Dawn of the Predacus

« Combiner Wars
"Dawn of the Predacus"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	April 7, 2016 (BotCon 2016)
Writers	John-Paul Bove
Art	Corin Howell
Colors	John-Paul Bove
Color assists	Ed Pirrie
Letters	Chris Mowry
Editor	John Barber
Continuity	IDW Beast Wars continuity?
Chronology	Circa 2035

At the end of an era, a huge fight ends in disaster for many of our heroes...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots / Maximals	Decepticons / Predacons	Others
Blades (1) Prowl (2) Silverbolt (3) Ironhide (4) Tigatron (13) Legend Convoy (14) Lio Convoy (15) Big Convoy (16) Unit-3 (17) Rattrap (18) Optimus Primal (19) Depth Charge (?) (20) Rhinox (21) Airazor (22) Mainframe (26) Razorbeast (27) Magnaboss (32) Inferno (34) Air Hammer (35) Blackarachnia (36) Grimlock (38)	Cicadacon (5) Sea Clamp (6) Decepticon experiments (7/8) Ramhorn (9) Tarantulas (10) Megatron (11) Retrax (12) Predaking (23) Waspinator (24) Terrorsaur (25) Drill Bit (29) Manta Ray (30) Buzz Saw (31) Predacus (33) Dinobot (37) Magmatron (39)	Unicron (28)

Notes

• According to the author, this story takes place 30 years after The Transformers: The Movie and 300 years before Beast Wars. It also precedes "Dawn of Future's Past".
• We're going to remind you now that the Beast Wars cartoon did not establish a definitive in-universe history for itself, merely making it highly plausible that events closely resembling the Sunbow cartoon or the Marvel comic happened offscreen. "Dawn of the Predacus" takes the ever-popular "Generation 1 cartoon as background" route which most Beast Wars tie-ins have utilized.

Continuity notes

• Ironhide references having been killed by Generation 1 Megatron before.
• The profile card for Optimus Primal's BotCon 2006 toy stated that he was a veteran of "the last Great War" which resulted in the defeat of the Predacons.
• The profile card for Razorclaw's BotCon 2009 toy (tying into his appearance in "Dawn of Future's Past") stated that he was doublecrossed and assassinated by the Tripredacus Council. However, see Continuity errors below.
• Unicron's head is still in orbit of Cybertron following the events of The Transformers: The Movie.
• The destruction of the moon explains its absence by the time we see Cybertron in Beast Machines.
• Some trends that would be in evidence in the Beast Wars—Tarantulas's manipulation of Megatron, Waspinator's terrible luck—are seen here for the "first" time.
• Megatron is seen reading a Covenant of Primus shortly before announcing his name; Megatron taking his name from the Covenant was established in "Nemesis Part 2".
• Many of the characters are not wearing faction symbols. The author has stated that clear factions (especially on the Decepticon side) had fallen down after the events of "The Rebirth" and Autobots and Decepticons at the time of the story do not necessarily correspond to future Maximals and Predacons.
• Rattrap seems to give Optimus Primal his name here, as a mocking nickname in reference to his resemblance to Optimus Prime and their mission from the Primal Council. This isn't just a cute bit: on his tumblr, Bove stated that he'd found it a "contradiction" that Primal had Prime's face and name despite being low-ranked, and he wanted to make it "less of a stretch" by saying Rattrap stuck the guy with it.
• Dinobot is seen standing over Grimlock's stasis pod, implying that he got the idea for his Beast Wars name from the Autobot subgroup.
• Tarantulas is already named "Tarantulas" 300 years before he ever gets a spidery Beast Mode. That's surprisingly not an error or dramatic conceit (at least not by Bove): in "The Agenda (Part 2)," Tarantulas is introduced by Ravage as "Lieutenant Tarantulas of the Predacon Secret Police," suggesting this may have always been his name, despite all reason.

