There were several BW characters that had TM toys made, but in the show/storyline they did not receive the bodies, so it's not really canon.

 

I don't remember DW's MTMTE profile books being like that...maybe its cause I only had one of their 2 of their G1 issues and all of their Armada issues (where EVERYBODY had a flaw).

From what I can tell, to an extent, Antagony and no known weakness (cept for the fact that she has to much self worth) and the Unicron affiliated Drancron has no known weakness.
DN

 

If you actually READ the profiles for Blackarachnia and Dinobot the explanations for their Transmetal 1 forms make perfect canonical sense. Being written by Ben Yee AND Simon Furman, I'd say they have the definitive last word on anything that's canon as far as this stuff goes.

For instance, the Transmetal 1 Dinobot was a "prototype" for the TM2 Dinobot II we got, the only reason we never saw him was because Tarantulas and Megatron couldn't get a spark to take hold in the body.

DN

 

I know its not totally in the spirit of these books, but its a shame we have some really cool Cybertronian modes for the BW characters that there just isnt room for in these sourcebooks...

 

Agreed- they've been pretty inventive so far.

 

...Did anyone else notice that Drillnuts is "constantly afraid of getting attacked from the rear?" Surprised that got past Hasbro....

Anyways, cramming things in a bit more might have made it a bit better- TM form art, longer bios, etc. But I'm still incredibly grateful we're getting a definitive guide to the BW universe, Happy Meal toys and all. I hope there's some final "explanation" bios at the end of the last volume that has pics of all the TM forms under "Transmetal", and the like. Maybe...

 

A very nice book. It seems to be very well thought out and informative to a point. Unfortunately, if you've never seen BW2 or BW Neo, some of these characters will make no sense as far as to their place in the BW mythos. Both show's stories are hinted at in the bios and we're led to believe that they've taken place before the signing of the Pax-Cybertronia. Now it's never been stated for certain, but it's be assumed that the Pax signaled the End of the Great War of the Autobots and Decepticons. (So far as that Ravage was secretly given Amnesty as a Decepticon.)

So it makes one wonder what exactly is the timeline here. And Speaking of a timeline, I had hoped that one would have been made for this book to help explain where/how events/characters fit together. For example; if the events of BW2 took place before BW, then why did the pack reformat themselves back to vehicle modes? They clearly will become their animal selves in issue two of the Ascending. So why the switch up?

As far as the color mistakes on BB and Blackarachnia, I'm hopint that they'll be corrected when the TPB is released. That said, I also hope that the pages will be restructured to include all of the character pics for the different Transmetal bodies as was partially done with Cheetor. There doesn't really need to be multiple entries for the same characters to me, just that the same Alt mode is matched to the proper Beast mode at least. (Cybershark, I'm looking at you.) Now as to some of these omissions, as a past comic editor I can say that mistakes sometimes happen no matter how hard you try to prevent them. If a few pics were mixed up, it happens. But I find it hard to believe that all of the pics for the bots with multiple bodies were not drawn which leads me to wonder if they were omitted due to space, or quality.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read and as with the G1 MTMTE series, I just can't express how much I love these profile books. Now if they would just fix the few errors pointed out here in this thread for the TPB, they'll succeed in securing even more of my money.

 

The odd colour mistakes (BB's gold!? TM2 Blackarachnia, too?!?) and the "missing" art are my only real complaints. Hopefully when they make a TPB at least the colouring mistakes will be take care of, nd hopefully pictures of EVERY mode, too. I mean, you make mention of B'Boom's AND Apache's third mode... but don't show it? Al the while Bigmos's third mode gets almost a full page. Odd choices, I must say.

But... I still like it. It'll be a nice resource to have. Can't wait till the next issues come out.

 

As others have said, my only complaints about this book are the mis-coloring and the lack of art on the characters who had more than one form or another mode. The actual profiles I thought were excellent. Hopefully the next issues and/or TPB will improve on the art situation, but even as it is I thought this was an interesting and enjoyable issue.

I'm thinking that once BW2/Neo was over and they were back on Cybertron, the Pack really wouldn't have seen a need or use for keeping their beast modes so they went back to Cybertonian forms. It's not like they were expecting to receive a distress call from Razorbeast on pre-historic Earth after all. But when they did, they adopted their beast modes again for that mission.

 

which is very odd since at Botcon i saw Nick Roche's art for the third mode

hm :\

 

I believe it's already been stated that they'll have a glossary in the last issue. I would have to guess that may be where we'll see some of the missing art/modes.

I'm also guessing somewhere in the glossary may give us an explanation for why some characters look or have different color schemes. Off the top of my head, BB, Blackarachnia (TM2), and Cheetor (TM) all have new color schemes. It's too much of an error to be an error, especially considering some of the people onboard for this project.

 

Well, error or not, I noticed that the Dinobot Bot pic was colored to match his 10th anniversary colors more than his show colors which made him look very clownish to me. (is clownish a word?) Onw could argue that the person who colored him went off that reference, but I'd think the show colors would have been prefered by the fans. (I almost wonder if we'll get a Universe colored Primal)

 

I'm with you on the Dinobot pic. While I wouldn't call that any error, it was a very bad judgement on the part of the sourebook team to choose those colors and that particular art. Especially for a character looked at so highly, I figured he would have had one of the best pages.

If only all art could be like Break's beast mode art...

 

 

I expect to hear Morgan Freeman wax poetic on the joys of being Break every time I look at that page. Should have been lots bigger!

 

Right, I understand that. But the point I was making is just because a toy is made, that does not necessarily make it canon in a story. It's great that Furman is going back and including all the toys into the story, but for a body that was never featured in a show, and its only place in canon is a two sentence blurb in a character bio, it's forgivable that the image is not shown in the profile. He seemed to make the point taht baecuase the toy existed, it should have been in the bio. IF that was the case, we could have an entire book just on Prime's various bodies.   Most of which are NOT cannon. (Munky Prime in Cybertron?)

 

That makes perfect sense considering Ben Yee and Simon Furman were among the major creative minds behind the show.  

 

I've picked up this book, and I've gotta say it seems as though they rushed to complete it, rather than take their time to make sure everything was layed out properly. I would have been willing to wait 6 months to a year for these books. Things that just don't make sense:

Colour. In some instances it's fine, others are a little wonky. But I think I know what went really wrong in the bad cases: they were putting characters in "mood lighting". If you think Blackarachnia is coloured wrong, take a look at Big Convoy. He seems a little orange too. Now, look at BB. for those who don't know BB, here is what he should look like: http://www.tfu.info/1998/Destron/BB/bb.htm
As you can see, he is not orange, and would have looked very cool if he was illustrated in his proper colour scheme.

Different incarnations. This is where these books would have done really well, if only they had implemented it properly. The Dreamwave books REALLY got it right in this department, going so far as to do seperate entries for Pretender versions of characters who were otherwise unchanged in terms of personality. I can understand that they may not have had the budget to include everything, but to do TWO PAGE SPREADS for ARCHADIS(?) and BIGMOS(?) but leave a fan favourite character like Blackarachnia to one page, showing only one version of her(the one she spent the LEAST amount of screen time in, I might add), seems very strange.

Also, this might be a little harsh, but I think Rob Ruffolo needs to bone up on his technique of illustrating beast characters. He's got the robots down, but the animals need work. DJ's cicada mode in particular seem really weird.