So I've had a long standing issue of "I don't know comics" because I don't have a comic book store locally in my area, it's rare that I ever get to see a comic book. This makes following comic story lines nearly impossible when I can't keep up with new issues. Well I just found this really convenient web site where I can read all the comics I want to ONLINE. It's not as good as actually having a physical copy in hand but it has allowed me to actually read the comics I've always wanted to check out but couldn't easily access before. So the first thing I did was look up all the Fallen and Tarn comics because I've always loved their designs despite knowing next to nothing about the actual characters in the comics that had to be the first thing I wanted to check out. I've also been reading The Mask because I knew that movie was based on a comic, it's my favorite movie ever. Yes I already knew the Comics had a more mature R rating but not much else. Please support your local comic book stores if you actually have one. I'm literally only using this online source because I don't have access to any local shops. I'm going to probably check out Beast Era comics next. That's always been my favorite era of the cartoons but I've never seen how the comics handled them... except for one Beast Wars source book which I need to re-read anyway because I barely remember it. All I know is that the American cast and the BWII cast were apparently both on Earth but out of sync with each other and apparently everyone hates BW Megatron including other Predacon leaders like BWII Galvatron. I also want to check out the Crossover comics at some point... not the G.I. Joe ones because I don't really care about G.I. Joe but the old Marvel Crossovers and the recent Back the Future and Ghost Busters comics. Any other suggestions I should look into?
If you ever wanna read the 3H/Funpub stuff TFWiki has a massive archive of them as well. Transformers convention and collectors' club archive - Google Drive
So um... is the morbid humor in these comics a common thing? Like Flywheels just died and the survivors only reaction is "Lets loot his corpse for spare parts" I get it they're scavengers, they were already doing that when we meet them and I kind of predicted it already but what I wasn't expecting was Falcrum's almost over exaggerated reaction to watching this happen.
So I almost didn't recognize this... Whoever drew this has some how managed to make a dumb McDonald's toy look cool.
That’s the quality artwork I want in the new Beast Wars books. The characters do look cool when the artist stays on model and adds detail.
So um... something I noticed while reading these comics that I really don't like... The portrayal of characters like B'Boom and Apache as separate characters when they're clearly intended to be the same person. TFWiki even points out how there's no difference between Hasbro's B'Boom and Takara's Apache so why did the comics feel the need to portray them as two different characters? The same thing happens with Injector and Latolata or Rartorata as they call him in the comic. At least in this case there is a SLIGHT difference in the color pallet between the two figures but typically Takara having a better paint deco than Hasbro doesn't qualify as a different character entirely. They even make a joke in the comic about how the enemy they're fighting (Rartorata) looks exactly like Injector. Instead of joking about how they look almost identical to each other, why didn't they just make them the same character as they're clearly intended to be. The renaming doesn't even make sense and is largely inconsistent. Like some characters use their American names, others use their Japanese names, and others use totally different names that only seem to exist in this comic? Rartorata isn't any easier to pronounce than Latolata and they both equally mean nothing to me. I've always just referred to this guy as Injector because that's what his toy was called in the American market. One of the things I liked about Beast Wars, the cartoon, is that the smaller cast made it very easy to remember and identify all of it's characters. The comic on the other hand... I'm not impressed with as it has characters I literally can't identify because they look like exact copies of other characters and there's so many characters packed into this thing I forgot most of them immediately after I finished reading it. One of the issues very prominently features Antagony on the cover but she has like one line in the entire comic was the entire point just to have another female character? That's literally the only reason she stands out cause other than that she doesn't do anything. Airazor, Blackarachnia, Botanica, and Strika aren't memorable just because they were females and simply existed they actually had character arcs and contributed to the stories they were in. To be fair, I've only read through the Ascending so far, and I think I'm reading these in the wrong order because there was a reference to the Gathering which I haven't read yet. When I looked these up online I wasn't exactly clear on what order the titles were actually released in so I just kind of jumped in head first which may have been a mistake. My opinion might change on some if not most of this but I don't think I'm ever going to like the duplicate characters running around. I just think it's dumb that anyone ever felt the need to make B'Boom and Apache different characters rather than what they actually are, the American and Japanese names of the exact same figure. That's worse than the times Transformers Armada used the Japanese names in the English dub... or just in general would refer to characters by the wrong names. At least Armada never had Hot Shot and Hot Rod appear on screen together in identical color schemes trying to pass them off as two different people. I do like how Ravage is portrayed, and slightly redesigned with his beast head in robot mode so it's still consistent with the cartoon despite him being in a new body. The fact that I could easily see this Ravage as being the same Ravage from the cartoon was honestly the best thing in this entire comic. Even his sudden change in motivation was well done and believable given how Ravage was portrayed on the show. Also as I pointed out in my last post they managed to make some pretty lame toys look really cool in the artwork so even if I felt the story wasn't really well written it was at least nice to look at. I loved the art work in this... except for the times that I'm seeing two B'Booms standing next to each other in the same panel... or looking at an image of Injector fighting himself. You know what... there is time travel involved... I'm just going to imagine these characters are just crossing their own time line, ignore the nonsense naming conventions, and save myself a headache.
