Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook

Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook #1–4
Strike a pose!
Publisher	IDW Publishing
Cover date	August, October, December 2007, February 2008
Written by	Simon Furman and Ben Yee
Art by	Robby Musso, Marcelo Matere, Don Figueroa, Nick Roche, Guido Guidi, Dan Khanna, Liam Shalloo, Josh Burcham, Zac Atkinson, Frank Milkovich, Simon Williams, Matt Frank
Colors by	Zac Atkinson Josh Burcham, Andrew Elder, Guido Guidi, Kieran Oats, Rob Ruffolo
Edits by	Dan Taylor
Design by	Mike Heisler and Neil Uyetake
Continuity	Beast Wars cartoon continuity
TPB ISBN	ISBN 9781600101595

Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook is a 4-issue limited series by IDW Publishing, featuring expanded profile entries for most pre-Beast Machines Transformers from the Beast Era toy lines (including Hasbro, Takara, MicroVerse, fast-food, and convention exclusive characters). Entries are in a format roughly borrowed from the Dreamwave Productions' More than Meets the Eye profile books and organized alphabetically.

In theory.

Issue #1 profiles

—Release date: October 3, 2007

Issue #2 profiles

—Release date: October 31, 2007

Issue #3 profiles

—Release date: January 4, 2008

Issue #4 profiles

If you guessed Frank Milkovich, you are correct.

—Release date: February 6, 2008

Beast Wars Glossary

In a vein similar to the final issue of the Dreamwave More Than Meets the Eye books, the trade paperback collection included a glossary of terminology, concepts, and other characters related to the various aspects of the Beast Era. However, while the final Dreamwave book gave each term its own section on the same level as the character profiles, the Beast Wars Glossary is much more condensed in its presentation.

Notes

Sadly, the Beast Wars Sourcebook was best known for failing to deliver on almost every front. In addition to woefully amateurish design and layout work—featuring massive amounts of whitespace surrounding undersized pictures and small clusters of text—the book was plagued by coloring errors and artwork that was either mismatched or missing outright, arbitrary re-writing of character personalities mostly designed to purge any non-Waspinator-related humor from the Beast Wars universe, and numerous other editorial errors, such as lesser-known characters like Bigmos getting double-page spreads, while major figures such as Blackarachnia got only one. Produced at a time when the IDW editorial team was in flux, the first two issues received a reception that would be described as lukewarm at best. Despite promises that the stabilized editorial staff would mean the final two issues of the series would be much improved, the general lack of any improvement at all left the series as the first major black mark for IDW.

In an effort to improve things for the trade paperback collection of the series, a topic was even started on the IDW forums so that all the mistakes could be listed. Artistic and typographic errors were duly amended (though many of the badly-drawn art pieces remained), and many of the page distribution oddities were amended, but the unsatisfying layout work and rewritten characters remained unaltered.

Art and coloring errors

Laser Ultra Magnus anyone?

I spent the night in Vegas and woke up like this.

Anniversary? What anniversary?

What. The. Hell.

• Blackarachnia's images inexplicably depict her in her Transmetal body, in a rather poor rendition of her original body's colors, rendering it solid gold-orange and black. For the trade paperback, an additional page with new artwork depicting her original body was added, while her Transmetal body was recolored from scratch.
• BB is similarly colored in nothing but gold-orange, with a little white.
• Dinobot's colors are based on the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary release of the Dinobot toy, minus the blue kneecaps and face. For the trade paperback, Dinobot was given completely new art for his robot and beast modes.
• Gimlet, Lio Junior, Magnaboss II, and Motorarm are all incorrectly colored as their Hasbro mold-partners Sea Clamp, Prowl, Magnaboss, and Ram Horn.
• The hind legs of Magmatron's combined-beast mode are incorrectly colored as if they belonged to Skysaur, when they are actually the robot mode arms from his Seasaur portion.
• All of the robot modes drawn by Frank Milkovich are rendered almost entirely mechanical, including all of the organic beast mode parts. Every. Single. One. See image on right, then try to un-see it.
• Speaking of which, Milkovich's renditions of both versions of Rhinox, Scissor Boy, Silverbolt, Tigerhawk, and Tripledacus all have visible pencil sketch lines remaining. Additionally, Tigerhawk even has the edge of a comic draft page left underneath, as the word "issue________" can be clearly seen in one of his wing cannon barrels. Tripledacus has an edge guide corner visible in his foremost foot. It is conveniently covered by the IDW logo on the cover of Sourcebook 4.
• Milkovich's sketches also have a common "squatting" pose because the robot and beast modes have been crammed on to the same comic draft page without particular regard for the space available. It is particularly grievous on Tripledacus, who literally appears to be crouching inside an invisible box.
• Ravage's "original" Predacon body has his Transmetal 2 beast mode head.
• Not really an error, but certainly bizarre: Scissor Boy is just a mirrored version of Powerpinch's art, with his minor detailing changed. At that point, why not just draw entirely new art?
• Silverbolt II has his beast mode head for a face in robot mode.
• Transmetal Tarantulas is colored in the black and white hues of his later "Fox Kids" redeco, instead of his original show-accurate colors.

