Skybound Entertainment’s Robert Kirkman and Sean Mackiewicz on bringing surprises, shocks and passion to their TRANSFORMERS comics

Robert, Sean, it’s great to catch up. For anyone who may not be familiar with Skybound, can you talk us through the origins of the company?
Robert Kirkman: Skybound was formed when The Walking Dead got adapted into a television show. I was able to retain a tremendous amount of rights around The Walking Dead. My business partner – David Alpert – and I formed Skybound so that we’d have a staff of people that could do something with those rights. I was going to be focused on the comic book series and the television show, so we need other people to ensure we made the lunch boxes and t-shirts and video games… That was the humble beginnings of Skybound – it was a Walking Dead-centric company for a year or so.

“I’m one of those guys that was traumatised by Optimus Prime’s death in that movie!”

Then, with all the systems we were building, we felt we could take ideas and other comics and supercharge them into where we’d taken The Walking Dead. That included publishing other people’s books, doing licensed comics and we even started making our own t-shirts, video games and merchandise. The company has expanded into animation; we made a Super Dinosaur cartoon and the Invincible animated series. We do so much stuff now that I can’t list all of the things we’re doing!

I’m proud of the fact that almost everything Skybound is because somebody here said: “I dunno, this might be fun!” or “I dunno, that might be neat!” It’s pretty cool.

Before we dive into your TRANSFORMERS comics, I wanted to ask a Walking Dead question. When you were creating The Walking Dead, did you ever envisage its potential for a TV show – or think of it in ‘brand terms’? Or is that not a healthy thing to consider during the creative process?
Robert: No – and since The Walking Dead I try and actively put that stuff out of my mind. You can very easily find yourself writing a comic book thinking: ‘I’m not sure we’ll be able to get a giraffe on the day we’ll be shooting this – so maybe I won’t put a giraffe in this…’ It hampers the creative process. Sometimes the by-product of that is that I find myself doing comics that are unproduceable… This planet blows up, this guy turns into a horse – it’ll be great!

Ha! Makes sense. Moving onto your recent TRANSFORMERS work with Hasbro, Sean, was Skybound always interested in doing licensed comics?
Sean Mackiewicz: When I first joined Skybound 12 years ago, part of our identity was that we didn’t do licensed comics. We just focused on original creations. What we ran into was that it’s tough to come up with an original idea that’s commercial, successful and offers something new to the audience. We work with talented creators and we wanted to continue working with them and create jobs, so getting into licensing made sense.

How did this relationship with Hasbro come about?
Sean: Well, we focus on licences that we love and are passionate about. And we put the same level of care and talent onto these books that we would for our original series. We had talked about the TRANSFORMERS franchise years before Hasbro asked us to! Robert is a passionate TRANSFORMERS fan and part of the hook was always this stealth launch… We wanted to create new characters, put them new situation and the twist at the end was the moment that a TRANSFORMERS robot awakens on that planet. That would then kick-start this new universe and comic series.

Fantastic – and that stealth launch was Void Rivals, which kicked off a new comic series set in the Energon Universe – a shared universe between TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE.
Sean: Exactly. It felt like a fun way to surprise readers. Something Robert’s done well with his original creations is to keep readers in retailers – and keep them in a perpetual state of surprise and shock… So much of the power of The Walking Dead was that dread, building issue-by-issue, of what awful thing will Robert do to me next!

“We wanted to infuse it with shocks and surprises and treat it like one of our own properties.”

Applying that to the TRANSFORMERS franchise made sense because part of its identity early on with the first animated movie was the shock and surprise around the death of Optimus Prime. It was a huge cultural moment for most men aged 45 to 55 years old!

Robert: I’m a huge TRANSFORMERS fan – and I’m one of those guys that was traumatised by Optimus Prime’s death in that movie! Everything I’ve done in my career has been to bring the feeling I had in that movie theatre to people that I’m telling stories to… Every death in The Walking Dead, every insane violent fight in Invincible… Everything I’ve ever done has been to relive that feeling through writing it and hopefully give that feeling to an audience. So to go full circle with the TRANSFORMERS franchise, we wanted to infuse it with shocks and surprises and treat it like one of our own properties.

All of that led to the creation of the Energon Universe – and there’s been a lot of attempts to try and weave TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE together. Those two properties, when viewed from a certain angle, can appear like oil and water. But if you find the right angle, they dovetail perfectly into a really cohesive universe. That’s the angle we were able to find with this.

How did you approach mapping out a new story for these iconic characters?
Robert: It was a fairly organic process. I take walks in the morning and jot down ideas. When this was still just a possibility, there was a two or three-week period where I’d get different ideas for G.I. JOE and TRANSFORMERS every day. I started making a document on my phone of all the different things we could do.

Once we got the licence, Sean was able to bring in Daniel Warren Johnson and Josh Williamson as our ideal TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE writers. I sat down with Sean and my ideas sheet, and we had a casual multi-hour conversation. Sean beefed up my thoughts and turned that into a framework of where the books would begin and options for where characters could go. It became a rough roadmap of what we could accomplish in our first year or two. We gave that to Josh and Daniel – some of it they’re using and some of it they’re not. And we still come together us a group every six months or so to map things out, discuss plans and ensure the universe is as cohesive as possible. Our aim is to achieve the kind of cohesive universe that Marvel and DC have always tried to have.

