Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac

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Transformers Animated:
The AllSpark Almanac

Ratchet's going to have his hands full cleaning these two up.
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published August 19, 2009
Written by Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster
Continuity Transformers Animated
ISBN ISBN 1600104878

ISBN 978-1600104879

Page count 220

Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac is a lusty happy love-letter written to MediaWiki for our carnal pleasure.

Contents


Notes

This book is an encyclopedic examination of the entire Transformers Animated storyline universe. It presents exhaustively thorough character profiles and summaries of the first two seasons of the cartoon and the Animated Arrival comic book...all written completely in-universe, in the form of "interviews" with the characters or excerpts from their journals and other in-story media.

"Interstitial" interludes are presented out-of-universe and describe the design process behind the art, animation, and locations, as well as brief story summaries of the Titan Magazines Animated issues. Elements of toy design are covered as well, but comparatively briefly.

There are also an insane number of obscure references to Transformers minutiae culled from the 25-year history of the franchise, as well as other sci-fi and entertainment franchises as well. Basically, all proper nouns and names refer to something or someone, even if that someone is a possibly non-existent character only mentioned once in a letters page of a foreign comic. And that's before we start talking about the numbers: Almost every seemingly incongruous alphanumeric string is a reference to another franchise, be it a Star Trek stardate or a Terminator's official designation. And that's just the content in English—about a third of the book's pages have large stretches covered in Cybertronix. Deciphered, these include non-Transformers-related passages, such as extensive, verbatim quotes from diverse sources ranging from Tennyson's Ulysses to Max Headroom.

Chapter 1 - Autobots

Chapter one covers all Autobots who appear in the first two seasons of the cartoon.

Transformers references

  • Pg 20a – As mentioned in his tech spec, Ratchet is a Protihex Medical Mechanical graduate.
  • Pg 34 – Unnamed in the Animated cartoon, the alien planet visited by the young Optimus, Sentinel and Elita-1 populated by giant spiders is here given the named Archa Seven. Presumably, this puts it in the same system as Archa Nine.
The language describing Omega's strength deliberately hearkens back to Generation 1 Omega's Transformers Universe profile, describing how he can pulverize “steel cubes” of impressive volume and hit diminutive items from a great distance with his head cannon. Numerous Cybertronian units of are used in the process; Omega is said to be able to like 600,000 kilo-units (a measurement used by Bulkhead in the Animated episode "Rise of the Constructicons"); the dimensions of the aforementioned cube are given in mechanometers (used in the Generation 1 episode "City of Steel" and mentioned twice more in the book); and the distance at which he can blast a small object is given in hics (from the Marvel UK 1991 annual story "The Magnificent Six!" and used once more in the book).
Omega is also noted to be armed with concussion blasters (the personal weapon of Generation 1 Soundwave), pulsar bombs (used by the Predacons on two occasions in the Robots in Disguise cartoon), quasar beams (Generation 2 Blowout and Beast Wars Cheetor both wielded quasar cannons), friction cannons (G1 Runamuck was armed with a friction blaster) and aquasting missiles (weapon of choice of the Beast Wars Fuzor Injector).
And finally, Omega has armor enhanced with rheanimum.

Real-world references

  • Pg 46 – Ratchet speculates that Wreck-Gar must have “27,000 gags” hidden in his trash bin. The number 27 is a running gag in "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs... Al, of course, being the voice actor who played Wreck-Gar.

Errors

  • Page 33: The Magnus Hammer is referred to as a "Stormbreaker" hammer instead of "Stormbringer," a previously-given name for the weapon.


Chapter 2 - Decepticons

Character models for all Decepticons who appeared in Animated seasons one and two.

