What does the Transformers and Back to the Future have in common? How about an epic crossover!? That’s right, thank you IDW!
IDW and the Transformers are no strangers to crossovers. In the past some of my favorite Transformers crossovers have been Mars Attacks: The Transformers, Transformers/Ghostbusters: Ghosts of Cybertron, and G.I. JOE / Transformers. All classics of my childhood. “Great Scott”, IDW has done it again!
This four-issue miniseries which will debut in October will be written by none other than Cavan Scott (bestselling author and writer of IDW’s Star Wars Adventures) and illustrated by Juan Samu (Marvel Action: Black Panther).
In the debut issue, Marty McFly returns from the adventure of a lifetime to a new, better Hill Valley… that is, until Marty and his friend Doc Brown’s time machine attracts the attention of the Decepticons. With one small mistake, Marty finds himself once again thrust into action to unravel a Decepticon plot in the past, present, and future… now with the help of a new converting time machine, the Autobot called Gigawatt!
Now if you are wondering how we got this information, its from the Comic Con @ Home online panel featuring Cavan Scott and Juan Samu as guests to discuss their work on the upcoming crossover, alongside panelists John Barber; Saura Naderi, Outreach Director at the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego; Dr. Lisa Will, Fleet Science Center Resident Astronomer; and moderator Andrea Decker.
You can watch the full length panel HERE and you can check out my favorite highlights from the panel below.
- Space and time travel have an overarching theme in both Back to the Future and Transformers.
- Cavan Scott was a technology and science journalist so he has a background in research. He says that time travel is more of a logic problem, so you have to keep track of where people are and the consequences while writing.
- John Barber’s wife is a scientist and he has occasionally been able to ask her questions and advice about the science side of things while writing. Now that’s a winning team!
- Barber says Transformers are a human experience pushed to a far degree. They don’t have a war, they have a war that goes for 4 million years that destroy their planet. He spent a lot of time researching black holes, something so heavy that not even light can escape it. You can use things like that to reveal stories, characters, and adventure.
- Saura Naderi asks if it’s hard to stay consistent in the fantasy world and if you need to fix contradictions in this world. Scott says it happens all the time and you need to come up with a solution to a problem that you created yourself, and that’s where the fun comes from. You have to convince the reader to make them believe how the world works.
- Decker asks Dr. Will how these characters inspired her to get into science. She said it all began with Star Trek and credits science fiction to getting her interested and she thinks it’s a great teaching tool and a great cultural touchstone to get people into science. She also promises time travel into the future because we will be further into the future as she speaks, we are all just locked into time travel at the same rate.
- Scott shares that the new crossover happens at the end of the first Back to the Future movie, Marty sees Doc Brown going into the future, then odd things happen with robots appearing, and then when the time machine that Doc invented returns, it transforms into an Autobot called Gigawatt which is an Autobot scientist and they are searching for Doc!
- Decker asks Samu how does he imagine these things he draws up. He jokingly says with a lot of coffee. But seriously he says all his life he draws all kinds of things in pop culture like robots, Star Trek, and Dr. Who. For him this is beautiful. This has given him the tools for him to be able to imagine and create these things.
- Scott says a good story starts with a great character first. Transformers are a great example, they are cool and turn into cool things. The reason we love them is because they are human, they have sentience, emotions, and ethics. A great character is based on their viewpoint. Character has to come first.
What is your favorite crossover of all time? Are you more team Transformers or Back to the Future? Will you be picking up this comic? Let us know in the comments and we will catch you next time, same Nerd-Time, same Nerd-Channel.
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