Bob Budiansky

Bob Budiansky was the writer of most of the Marvel US Transformers comic book series and the creator of much of the mythos, characters, and names behind the first several years of the franchise.

In late 1983, Hasbro approached Marvel Comics to create a storyline around a series of transforming toy robots they had licensed from Takara. Editors Denny O'Neil and Jim Shooter created some of the early background for Transformers, including several names, but much of the material for the first 28 characters were rejected by Hasbro. Revision duties were passed to editor/writer Bob Budiansky, who renamed most of the characters and revised the personalities. Though Optimus Prime was named by O'Neil, Bob Budiansky is responsible for the names of Megatron, the Dinobots, Sideswipe, Wheeljack, and countless others.

Due to its success, the Transformers four-issue miniseries became an ongoing. Bob Budiansky was moved from editing duties to writer. It was in these years that he developed popular characters Shockwave, Ratchet, and Grimlock into the roles they're famous for today. He also created the concept of the Autobot Matrix. Budiansky continued to write tech specs and name characters until the end of the original series.

Towards the end of the comic book series, Budiansky started to feel fatigue. It was complicated and frustrating, from a story-crafting point of view, to introduce so many new characters in so few issues. At Budiansky's recommendation, the writer of the Marvel UK Transformers comics, Simon Furman, took over Budiansky's duties on the US comic.