Transformers references

  • Pg 60 – Mentioned here and restated on pg 127, Megatron's swords are forged from tironium. As noted in his tech specs, his armor can deflect anti-proton lasers.
  • Pg 66 – As on his toy packaging, Lugnut is referred to with the nickname "The Kaon Krusher".
  • Pg 74 – Shockwave's cannon can fire blasts from anywhere in the electromagnetic spectrum, just like Generation 1 Shockwave could.
  • Pg 77 – Swindle's gyro gun and scatter blaster are named after the weapons of the original Generation 1 Swindle.
  • Pg 81 – Starscream claims to be the handsomest 'bot "this side of the Benzuli Expanse".
  • Pg 83-84 – Having gone unnamed in the Animated cartoon, Thundercracker, Sunstorm and Skywarp were all given names and powers derived from their Generation 1 counterparts when they were released as toys. The liar and female clones did not get toys, but The AllSpark Almanac carries on the trend; the liar clone is named Ramjet and is noted to have a reinforced nosecone for mid-air collisions, while the female clone gets the brand new name of Slipstream (which was previously revealed at BotCon 2009).
  • Pg 88 – Numerous weapons used by Lockdown in the cartoon are here given the names of similar weapons from other corners of the Transformers multiverse. He is armed with sleep nets (from the Generation 1 coloring book Bumblebee to the Rescue!), nova spray, and a lightning whip. His chainsaw is also described as being “micro-serrated”, language frequently used to describe the beak of Generation 1 Buzzsaw.

Real-world references

  • Pg 66 - Blitzwing calls Lugnut a “five-eyed, no-brained, flying purple people eater,” paraphrasing the 1958 Sheb Wooley song, “Purple People Eater”.
  • Pg 82 – Starscream's first sycophantic clone is given the numerical designation #2716057, the serial number of hard-drinking robot Bender from Futurama. The first cowardly clone, meanwhile, is marked #3370318, the serial number of Bender's identical duplicate, Flexo.

Chapter 3 - Humans

Character models and the occasional background image for the major humans of Animated.

Transformers references

  • Pg 94 – Swindle plans to imitate Angry Archer's antiquated dialect to help facilitate his next deal with the Darkling Lords of Prysmos. This is a reference to the 1987 Hasbro toyline, Visionaries; Prysmos was the planet upon which that series was set, and the Darkling Lords were the villains of the franchise.
  • Pg 101 – The name of Prometheus Black's company is given as Biotech Unbound, referring to the Greek poem, “Prometheus Unbound”, which was also the title of a Beast Machines episode.
  • Pg 103 – In the Animated cartoon, the bat-monster is noted as having formerly been Meltdown's lawyer. Here, Captain Fanzone notes that the shark-monster was his stock broker. In addition, he calls it a "Seafood Louis creature"

Real-world references

  • Pg 97 – Slo-Mo is here given the first name of Samantha, and on pg 143, the surname of Lomow. So hey, it turns out that her real name is the same as Hasbro Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Samantha Lomow, on whom she was based.
  • Pg 105 – Ming-Li is named after author Jim Sorenson's wife, Ming-Li Wang. Shana Story is named for a friend of author Bill Forster, Shana Storey, who is credited in the acknowledgments section of their previous book, The Ark II.
  • Pg 106 – Porter C. Powell's limousine is branded as a “TUX model”, named for the Tonka GoBot it was designed to resemble.

Errors

  • Page 95: The "d" is left out of "Powdered Sugar."


Chapter 4 - Events

The episodes and comic stories that make up the primary Animated continuity, in order.


Transformers references

  • Pg 112 – An observation of the events of the first issue of the Animated comic by the trans-dimensional Vector Prime. He uses the aforementioned Universal Stream classification system to catalog this manuscript, identifying the Animated cartoon universe as “Malgus 1207.26 Alpha”. The designation is later used again on pg 117.
  • Pg 116 -
Main article: Venus (Magazine)
  • Pg 119a – Most of the weapons Swindle sells Lugnut and Blitzwing, and the planets he gets them from, are established, if obscure, Transformers items and locales. Most of them were named in the comic story this page covers, "Everything Must Go", but a few more things are named here. The full list includes:
  • Pg 119b – Optimus's evaluation form is rendered in the style of classic Transformers Tech Specs, but not any one particular design. The training exercise from the comic story “Survival Skills” is revealed to have taken place on Kaiba-5.
  • Pg 124-125
Main article: Detroit Powell Press
  • Pg 136 – Sari's notebook paper is decorated with an illustration of "Hello Nekomimi Pop-Star", a chibified, "Hello Kitty"-style version of Nekomimi A from the Energon episode, "Distribution". Nekomimi B appears on pg 147 in a similar fashion.
  • Pg 138-139
Main article: Garbage-O's

Real-world references

Main article: Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac/Events Real-world references

Errors

  • Page 133: "...have tried harder to recruit the Dinobots as allies, but I was so angry at Prowl's deception that I..." is repeated immediately following the first use in the third paragraph.
  • Page 145: The "c" is left out of "First (and Second) in Flight."

