The Real Story
The Story
When I was young, I like many Gen-Xers adored Sci-Fi TV shows such as Transformers, GoBots, Robocop, and Star Trek The Next Generation. Loving to draw and styling myself an "artist", I started to draw my own characters and write fan fiction loosely based on The Transformers television show. During my teenage years, I created over 160 different characters and wrote numerous stories about their world inside my head. They were the Zapbots, a variation on The Transformers with subtle inclusions of Star Trek storylines. The drawings, artwork, and stories were my distraction and survival--my outlet for growing up in the '80s and '90s.
When I reached college in 1994 the majority of this work was placed quietly on a shelf as my academic studies occupied the majority of my attention and time. The Zapbots were occasionally brought out to show my references to perspective drawing or used as an inside joke amongst my college friends. On occasion, my references would be included in my artwork during my course work, but I had grown disinterested in Transformers by my late twenties. I did start rewriting the saga stories in college providing a much-needed grammar and spelling upgrade but stopped in 2000 due to just life duties taking over priorities. The last story I wrote in 2000 was Robot Trek II.
Parody Idea
Around 1998 South Park came onto the air. I was an instant fan of the show and the parody concept. I loved the use of colorful paper collage, cheap animation, peppered with intelligent humor, and liberal views. I bought their T-shirts, saw the movie three times, and up until the 2000 Oscars thoroughly enjoyed the show.
I must also note that I have been a diehard Phil Collins fan. I have every album, every bootleg created, and numerous recordings of him on video. I was and, (to a certain degree) am still a fanatic. At this venture in my life, Phil Collins represented to me the average individual who enjoyed what he did but constantly got made fun of for being who he was. We were kindred spirits. I continuously endured numerous taunts and ridicule from individuals from high school and throughout college and beyond. I found myself defending my musical tastes in a time in my life where I was obsessed with what everyone thought of my nascent talent and I took my music quite seriously--almost too serious.
The highlight of this period of my life was when Phil was asked to do the soundtrack for Disney's Tarzan. The movie and its soundtrack was the pinnacle of my redemption for my tastes amongst my friends, co-workers, and the world. My life was built around Phil's persona and I related to him just a little too much--but hey, I was a fan and there are far worse things to be interested in.
That was until Phil Collins won the Oscar for Best Song, beating out Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the South Park Movie. I knew Phil would soon be a target for Trey and Matt's parodying humor. This caused me much turmoil. Now the battle I had endured during my youth not only resurfaced but took on a global audience. No more than four weeks passed before South Park debuted a new episode where they completely bastardized Phil Collins, taking every cheap pot-shot they could to make fun of him.
Compared to today, where I am a bit more relaxed, more confident, and possessive of a "don't give a damn" attitude, this "attack" on a personal hero was like a massive punch to the gut, if not including a swift kick to the balls.
I thoroughly enjoyed South Park, but I adored Phil Collins, and I lost all respect for the show. I promptly took down all my posters, burned my mouse pad, and threw everything but the sticky foam book out.
I was frustrated but felt I had no recourse. I posted to message boards. I faxed Comedy Central, and I did everything I could to get noticed to proclaim that "Phil Collins deserved that award!" I perhaps took Phil's slight too personally; however, by attacking Phil Collins they had attacked me and everything I stood for.
A positive side effect of all my frustration was it allotted me much creativity. In between jobs and having a lot of free time on my hands, I was playing around with FLASH animation.
Then came my moment of pure imagination.
Why not create a parody of Transformers in the same cartoon style as South Park.
Suddenly I had a new idea for my Zapbots. Instead of trying to be serious (of which numerous friends of mine shrugged off that idea as 'being done before') why not make it comical.
It took a week of numerous nights late at the keyboard before I structured a pretty decent Flash Animation featuring my Zapbots going to save Phil Collins. The animations were crude, there was no sound except for music and sound effects, and the plot was as bad as South Park could be. But it was fun, I was creating art and it gave me a chance to sharpen my experience of FLASH, which helped me in numerous jobs going forward.