Transformers references

• Magnaboss references the "such heroic nonsense" line from The Movie.
• The Swarm is mentioned.
• One of the Decepticons under Megatron's command is the 2010 Transformers toyline character Terradive.
• The universal greeting is referenced.
• Cicadacon laying down the Decepticon sigil echoes Optimus Prime's surrender in "Surrender!".
• Ramhorn mocks the inconsistent units of time used in the Generation 1 and Beast Wars cartoons.
• Optimus Primal tells the yet-unnamed Rattrap to shut his "trap."
• This would not be the last time Primal would have an encounter with Unicron's head.
• Plans for Magmatron's body and Ravage's transwarp cruiser are seen.
• Unnamed 'bots who resemble pre-beast forms of Air Hammer and Blackarachnia are seen walking around in the epilogue.

Real-life references

• Ironhide refers to Megatron as a "knock-off."

Continuity errors

• The profile card for the "Dawn of Future's Past" version of Generation 1 Razorclaw says that after the defeat of the Decepticons in the Great War, he led the nascent Predacon faction against the Autobots until the Tripredacus Council seemingly assassinated him. In addition, Divebomb appears alive in "Dawn of Future's Past", and the profile card for "Dawn of Future's Past" Laserbeak says that Divebomb recruited Ravage to the Predacons. Here, however, Razorclaw's entire team is killed off by Predacus in the final battle of the Great War before any of that can happen.
• The stasis pods in this story are labeled with the names of the characters inside, whereas the pods in the show weren't (with the obvious exception of Protoform X). It's possible that this is simply a change that occurred over the next 300 years, but why?
• The death of Predaking, a being composed of black, yellow, and red mammals and birds, is commemorated with... a purple insect face?
• Waspinator is already named "Waspinator" pre-beast mode and unlike with Tarantulas, it conflicts with his 2011 Hall of Fame bio that declared his pre-Earth name to be just "Wasp".

Contentious continuity

To put it very mildly, this story was quite controversial within the fandom—aside from the admittedly subjective "Beast Wars isn't supposed to be all about Generation 1" complaints, many fans perceived it as stomping all over the continuity it was supposed to fit into like, well, a combiner stomping on Waspinator. Some of these issues have their origins in plot points that author John-Paul Bove had in mind but either didn't have time for or didn't realize were unclear, which he has gone on to clarify on his Tumblr. Bove has stated that the story was originally meant to be part of a miniseries set after "The Rebirth", so maybe some or all of these points would have been clearer in that context, but...

• This story predates the existence of Maximals and Predacons, and there is no indication that any sort of downsizing has taken place yet, yet the Axalon is already in service, apparently scaled to Generation 1-era Transformers.
  • According to Bove, after the downsizing, Generation 1-scaled ships and buildings were retrofitted to suit smaller inhabitants. In particular, each deck of the Axalon would have been split into several smaller ones, making it a "larger" ship from the Maximals' point of view.
    • In "Optimal Situation", a cross section of the Axalon's bridge is moved into the Ark, and we can see how big Optimal Optimus—who was larger than his fellow Maximals but much smaller than at least one Generation 1 guy—is in relation to the inside of the ship. As Optimal Optimus is tall enough to span the height of the entire hull (which is why the cross-sectioning happened for out-of-universe reasons), that the ship once housed Generation 1-sized guys is essentially impossible, unless they were scooting around inside it on their butts.
• Protoforming technology is established as a weapon of war, with stasis pods as a form of life support for its victims. Optimus Primal takes possession of some of these stasis pods (stating that he'll "do what we can for them"), implying that the stasis pods said to contain his Maximal crew on the cartoon are actually a bunch of protoformed Autobots and Decepticons he's been carrying around in his ship for 300 years and that the blank protoform who becomes his new body from "Coming of the Fuzors (Part 2)" onward is actually somebody's corpse.
  • Bove writes that this was only meant to be the beginning of protoform and stasis pod technology, and by the time of the cartoon it would have evolved into the usage the cartoon suggested, with only some of the Axalon's pods being old Autobots and Decepticons (the rest having been restored to their old selves).
• The sight of Generation 1 Inferno becoming a protoform which is then labeled as (naturally) "Inferno" suggests that his protoform became Beast Wars Inferno. Which wouldn't really be a continuity error, but it would be incredibly stupid.
  • Bove stated at BotCon 2016 that this was was deliberately left open to the reader's interpretation, and that he hasn't ruled out Generation 1 Inferno's return if the story were to be continued.
• There appears to be at least one of Ravage's transwarp cruiser, which will be "experimental" 300 years later, flying around.
  • Bove explains that it's just a similar design, similar to the various Enterprises.

