Mister Johnson

Johnson is a human from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Yes, that Richard Branson Mister Johnson.

Richard Branson Mister Johnson runs a large company called Virgin Vision from the United Kingdom. Their activities involve clean-up operations, which he oversees personally. His intentions are genuine, but he doesn't object to a little publicity along the way, either.

He's smart enough to know that you don't get sharks in the Thames, though Jawbreaker disagreed.

Fiction

Marvel The Transformers comics

Richard Branson Mister Johnson appeared exclusively in the UK portion of the Marvel Comics continuity.

Following the discovery of Transformer bodies in the Thames, Richard Branson Mister Johnson led a crew from Virgin Vision to remove them environmental hazards from London's main waterway, come rain or shine. No sooner had they hauled the bodies of Centurion and Megatron above the water than a team of Decepticons showed up to steal them and fly them back to Shockwave.

Branson Johnson appeared cross at the Decepticons as they took the bodies away. In which case he may have had more in mind than simply disposing of them. (Or he just didn't like being put out of a headline.) Salvage!

Notes

• Originally, this story would have featured a character who was merely Bransonesque, but Lee Sullivan had a bit of fun drawing a full-on Branson likeness. When his bosses saw it, they decided to try for permission to actually use Branson as the character. They were successful, with Branson's appearance being tied into his ongoing environmental "Clean Up Britain" campaign, leading to it even making some UK papers. One such article was reprinted in the Titan trade paperback Transformers: Space Pirates, though it wasn't very complimentary about either Branson or Transformers.
• Hatchette's reprint in 2018 saw Richard Branson changed into Mister Johnson, ruining the greatest moment in Transformers history in a scandal known as 'The Branson Pickle'. Lee Sullivan was brought back to redraw Branson's hair and chin. As Simon Furman explains: "In the absence of actual paperwork from those dim distant days proving we had Branson's permission to use his likeness, it was decided to err on the side of caution. I did actually try and contact Branson. But in the end we got Lee Sullivan to make art changes... to his own art."
• You know who else is Bransonesque Johnsonesque? R.J. Blackrock.

External links

• Richard Branson at Wikipedia
• Richard Branson's page at Virgin Group website