Injector and Rartorarta are indeed different beings that look alike. Takara and Hasbro took the same toy and applied entirely different characterisation and background storyline to them. And as the two were not intended to crossover, it was all okay. It’s like how Masterforce Cab has the exact same toy as Hasbro Hosehead but the two are completely different characters.
Takara has often used the same toy or at least mold to make a completely different character. Although sometimes the characters are more similar than others. There are also sometimes mild colour pallet changes to some, no changes whatsoever in others, and sometimes even heavy remolds. It had been that way since Masterforce when Powermaster Optimus Prime was made into Ginrai, Nightbeat, Siren and Hosehead turned into Minerva, Goshooter, and Cab respectively. Bomb-Burst into Blood, Dreadwind and Darkwing into Hydra and Buster, etc. There was some of that in Victory as well with Holi instead of Stakeout. For BWII you have the same deal, with Spittor being repainted and made into a Maximal, Bonecrusher repainted and given a distinct personality as Bighorn, Tripredacus being a Maximal called Tripledecus. Prowl becoming Lio Junior is another big one, as with G2 Megatron and G2 Smokescreen into Megastorm and Starscream respectively. Much of the characters in the show also have completely new personalities along with name changes making them distinct enough from their American counterparts. For Apache and B'Boom, I'm pretty sure B'Boom in his bio was depicted as some kind of raging commando whereas Apache in BWII was just a sad old man. BWII never tried to depict the same characters as the US but with Japanese-language friendly names as in G1, rather Takara had already started doing their own thing completely when it comes to ascribing characters and personalities to the toylines.
I can... SORT OF understand Nightbeat and Minerva being different characters. Nightbeat Minerva As a super obvious female redeco of the same mold that's fine. I could even see the Nightbeat deco working in universe because being that Nightbeat is male and Minerva is female the characters have VERY DIFFERENT proportions in their character models that help them stand apart. Kinda like Lugnut and Clobber who look almost identical except for the gender swap. Like even Cheetor and Tigatron have different proportions despite being based on the same mold which makes it easy to tell them apart. Even if they both shared a color pallet you could tell them apart just by the size difference. B'Boom and Apache on the other hand look identical as toys and in their art work so if you have both of them standing side by side it's impossible to identify which one is B'Boom and which one is Apache. Siren and Goshooter, it's a stretch to make them work since their color schemes are a lot more similar to each other and since they share a body type in universe unlike Minerva, Goshooter wearing Siren's colors doesn't help. Cab from what I could find never had his own color scheme, he's literally just a reuse of Hosehead with no changes so nope, those don't work as different characters at all. Actually that's wrong. Spittor was originally sold as a Maximal in Europe. The packaging and instructions had him labeled as Maximal despite him having a Predacon faction insignia. The repaint was correctly sold as Predacon but that's actually not why he was repainted, this repaint was being marketed as a Transmetal despite being the exact same mold and the fact that he would later get a proper TM2 Mold that wasn't just a repaint of the original toy. Which is confusing... I mean their personalities are distinctly different with the Maximals being Mexican stereotypes and the Predacons being actual characters despite looking nothing like their toys... but the most confusing part is their names are almost identical as well. Well not their individual names but Tripredacus and Tripledecus... For the longest time I didn't even realize their name was Tri-pred-a-cus I had been pronouncing it Triple-de-cus for YEARS not even knowing that was it's Japanese name, I just thought that's how it was pronounced. I literally spent years using the American spelling but the Japanese pronunciation just because I didn't know how to say his name properly. It's just by accident that the way I thought it was pronounced happens to also be closer to the Japanese spelling. Yeah the fact that Prowl is G1 Prowl in a new body while Lio Junior is Lio Convoy's son makes it kind of hard to be the same character... but the fact that they look literally identical to each other makes it equally as hard to separate them as different characters. Like at least give them unique paint jobs. Repaint Prowl so he looks like G1 Prowl and give him a new head so he doesn't look weirdly like Optimus for some reason. It makes sense why Lio Junior looks that way but that look doesn't work as G1 Prowl. And it makes even less sense why this old veteran Autobot rebuilt as a Maximal looks identical to a young Maximal who was "born" into that body. Megatron and Megastorm are BARELY different... To be fair Megastrom actually has