However, on some points his explanations fall short:

• Rattrap really shouldn't know Optimus Primal yet. Bove defends this by saying nobody ever said how long they'd been serving together, but while nobody establishes a precise timeframe, "Beast Wars (Part 1)" makes it abundantly clear that Rattrap is new to Primal's command, and on top of that strongly suggests that Primal himself is new to command. Making them old friends destroys the backbone of Rattrap's entire first-season character development, as it's grounded in him learning to know and trust Primal as a commander. There's some wiggle room, but it's hard to argue that there are three centuries of it.
• Many Maximals and Predacons from the cartoon, plus some who didn't appear in the cartoon, existed concurrently with their legendary "energon guzzler" "ancient ancestors". Bove tries to explain this away by pointing out that most of them aren't seen to interact with any Autobots or Decepticons, but that still puts them in the same time frame as characters who were supposedly part of the distant past.
• In particular, many participants in the Beast Wars were present for the end of the Great War, with some playing rather prominent roles during the war's end:
  • Beast Wars Megatron seizes a role of authority following Galvatron's demise, bossing Predaking around. When the Autobots want to negotiate an end to the war, Tigatron and Airazor are sent to him. Bove would clarify that he hadn't intended that, and that Megatron isn't a big player yet but just a chancer with big ambitions.
  • Tigatron and Airazor are incredibly important Autobots, to the point that Prowl says that Tigatron is "respected by all sides for his desire for peace", sending him as an emissary to the Decepticons due to his widespread reputation. This echoes his later personality traits when awoken on prehistoric Earth and he would again be sent as an emissary by the Vok... but apparently nobody will make the connection.
• Airazor ends up in a stasis pod labeled with her name and Tigatron does not, which makes the status quo of "Dawn of Future's Past" difficult to extrapolate. Apparently at some point she was brought back, but without her memories (and possibly without her name—despite it having been written on her pod), and also Tigatron won't recognize her. Which isn't impossible, but wow she has the worst luck.
• In "The Agenda (Part 1)", General Ram Horn says, "ever since the Autobots defeated our Decepticon ancestors, we Predacons have worked secretly towards the day where we might rise up and take what is rightfully ours,", but we learn in this story that the Tripredacus Council WERE those Decepticon ancestors and that they defeated themselves on purpose.
  • On the note of Tarantulas...he says in "Other Victories" (seemingly as a retcon from the above) that he and the Tripredacus Council have neither Autobot or Decepticon origins. Yet here, he is a full-blown Decepticon alongside the Council.

Other notes

• This book was produced by IDW Publishing instead of Fun Publications. As such, it was promoted as being in continuity with IDW's other Beast comics.
• An early plan was to have Optimus on the Primal Council as Head of Science but that was dropped as "making him too prominent".
• Unit-3 is asked to "fill some big shoes" and later becomes a leg (and foot) for Magnaboss. Ahaha. Haha. Ha.
• This was originally planned as a miniseries. Cut bits would include:
  • An explicit canonisation of the fan theory that Pretender and Micromaster tech had been the starting point for the Beasties.
  • The Golden Age, as established in "The Rebirth Part 3", had indeed happened with just pockets of Decepticon rebellion but Galvatron blew it all up. It would've been more clearly established that there were many fighters who weren't in either main faction but were allied to them (Bove comparing this to how in the Second World War, there were multiple countries, groups, and sympathisers attached to the Allies and Axis).
  • There would have been material on "the status of a number of Autobots before DotP and the some of the Cold War events after to properly begin to fill in some of the picture of a post-war world."

Covers

• BotCon Edition:
• Diamond Edition: