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James Roberts

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The name or term "James" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see James (disambiguation).
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A proud smile, a sad smile.

James Roberts (born November 15, 1976)[1] is a British writer and Transformers fan. He was one of the early members of fan club Transmasters UK (TMUK), and wrote a number of text stories and strips. The most famous of these is the absolutely massive Eugenesis, an unofficial novel he first published back in 2001.

His first shot at pro-work was pitching Spotlight: Octane with fellow TMUKer Nick Roche in 2007, where he wrote an extensive outline (some of which has shown up in his later comics). It wasn't picked up and Roberts forgot all about it until reminded in 2016.[2][3][4] His first successful bit of work was helping out on All Hail Megatron #15, acting as a "sounding board" for Nick's script. While he didn't write any of the script, Nick made sure to include him in the credits.[5]

After that, Roberts was brought in to co-write Last Stand of the Wreckers, in order to lessen the stress and workload for Roche. While the first issue was all pre-planned by Roche, from issue two onwards it became a collaborative effort.[6] He went on to write the text story "Bullets" for the Wreckers trade. On the back of that, Andy Schmidt offered Roberts a role as "showrunner" on digital-only 5-page stories called War Stories; most would be written by Roberts but guest writers like Simon Furman would drop in. This was derailed by, as Roberts remembered in an interview, plans for a digital Transformers Prime story that itself went unmade (unless in interviews he's confusing that with The Transformers: Autocracy). After that, he pitched a one-off Megatron origin story that would become "Chaos Theory", which saw him brought into a multi-writer "brain trust" modelled on the contemporary writers' room for Spider-Man after "Brand New Day", co-writing "Chaos" with Mike Costa and then being on the ground floor of the Phase Two soft reboot, co-writing The Death of Optimus Prime and became the sole writer on the new ongoing, More than Meets the Eye.[7]

One of his noted habits is massive world-building and drip-feeding character details & backstory throughout a run. He's cheerfully admitted he likes building up a character history in non-sequential order "so you fill in the blanks".[8] His characters are prone to language- and literature-related digressions and witticisms, and sometimes self-aware to the point of straining the fourth wall. Due to all his long term plots, he obsesses a lot over every script and they all start as longhand before being refined ("I have a tower of notebooks full of my barely legible handwriting").[9]

Always start off low, always start off with real people, y'know, because most of us are ordinary people.James Roberts,[10]
Let’s just say that my interest in politics stems from time spent working closely with politicians.Roberts on his job before becoming a full-time writer.[11]

Contents

Writing

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

James Roberts was the author of a book Jimmy owned, whose title began with an E. Maximum Dinobots #3

Legends comic

A resident of the Legends World, James Roberts was saved from a Zamojin invasion by Skyquake and Thunder Clash toys that revealed themselves to be real Transformers. Legends World in Imminent Danger! Part Two When his world was destroyed, Roberts was evacuated to Cybertron of the G1 World. The Road to Legends' Revival Chapter 2

