Beast Wars: Uprising
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
Beast Wars: Uprising is a Generation 1 continuity based on the Beast Era. It has been depicted in Fun Publications comics and prose stories.
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Overview
Beast Wars: Uprising focuses on a dystopian, late 24th century Cybertron, years after the conclusion of the Great War. Forcibly disarmed and exiled to their homeworld by the vastly superior Human Confederacy, the decrepit Autobots and Decepticons have become the immobile Builders of Cybertron, constructing the Maximals and Predacons as their successors.
In addition to maintaining most of the essential functions of society, the Maximals and Predacons also provide entertainment and continue the Autobot-Decepticon grudge via gladiatorial matches. Unsurprisingly, however, the Transformer homeworld descends into war as Lio Convoy leads many Maximals and Predacons against the status quo for their freedom, launching the Grand Uprising. Thus Lio Convoy's Resistance battles Micromaster Builder troops, the Maximal Command Security Force, and the Tripredacus Council's Predacon Secret Police for control of their homeworld. One of the darker interpretations of the Transformers franchise, not a single combatant faction can be considered truly "good": while there are heroic characters on all sides of the war, most of them are willing to commit various atrocities in the name of victory.
In addition to using a wide variety of Maximals and Predacons from the Beast Era franchises, the Beast Wars: Uprising stories make use of various characters with beast modes or animalistic robot modes, and repurposes them to represent new, analogous characters. Notably, the majority of the stories were set before any characters obtained their more recognizable beast modes; instead, the authors repurposed other toys to represent their Cybertronian vehicle forms, which soon became a hallmark of the series. Similarly, many vehicle alt-mode Mini-Cons were repurposed to represent Micromasters.
The prose stories are chock-full of geeky minutiae on just about every page — obscure characters and locations from all across the mythos, hidden cybertronix messages, GoBots, and numerous pop-culture homages... but when you hire the guy who penned the nerdiest thing ever to nerd, what do you expect?
Initially, the Beast Wars: Uprising universe was only referenced in the profiles for Blackarachnia and Depth Charge in Collectors' Club magazine issues #25 and #49 as those characters played significant roles in other Club stories. In 2014 Beast Wars: Uprising itself was fleshed out in more detail in that year's magazine comic arc Alone Together. The following year saw text stories which formally showed the beginnings of the titular "uprising".
Creative team
Alone Together was written by S. Trent Troop and Greg Sepelak, with Jesse Wittenrich and Pete Sinclair writing the prologue. Art duties were handled by Naoto Tsushima, with Evan Gauntt on colors and letters by Jesse Wittenrich.
The prose stories have been written by Jim Sorenson and David Bishop, with Jesse Wittenrich, William Mangin, Josh Burcham, Hosono Tomoya, Christopher Colgin, Dan Perico, and Robby Musso providing illustrations.
Notes
- Beast Wars: Uprising was first named in a Collectors' Club tweet on 14 February 2014.[1]
- The titles of the prose stories are references to psychiatry-related social phenomena.
- Author Jim Sorenson mentioned that while the universe was originally pitched as "Beast Wars meets The Hunger Games", he was inspired by contemporary movements such as 2014's Ferguson protests when developing the prose stories.[2]
- Being set in the late 24th century, Uprising contains a number of references to Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- Jim Sorenson revealed the titles of three more prose stories which he might have written had he had more time: "False Equivalencies", featuring Immorticon, "Virtue Signaling", featuring Maxima,[3] and "Other Victims", featuring the Vok.[4]
