I'm yet to get my hands on a copy of BotCon 2016's comic book offering, Dawn of the Predacus, but if the Transformers Wiki entry on it is anything to go by, I should be reconsidering trying to track one down. The Wiki is known for being tongue-in-cheek at times, but I've never seen it be this ruthless.
I just got the comic today and read it. Here are some of my impressions... Unit-3 never has his named mentioned in the comic. His name has nothing to do with Tigatron's designation of Unit-2 in the Dawns of Futures Past comic. He's a guy who is a member of an Autobot unit called Unit-3, under the command of Perceptor. Almost all of his unit are killed in a Decepticon attack off page. When the Silverbolt attempts to get a hold of the Perceptor, this guy responds "Perceptor didn't make it. No one did. Except me... You asked for Unit-3? I AM Unit-3." Later on when they were planning their surprise, the imply that Perceptor had been part of the Magnaboss contingency plan, and they ask this guy to take Perceptor's place. The story takes place just after a final battle between Optimus Prime and Galvatron which kills BOTH of them. The Autobots are taken over by a Primal Council lead by Prowl, Ironhide, Silverbolt, Hot Spot, Tigatron, Lio Convoy and Big Convoy. Beast Wars Megatron takes on the Megatron name after Galvatron falls. His unit includes Waspinator and Terrorsaur, G1 Predaking and some generics, one of which looks like movie Terradive. Ironhide specifically mentions Galvatron killed him once, but he came back, so this sets if as POSSIBLY happening in the Sunbow universe. The plan of the Predacus council is to attack Cybertron with a Transmatter bomb that will convert any Cybertron not of the first generation (which they are) into protoforms. They order the surrender because they need as many Autobots and Decepticons ALIVE to be effected by the bomb as possible. Megatron doesn't want to stand down so he keeps fighting. Eventually the Predacus is formed and kills Predaking when Megatron isn't nearby, so that the Decepticons are more likely to stand down. I think the Predacons take the name Predacons in honor of their fallen hero. The Predacus council launch the bomb from Unicron's head to Cybertron, but it is partly deflected by the Axalon, who is piloted by Optimus Primal (Rattrap names him that because says something Optimus Prim-like, Primal tells him to shut his TRAP.) There is a 4th person on the Axalon, who maybe is supposed to be Cheetor. He's in the background, very undefined, doesn't speak, but his head was shaped like Axalon Cheetor. Only part of Cybertron's population is hit by the Transmatter, and reverts to protoform form. After the fighting ends a lot of the protoforms are fathered into stasis pods. They SPECIFICALLY point out Infenro, Grimlock and AIRAZOR as protofroms in stasis pods... and here's the rub. This means it specifically IS NOT SET in the Dawns of Future Past story, because they put Airazor in a stasis pod, but in Dawns of Future Past Airazor and Tigatron are not in pods yet. Unless she gets fixed at some point, and turned into her Energon Slugslinger body, then gets RE-protoformed I guess. They DO NOT show us Tigatron becoming protoformed, so I'm not sure how he becomes one, unless they are implying this IS the same setting as Dawns of Future Past. I could assume he got his BotCon 2006 mode when he joined the Maximal Security Force. Airazor was one of the Autobots under his command. After the protoforming there are guys walking who looks like Silverbolt and Blackarachnia walking around together on Cybertron... but this is after everyone was turned into protoforms, so it can't be them right?. Cybertonian Dinobot was seen standing over the stasis pod of Grimlock, implying he took his name from the Dinobots. Inferno among the Autobots becoming a protoform, then he is labeled as one of the stasis pods on the Axalon, so it's the IMPLICATION that he MAY be Beast Wars Inferno. Megatron was shown to be punished by being downgraded to a crappier body, which is how he lost his 6-changer form. One of the Predacus council is shown working on the designs for Magmatron at the end.
My god, that sounds like an absolute mess. How is John Barber the editor of this thing? He's always one for being on top of continuity. And that Silverbolt and Blackarachnia moment, that made me laugh out loud. And seriously, the Maximals and Predacons, instead of being descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, are actually just Autobots and Decepticons? Now Ravage made sense because that was an upgrade but come on. And I know they showed stasis pod characters walking about before in Dawn of Future's Past but it made sense for those two not every other character. Besides that was just throwaway fanservice. And seriously, people need to stop linking G1 Inferno with Beast Wars Inferno, otherwise Beast Wars Scorponok is actually the old G1 Headmaster Scorponok. Remember when they mentioned there was a different guy called Prowl in MTMTE? See, no need for explanation, just a different guy with the same name. This sounds awful, like crappy non-canon fanfiction, like Transformers Deviation! XD I'd still read it for a good laugh, but I've never bought a botcon issue before due to living in the UK so, burn it and move on.
If they said that Beast Wars Scorponok was actually a reformatted Fasttrack, I could get behind it. Fasttrack (Scorponok) - Transformers Wiki
Not sure why this is coming off as a mess to some people. It's not interesting whatsoever, in fact it's not even bizarre enough to gather the same appeal as TF Vs GI-JOE. It just seems like a predictable chain of events meant to connect this universe to the Beast Wars one, if not an alternate Beast Wars universe. Kind of like the Alliance or Defiance Movie comics. EDIT: Okay, I'm reading the wiki's list of events. It's much worse than the above post made it out to be. For one I didn't realize this was supposed to be a prequel to THE Beast Wars cartoon. I thought this was linked to that Beast Wars Uprising prose story or something of the like. Also the post doesn't mention any of this: And It's fucking bonkers. What continuity is this?! When is this supposed to be happening? Is this, like, the Wings Universe Beast Wars? Is this the Deviations version of Beast Wars? Is this even Beast Wars?
