a giveaway here).

He has stated that during his first year, he found himself burning out on the job and finding it "not as fun" as he'd thought, because the immortal, robotic nature of the characters made it difficult to get a handle on. Aside from the general oddness of the concept, he felt they lacked the usual motivations of an action-adventure character and he didn't see how they could realistically have personalities like humans, and the need to have them act human-esque was a big logical flaw. "They don't have all of the basic things that humans have that motivate them and give them motivation for drama for a story. They don't really get hungry, they don't get tired, they don't have women or relationships like that [which] they value because they don’t have females that they can love; maybe brotherly love, but how — they don’t have parents? They don't have religion or spirituality... you have to manufacture [these things] and that makes it very incoherent." That, and the restrictions from the toy-centric nature of the premise (like Optimus only turning into a truck all the time), caused him major problems. The final storyline, Chaos, energised him after it was turned into a big event and brought in James Roberts as a co-writer.

Taking his two All Hail Megatron coda stories as one, Costa wrote a total of thirty-five issues across his two-year run. For a time, this meant that he ranked in third place behind Simon Furman and Bob Budiansky as the writer who had penned the most Transformers comics in the brand's history, until his position was overtaken by John Barber and James Roberts in 2014.

The fandom has caused Costa to be alternately amazed, baffled, and annoyed. He's admitted he wasn't prepared for the intense dedication of the fans and the multiple demands from his readers — "I have no idea who's going to like what!" — but in the end he finds it "pretty cool" that people are talking about what he's doing. He's claimed there's "probably only a hundred active posters" on the message boards.

In addition to Transformers, he has also written for G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Comic bibliography

IDW Publishing

Writer

• All Hail Megatron #13 ("Uneasy Lies the Head"), #16 ("The Man of Steel")
• The Transformers ongoing series #1–21, 24–31
• Spotlight: Prowl
• The Transformers: Ironhide

External links

Interviews

• September 2009—CBR
• November 2009—Seibertron
• May 2010—CBR
• July 2010—San Diego Comic-Con (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) (with Andy Schmidt, Larry Hama, Robert Atkins, Denton J. Tipton, Michael Kelly, and Alex Irvine)
• April 2011—The Underbase
• May 2011—Seibertron (with Brendan Cahill)
• June 2011—BotCon (with Chris Ryall, Andy Schmidt, Livio Ramondelli and Flint Dille)
• July 2011—San Diego Comic-Con (Part 1, Part 2) (with Chris Ryall, Denton J. Tipton, John Barber, Livio Ramondelli, Carlos Guzman, Tom Waltz, and Brandon Kale)
• December 2011—The Underbase