Talk:Cybertron's Most Wanted

There is a major error in this year's Botcon comic. We (Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop) are credited as the writers. We did not write this story.
We were hired to write the comic, at which point we put together an initial story treatment. This treatment was rejected, and we wrote a second new treatment. To ensure that there would be no misunderstanding of where we were taking the story, this was an exhaustive outline, covering every action and event. In essence, it was a completed story minus dialog.
After an extensive amount of back and forth, Pete approved that treatment for expansion into the full script. This was the agreed-upon final outline.
We then expanded the outline into a full script and turned it in, having been contracted for a 24-page comic script. It was at this point that Pete came back to us. Pete told us to scrap the entire first two acts, rewrite it with the jailbreak scene with very different characterizations for key cast members, and then just staple-gun the third act from the prior story onto that (with none of the plot points or characterizations lining up).
We informed him he was telling us to write a full second script long after we had delivered what we had discussed, and that we had put aside other paying projects for this. We had been contracted for our page count, we had turned in our page count on an approved, finalized outline, and that we could do the reworks in question, but that we would have to charge for those pages. Pete opted to have Jesse finish the story instead.
(A handful of things from our draft were kept in the snippets of the final we've seen so far (no, we have not seen the final iteration yet). Dia/Burnout being female was our idea, and we had to fight for it. Zaptrap's Wizard of Wor-style speech pattern was also from our draft.)
Jesse sent us the new script asking for feedback, saying he felt it was still "your story". We provided a ton of feedback, and made it clear that it was not our story. We told him, and I quote the email here:

"While we appreciate the gesture, this isn't "still our story". The only things left of what we wrote are scraps of dialog in the back end. The main-cast characterizations, plot and motivations are completely changed. There isn't enough here for us to be credited as writers. At best a "based on concepts by" or something similar."

We believe strongly in accurate credit given for work done. This story should be credited to Jesse Wittenrich and Pete Sinclair. --M Sipher (talk) 17:37, 21 June 2015 (EDT)