In the piece, which you can read in full here, editors Sarah Gaydos and David Mariotte join writer Magdalene Visaggio and artist Fico Ossio in talking about their approach to the issue, the story in general, the influences on both Transformers and Visionaries from previous work, and where it might go from here. There are gigantic spoilers for the issue, of course, but we've avoided them in the snippets below.
Magdalene Visaggio: There's a ton of great concepts in the old Visionaries cartoon from a storytelling standpoint. The basic structure of the show is super compelling. But I knew that that kind of content wasn't going to fly in 2017. So I approached this much like Ron Moore approached Battlestar Galactica: what's the stuff here that matters, versus what's the stuff here's that's designed to sell toys? We only have five issues to work with, so everything needed to be streamlined; initially that meant paring down the cast and simplifying the magical system, which in the show involves multiple animal totems, with some of the players getting magical staves and others getting the power to control ancient vehicles. I basically stripped everything down to something that wouldn't demand copious explanation: everyone gets a staff that can summon holograms, nobody gets more than one totem, etc.
I also really can't stand it when villains exist for the sole purpose of being evil. So I needed to figure out what exactly separates the Darkling Lords from the Spectral Knights. You know, what is the story the Darklings are telling themselves where they're the good guys? So I landed on the idea that they're both factions of a single organization run by Merklynn – the Visionaries, natch – with different philosophies that went into schism. There's more there that's gonna come into play as the book unfolds.
Fico Ossio: We kept the original concept, the idea behind Visionaries and started from there. After we had the story, we worked on what this world and characters should look like and then matched that with the original designs/characters and IDW's Transformers. But overall we wanted to do a complete update from the original for the most part.
Sarah Gaydos: For me, the key was having a believable situation where both the Visionaries and our current IDW version of Transformers all would exist believably in one place, so it just didn't make sense to stick with a vintage look. Fico did a fantastic job of updating the character design and mechanics of the Visionaries. I couldn't be happier with it!
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SPOILER obviously provided many more big moments in the comics for IDW, and you highlighted some of those moments at the end of the book. Fans will want to see [them] avenged, right?
Magdalene Visaggio: And [they're] not going to be the only one to die before all this is over. This is a high-stakes story that is going to have long-term consequences for the IDW G1 franchise.
Fico Ossio: OH YES! I'm looking forward to drawing that.
Sarah Gaydos: Hell yes, I want to see [them] avenged. This book has real stakes, real emotions at play. Mags is doing a fantastic job with balancing all these aspects of intrigue, betrayal, grief, and somehow packing in a ton of heart all at the same time. And Fico's art, with colors by David Garcia Cruz, captures the incredible visuals of New Prysmos, while still bringing the spirit of Transformers everyone knows and loves to life.
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With magic playing such a big part, you chose some interesting characters to combat that in Wheeljack, a scientist, Breakdown and Ironhide, a typically traditional, protective and defensive voice. Talk about playing those personalities up against New Prysmos, Darkling Lords and Spectral Knights.
Magdalene Visaggio: Ha, yeah. I actually didn't get much of a say in the matter, which I think is really cool. So many other characters were occupied in other books and stories, so these were the face characters that were available – which is kind of exactly how it happens in-universe, too; you don't always get to pick your team. I credit David Mariotte for handing me a group of Cybertronian heroes who would be a great foil to the Visionaries I was reinventing.
David Mariotte: It's true, there are a lot of other Transformers doing a lot of other things right now, but we worked with my predecessor, Carlos Guzman, to figure out a core handful of characters that would be available and a good fit. And a lot of them fell into place naturally. Ironhide is a head of security on Cybertron and suddenly there's this whole city with unknown capabilities that he has to deal with. Wheeljack's a scientist who is suddenly up against a force that defies explanation. Breakdown, and I'll never stop harping on how well Mags writes him, has been a background character for a while now, but he finally gets his chance to step up and show Cybertron what he's made out of.