Chapter 5 - Culture

A catch-all for other aspects of Animated including ships, monsters and customs.

Transformers references

  • Pg 161 – Starscream uses the expression “a few lipoles short of a nest”, referring to the metal-eating bat-creatures native to Jupiter's moon Io, from the Generation 1 multi-part episode, Five Faces of Darkness.
  • Pg 170 – Bulkhead describes candy as being like Ultra-Energon for kids.

Real-world references

  • Pg 164 – Lockdown's spaceship used to be an “IG-2000” class ship, referring to the Star Wars ship that bore that name. It is outfitted with Deckard cannons (named for Rick Deckard from Blade Runner), Samus-blasters (named for Samus Aran from Metroid), and isomorphic controls preventing anyone other than Lockdown from piloting it, as does Doctor Who's TARDIS. Lockdown rounds out the paragraph by saying “a bot's got to know his limitations”, paraphrasing Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force.
  • Pg 165 - “A three hour tour!” cackles Blitzwing, quoting the theme tune of Gilligan's Island.

Chapter 6 - Detroit

People, places and things in and about Detroit.

Transformers references

Real-world references

  • Pg 189 – Jeff Litvack is a friend of Jim Sorenson's, who he credits in the acknowledgments of this book. Krista Kohlhausen is Bill Forster's “favorite person,” according to the acknowledgments of The Ark.


Chapter 7 - Settings

Background pictures and associated character models from the first two seasons of Animated.


Transformers references

  • Pg 203 – Noted architect George R. Apple. G.R.Apple? Anybody? Anybody? C'mooon!
  • Pg 206 – The Nemesis is equipped with a Grand Mal class force field, named after the Grand Mal, the giant fortress-cum-giant head occupied by Beast Wars Megatron in the latter stages of the Beast Machines cartoon. It has a cybertroid alloy star drive (just like the Generation 1 Nemesis, as mentioned in the G1 episode Microbots), and has the most sophisticated sensor array this side of the Eshems Nebula, a region of space introduced in IDW Publishing's live-action movie-based Defiance series.
  • Pg 207 – To escape the damaged Nemesis, the Decepticons used Devolan escape pods. The planet Devola was the site of a huge victory for the Decepticon Tidal Wave in the Armada universe.
  • Pg 211 – The crashed Decepticon ship on Archa Seven is named the Twilight, after the flagship from the Marvel Generation 2 comics.

Interstitials

The only place in the book where out-of-universe is presented, the interstitial pages covered divergent continuities as well as select aspects of the animation process.

Literary elements

Including the copyright information, title page, foreword and afterwords, notes from the authors and acknowledgments.

Transformers references

  • Pg 9a – Sorenson and Forster hail from universal stream Quadwal -3760.925 Theta. Universal streams are a means of classifying the numerous Transformers universes devised by authors Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop, which first appeared in the Transformers Collectors Club story, Withered Hope. This particular classification, however, makes no sense, save for the “Theta” suffix, which indicates a “spoken word” or “live performance” scenario. The “-” sign also indicates they're from an evil parallel universe, akin to the Shattered Glass fiction introduced at BotCon 2008, the only other universal stream to be marked like this. “Don't ask,” the authors say.
    • But we're the goddamned Transformers Wiki, so screw that "don't ask" stuff. We're nerds, we're gonna do this thing. "Quadwal" is an obvious play on "fourth wall," which is what this universal stream is breaking. September 25, 3760 BC is the first day of the Hebrew calendar, specifically the date some believe Creation began. (So that "-" sign has a double meaning!) So Sorenson and Forster hail from the Real Life Universe, or the negative universe version of it, hence why they are incarcerated criminals.
  • Pg 9b – The Reverse-Pretender technology used by Sorenson and Forster is a reference to several 1980s Transformers toy commercials, which featured a child leaping into the air and transforming into Ultra Magnus.

Errors

  • Page 2: In the indicia, the latter "r" is left out of "characters".

Full annotated listing of MOST hidden references in the Almanac

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