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This story begins in the Marvel UK Generation 1 comic, specifically Issue #160 of 332. In this issue, Richard Branson and his likeness show up in the comic as an entrepreneur who was working on removing contamination from the Thames River, specifically Transformer bodies. The art was originally only going to be in the likeness of Branson, but artist Lee Sullivan had some fun drawing a near perfect likeness to Branson for the issue. As a result, Marvel decided to get his approval to name the character in the comic Richard Branson, to which he granted approval.
However, as writer Simon Furman explains in his Twitter post, they had no paperwork proving that the likeness was approved, so they had to recently change the likeness and name of the character, which means Lee Sullivan redrew the panels featuring Branson in the Hachette collection. So while this means that Richard Branson has been replaced by a "Mister Johnson", it does provide the cool news that Lee Sullivan has drawn some recent Transformers artwork!
Check out the quote form Furman below, along with a shot of the panel then and now, and let us know what you think of this wonky tale below!
Note: We thank TFWiki for the images of the original artwork to go with Wilson Jim on Twitter who provided the images of the new comic. Links are included in the photos below.
In the absence of actual paperwork from those dim distant days proving we had Branson's permission to use his likeness, it was decided to err on the side of caution. I did actually try and contact Branson. But in the end we got Lee Sullivan to make art changes... to his own art.
