Identity Politics

	"Identity Politics"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	September 13, 2016
By	Jim Sorenson with David Bishop
Illustrations	Tomoya Hosono
Colors	Winston Bolen
Continuity	Beast Wars: Uprising
Chronology	late 24th century
Page count	29pp

A shady business venture leads Scorponok into Cybertron's criminal underworld.

Synopsis

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Predacons	Builders	Others
Stockade (1) Rav (3) Gauntlet (14) Thunderhoof (22)	Scorponok (2) Impound (4) Gnashteeth/Megatron (5) Cerberus (8) Hydrax (9) Ped (11) Budora (19) Raze (20) Sting (21) Terrorsaur (23) Snitch (26) Scavenger (27)	Double Punch (6) Sigil (7) Krunix (12) Tappet (13) Dipstick (15) Skater (16) Ego (17) Datamine (18) Halogen (24) Traachon (25)	Dropkick haulers

Characters mentioned but not appearing include: the Destron Boys, the Firestormers, the original Megatron, Optimus Prime, Kudon, Cross-Cut, Borehole, Hydrau, Bulletbike, Fracas, and Floron.
Chronologically, this story would appear to be the earliest Beast Wars: Uprising fiction so far; on top of no mention being made of the Grand Uprising, the story revolves around the formation of the Darksyders, who were established in Alone Together to have been the Predacons fought by Optimus Primal's team of Maximals, as described in "TransTech" Blackarachnia's magazine bio.
Following the trend of previous stories, Gnashteeth/Megatron has a body based on an existing toy, in this case G1 Megatron's Thrilling 30 Legends Class toy. Scorponok is his TFSS 5.0 toy while Terrorsaur takes his BotCon 2016 toy body. Thunderhoof's design is lifted almost directly from that of his original Robots in Disguise counterpart.

At one point on Page 22, Cerberus is mistakenly called "Bruticus" by the narration text.

Several members of the Builder Assembly in this story were previously mentioned in "Broken Windshields".
The Maximal Flying Corps was first mentioned in "Burning Bridges".
The Firestormers were previously mentioned as one of the gangs on Uprising Cybertron in "Trigger Warnings".

The Destron Boys first appeared in "Gone Too Far" as an Offworlder gang in Axiom Nexus.
A version of Bulletbike first appeared in the TransTech story "I, Lowtech" as a businessbot.
E-paint first appeared in the Animated cartoon.
Megatron as the gladiatorial champion of Tarn comes from the Marvel UK continuity.
Krunix debuted in the Marvel UK comic as an art error which resulted in a Fracas-looking bot who wasn't Fracas. Rather cleverly, this story repurposes the Titans Return version of Fracas (a head-former) as the Uprising version of Krunix while still giving the Uprising version of Fracas his original Nebulan gun-former status.
Thunderhoof leading a gang called the Kospegos comes from the fictitious being of the same name which his Robots in Disguise namesake pretended to be.