Divergence from original sources

• The book makes considerable alterations to the personalities and intelligence levels of a fair number of the Japanese characters. Ben Yee is on record as saying these changes were intentional and designed to fit certain characters better into the overall feel of the merged Japanese/American Beast Wars universe the books were creating.^[3] Despite that explanation, the changes seem rather contrary/deliberately misinformative for something calling itself a "sourcebook". Overhauls to Japanese characters include:
  • Diver, a skittish coward, is described as unflinching in the face of danger.
  • Guiledart, infinitely loyal in all media portrayals, is described as an utterly distrustful schemer.
  • Hardhead, routinely portrayed as being dumber than toast, is described as a natural leader with a gift for following complex strategies. He's also described as a master swordsman, whereas the Beast Wars Neo comic made it a point (with humorous effect) to illustrate what a terrible swordsman he is.
  • Ikard, despite being Scuba's cousin in the original material, is described as being his brother.
  • The Jointrons retain their core personalities, albeit somewhat scaled back due to potential cultural sensitivity concerns.
  • Mantis, a grouchy and psychotic loner, is described as a smiling, optimistic, friendly guy.
  • Moon, the cutesy-wootsy comedy relief sidekick, has absolutely no traces of humor or levity in his awkwardly grim write-up.
• The Japanese characters were not the only ones to receive arbitrary contradictions to their source depictions. Several of the Western Beast Wars characters also received alterations that ranged from minor to completely incongruous:
  • Injector, described in his toy bio as being sincerely proud of his own "beauty", is now secretly ashamed of his own ugliness.
  • Prowl II, previously somewhat implied to be somehow related to G1 Prowl, is described as a reincarnation of Binaltech Prowl (even though the events of Binaltech occur in a divergent timeline separate from Beast Wars).
  • Ramulus, a hot-headed jerk in his toy bio and previous comic appearances, is described as "even-tempered" and peaceful.
  • Windrazor's entry labels the Cub a Maximal. This is true to the character's original toy bio, but at odds with the Cub's more prominent fictional appearance as a Predacon.
• The Sourcebook proceeds to diverge from the source material in other ways unrelated to characterization, but nonetheless random and troubling:
  • Airazor's motto is listed as "She swoops to conquer!", but her actual line of dialogue from the episode "Call of the Wild" had been "She stoops to conquer!", in reference to both the 18th-Century romantic Irish play of the same name and the hunting dive used by peregrine falcons (her beast mode), called a "stoop" only in reference to that specific breed of falcon. This change was a conscious decision on Yee's part.
  • Depth Charge's bio states that Colony Omicron was destroyed by Protoform X (Rampage) "Many Stellar Cycles ago." In the episode that first mentioned this, "Deep Metal", the number of Stellar Cycles ago that this happened was stated to be just... four!
  • Japanese names are often mistranslated or pointlessly altered. Despite a stated policy to not diverge from the names of originally Japanese characters,^[4] some were altered anyway, such as Elphaorpha to "Elephorca", Blentron to "Blendtron", and Tasmania Kid to "Tasmanian Kid". The Ascending disregarded "Tasmanian Kid", but kept "Elephorca". A likely origin for these name changes is Ben Yee's own website having spelled them as such.^[5][6][7]
  • Magmatron's three individual beast modes are claimed to have "only loose connections to actual reptilian lifeforms", seemingly ignorant of the existence of Giganotosaurus, Elasmosaurus, and Quetzalcoatlus.
  • "Technorganic" is consistently misused to describe any and all Beast Wars-era characters, when the term should only properly apply to post-reformatting Cybertronians from Beast Machines or later.
  • Most bafflingly, throughout the Sourcebook are numerous references to several Maximal and Predacon characters having personally fought in a war that preceded the Pax Cybertronia. At first, this sounds like the Sourcebook is claiming that these particular Maximals and Predacons were all veterans of the Great War fought by the Autobots and Decepticons (whom the Beast Wars cartoon noted several times were their ancient ancestors), but as revealed in the Glossary section first published in the trade paperback, these are actually references to a second, completely new "Great War" that was instead fought between the Maximals and Predacons, long after the Autobot/Decepticon Great War had ended. While Ben Yee has explained why the signing of the Pax Cybertronia was moved to later occur after this Great War instead of right after the Autobot/Decepticon one,^[8] the very existence of a "Great War" fought between the Maximals and Predacons is antithetical to the in-universe history of the Beast Wars cartoon (see this article for more).

