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Transformers: War Journal.
Story: John-Paul Bove
Script: Josh van Reyk & Jon Stone.
Art: Tom Parish, Casey Coller, Matt C. Adams, Shane Anderson, Richard Cookson, Stanley Chou, John Flores, Jon Stone, Stavros Kundromichalis, Jeremy Tiongson & Evan Gauntt.
Colors: John-Paul Bove.
Letters: Bernie Lee.
Covers: Josh Burcham, Tom Parrish, Kent Lin.
Sketch Cover: Andrew Wildman.






Well, here we are. HUGE thanks to all the talented artists who have contributed to this project; all of your hard work has made this comic so much more that I ever imagined. Special thanks to both John-Paul Bove and Bernie Lee for their amazing work and dedication, without them this project would not nearly be as “professional.” Extra special thanks to both Andrew Wildman and Josh Burcham for their contributions. I have been very blessed to have been involved in this project and am extremely amazed with how this has turned out.

I hope you all enjoy reading this piece, as much as I have helping to create it.

- Josh van Reyk

Congratulations guys! It's been a pleasure to watch this great project come into fruition behind the scenes.

I'm proud of you all, take a bow. I'm glad everyone can now enjoy the months of hard work you all put into this comic!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to instigate a round of applause to Andrew Wildman for contributing that Hot Spot sketch cover!

Take a moment to check out the Draw The World charity noted on that cover here:
http://drawtheworldtogether.wordpress.com/welcome/

oooooo spiffy! Now to make a CBR of it to make it even more fun to read!

Right, I've gots me some reading to do... *saves all the files & opens file in Windows image viewer*
Before reading it I'd just like to say it looks great, and I can't wait to read it properly!

Now I've read it I'd like to say WOW!!! Amazing!
Love the art, and love the story! I really enjoyed the construction of Superion.

This is amazing.
But I still want my Silverbolt.

Fantastic . Loved every page, every word, every color, and you released it a day early too .

Thought the use of Japanese characters was great, and noticed a couple European guys too. Raindance was awsomely used too, I snickered when Hot Spot said he was only as big as his arm.

First Aid has been one of my favorite characters since I saw "The Ultimate Weapon" some years back, and his characterization here re-affirmed my liking of the character. Poor bot, I know Ratchet has been portrayed similar in the past, but never in a front-line situation. Poor Minerva too, but it was great to see a "love" angle integrated into Transformer lore again.

Yep, great job, and thanks for bringing us something so great, something that I would gladly buy for full price. I'm also in the process of downloading it to my computer.

Really, really high above and beyond top-notch from everyone involved .

Just finished reading this, and, whew. I agree, it's awesome stuff!

I feel really sorry for poor First Aid and for Silverbolt (Hmm, Sherade, are we allowed to share the possessive noun?) and the Aerialbots. The whole comic, in fact, brings up the question of whether it's worth it to live at all costs. Pretty creepy and thought-provoking at the same time. (More thoughts later, most likely, when I have a chance to read it again.)

And, Richter, I shall be a little evil and say that the last half of page 7 was incredibly gratifying and thank you for writing it. (I've been waiting for someone to finally do that...)

Thanks everyone for the kind words so far. It's such a relief that so many people are enjoying this piece.

Jeysie wrote:And, Richter, I shall be a little evil and say that the last half of page 7 was incredibly gratifying and thank you for writing it. (I've been waiting for someone to finally do that...)

Thanks, it was fun to write that particluar event

WOW! Fantastic work guys! Total kudos!

Wow! This was awesome. Any chance we'll get to see any more of these full-length comics?
Edit: Who's the Autobot with the pink body and blue helmet with yellow crest? I'm pretty sure he's a European Autobot, but I can't recall his name.

P.S.
Think IDW might publish this, maybe?

Actually awesome!

My hat goes off to all of the team that created this. You've created what looks like a professional comic. It might even fit permanently into the IDW continuity, depending on what Furman does with that story as time goes on. Making characters react to a hopeless battle has always been an interesting kind of writing, and the comic pays off with some turns we haven't frequently seen in the TF universe.

You guys made a big fuss out of the War Journal coming out, and now we can all see why it was worth it.

My favorite part of the last page is Blades. If only all the other Autobots were as vicious as him, they wouldn't be in that situation, haha.

Sentinel Pax wrote:Wow! This was awesome. Any chance we'll get to see any more of these full-length comics?
Edit: Who's the Autobot with the pink body and blue helmet with yellow crest? I'm pretty sure he's a European Autobot, but I can't recall his name.

P.S.
Think IDW might publish this, maybe?

Thanks

That's Flash, one of the Turbo-masters.

Justicity wrote:Right, I've gots me some reading to do... *saves all the files & opens file in Windows image viewer*
Before reading it I'd just like to say it looks great, and I can't wait to read it properly!

Now I've read it I'd like to say WOW!!! Amazing!
Love the art, and love the story! I really enjoyed the construction of Superion.

Thanks! This started out as a 3 pager and that was one of them.

Duke of Luns wrote:Fantastic . Loved every page, every word, every color, and you released it a day early too .

Thought the use of Japanese characters was great, and noticed a couple European guys too. Raindance was awsomely used too, I snickered when Hot Spot said he was only as big as his arm.

First Aid has been one of my favorite characters since I saw "The Ultimate Weapon" some years back, and his characterization here re-affirmed my liking of the character. Poor bot, I know Ratchet has been portrayed similar in the past, but never in a front-line situation. Poor Minerva too, but it was great to see a "love" angle integrated into Transformer lore again.

Yep, great job, and thanks for bringing us something so great, something that I would gladly buy for full price. I'm also in the process of downloading it to my computer.

