The best thing about a post-war setting is absolutely the idea that literally everyone is new to their job. No industry has industry standards yet. The regulations are still being written, and they’re being written by a bunch of guys who don’t know anything about regulation-writing.
Like maybe a couple of Cybertronians just return to their pre-war occupations, and there’s some things that aren’t that different from during the war, but there has to be some huge number of jobs filled by people who just decided to give it a go.
above left: my sketch of a surgeon (someone I’ve worked with IRL but I’m not naming him because he doesn’t need my Transformers blog showing up in search results for his practice LOL) mid-motion in the surgical theatre, which I drew at 4 AM yesterday so lmao
above right: IDW 2 Ratchet in a similar pose, carrying out helm repairs on a patient who appears to be positioned lain supine but horizontal (so not in the Trendelenburg position or anything)
I don’t know what it says about me that I was illustrating a surgery and my brain instantly went to “it’s like the robot space doctor!!”
but I figured I’d share because it’s not just me right, like the vibe of these two images is remarkably similar, right????
(also please Hasbro give us a Transformers med bay focus series already, in literally any medium, oh my god it would be so good)
Honestly a transformers doctor show or comic would be really cool, I’d love to see the world building in that!
If they ever want to make a Transformers series of literally any kind focusing on the medical bots, I just want to say right now that I am 100000% available to consult on healthcare working environments etc., lmao
For real though, the potential is extremely high, I feel like a lot of people seem to be really interested in Cybertronian medicine (if the numbers on my medical Transformers analysis posts are any indication LOL <3) and there are a lot of really popular medic characters
I fully believe a mini-series or something would be a seriously good idea, maybe a comic mini-series in particular as they seem to have some concerns around their comic book sales at the moment (not even specifically a Transformers issue as the entire comics industry has been dunked on the last few years)
Med Bay Comic Mini Series: Whoever works on the official comics at this point, I’m serious, please let me pitch this formally, I will make an actual effort to make this happen if at all possible
A comic mini-series would likely be the option they’d consider most seriously, as it’s a far lower cost to produce than a show or animated short, and doesn’t take as long to actually make compared to animated works.
A generally successful and easy way for them to generate some comic sales would be to do something like an online exclusive (available for download) comic mini series of like even just four to eight issues in total, focused around medical shenanigans.
They could even do it based on specific characters: One character highlighted per issue with each issue being a self-contained story. They’ve done this several times in the past with pretty good results, and since it would be digital only, they wouldn’t need to factor in any printing costs, shelf space issues at comic retailers/stores, etc.
If they weren’t sure about it and wanted to make an even smaller run, they could do a three parter mini series with a focus on Ratchet, First Aid, and Hoist as being the most commonly known/familiar medical characters.
Making it an online exclusive or digital product would then also avoid the potential of any lockdowns etc. getting in the way of people’s access to comic stores etc., so even in consideration of any digital comic pirating concerns (loss of revenue) issues and so on, it might still end up being a better idea for such a limited mini-series to be a purely digital thing. (This doesn’t address the potential for access issues with digital downloads such as region-based access problems etc. as well as those who just prefer having hardcopies, but idk I’m not a marketing or sales person, you gotta weigh your positives and negatives lmao)
With a short three issue thing, they could then also do a fun triptych style cover thing if they wanted, where all three covers next to each other would then create a single poster style image of a view of the entire Med Bay with the bots at their own workstations or something! They could do this with a 4 or 8 issue run too, but idk I just really like triptychs.
Or, they could use it as an opportunity to focus on the lesser known medical characters, possibly by focusing around a central Med Bay location where the more familiar characters would also be working, to help tie it all together and balance out the lesser known characters with more familiar/popular ones. (This would possibly be handy if they might want to develop the backgrounds of old lesser known characters.)
Alternatively, following that logic, it could also be a good way to introduce any new medical themed characters this way, as it would place them in an environment where they could then interact with the more familiar characters and might serve as a fun mini-series prelude to whatever else.
I’m just thinking out loud, of course; With IDW handing over the Transformers license soon, it’s anyone’s guess at the moment what they might want to do from here, or what (if anything) is being developed at the moment.
But I do think anything med bay focused would be potentially really fun and interesting.
For example, any Ratchet focused issue in any kind of mini-series about medical staff could take all kinds of directions; It could even be fairly light-hearted, just following Ratchet through a day of outpatient care, routine appointments for maintenance, general Med Bay shenanigans– Capping it off with perhaps a more serious case (which would still end on a positive note), thus giving the opportunity to have some fun but also highlight that what Ratchet does is hard, which would help show a bit of why he’s always so gruff– But reinforce that he does, absolutely, care very much.
Could be a good way to introduce certain characters / some in-universe lore or background information to any new readers, too!
Or they could just go full whatever mode and do a single med bay focused special, kinda like how Annuals get put out once a year but with a slightly increased page count to fit in any longer than usual stories or one central story with a few shorter or one-page strips.
Which would still have a huge amount of potential to be pretty fun and interesting, and would still give a good opportunity to appease med bay character fans as well as introduce those characters to any new readers, so either way, nobody loses.
TL;DR give me the med bay content, I need the med bay content, I will actively write the med bay content if they will accept an actual pitch lmao
