this is an obscure ask but OMG you co-wrote an episode of The Transformers!!! you did Webworld with the late, great Len Wein. Webworld is crazy, that's the one where Galvatron's insanity has his teammates drop him off in a therapy planet and he drives the living core crazy. do you have any memories working on it? what was it like co-writing with Len Wein? Thanks, a very excited transformers fan
You know, queries about this come in every now and then. Soâbecause this response from last year is pretty detailed, and I think will answer all your questionsâI'm just gonna paste it in here. đ
...About my work on Transformers G1: Developmentally speaking itâs kind of a complicated story, so bear with me here while I set the scene.
In 1985 I was a pretty busy gal. The Door Into Shadow had just published. Deep Wizardry had gone to press for publication in Delacorteâs fall-â85 schedule. My first computer game, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative, launched (in the Rainbow Room on top of 30 RockâŚ) in the summer of '85. I was then scripting my first comics work for DC (the âDouble Blindâ two-parter and âThe Last Wordâ). And after taking a brief breathing space from four or five yearsâ worth of animation work across a number of shows (scroll down here for details), Iâd just turned in an episode of My Little Pony.
In memory all this work tends to get tangled together somewhat (which is probably no surprise). One thread that shows persistently through the tangle, though, is how much time I was spending in New York at a time when I was living in Philadelphia.
A surprising amount of that has to do with the research surrounding Deep Wizardry, which required specialized materials not readily available anywhere else. Because I had a contract for that book, in early 1984 I applied for (and was granted) access to the Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room at the main branch of the New York Public Library. As a result, for the guts of a year I was âup in townâ at least every other week or so, sometimes for two or three days at a timeâtaking notes from the Woods Hole oceanographic resources there, drawing copies of them (like this one) when xerography wasnât available or when otherwise necessary, andâwhen there was timeâwriting.
But on those stay-overs my evenings were my own, and fortunately there were some really nice people to meet up with, every so often. Back when 666 5th Avenue (now 660) was DC Comicsâ home, a lot of the writing and editorial talent had a habit of heading down to street level and around the corner on Friday nights, to meet up and relax at the bar in a local steakhouse on the W. 52nd Street side (long gone now, alas). Thatâs almost certainly where I first met Len Weinâmost likely introduced to him by my editor on the Trek comics at DC, Bob Greenbergerâand we quickly got to be friends. Each of us was interested in the writing (and kinds of writing) the other was doing, so we had lots to chat about.
Now during this period Iâd recently finished work on that My Little Pony script. A production company called Sunbow was then handling the screen side of the property, along with shows based on various other IPs. To this day I canât remember who it was over there who said to me, âSo listen, now that youâre done with that, weâve got some slots unfilled on another showâwould you be interested in doing a Transformers?â My answer was naturally âSure, why not?â*
So shortly I was talking story, in a general way, with my new story editor over there, Steve Gerber. The thought of doing something a bit personal, and getting into some of the charactersâ heads a bit, was as usual on my mind. The idea of getting Galvatron some psychiatric care had already crossed my mind at that point⌠though I had on first impulse pushed that (for the time being) onto the back burner due to possibly being a little too âon the nose.â
At some point pretty early on in this process, though, a different idea hit me. Len was plainly perfectly cut out for animation storytelling (as other comics writers have also been: but the fit had rarely seemed quite so perfect, to me at least). And heâd have a party with this, I thought. Why not invite him along for the ride and let him get a feel for how itâs done?
So I said to him (as Tom Swale had once said to me years back), "Hey, you wanna write a cartoon?" And to my great pleasure Len promptly said âYes!â And having cleared this team-up with Steve Gerber, we dove in as co-writers.
Collaboration can sometimes be a rocky road, but Iâve always been lucky in mine, and that lucky streak held true with Len. I have rarely had a co-writer who right out of the starting gate was more willing to stretch hard to get things right, and one who was more effortlessly funny⌠even when the humor turned dark (as it repeatedly did in this episode). He unquestionably brought things to that script that I wouldnât have thought to try, or would have been nervous about my ability to pull off, solo.
âŚSo after a couple/few weeks we turned âWebworldâ in, the checks cleared, and we both went on to other things... while remaining good friends all the while: and it was @petermorwood's and my great pleasure to have Len as a houseguest here. The two of them got along famously, another case of senses of humor meshing perfectly. ...But that episode keeps coming up as many peopleâs favorite⌠and I canât say that I mind a bit. đ (If you want to look at it, the whole episodeâs online: just follow the link.)
BTW, because people do ask âWhy does Lenâs name appear first on the credits screen?â, the answerâs simple: Because I insisted. He was the newbie here, after all. I thought it only right that the junior partner in this medium should be put in pride of place on that credit, his very first time out (and if you scroll right down to the bottom of his IMDb page, you'll find it there, the very first entry). ...Noting here that I've routinely done the same with Peter, for anyone whoâs been watching. Collaborator of thirty-plus years he may have been, but heâs still always been newer at this than I am. đ
In any case, I wear the joint credit with Len with great pride. Itâs an honor to be associated with someone who went on to becomeâentirely separate from his already-stellar career in comicsâone of the strongest and most prolific animation writers of the last few decades.
âŚSo thatâs how it happened. (And as for the story, which pops up here and there, of how Bob G. and I dragged Len out of that restaurant one night and made him buy his first computer [an early Macintosh]: thatâs true too.) đ
*Also, after this they asked me the same question again, but this time about a show called GloFriends. Same result, due to the house rule: âIf someone offers you work, take it!â :)
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