Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook

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The Beast Wars Sourcebook is a 4-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, MicroVerse, fast-food and convention exclusive characters). Entries are in a format roughly borrowed from the Dreamwave Productions' More Than Meets the Eye profile books and organized alphabetically. In theory.

Vital Statistics

Writer: Simon Furman and Ben Yee
Artists: Robby Musso, Marcelo Matere, Don Figueroa, Nick Roche, Guido Guidi, Dan Khanna, Liam Shalloo, Josh Burcham, Zac Atkinson, Frank Milkovich
Pagecount: 48pp

Issue #1 profiles

—Release date: October 3, 2007

Issue #2 profiles

—Release date: October 31, 2007

Issue #3 profiles

—Release date: January 4, 2008

Items of note and errors

Omissions

  • Claw Jaw's bio is also lacking any mention of his "Transmetal" form (which was a pack-in redeco of his original toy and included a Beast Wars video in various European markets).
  • Quite a few characters with triple-changer abilities do not have their tertiary mode pictured, though art was often produced.
  • 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/notes

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. The profile's author Ben Yee has gone on the record that this is in fact an error of the colorist, which he hopes will be corrected in the trade paperback.
  • Dinobot's colors are based on the Beast Wars 10 Anniversary release of the Dinobot toy, minus the blue kneecaps and face.
  • 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 actually the robot-mode arms from his Seasaur portion.

Other notes/errors

  • 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.
  • The book makes alterations to 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. 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. Ben Yee is on record as saying these changes were intentional and designed to fit certain characters better into the overall feel of the merged Japanese/US Beast Wars universe the books were creating.[1]
  • Despite being Scuba's cousin in the original material, Sourcebook states that Ikard is his brother.
  • 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".
  • The artists' credits sections in the front of the books 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..."
  • The book contradicts Injector's original toy bio by saying he puts on a show of liking his beast mode, but really thinks it is ugly and he's ashamed of it.
    What. The. Hell.
  • 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 Quetzalcoatlus... where's the looseness here?
  • Not so much an error, but the first two issues feature cover images of characters not in those issues. Magamatron is on #1, but his bio is in #2, Torca is on #2 but will be in issue #4. (However, "Elephorca" is in #2, so it's entirely possible the art is supposed to be him, and it's just miscolored.)
  • All of the robot modes drawn by Frank Milkovich are drawn almost entirely mechanical, including all of the organic beast mode parts. See image on right.
  • Not really an error, but certainly bizarre: Scissor Boy is just a mirrored version of Powerpinch's art, with his minor detailing changed. At that point, why not just draw entirely new art?
  • Ramulus is described as "even-tempered," whereas his toy bio and previous comic appearances portray him as a hot-headed jerk.
  • Ravage's cassette mode is labeled "NAME".
  • Ravage's "original" Predacon body has his Transmetal 2 head erroneously.
  • Scourge is absent from the third issue.
  • God, I need a stiff drink.


References

  1. ↑ Ben's review of issue two. (See link above)
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