Shane McCarthy

Tonight on Top Gear, Richard Hammond will drive a jet-powered dragster and a comic franchise into the ground.

Shane McCarthy (born July 24, 1975) is an Australian comic book writer. His first major comics work was a back-up story in Detective Comics, and later he was responsible for the temporary reinvention of the Riddler during the five-part "Riddle Me That" storyline in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. Beginning with All Hail Megatron, a "soft reboot" of 2005 IDW continuity, McCarthy has written several Transformers comics for IDW Publishing.

McCarthy's comics are known for their decompressed storytelling and Brian Michael Bendis-style approach to dialog. The theme that runs through his Transformers comics is that both the Autobots and Decepticons have lost their grounding in their ideals. McCarthy's most contentious addition to the mythos, the character Drift, serves as a mouthpiece for McCarthy's theme.

Outside of comics, one of Shane McCarthy's passions is swing dancing. He is the owner of the Swing It! swing dancing school in Perth, Western Australia.^[2]

Comic bibliography

IDW Publishing

• All Hail Megatron #1–12, half of #14.
• Spotlight #20 "Blurr"
• Spotlight #22 "Drift"
• Spotlight #23 "Cliffjumper"
• The Transformers: Drift (4-issue miniseries)
• Mars Attacks: The Transformers
• The Transformers: Drift - Empire of Stone

Notes

• The first details of All Hail Megatron were revealed by McCarthy in a television interview on the disreputable Australian tabloid current affairs programme Today Tonight on January 16, 2008. He was quoted saying that the story would be about a "world without the Autobots", but later retracted his comments, claiming he had been misquoted.^[3] Considering the quality of Today Tonight's journalism (trust us, it's terrible), it's hard not to give Shane the benefit of the doubt on this one.
• He is not a fan of the 2007 Transformers movie,^[4] nor the new incarnation of Drift depicted in Age of Extinction, deeming him a racist stereotype.
• He is a fan of Simon Furman, has read everything he has produced, and would never ever do anything to "piss all over what that man did",^[5] though this didn't stop him from completely ruining the plans Furman had for the character Hunter O'Nion and his partner Sunstreaker.
• McCarthy reported on his blog that neither he nor artist Guido Guidi were given complimentary Generations Drift figures from Hasbro. He considered this to be rather lame and agreed with a reader that Hasbro should be ashamed.^[6]

External links

• Shane McCarthy's website
• Shane McCarthy's MySpace page
• Shane McCarthy's blog (archived copy)
• Blog post talking about death in All Hail Megatron (archived copy)

Interviews

• April 2008—Newsarama forums (defunct)
• May 2008—Comixfan (mirror)
• May 2008—The Pulse
• July 2008—Newsarama (with Chris Mowry and Simon Furman)
• October 2008—CBR
• June 2009—Moonbase 2
• 2009—9am with David & Kim (defunct)
• September 2010—Madman Entertainment
• October 2010—The Underbase
• November 2014—CBR
• July 2021—Ia-Con (with Andrew Griffith and Livio Ramondelli)

References

1. ↑ Comment made on the Allspark.com forums, on November 2, 2008
2. ↑ Swing It! About Us/Teachers page
3. ↑ Shane McCarthy clarifies All Hail Megatron details on February 20, 2008 on the IDW forums
4. ↑ Based upon his pleasure in a blog post about a fan praising All Hail Megatron while deriding the 2007 Movie
5. ↑ Q&A with Shane McCarthy at oneshallstand.com; January, 2009
6. ↑ Samurai For Sale, SMAcTalk, September 1, 2010