Jim Shooters original treatment for The Transformers Part 2
In part 1 we briefly looked at Jim Shooter, editor-in-chief of Marvel and how he came to write the first treatment for The Transformers. In part 2 we shall take a deep dive into this initial treatment and examine just how much of it was retained when the Transformers became a comic and a cartoon.
A Treatment for transforming robots
“Civil war rages on the planet Cybertron. Destruction is catastrophic and widespread, and yet no life is lost. None, at least, in the sense that we know life — for the inhabitants of Cybertron are all machines.”
Thus begins Jim Shooter’s treatment for “The Transformers”. Obviously, this was an internal document to be shared between Marvel and Hasbro. Therefore, very few people had seen it until relatively recently. Indeed, its contents only came into the public domain when Bob Budiansky (the original writer for the Transformers comic) shared them in a presentation at the 2010 BotCon convention.
Budiansky showed the audience all 8 pages, containing the original text by Shooter and various annotations (written in various hands, including Budiansky himself). As noted above, Shooter…
