Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook

The Beast Wars Sourcebook is a 3-issue limited series by IDW Publishing, featuring expanded profile entries for most pre-Beast Machines Transformers from the Beast Era toy lines (including both US, Japanese, micro-verse, fast-food and convention exclusive characters). Entries are in a format roughly borrowed from the Dreamwave Productions' More Than Meets the Eye profile books from a few years earlier and organized alphabetically.

Vital Statistics

Writer: Simon Furman and Ben Yee
Artists: Robby Musso, Marcelo Matere, Don Figueroa, Nick Roche, Guido Guidi, Dan Khanna
Pagecount: 48pp

Issue #1 profiles

A	B	C	D
Air Hammer	Bantor	Cheetor	Dead End
Airazor	Bazooka	Cicadacon	Depth Charge
Antagony	B'Boom	Claw Jaw	Dinobot
Apache	BB	Cohrada	Dinobot II
Arachnid	Beetle	Coelagon	Dirge
Archadis	Big Convoy	Cybershark	Dirgegun
Armordillo	Bighorn	Crazybolt	Diver
Autocrasher	Bigmos		DJ
Autojetter	Blackarachnia		Drancron
Autolauncher	Bonecrusher		Drill Bit
Autostinger	Break		Double Punch
	Bump		Drill Nuts
	Buzz Saw
	Buzzclaw

Items of note and errors

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

• The Dark Eggbeasts are notably and intentionally absent from the book, as is 'the "Lion Head Optimus Primal" figure'. Boo.

• The line art for Blackarachnia's profile pictures show her in her Transmetal 2 form, but the images are colored gold and black, like her original body. BB, meanwhile, is just colored entirely gold for no apparent reason. And dude, why the hell is Dinobot purple, green, brown and yellow?

• Airazor's motto is listed as "She swoops to conquer!", but her actual line of dialogue from the episode had been "She stoops to conquer!" Call of the Wild, a reference to the hunting dive used by peregrine falcons. The new motto is still a bird reference, but a less sophisticated one.

• Cybershark's profile features a picture of his Transmetal 2 robot form but his original organic beast form.

• Quite a few characters with triple-changer abilities do not have their tertiary mode pictured.

• Thus far, characters who have had multiple bodies such as Cheetor, Blackarachnia and Megatron are depicted with an inconsistent mishmash of their respective bodies' modes, in no cases showing each mode of each body.

• The credits sections up front 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, though who drew the others is currently unknown.

External links

• Ben Yee's review of Beast Wars Sourcebook 1
  
  
  From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.