Really, really high above and beyond top-notch from everyone involved .

Thanks so much, everyone did such a tremendous job on this.

Sentinel Pax wrote:Wow! This was awesome. Any chance we'll get to see any more of these full-length comics?

Maaaaaaybe....

Sentinel Pax wrote:Edit: Who's the Autobot with the pink body and blue helmet with yellow crest? I'm pretty sure he's a European Autobot, but I can't recall his name.

It's Flash. Saviour of the universe...

Think IDW might publish this, maybe?

It's very unlikely, but they did enjoy it!

That was an awesome read!
I loved it, I really did.

Menbailee wrote:My hat goes off to all of the team that created this. You've created what looks like a professional comic. It might even fit permanently into the IDW continuity, depending on what Furman does with that story as time goes on. Making characters react to a hopeless battle has always been an interesting kind of writing, and the comic pays off with some turns we haven't frequently seen in the TF universe.

You guys made a big fuss out of the War Journal coming out, and now we can all see why it was worth it.

Thanks for those kind words. We wanted to make something that wouldn't look out of place on a shelf and something that would "feel" as much like an IDW comic as possible but with a twist and I wanted to do a war story that felt like a proper war, although one that would fit in 22 pages...

Menbailee wrote:My hat goes off to all of the team that created this. You've created what looks like a professional comic.

On behalf of everyone - thanks, we worked very, very hard to do the best we could.

Menbailee wrote:It might even fit permanently into the IDW continuity, depending on what Furman does with that story as time goes on.

Sooner or later unfortunately it'll get contradicted although this does take place slightly further in the future than current IDW comics so this hasn't happened yet.

Menbailee wrote:Making characters react to a hopeless battle has always been an interesting kind of writing, and the comic pays off with some turns we haven't frequently seen in the TF universe.

The concept was to tell a war story that felt like being in the trenches and the hard decisions that get made. Very pleased you dug it!

Menbailee wrote:You guys made a big fuss out of the War Journal coming out, and now we can all see why it was worth it.

That's the nicest thing you could have said!

Ah, Flash! Thanks, guys. Keep up the good work.

wordmongerer wrote:

Sentinel Pax wrote:Wow! This was awesome. Any chance we'll get to see any more of these full-length comics?

Maaaaaaybe....

Heh! I'd love to see another one, myself. In particular, I think the Mosaic format is almost perfectly tailor-suited to a Rashomon-inspired story.

wordmongerer wrote:I wanted to do a war story that felt like a proper war, although one that would fit in 22 pages...

I think you succeeded in spades there. I remember lamenting to an online friend that there seems to be too little TF stuff that really deals with the idea of the endless fighting the TFs have to endure. His response upon reading this comic was, "There, you got what you wanted! You happy now?"

Anyhoo. As I promised, (a lot) more thoughts now that I'm reading this at a time when I'm not ready to nod off to bed.

It seems like it is the cosmic fate of the Aerialbots to eventually get shot out of the sky and then rebuilt into some bizarre contraption. At least this time it was for a noble purpose and it was a well-meaning Autobot that did the latter.

I already mentioned page 7, but I'll also say that now that I think about it, it reminds me of a similar vibe to that Deep Space Nine episode where Sisko ends up decking Q. ("P-Picard never would have hit me!" "I'm not Picard!") But Slingshot's belligerence *does* have more focus and purpose here than his usually just being a blustering jerk.

Then we have poor Silverbolt. The Bot really never ever gets a chance to be happy, does he? I can't even think of an instance in the cartoon where he so much as got to smile! An interesting take on his fear of heights, too, in it really being a cover for deeper worries. (As the old quip goes, "It’s not the fall that gets you, it’s that sudden stop at the end.")

The take on Superion is indeed creepy and original. Much more Frankensteinian than the ultimate expression of teamwork it's usually portrayed as. I also like how in just a few brief text bubbles we got an implication of the five disparate personalities and what it's like for them to all try to fit together.

(Side note: I never really had any particular problem with combiners in the original series, since there were several implications as to why it wouldn't be more common. But that's a tangent, and furthermore this *is* IDW continuity, which I'm not familiar with yet. So moving on...)

I really, really feel sorry for poor First Aid in this one. First he loses his partner Minerva. Then he finds that no matter what he tries to do to make things better and save lives, he just seems to keep making things *worse* instead and digging himself (and everyone else) into an even deeper hole. As I said earlier, the idea he seems to have to struggle with is, "When is surviving and keeping people alive no longer worth the cost you need to put into it?" Not an easy question for an inherently empathic and earnest Bot.

Hot Spot, meanwhile, seems to take over the mantle from *his* role model a bit more adeptly. In the end he does make the hard choices, comes up with a plan that succeeds despite the sacrifices... and has it be completely for naught as Optimus more or less consigns him and the others to the same fate he was forced to give the Aerialbots. Ouch.

Some more random thoughts:

Blades' page is both creepy and cool at the same time. Is (was) that the remains of Shrapnel?

Always good to see the Autobot cassettes get some "screentime", although they're probably wishing they got less right about now. Hurrah for Blaster's alter-ego Twincast as well.

Nice little twist on how the Protectobots got their name.

Finally, the last two-page spread is just seriously cool. (Charge of the Photon Brigade, indeed.)

I *think* that's everything I can think of to say here. It was indeed worth the wait, and I'm incredibly envious that you folks got enough talent to come up with something this good.

I stupidly posted this question in the double thread, think it'll get answered better here.

Any reason as to why Flash was used? Were his other Turbomaster brethren already decimated? I know, not really important, but I do loves seeing my fav figure getting some time in the spotlight!

That...was...awesome!