Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, Estriol, female transformers, idw, James Roberts, transformers, Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye, Windblade

No Little 'Bots? James Roberts Retcons 'Estriol' In Female Transformers(UPDATE)

By Spencer Ellsworth

The female robots in IDW Transformers comics have been a source of controversy for years, as Bleeding Cool has previously reported. Rachel Stevens gives a wonderfully thorough overview of the recent storylines and controversies in Women Write About Comics; go read it.

In sum, IDW has recently introduced three "naturally occurring" female Transformers. The Windblade miniseries established Windblade, Nautica and Chromia as part of a generation of Transformers that grew to identify as female.

Transformers have never canonically reproduced sexually (though it only takes a cursory Google search to find plenty of fan-penned accounts, all roaring pistons and spinning sprockets). (I don't have to tell you that, do I?)

Windblade leaves it unclear whether there is a built-in gender component for the TFs or whether they simply identify as male or female. James Roberts, writer of the critically acclaimed More Than Meets The Eye series, recently listed, in issue #31, his female character Nautica as being "spark-type: Estriol-positive." Sparks double as Transformer CPUs and Transformer souls, powering transformation cogs, brain modules, and presumably all the pistons and sprockets.

Roberts asked for the Estriol reference to be removed from the MTMTE trade paperback, claiming it is "unnecessary and potentially (if unintentionally) offensive."

Canonically, this means there is no fundamental difference between his and hers—Transformers only identify as such.

This will put an end to any hopes of robot sex in future Transformers comics. If that news disappoints you, I'm sure a quick Google search will put you right.

UPDATE:

Further thoughts from Roberts on the subject have been forthcoming.

Spencer Ellsworth has written about comics for Bleeding Cool since 2013, and all over the Internet since 2007. He has also published short fiction in many venues, including the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and maintains a blog and bibliography at spencerellsworth.com and twitters @spencimus

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