The comic book license for the Transformers property has changed publishers more often than the robots have changed shape. But now it's in the hands of IDW Publishing, a company with a track record for licensed properties. And with a live-action Transformers movie set to open July 4, that is good news for fans of these robots in disguise.
It's also good news for IDW, providing the San Diego-based publisher with its largest audience yet, thanks to various tie-ins and the attention that comes with an expected summer blockbuster like Transformers.
The movie is about two warring sides of an alien robot species that have taken their battle to Earth. IDW—which publishes licensed comics of Star Trek, CSI, 24, Scarface and more—is currently putting out a four-part prequel to the Transformers film, which will shortly be collected in a trade paperback. Through the month of June it will publish a four-part adaptation of the movie, also to be collected this month. Each issue of the adaptation will offer 32 ad-free pages and include concept art, interviews and additional material.
IDW Publisher and editor-in-chief Chris Ryall co-wrote the prequel with Transformers writer Simon Furman, a process that required them to fill in a lot of blanks to flesh out the movie's backstory.
"The movie starts with the characters here on Earth, and there's a lot of backstory that's just alluded to in the movie," Ryall said. "We took those little pieces that were mentioned in the script—the battles that took place on Cybertron [the Transformers home planet] or other things that took place before they arrived on Earth—and then told stories around that to tell a full prequel story that leads right into the movie itself."
Ryall said the process of coordinating their ideas for the prequel with the film's movie studio, Paramount, went "surprisingly smoothly" for a project this size. When it came to adapting the movie, however, Ryall said he and his fellow creators were most daunted by the prospect of disappointing Transformers fans.
"Transformers has a fan base that's more passionate than any fan base that I've ever dealt with.... So it's a matter of people who have been following this stuff for 20 years and been waiting for a movie forever—you really don't want to let them down and you really want to tell a good, solid Transformers story, not just a retread of stuff they've read before."
In addition to the movie-based Transformers comics, IDW will publish its regular Transformers comic, which will start back up in September under the title Transformers: Devastation, plus a miniseries exploring the origin of villain Megatron and several specials spotlighting various Transformers characters. There will also be a four-part crossover miniseries with Marvel's New Avengers comic starting July 4.
IDW is also contributing to a promotion that Target is doing for the movie. The retail chain will be giving away a million and a half free comics at various theaters across the country on Transformers' opening weekend, and Ryall said IDW contributed a 10-page original story to that comic.
With that Target giveaway, the first issue of the prequel that was given away on Free Comic Book Day and a comic that will be included with the Transformers video game—not to mention the prequel and adaptation trade paperbacks—IDW expects as many as two million Transformers comics to be distributed.
"That's the most widely distributed comic we've ever done by just a huge degree," said Ryall. "The potential new audience that we're able to reach with this property has been really gratifying. It's opened doors and [given us] inroads to places that we never thought possible. When the DVD comes out later this year, there's talk of doing an exclusive story just for the DVD—so once the movie opens we can build on that and keep it growing."
IDW's history with licensed comics has helped prepare the company to take advantage of such a potentially huge project. It started with CSI comics five years ago, which Ryall said have done "very well" for IDW, leading to other TV properties like 24, movies like Shaun of the Dead and Land of the Dead, and video games like Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill. The company recently landed the comic book rights to the Star Trek franchise and will begin publishing those in July. And it was just announced that in November Joss Whedon will be contributing to the Angel comic IDW publishes based on Whedon's TV show in a model similar to Dark Horse's current Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic.
"The Angel [TV] series ended on a cliffhanger where they're all fighting presumably to their death in [an] alley. I think it left a lot of people curious and hanging on to see what was going to happen, so now we finally have a chance to show them."
Still, none of these properties have done as well for IDW as Optimus Prime and his friends.
"CSI really got us going back five years ago, but since then, especially this year, Transformers has been far and away our biggest title, the biggest thing we publish at all right now," said Ryall.
Ryall sees this interest in the comics and in the anticipation for the movie as another sign of Hollywood recognizing the box office clout that fans of such properties have.
"I think [what] studios have realized is that the fan base is a lot bigger than they thought and it's very loyal. You've got people that are going to see 300 three or four times—that's the kind of thing you need to give these movies the legs that a lot of them have had. When you look at an opening like Spider-Man 3 had, those numbers are so much bigger than the comic-buying audience, but [the studios] realize that just because people aren't necessarily buying the comics, they certainly are aware of these characters, so I think you'll keep seeing a lot more. Plus, with comic books you've always got these fantastic visuals, [and] even more people [are] intrigued to see this stuff brought to life."
