- I was going to college for a business degree so I didn't have mental energy for another serious project and I was burnt-out from the epic First Contact series.
- Transformers were having a renaissance thanks to the success of the "Beast Wars" line of toys and cutting-edge computer-animated TV show, the first season of which is pretty good.
- The ascendancy of the Internet--in particular the World Wide Web and ISPs like America Online--allowed nostalgic fans of '80s toys/TV shows to connect like never before.
Other fans had done an alternate continuity, only they used the apocalyptic continuity where the bad guys are winning and the good guys driven nearly to extinction. I took the opposite tack. In this alternate universe the heroic Autobots and their human allies--since humans couldn't fight Transformers straight-up I made them good at building starships to equalize things--have pretty much eliminated the evil Decepticons and killed their vicious leader Megatron. Everything is going great, right?
But with the war over, tensions rise between humans and Autobots. In sort of a foreshadowing of the Iraq situation, the humans begin to rise up against the Transformers whom they see as occupiers, not liberators. The result being that the Autobots abandon Earth. But at the same time, the remnants of the evil Decepticons are gathering under a new leader while a demented Autobot takes charge of the Transformers homeworld of Cybertron and another threat lurks at the edges of known space.
This story while it stems from a line of kid's toys was not aimed for children. It involves politics, spirituality, relationships, and even Transformer reproduction. (Trust me, it's not gross at all.) And just for the hell of it I focus less on traditional favorite characters like Optimus Prime and more on my favorites like Jetfire or relatively obscure ones.
Just remember it's an alternate continuity and it has nothing to do with the 2007 movie.
Please enjoy "Transformers: Xenophobia..."