I posted the animation to newgrounds.com and various Transformers fan boards. The reaction was almost instantaneous. Individuals from around the globe, some as far as New Zealand either loved or hated my little animation. In a very short time, the Zapbots had become somewhat famous on the Internet.
The moment of glory finally came when Phil Collins had a very successful Farewell Tour visiting Columbus, where I got the opportunity to get his attention during the show with my personally designed SouthPark shirt which had him bashing Cartman over the head with his Oscar. There’s a whole story to that night which you can read here.
My fifteen minutes of fame faded but I found rebirth in creating a Transformers Podcast (TFormers.com) and numerous fans of the show remember my Zapbots animation. Since then I have started watching South Park again. I ponder if I had more time, more energy, and maybe some voice actors I could have possibly had the next Homestar Runner. Alas, I let the idea die down again, and once again my Zapbots were put into the confines of my closet and my computer drive for a while.
Rebirth (Non Parody)
Around 2005 I started a Transformers Podcast for [Tformers.com]. A friend of mine who was a fan of my Podcast (Dual Mirror Gridwork aka Doug) inquired about them and I started to pull out all the various sketches I had drawn to show him. He was quite impressed with my work.
I was impressed at my younger self as well. Besides being amazed at the amount of work I created in my youth I was actually surprised at the vastness of my imagination. There was still a “Story” here, and it was actually not half bad. While a lot of the ideas were lifted from Transformers some of the stories were not. It was a whole saga I had created in my head and it was pretty darn good for someone 14-18 years old!
Since I had gained some fans based on my work in the TFormers Podcast field, I garnered there might be a way to actually present these ideas to the public now. There was now a forum for the stories and concepts from my younger self. I now had the ability to share them with those who would most appreciate them.
So I started this wiki around 2005, to provide the most basic information about the Zapbots. As well as the ability to publish the numerous drawings in numerous sketchbooks and pieces of paper that rendered many color pencil kits to nubs. I presented to the world, the story of the Zapbots in their original format (with minor spelling and grammar corrections). This is all the original art, and soon to be released the original stories. Maybe this can be viewed as somewhat of an alternative timeline of The Transformers if perchance Hasbro was run by a 14 year at the time.
Sadly 2005 came and went and once again I got busy with life and never really got around to finishing the Zapbot wiki.
Update 2020
In 2013 on plane flights back and forth from California I wrote a new Zapbot story called ‘Reboot’, picking up the saga several years in the future. While I had stories that I needed to finish in between these two stories I wasn’t sure how I was going to complete them since some of the stories were slightly lifted from existing influences (Star Trek etc...) So I picked up the Universe several years later to give some breathing room for an idea I had in my head. The Rebooted story follows the Zapbots' reawakening in 2013 and coming back to Earth after being away for many years.
In 2020, with the CoronaVirus pandemic and a lot of free time on my hands, I decided to revisit these stories I wrote as a kid. I reread all the original saga, and then reread the revised saga. Then I started drawing and writing again, picking up after Robot Trek II with Robot Trek III. I know knew how I wanted these stories to end.
Update 2021
And now the latest as we are in 2021, and I completed the entire saga second revisions. As such it was time to go back to the original revised stories that started in 1994 and give them some much-needed upgrades as well. So if you are confused by this I highly recommend you check out the Story Comparison wiki article. This will give you some idea of when what stories were written etc...
As of August 2021, the basic versions of all the Zapbot stories are up on this site with details and analysis to help any fan catch up. While minor changes may be made, they are open to the public for consumption.
I've included as much of the original art from my childhood here. As time permits I will upgrade the artwork to match the current stories.
Enjoy the wiki and stay tuned.
Update September 2022
Wow, a year has gone by already and it never ceases to amaze me how much time flies. I am halfway done with the Combiners teams, targeting to have all the Zapbot Characters updated by the end of the year. Looking forward to completing this task in a period of two years.
Update July 2023
We're DONE! All characters have been redrawn! Anything else going forward will be new. I hope to write the Season 3 at some point here. Enjoy!