Convention appearances

Notes

  • He first got into Transformers in 1986, in time for the Triple Changers, and hunted down older toys and Ladybird Books at second-hand shops and fetes; key memories also include visiting the local shop and poring over their Hasbro retailer catalogue for new toys, with his mind being blown by Mega and Ultra Pretenders ("they're inside and oh my god that one transforms!"). The earliest toy he bought himself was Snapdragon. He's even said the Action Masters were "cool", explaining he felt those toys showed Hasbro's faith in the characters selling toys and not the transformation gimmick itself.[12]
  • The Marvel UK Transformers comic printed letters from a young James Roberts on four separate occasions.[13]
  • He was nominated for Favourite Writer in the 2014 True Believers Awards.[14]
  • The number 113 constantly shows up in Roberts' Transformers work in homage to The Transformers UK issue #113, the first issue he bought for himself after getting pulled in from reading a friend's copy of issue #97.
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James Roberts: E(aster Egg)!
  • Roche snuck Eugenesis into a bookshelf in Maximum Dinobots #3.
  • The original Eugenesis cover looked like a Penguin Classics book (even sporting the tagline "Polyhex 21st Century Classics"). Roberts has said this was him poking fun at his own "lofty" aspirations.[15]
  • Shockwave's death in The Legacy of Unicron! has haunted Roberts since childhood...[16]
  • Mike Costa has joked that because of James's popularity among the nerdier fans, he thought that even if people didn't like Chaos, "they'd have to pretend they did because James' name was on it!"[17]
  • In Eugenesis, Roberts listed some of his creative influences (circa 2001): Simon Furman, Martin Amis, Chris Carter, Graham Greene, Neil Hannon, Vladimir Nabokov and Morrissey, "who I doubt have ever been acknowledged in the same sentence". He's since brought up his admiration for Russell T Davies' TV work (including his run on Doctor Who); Peter David, Grant Morrison's Zenith, and Justice League International in comics; and Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and John Updike's "Rabbit" books in literature. Science fiction prose isn't his thing though, instead gravitating to literary fiction.[18]
  • Roberts admitted to being "a control freak when it comes to my scripts", and that they are often 50 pages long with precise panel-by-panel descriptions. However, he concedes artists like Alex Milne have "a far, far superior grasp of visual storytelling than I do", and "unless the way a particular shot is framed is integral to the plot", they can feel free to deviate.[19] Nick Roche strongly implied in 2015 that these masses of detailed panels are why they hadn't worked together for a while,[20] though they are still friends, you paranoid person.
  • His biceps are huge.
  • Roberts collected many of the more interesting tidbits from his early notes for More Than Meets the Eye into four volumes of The MTMTE Notebooks, which he sold at conventions and online.

External links

Interviews

References

  1. ↑ "Best tweet ever. “@rollerOrbital: @jroberts332 It's your birthday? HAPPY BIRTHDAY! i didn't get you anything because trailcutter is dead”"—jroberts332, Twitter, 2014/11/15
  2. ↑ "In 2007, @jroberts332 and I attempted to pitch Spotlight: Octane. Here's the cover and character design. https://t.co/5fS4W2grfz"—NickRoche, Twitter, 2016/05/30
  3. ↑ "*head explodes* I'd completely forgotten about this! Oh my god! https://t.co/fhoMT9uNai"—jroberts332, Twitter, 2016/05/30
  4. ↑ "Not a script, but James wrote a very extensive outline which he then hacked down. Some of it has shown up in MTMTE. https://t.co/7sjztgmVv5"—NickRoche, Twitter, 2016/05/30
  5. ↑ Moonbase 2 interview, 29:15 to 31:00
  6. ↑ Moonbase 2 interview, 39:40 to 31:00
  7. ↑ Guernsey GeekOut interview, 1:12:30 to 1:15:10
  8. ↑ "The Underbase Podcast Deconstructs Shadowplay", 09:11 - 09:24
  9. ↑ Interview with Boroughcon
  10. ↑ "The Underbase Podcast Deconstructs Shadowplay", 1:10:22 - 1:10:30
  11. ↑ IDW Forum Q&A: "Assuming that writing is now your full-time job, what did you do for a living before?"
  12. ↑ Moonbase2's second interview with James Roberts - 49:50 to 59:30
  13. ↑ Dread Tidings issue 288 and 295; Darn 'n' Blast issue 310 and 316
  14. ↑ True Believers Comic Awards nominees
  15. ↑ Interview with Roberts at TransFans.co.uk
  16. ↑ Moonbase 2 interview, 50:26 to 51:08
  17. ↑ The Underbase podcast interview with Mike Costa ("Special Guest")
  18. ↑ Moonbase2's second interview with James Roberts - 01:20:00 to 1:22:15
  19. ↑ Answer to a post on an IDW Forum Q&A.
  20. ↑ "@MMortAH Well, we haven't worked together in three years... make of THAT what you will... :)"—NickRoche, Twitter, 2015/11/13
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