Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, IDW | Tagged: steampunk, ted mckeever, transformers

The Ted McKeever Steampunk Transformers That Never Was

Published Mon, 24 Jan 2022 06:57:11 -0600

Chris Ryall, former President, Publisher, and Chief Creative Officer of IDW Publishing tweeted out some memories of Transformers projects that never came to pass, now that IDW is losing the license. As first reported by Bleeding Cool back in November.

Thinking back over all the Hasbro-related comics and stories over my time at IDW, I'm remembering the time I almost got Ted McKeever to do a steampunk-era Transformers series. That woulda really been something based on the one piece of art he created for it.

Let's just say that a creator as uniquely independent as Ted and a title based on a licensed toy property weren't necessarily always going to see eye to (more than meets the) eye on designs, so the amicable split seemed the wiser path for all involved.

Yeah. I have such a big file full of great "what might have been" art for these properties. Maybe I should start me a Substack…

Maybe you should, Chris! Ted McKeever is an American artist best known for his idiosyncratic work in the comic book industry, including comics such as Eddy Current, Plastic Forks, Metropol, Industrial Gothic, Junk Culture, The Extremist, Doom Patrol, Toxic Gumbo and Faith, from companies such as Vortex, Marvel, Comico and DC Comics In the late 1990s/early 2000s, McKeever worked with writers Randy Lofficier & Jean-Marc Lofficier on a trilogy of DC Elseworlds one-shots based on German Expressionist cinema — Superman's Metropolis, Batman: Nosferatu, and Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon, then contributed to The Matrix Comics webcomic series. He did work for IDW on an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars but the project was cancelled before publication.

In 2010 McKeever began producing solo projects for Jim Valentino's Shadowline imprint at Image Comics. Starting with Meta4, McKeever then continued between the years 2011 through 2015, where he produced the series Mondo, Miniature Jesus, The Superannuated Man, and finally Pencil Head in 2016, before he walked away from the comics industry for good.

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