SSSS Gridman has essentially designed most of its human cast to be visual references to Shattered Glass Transformers characters, including Soundwave, seen here wearing a shawl with SG Ravage printed on it.
And I’m SG Ravage’s daddy, so.
anyway yes it’s all incredibly bizarre
The green hair tie is my fault.
Not kidding.
I want to hear this story
When Shattered Expectations took off, Greg and I set about the task of producing more tongue-in-cheek Shattered Glass material for the club. Early on I wanted to take the cast to Earth in “Do Over” to replicate the 84 toon setup, but in reverse. We imagined this not just as a reversal of roles, but “how would these characters be if this was an actual 80s cartoon”. That meant that the Decepticons needed a kid appeal character, to be what Bumblebee was for the original G1.
Soundwave was the obvious pick, both in terms of popularity and because my highest ranking autobot and decepticon as a kid were Bumblebee and Soundwave, and they’ve been rivals in my head ever since. Soundwave became a cool, surfer-dude heavily influenced by Val Halen from the justice friends. Soundwave reformats into a sweet van with a Cold Slither mural on the side, and is the human kids’ fun, dudarino friend.
As part of this I wrote a scene where Soundwave makes a bandanna out of a tarp, in vibrant lime green. This was a nod to a piece of Poison merch from 2001 that I got in a show in 2002 or 2003 for ½ off (the picture isn’t of my specific bandanna, but one from the web):
Because in my mind, Poison was the kind of band SG Soundwave would love.
I had imagined it as an 80s rocker do-rag, in the Brett Michaels sense: