When it comes down to the Revolution and how everything is going to work, John Barber is the man to call. "Mr. continuity" will be one of the spearheads for the upcoming Revolution comics, and Luke Owen got the chance to interview Barber on the upcoming comics. You can find the original source
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Today sees the release of IDW’s Action Man #1, which kickstarts a Hasbro expanded universe that brings together several of their other properties including The Transformers, G.I. Joe, Micronauts, M.A.S.K and more. Sadly, My Little Pony is not part of it. To celebrate the comic’s release, we caught up with the man who is spearheading this series – John Barber.
Barber is a man who has been hailed as ‘The God of Continuity’, and has previously worked with Marvel before jumping to IDW and writing for Transformers – both the Michael Bay movie tie-ins and IDW’s on-going series. But now he’s moving into a slightly less known territory of Action Man. So, why use him over more established characters?
“Well, it goes without saying that Action Man is the biggest character in the Hasbro stable,” Barber jokes. “No, I love Action Man, but I kid. [He’s] got a great set of fans, don’t get me wrong, but this comic is really about introducing the character to readers while honoring his history. The lead-up to Revolution is part of the DNA of the book Paulo Villanelli and John-Paul Bove put together. We’re not going to hit you over the head with it on page one, but Action Man is really the first book we’ve launched post-plans about the shared universe—I guess Rom #0 was the first, but Action Man was in that book in preview form, anyway. And Action Man absolutely plays a key role in Revolution—in fact he’s the first character you see in Revolution #1—but we’ll start to see these characters interacting in most of the comics leading up to Revolution (I say “most” as Micronauts is in another universe and More Than Meets the Eye is in deep space so we’re not cramming anything in that isn’t organic to the story).”
Is it going to be difficult to bring in characters from G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc?
“In a way, even though you don’t have to be reading Transformers,” he claims. “Revolution grows from the events in the Transformers comic Andrew Griffith and I do. Optimus Prime has declared Earth is under his protection, whether it wants to be or not. And for a lot of people, “not” is the answer. So when something starts going wrong with Ore-13—a substance Transformers can convert to energon, their food—signs point to the Transformers.”
He adds: “Action Man is one of the first discoverers of how bad things are with the Ore-13 crystals, and his actions cause G.I. Joe to be called in. Meanwhile, Rom’s been running around killing these shape-shifting aliens called Dire Wraiths, and the Transformers and G.I. Joe don’t know what to do with him—they don’t know what he’s up to, but Rom knows who the Cybertronians are. As the story goes on, the Micronauts enter the scene in a big way (no pun intended), and M.A.S.K. is formed… there’s a lot of moving parts, but Cullen Bunn—who’s co-writing the Revolution event with me—and Fico Ossio—who’s doing the amazing art—and I are making sure the story is clear and that everybody has a legitimate point of view and desires.”
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IDW is no stranger to the world of crossovers, having brought Green Lantern to the world of Star Trek and countless team-ups between Transformers and G.I. Joe. There have also been connecting comics like Infestation, which tied together their on-going comics for Ghostbusters and Transformers but never saw the characters interact.
“IDW’s done really cool, really fun stories where they put together some great characters, like Star Trek/Green Lantern. And Tom Scioli (and slightly me, but Tom deserves all the credit) did absolutely amazing stuff on Transformers ss. G.I. Joe,” Barber says. “Then there have been line-wide stories like Infestation and Conspiracy where there’s a central spine and tie-in comics from different series, but the characters from one series don’t necessarily interact with each other—just with the central spine. I love those stories, but they’re very self-contained – that’s got advantages, of course. Transformers vs. G.I. Joe wouldn’t have the personality or impact it had if ten comics tied into it. But I think with the right project, it’s really great to have an event with big consequences in the comics crossing over.”
So how does Revolution differ? “This is going to have big repercussions,” Barber answers. “The individual titles will all maintain their own identities, their own stories, their own styles—but the canvass they’ll take place in will be this big, unified world, which I think is a ton of fun. It’s really great to have the ability to move characters between books and have these characters interact.”
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Barber has been hailed by fans as ‘The God of Continuity’, which makes him the perfect man to take on something like Revolution – as it not only brings together these characters but does so without compromising the stories already told. Is ‘The God of Continuity’ a fitting moniker?
“I don’t know about that,” he says laughing. “When I came on to Transformers, I sort of approached it as an archeologist. I dug in and read everything and took notes and thought about things and tried to see what resonated and what I could build on. I think I got too into the woods with that in places, but it created the worldview I have on some of the characters. Like, I looked at how Soundwave or Prowl were handled, and they were both written really differently by different writers over the years, and I thought through—what would make somebody be like that? What if they really did act all those different ways, what’s their deal? And that led to—I hope—richer characters.”
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Barber has written for two different types of Transformers – the IDW on-going series and the comic tie-ins for Michael Bay’s live action movies. “I did the movie tie-in comics first, so a lot of it was just learning how to write, and how to write Transformers,” he recalls. “I think philosophically, there’s a part of me where I wanted to have the high-octane non-stop action of the Bay movies in a comic, and another part that wanted to explore the world in a different way. The Rising Storm series was me trying to write a Michael Bay story in a comic; the Foundation series—which was the first time I worked with Andrew Griffith!—was meant to have a different tone. That was a thing I was thinking about a lot, then. And when Andrew and I came on to the IDW Universe series, it was more about our take on Transformers. We respected the past, but we weren’t operating under, or really reacting to, anybody else’s style. I talked to James Roberts, who was starting writing the other series, and we bounced ideas around and tried to figure out where we could intersect and how we could keep a different feel between the books but still feel coherent.”
But the real question is: who would win in a fight between Bay’s Optimus Prime and IDW’s Optimus Prime…?
“The Bay Prime is more vicious, but I think Optimus in the Transformers comic is more tactical in his thinking at this point, and he’s not exactly a pushover,” he says. “I think the comic book one wins.”
When Revolution was announced earlier this month, there was a large vocal outrage from fans who felt that this ‘cash in’ was going to ruin the stories they’d liked in G.I. Joe: Real American Hero and Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye. IDW editor Chris Ryall spent a long time on Twitter answering fan queries and concerns, and told them all to trust the process.
“I used to edit Wolverine. I’m used to the internet reaction being negative,” Barber jokes.
But one has to wonder, did that level of negativity have some effect on the plans for Revolution?
“Nope. The plan is the plan and the plan is awesome,” Barber emphatically states. “I mean, there’s pressure, of course – Cullen and Fico and editor David Hedgecock and colorist Sebastian Cheng and I all feel a lot of pressure to not let people down, and to do justice to the characters, and to build a strong foundation to this world. Telling a story has it’s own pressure! A nice pressure, I’m not complaining – it’s great! But I don’t feel any additional pressure based on anybody’s initial reactions.”
One of the big things promised coming from Revolution is that things will change. Big things. Groundbreaking things. So what can we expect?
“Transformers is going to change – the grand, over-arcing story I’ve been telling is still totally in place, now with cooler pieces making Earth a richer, more interesting place,” Barber says. “But the actual title will have a couple big changes.”
He adds: “Micronauts will be on Earth – which is huge (pun completely intended this time); Rom will have new relations to Transformers and G.I. Joe; G.I. Joe will have a big, new mission coming out of Revolution; Action Man will have a pretty interesting remit and goal; and M.A.S.K. will exist, which it doesn’t now. I mean, it’ll do a lot more than just exist! But M.A.S.K. is born in this crossover.”