Editing errors

• The artists' credits sections in the front of the books have numerous inaccuracies. Notably, Dan Khanna is credited with numerous pieces he did not draw (Dan himself confirmed this), including Blackarachnia, Dinobot, Hardhead, K-9, and Killerpunch. Blackarachnia was likely drawn by Nick Roche, and the Trade Paperback version identified Simon Williams as the artist for K-9 and Killer Punch with Jamie Snell as the artist behind Hardhead.
• The alphabetical order of characters gets out of whack in numerous places. For instance, Scourge is absent from the third issue, even though it ends with Silverbolt, who should be many characters down the list in alphabetical order. He was included in the fourth issue instead.
• Characters are not consistently placed in subgroups. Drancron is apparently not a Blendtron, nor is Longrack a member of the Pack. The Trade Paperback version meanwhile neglected to list Autostinger as an Autoroller.
• The entries of Beast Wars II characters are inconsistent on whether the factions are Maximals and Predacons or "Cybertrons" and "Destrons". The trade attempted to explain this by including different meanings for the terms in its glossary.
• Issue 2 has a disproportionate number of pointless and incorrectly used parenthetical asides and additions, and sections of sentence between dashes for no good reason. Chances are the writer was unsure whether to keep the asides and sentence fragments or not, and added the punctuation marks to leave the decision to the editor. Instead of either omitting the marked passages altogether, or keeping them but removing the punctuation marks, they were simply left as they were. For example:

Hydra: "The trouble is, everyone-who's ever had anything to do with Hydra-knows what to expect..."

Injector: "...his ungainly new (Fuzor) form..."

• Issue 4 is rife with layout errors, especially on the characters who have multiple-page profiles. None of them follow the Bio-Weapons/Abilities-Weaknesses layout set out by all the other profiles in the books. This seems to be a deliberate attempt to lay the pages out to be read as two-page spread which could be a good... no, it's just stupid. It's especially painful on the three page (!) profiles like Waspinator and Tigatron.
• Diver's Niagara Base is misspelled as "Niagra Base".
• Elephorca's beast mode is labeled an elephant, instead of elephant/killer whale.
• Gigastorm's "Abilities" section ends with a bizarre sentence fragment: ".. . built into its fists.built into his right arm."
• Not so much an error, but the first two issues feature cover images of characters not in those issues. Magmatron is on #1, but his bio is in #2, Torca is on #2 but in issue 4. (However, "Elephorca" is in #2, so it's entirely possible the art is supposed to be him, and it's just miscolored.)
• Ravage's cassette mode is labeled "NAME".
• The back cover of issue 3 states profiles are listed from "Optimus Minor" to "Silverbolt" when the volume in fact starts with Onyx Primal.
• Terrorsaur's name is misspelled as "Terrosaur" in his page's header.
• Wolfang's name is misspelled as "Wolfgang" in his page's header and on the back cover.
• The trade paperback version leaves out Galvatron's weakness, and made Break's primary function "PRIMARY FUNCTION".
• Megastorm's tank mode is labeled a beast mode.

Omissions

• A glossary similar to that of the final issue of Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye was promised by Ben Yee to explain oddities like the inclusion of Moon with the absence of Artemis, but no such index was included.
• The Egg Beasts are notably and intentionally absent from the book, as is McDonald's "the 'Lion Head Optimus Primal' figure".
• The Predacon Wolfang, from the Beast Wars Telemocha Series toyline, is also missing, but this is hardly surprising considering he was released only a few months before the first issue of the Sourcebook was released.
• Fiction-only characters, such as Cataclysm, the Cub, Great Convoy, Majin Zarak, the Veteran, Strada, Kuma Kinkin, and Rage are not included.
• Claw Jaw's and Spittor's bios are lacking any mention of their "Transmetal" forms (which were redecoes of their original toys that were each included with a Beast Wars video in various European markets).
• Quite a few characters with triple-changer abilities do not have their tertiary mode pictured, though art was often produced.
• Characters who have had multiple bodies, such as Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Blackarachnia, and Megatron, are depicted with an inconsistent mishmash of their respective bodies' modes, with no profiles managing to include artwork of every mode of each body. This issue was apparently fixed in the trade for everybody except Megatron, who still lacks any post-Season 1 artwork.
• The entry for Magnaboss II states he has the ability to teleport from his member Skywarp, yet oddly the entry for Skywarp doesn't mention any ability to teleport.
• Gigascouter had complete profile art commissioned, which doesn't appear in the book.

