Transformers: The Ultimate Guide
Transformers: The Ultimate Guide is an officially licensed guide from DK Publishing published in 2005. written by Simon Furman in 2004. In 2007, a second edition was published, increasing the page count from 144 to 152 (visibly different by having a reflective background on the cover instead of white).
Contents
- Introduction
Generation 1
The Ultimate Guide is one of many similarly-titled publications by Dorling Kindersley, which cover the histories, characters and worlds of comic characters such as Spider-Man, the X-Men and many others. However, the Transformers tome is distinguished by one major detail - while the other books serve as encyclopedias of the characters' long histories in print, Transformers: The Ultimate Guide gives only the most basic of treatment to the historical aspects of Generation 1, and instead, its articles are focused entirely on the then-current Dreamwave comics continuity. However, as Dreamwave's universe was so monumentally underdeveloped at the time of the book's publication, most of the information in the book actually had to be created for the book.
Additionally, the book appears to deliberately favor story material from comic continuities as opposed to the animated continuity. This is most conspicuous in dealing with the origin of the Dinobots in the Dreamwave universe, where Furman dismisses the notion that they were built on Earth by Wheeljack (as in the cartoon) on the basis that it is in contradiction with the "historical evidence" that the Dyno-bots existed on Cybertron - from the War Within comic Furman himself wrote nearly 20 years later. This approach goes so far as to claim that the cartoon's Quintesson-creation origin for the Transformers is entirely conjectural - when talking solely about the cartoon!
Finally, in the sections where book does deal directly with historical aspects of Generation 1 (in the pages covering the Marvel Comics, the cartoon and the toys), not one page passes without several errors. Several names are spelled incorrectly ("Teletran-1", "Carlee", "Eleta-1", "Sean Burger"), various 'toon and comic summaries have inaccuracies in them, and the toys used for images are old, ratty artefacts with peeling, misapplied stickers and various missing accessories.
Subjects covered include:
- Cybertron
- The City of Iacon
- Civil War
- Optimus Prime
- Megatron
- Autobot Officers
- The Decepticons
- Soundwave and Co.
- The Dinobots
- Combiners
- TV Season 1
- TV Season 2
- The Movie
- US Comics 1
- US Comics 2
- UK Comics 1
- UK Comics 2
- TV Season 3 & 4
- Unicron
- Quintessons
- Primus
- Special teams
- Headmasters and Targetmasters
- Powermaster Optimus Prime
- Pretenders
- Japanese G1 Toys
- This section deals largely with toys that were later recycled into Transformers.
- Generation 1 Toys
- Other G1 Toys
- Transformers Versus G.I. Joe
- G2 Comics
- Beyond G2
- Generation 2 Toys
- Aside from the introduction page, all artwork in the Beast Wars and Beast Machines sections was provided by Mainframe Entertainment
- The Arrival
- Optimus Primal
- Megatron
- The Maximals
- Predacons
- TV Season 1
- Fuzors and Transmetal
- TV Season 2 & 3
- Beast Wars Toys
- A New Wave
- Autobots and Decepticons
- The Robots in Disguise section of this book was brief and incomplete, as the Robots in Disguise television section was deliberately excluded in order to leave more room for material about the then-upcoming Energon series.
- Cybertron Revisited
- Autobots
- Decepticons
- Mini-Cons
- The TV Series
- TRANSFORMERS Armada Toys
- The image of Super Mode Optimus Prime has several different paint applications than his general release.
- TRANSFORMERS Energon
- Autobots
- Decepticons
- TRANSFORMERS Energon Toys
- The Energon cartoon did not have a section in the original printing because at the time, it hadn't finished airing.
Dreamwave Comics
- Index
- Acknowledgements