Nope, yep, you're right. I only thought "predictable" based on the more fanfiction-y ideas like making Inferno Inferno. Then I actually read the wiki-page. Basically: Injector has a posse (Hasbro to Beast Wars)
Having read it, I enjoyed it. There are a bunch of great lines. I have a lot of issues with it (WHY THE HELL WOULD MEGATRON KEEP CALLING HIMSELF A PREDACON IF THIS HAPPENED? There is no way in hell I would not call myself a Decepticon if I were a rogue with this same sequence/background.) and Inferno being Inferno is stupid. Tigatron is on the primal council so why the hell wouldn't he take command from Primal upon waking up on Earth? Why are a large number of these protoforms (which aren't a normal process in this story) taken by Primal for a random voyage - why wouldn't they be left on Cybertron and checked out by any remaining Doctor/Engineers on the planet? There are a lot of dumb little things like that, but it's a fun story as long as you can mentally put it in its own little timeline.
Seibertron.com were glowing in their review of the issue, giving it a 4 out of 5: Or so I thought. Upon closer inspection, there's actually a dot at the start, meaning it's a 0.4 out of 5 : Yeah, it doesn't make for pretty reading
This basically sounds like an in-house continuity meant only to tie up various exclusive toys and their bios. I'm almost sure it's simply not supposed to be in any particular continuity, just a club/convention toy tie-in. Hence why the editorial's pretty forgiving to it. We're probably really overthinking it.
I was under the impression it was meant to be in the same continuity as the Beast Wars comics and sourcebooks prodiced by IDW back in 2006 for the 10th anniversary. This interview certainly implies that.
It certainly can be in continuity with all the Beast Wars Sourcebooks. I see no direct contradiction with them. It could also be in continuity with the Dawn of Futures past IF they explain how Airazor was repaired and given her Energon Slugslinger form at some point in the 300 years between the events of Dawn of the Predacus and Dawns of Future Past. Maybe some of the prototformed Autobots were repaired in that time, but not ALL of them? Also, you have to assume the Maximals who looked like Silverbolt and Blackarachnia in Cybertronian form were either simply NOT them, or perhaps they somehow became protoforms over the course of the next 300 years in some other incident. I did notice one other unnamed cameo. On page 14 there is a Decepticon under the command of Megatron who makes a stupid comment about cutting the arms and legs off the snake, which Megatron dismisses. He transforms into a 6 wheeled car. This maybe is supposed to be Scorpnok, as seen in the TFSS 6?
John-Paul Bove has taken to tumblr to try and explain everything the wiki has to say about the issue. His explanation is seemingly longer than the comic itself; that's not a good sign. I know he originally had a four-issue miniseries in mind, but needing this level of outside explanation to justify the story isn't how this should work.
Actually I agree with Bove on most of that. The wiki is being picky and making assumptions that were not explicitly stated. I could have made the same counter arguments to the wiki's nitpicking without reading most of Bove's posts. The downsizing took place AFTER the events of this story, etc. I mean if they wanted to be nit picky about every little thing, they could have complained that when Dinobot was depicted in his one panel, he didn't have a big shovel arm that was on Darkside Dinobot. The easy counter to this would be that in this story he hadn't taken on an excavator alt mode yet, or maybe that wasn't even Dinobot, as he wasn't named... the majority of characters in the comic never got mentioned by name, so really any assumptions by the wiki are their own doing. The only things NOT addressed by Bove were the seemingly Silverbolt and Blackarachnia not being among the protoforms, when they should be (if that WAS them, they were unnamed so we are assuming it was them!), and Airazor being a protoform while Tigatron was not at the end of the story, which sorta contradicts Dawns of Future Past events (which Bove never claimed this was in continuity with!).
Okay, well then if this IS set before Dawns of Future Past story the only big thing that actually needs fixing is that Airazor is in a stasis pod at the end of the story, but when DOFP starts she's alive and well walking around, piloting the Chromia 10. So they must fix her over the course of the 300 years between the two stories. On a minor note, either those two Maximals that looked like Silverbolt and Blackarachnia were not them, or they become protoforms over the next 300 years somehow. As for any other change in appearance of characters, I assume various Cybertronians get reformatted and downsized over the course of 300 years, that's not a problem. Therefore showing a non-shovel arm Dinobot is because he wasn't a backhoe yet. Showing Ravage standing as big as a full sized Decepticon with a car alt mode here means at some time in the next 300 years he is downsized and reformatted into his Beast Wars body. Tigatron gets is BotCon 2006 body when he gets reformatted to become part of the Maximal Security forces... etc. In some cases the Wiki is downright WRONG. It claims there is a fleet of Tranwarp cruisers hidden inside Unicron. There are two ships depicted in the Predacus hideout. One is the Darkside, the other is Ravage's ship. Neither is depicted as flying, so they might still be under construction.
Seems like Bove's jumping through hoops in order to pretend that a lot of his blatant mistakes/carelessness were just "implications". While this is true, these "implications" are pretty heavy and clearly extremely intentional. For example, they were pretty explicitly trying to say G1 and BW Inferno are the same character, shrugging it off an acting like its just a "maybe" is a little reductive in my opinion. You wrote a bad comic, but at least own it. I absolutely agree. A writer should never ever have to sit down and explain/defend all the errors in their comic, the comic should be able to do so on its own.