Collections

• Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook TPB (June 18, 2008) ISBN 1600101593 / ISBN 978-1600101595

• Collects issues 1–4.
• Corrects many mistakes made in the individual issues.

• Transformers: Beast Wars Omnibus (March 25, 2009) ISBN 1600103901 / ISBN 978-1600103902

• Collects Transformers, Beast Wars: The Gathering, The Ascending and the supplemental Beast Wars Sourcebook.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 93: Beast Wars: The Gathering (June 17, 2020)

• Collects The Gathering and material from the Beast Wars Sourcebook.
• Bonus content is extensive. In additional to the normal Furman introduction and cover gallery, included is an introduction by Ben Yee, a 2-page "Unleash the Beast Wars" feature detailing the origins of the show and toyline, a 3-page "Creating the BW-Verse" interview with Bob Forward, a 2-page "The (G1) roots of the Beast Wars" feature detailing the G1 elements in the show, 4 pages of Don Figueroa's design sketches, and a reprint of the "Optimus Primal vs Megatron!" toy pack-in comic.
• The profiles from the Sourcebook were more prominent in The Gathering. They include: Air Hammer, Armordillo, Bantor, B'boom, Bonecrusher, Buzzclaw, Clawjaw, Cybershark, Dead End, Depth Charge, Drill Bit, Grimlock, Heinrad, Icebird, Iguanus, Inferno, Injector, Insecticon, Jetstorm, K-9, Lazorbeak, Lio Convoy, Magmatron, Manterror, Megatron, Night Glider, Noctorro, Optimus Minor, Optimus Primal, Poison Bite, Polar Claw, Powerpinch, Quickstrike, Ramhorn, Ramulus, Ravage, Razorbeast, Retrax, Rhinox, Scarem, Scourge, Sea Clamp, Sky Shadow, Snapper, Snarl, Sonar, Spittor, Torca, Transquito, and Wolfgang.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 94: Beast Wars: The Ascending (September 9, 2020)

• Collects The Ascending and material from the Beast Wars Sourcebook.
• Bonus content includes the normal Furman introduction and cover gallery, a 7-page Beast Wars Glossary, and a 5-page Behind the Scenes proposal of Furman's planned third Beast Wars miniseries to be titled The Revisiting.
• The profiles from the Sourcebook were more prominent in The Ascending. They include: Airazor, Antagony, Apache, Archadis, Autocrasher, Big Convoy, Bighorn, Blackarachnia, Break, Bump, Buzzsaw, Cheetor, Cohrada, Crazybolt, Depth Charge, Dinobot, Dinobot II, Drancron, Drill Nuts, Elephorca, Gimlet, Guiledart, Halfshell, Hardhead, Hellscream, Ikard, Ironhide, Killer Punch, Longrack, Mach Kick, Max-B, Motorarm, Prowl, Rampage, Randy, Rartorata, Rattrap, Saberback, Santon, Scarem, Scorponok, Scuba, Sharp Edge, Shokaract, Silverbolt, Stampy, Survive, Tarantulas, Terragator, Terrorsaur,Thrustor, Tigatron, and Waspinator.

• 

  Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook; cover art by Jake Isenberg and ???

• 

  Beast Wars Omnibus; cover art by Don Figueroa and Josh Burcham

• 

  Definitive G1 Collection Volume 93: Beast Wars: The Gathering; cover art by Don Figueroa

• 

  Definitive G1 Collection Volume 94: Beast Wars: The Ascending; cover art by Don Figueroa

References

1. ↑ Simon Furman, WordPress, "Beasts Shot", 2007/11/05
2. ↑ Simon Furman, WordPress, "Beasts Shot", 2007/11/04
3. ↑ Ben's review of issue two. (See external links)
4. ↑ August 18, 2007 comment from Simon Furman on his blog: The question is, once you start re-naming the Japanese BW characters, where do you stop? I mean, there’s “Randy” for the start!!! For the source books and the Ascending, between myself, Chris Ryall and Ben Yee we dediced to simply go with all the names as they originally appeared, for better or worse.
5. ↑ "Elephorca" and "Blendtron" spellings
6. ↑ Another "Blendtron" spelling
7. ↑ "Tasmanian Kid" spellings (despite the "Tasmania Kid" spelling here)
8. ↑ Ben's review of issue one. (See external links)

See also

• Archived transcription of the Beast Wars Glossary

External links

• Ben Yee's review of Beast Wars Sourcebook 1 (archived)
• Ben Yee's review of Beast Wars Sourcebook 2 (archived)