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

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

Issue #2 profiles

• Elephorca
• Fractyl
• Galvatron
• Gigastorm
• Gimlet
• God Neptune
• Grimlock
• Grizzly-1
• Guiledart
• Halfshell
• Hardhead
• Heinrad
• Hellscream
• Hydra
• Icebird
• Iguanus
• Ikard
• Inferno
• Injector
• Insecticon
• Ironhide
• Jawbreaker
• Jetstorm
• K-9
• Killer Punch
• Lazorbeak
• Lio Convoy
• Lio Junior
• Longrack
• Magmatron
• Mach Kick
• Magnaboss
• Magnaboss II
• Manta Ray
• Manterror
• Mantis
• Max-B
• Megatron
• Megastorm
• Motorarm
• Moon
• Night Glider
• Noctorro

Items of note and errors

Omissions

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

• Claw Jaw's bio is also lacking any mention of his "Transmetal" form (which was a pack-in redeco of his original toy with a Beast Wars video in various European markets).

• 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.

Coloring errors

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

• Blackarachia's images are solid gold-orange and black.

• BB is similarly colored in nothing but gold-orange, with a little white.

• Why the hell is Dinobot purple, green, brown and yellow?

• Gimlet, Lio Junior, Magnaboss II and Motorarm are all incorrectly colored as their Hasbro mold-partners Sea Clamp, Prowl, Magnaboss and Ramhorn.

• The hind legs of Magmatron's combined-beast mode are incorrectly colored as if they belonged to Skysaur, when they are his robot-mode arms from his Seasaur portion.

Other notes/errors

• Grimlock's art is much closer to the original toy, in both robot and beast mode, then to the heavily reimagined Uberraptor form he has in the IDW continuity.

• The alphabetical order of characters gets out of whack in numerous places.

• Despite a stated policy to not diverge from the names of originally Japanese characters, some names have been altered, such as Elphaorpha to "Elephorca" and Blentron to Blendtron.

• Speaking of arbitrarily changing things whenever the fancy strikes, the books take many liberties with the personalities and intelligence levels of a fair number of the Japanese characters. Understandably, the cartoonishly racist "Frito Bandito" aspect of the Jointrons was dropped, but their core personalities stayed basically the same. However, there are numerous instances of fundamental changes to characters for no discernible reason. Mantis, a cold-blooded killer, is described as a smiling friendly guy. Diver is no longer a skittish coward. Hardhead is no longer dumb as toast. Infinitely loyal Guiledart is described as an utterly distrustful schemer. Moon isn't even remotely comedic.

• Characters are not consistently placed in subgroups. Drancron is apparently not a Blendtron, nor is Longrack a member of the Pack.

• The entries of Beast Wars II characters are inconsistent on whether the factions are Maximals and Predacons or "Cybertrons" and "Destrons".

• 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!" in "Call of the Wild", a reference to both the 18th-Century romantic Irish play of the same name and the hunting dive used by peregrine falcons (her altmode), called a "stoop" only in reference to that specific breed of falcon.

• 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.

• Issue 2 is also notable for having a disproportionate number of pointless and incorrectly-used parenthetical asides and additions, and sections of sentence between dashes for no good reason. For example:

Hydra: "The trouble is, everyone-who's ever had anything to do with Hydra-knows what to expect..."

Injector: "...his ungainly new (Fuzor) form..."

• Gigastorm's "Abilities" section ends with a bizarre sentence fragment: ".. . built into its fists.built into his right arm."

• Magmatron's three individual beast modes are claimed to have "only loose connections to actual reptilian lifeforms". Uh...Giganotosaurus, Elasmosaurus and Quetzcoatulus.....where's the looseness here?

• Not so much an error, but... both issues currently out feature cover images of characters not in those issues. Magamatron is on #1, but his bio is in #2, Torca is on #2 but he is presumably part of issue #3.

External links

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