Simon Christopher Francis Furman is a British comic book writer. He has worked on a wide variety of licensed and original properties, but is most reknown for his long-time work on the Transformers Comic Book franchise.
His professional career began in 1984 with the opening episode of "Terror of the Cats", in issue 3 of Fleetway's weekly comic Scream! He later moved over to Marvel UK, where creators were in high demand — at the time, many British comics were published weekly, so additional material was needed to fill in the gaps from their American counterpart's monthly schedules. There Furman worked on numerous original and licensed properties such as Doctor Who, Action Force, Dragon's Claws, and Transformers.
Furman's work on The Transformers eventually led to his worldwide fame; when longtime American Transformers writer Bob Budiansky stepped down from the role, Furman was logically selected to replace him. But where Budiansky targeted a pre-teen audience with lighthearted action-adventure stories, Furman eschewed that, instead adding an undercurrent of pseudo-religion and lore to the Transformers mythology (much of which he had previously introduced in his UK work). He reframed the robotic civil war as part of a larger ancient struggle between mechanical gods, with the Transformers themselves destined to be a warrior race against Unicron. This change in tone captivated the older fandom, and Furman was soon accepted as the definitive writer of Transformers stories. It is not a stretch to say that Furman has probably had more influence on the entire Transformers mythos than any other writer.
Outside of Transformers, Furman is also known as the co-creator and chief writer of Death's Head (who was originally created as a throwaway character in the Transformers UK series). The character instead was so beloved that he was spun off into his own line, eventually becoming a staple of Marvel UK comics in the 1980s and 90s.
Simon Furman's works include:
Comic Books- Transformers: Generation 1:
- The Transformers (Marvel)
- Transformers: Generation 2 (Marvel)
- Transformers: The War Within (Dreamwave)
- Transformers: Armada (Dreamwave)
- The Transformers Megaseries (IDW)
- The Transformers: Maximum Dinobots (IDW)
- The Transformers: Regeneration One (IDW)
- Transformers '84 (IDW)
- Doctor Who Magazine
- ThunderCats (1985)
- Action Force
- Death's Head
- Dragon's Claws
- Brute Force
- Robocop
- Alpha Flight
- What If?
- Robotech (2017 Titan Comics run)
Video Games
Tropes associated with Simon Furman:
- Author Catchphrase: Furman uses certain phrases so much in his Transformers work that they have become lovingly known as "Furmanisms" amongst the fandom. It's so excessive that even Furman knows about them, and uses them consciously. A few choice examples:
- "Better to FIGHT AND DIE — than live with the knowledge that I ran!"
- "It can feel pain — IT CAN BE HURT!"
- "Do you not understand? It's OVER — FINISHED!"
- "In my heart of hearts, I know... IT NEVER ENDS!
- Lots more are available on the Transformers Wiki.
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My Real Daddy:- For the Transformers series as a whole. Not only did he write most of the stories in the original comic book, but he was the one who treated it like a serious story rather than a glorified toy advertisement and introduced all the mythology that the subsequent Transformers franchise would build off of. Furman's eponymous article on the Transformers Wiki even described him as responsible for "80% of this wiki."
- If there was any one character in particular who falls under this it would easily be the Dinobot, Grimock. Just about all subsequent incarnations of the character take after Furman's Barbarian Hero characterization of him.
- Redshirt Army: TFWiki.net likes to play up how Furman enjoys slaughtering "hordes of background characters". His page quote on there is even just him asking the Beast Wars staff if he can kill anyone off.
- Verbal Tic: Furman likes to use odd speech patterns to make his characters more distinctive. Arguably the best example would be Death's Head, who speaks tersely and ends most of his sentences with questions."Skilled warrior is only out of ammo when room is empty, yes?"
