TFW2005 recently had the opportunity to speak to Mairghread Scott, one of the writers for Transformers Prime and co-writer of IDW Publishing's Rage Of The Dinobots mini-series and their upcoming Beast Hunters comic.
There is a short snippet below, but to read the full article visit TFW2005.com
1. Hi Mairghread! First off, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us here at TFW2005.com. Can you tell our members a little bit about yourself and how you landed the gig of working with the Transformers?
Sure, I’m a freelance animation writer and my day job is working for production on Transformers Prime the TV Show. It’s where I got my first script and it has been my home base ever since. As far as the comic is concerned, Mike Johnson invited me to join him on Rage of the Dinobots. He’s a fantastic writer who worked with us on Prime before and knew how badly I wanted to get into comics. Since he had the comic book chops and I was already immersed in the Aligned continuity we were a natural pairing to work on Rage. After that… well we made no secret about wanting to continue the stories we were telling and, thankfully, our editors at IDW and the good folks at Hasbro agreed to let us keep going.
2. What do you do when you're not writing stories about giant robots punching eachother? Are there elements of your real life that you draw influence upon for your stories?
Mostly I read comics and cross-stitch, but I am always trying to do new crazy things that I think might be useful later on (much to the chagrin of my husband, who insists I’m going to get myself killed). I’ve done everything from flying trapeze to pole dancing, kung fu to parkour and it’s all helped with my work. Writing the Ser-ket/Grimlock fight in issue 3 of Rage involved a lot of thinking back to my armored sword fighting lessons with the SCA (they’re medieval reenactors). I wanted Ser-ket to be a two-weapon fighter, but in real life they rarely beat sword and shield fighters like Grimlock, so I tweaked her weapons to be a sword and electric scourge instead of two swords. It made it a lot more believable that she would get Grimlock to drop his guard and giving her that goal in battle made the fight a lot more interesting than just having them randomly hack at each other.
3. You're the first woman to write a Transformers comic. How does that make you feel and what do you think you bring differently to the table of other comic book writers?
Well, you definitely feel like there are more eyes on you, but I’ve got a really great writing partner in Mike Johnson and that’s reassuring. The only thing I think I do deliberately as a female writer that might be different is to include women in my stories in a very ‘normal’ way. Female comic book readers (i.e. me when I read comics) are looking for female characters to be there, be well written and not be treated like a big deal. In a lot of ways Transformers is the perfect brand for that. Female Transformers characters don’t dress provocatively, they aren’t just love interests and no one questions if they’re fit to lead/defeat because of their gender. Ser-ket lost because she was a villain. Arcee is on Team Prime because earned her spot. End of story. The more I can do to build on that for all comic fans, the better.
4. What can you tell us about the upcoming Beast Hunters comic from IDW Publishing?
The new comic features the same great Dinobots we had in Rage, but we’ve jumped forward in time and the Dinobots’ mission to protect those still left on Cybertron has turned them into accidental leaders for the largest Autobot settlement still on the planet. The only problem is that being great commando fighters and being great civic leaders are two very different things. We’re hoping to expand the Prime universe and explore that tension as the Dinobots protect their followers from threats both external and internal. Grimlock’s always claimed that he could do a better job than Optimus and Mike and I are determined to test that theory.
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