What do you feel is the key to successful creative collaborations between a publisher like yourselves and your writers and artists?
Sean: Well, Executive Editor Ben Abernathy and I both know how to work with creators and how to create trust. When we sat down with Josh and Dan, we had an idea for a Cobra Commander mini-series, but new things came up. The idea that Cobra Commander is interrogating Megatron was something that didn’t come up in those early conversations between Robert and I.

Also, Commander’s quest was now to get the Energon – and that wasn’t an idea we had… We didn’t anticipate the importance of Energon to this universe – and later that became the Energon Universe! That’s a case of Robert and I recognising a great idea when we see one, because that really motivated the first year of storytelling.

And what about cultivating a fruitful relationship between yourselves and Hasbro?
Sean: With Hasbro, we started off with Michael Kelly, who was a great ally. I don’t think he always understood what we were doing, but he always trusted in Robert’s talent and Skybound’s previous execution. He was a big advocate for us internally.

Robert: Michael was even against some of our ideas to begin with, but very quickly got super excited about them. He was key in helping us realise what we wanted to do. Getting him excited made us feel comfortable with what we were doing.

Sean: Our approach was to be respectful to the fans who have loved this brand for 40 years. At the same time, we wanted to capture lapsed fans like me… People that hadn’t interacted much with Transformers since they were younger. Then there were people who had never been exposed to TRANSFORMERS or G.I. JOE… People closer to 25 who didn’t have a relationship to the brand. We wanted to show them why we thought it was so cool to begin with.

“You need a strong story. It’s something TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE have in abundance.”

That approach is why the sales of these books have been incredible. We’ve attracted a new audience and the lapsed fanbase, in addition to the fans that have been with these brands every step of the way.

Alongside TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE, you’ve also created comics for brands like Creepshow, LEGO and Universal Monsters. What made these brands appeal?
Sean: With The Walking Dead, horror is part of Skybound’s DNA and so Creepshow and Universal Monsters made sense. With LEGO, I love LEGO and several employees love LEGO! We were building a middle-grade YA comic imprint called Skybound Comet and putting LEGO Ninjago in there made sense. It all stems from our passions – and they’re big global franchises that provide us with opportunities to reach huge audiences.

What does a brand need to have to successfully translate into comics?
Robert: Comics is a storytelling medium and there’s a heavy visual component. If you’re not visually interesting, you’ll have a tough time in comics. At its core, you need a strong story. It’s something TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE have in abundance. It’s the same with Creepshow, Universal Monsters and LEGO – these are all storytelling brands.

Before we wrap up, this year sees the TRANSFORMERS franchise celebrate its 40th anniversary. Why do you feel the brand has endured and continues to thrive?
Robert: The core concept is really interesting and I love the cosmic nature of the story of the Autobots and the Decepticons. In terms of longevity, you have to give Hasbro credit. They’ve been able to give a fresh coat of paint to the TRANSFORMERS brand every few years, from Beast Wars to EarthSpark. It shows how versatile the brand is – and that’s reinforced by the fact it now has groups of fandoms across different eras.

What fuels your creativity? What helps you have ideas?
Sean: Pressure. Knowing we have a script, we have an outline, someone needs feedback and going with my first instinct. And having open conversations with our creatives about the best path forward.

Robert: My whole life is chaos. My brain is chaos. I’m writing seven different projects at the same time. I have the opposite problem to writer’s block. I get ideas for things I’m not working on while I’m working on other things – it’s kind of frustrating! I’ve been in that state for decades now, so that’s helped me generates ideas fast and efficiently.

If I do run into something I can’t figure out, in my younger days I’d solely focus on that one thing – I’ve gotta figure this out, I’ve gotta figure this out! It would hamper the process. As I’ve gotten older and realised how my brain works, I now know those kinds of delays are part of my process. If I stop working on something for two or three days, I’ll come back to it and my problem has usually worked itself out. So those delays are part of my process; they’re necessary. And that’s why I’m late with everything.

I have one last question! We’ve covered some of your recent licensing activity with Invincible, but I wanted to ask if there’s a Skybound brand you’d like to do more with licensing-wise? What has untapped potential?
Robert: One of the things we have that has the most potential in my mind is James Harren’s Ultramega. It’s a really unique story, but a take on something that’s fairly universal – kaiju fighting. It’s a big monster story but not in a way you’ve ever seen before. To me, it feels similar to Walking Dead… ‘Yes, there’s been a billion zombie movies, but this is a sad soap opera take on that.’ I feel the same about Ultramega.

Sean: Right now, there’s a lot of passion internally for Stillwater. It’s something people will be hearing a lot about in the future. It’s a horror comic by Chip Zdarsky and Ramon Perez about a town in which no-one ever dies and no-one ever ages. It’s a psychological look at the toll that would take. It’s a really cool horror book that we’ve finished publishing but that has a long life ahead of it.

Great picks. Thanks again guys.