slightly better camo and that's about all they changed. Smokescreen and Starscream on the other hand same mold totally different paint scheme. Dreadwing and BB look way more similar to each other. I actually had that G2 Dreadwing when I was a kid. I got him used from a friend so he was missing a lot of parts and I had no idea how to transform him properly. I didn't even really recognize what he was till years later when I saw the picture online and realize oh, that's how that figure is suppose to look. The thing is though, we're not even talking about Takara... we're talking about an American comic book, put out for American audiences, who would have been totally confused by the appearance of two B'Booms because we have zero frame of reference for who or what Apache is suppose to be. Even knowing about the Japanese Transformers I'm still totally confused. Hasbro's typical MO is to take things from Japan and adapt them for American audiences. Typically changing the names and such but never intertwining the different continuities. This is why Ginrai functionally is Optimus Prime because that's how the toy was marketed in America. Technically they're different characters because Ginrai is a human who pilots a robot that just happens to look like Optimus but in America there has never been a Ginrai, there was only ever Optimus. To have Takara's Ginrai standing next to Hasbro's Powermaster Optimus Prime when they're functionally the same toy would be total nonsense. To give another example... imagine having Override and Nitro Convoy appearing in a comic together. Sure Override is female and Nitro Convoy is male but Override is functionally just an American adaptation of Nitro Convoy, they shouldn't co-exist in the same universe together. In fact they DON'T co-exist in the same universe. Transformers Galaxy Force where Nitro Convoy was originally from was intended to be a stand alone universe that wasn't connected to anything else. Transformer Cybertron on the other hand Hasbro tried to hammer into the Unicron Trilogy and make it a sequel to Armada and Energon even though they failed so badly at doing this that it works better as a stand alone series anyway. Basically B'Boom and Apache are the same as Override and Nitro Convoy, they're regional variants of the same character that should never co-exist together in the same universe. Having them together like that is just too meta and unless you're going to go all out breaking the 4th wall to make the joke work there's point in having that type of crossover. It ends up just making my head hurt trying to wrap my brain around how this works in universe. I'd rather try to solve poorly written time travel paradoxes then trying to figure out how American and Japanese continuities can crossover in the comics.
Well I finished the Gathering... Had B'Boom but no Apache which is good. Still a lot of characters to keep up with. Many of which barely contribute anything to the story. The Mutants showed up at one point with no explanation what so ever as to why they ended up with 2 beast modes and no robot modes, why they're neither Maximal nor Predacon, they're just there for like a page and then are never brought up or mentioned ever again.
I just started reading though the Collector's Club stuff and noticed in the first issue... apparently Vector Prime is responsible for buying the Maximal's enough time to repair Optimus Prime after BW Megatron shot him in the face. It kind of makes since given Vector Prime's ability to time travel and travel across different realities. It's pretty obviously a retcon but it's one that I think actually works.
Well I got into the Transtech stuff... So a few things I noticed... 1. Obviously this is not the Beast Machines continuation that Transtech was originally intended to be. They're not on a Technorganic Cybertron, supposedly this version of Cybertron has never seen a civil war that the other Cybertron's have so Autobots, Maximals, Decepticons, and Predacons are all working together. There does seem to be a secret conflict however between the TransTechs of this world's Cybertron and the "Outworders" interdimensional travelers from other Cybertrons. Blackarachnia's character bio also talks about how her Optimus Primal was killed which is entirely different to how Primal died in Beast Machines. Cheetor's bio also described a similar character arc to the Cheetor we know except it's a character arc that happened entirely on Cybertron in the TransTech police force and not on Prehistoric Earth in the Beast Wars. So obviously these are not our Cheetor and Blackarachnia. There's also a TransTech Silverbolt who appears to have never been in any kind of relationship with Blackarachnia as there's no mention in either of their bios of a connection between the two. 2. With all of that being said, it's also clear that they did reuse and repurpose some of the concepts, mainly concept art, though there are also TransTech designs that were not seen as part of the original abandoned series. I could very well see them as being other unused designs from that era that just never got leaked but Hasbro would have had access to for reuse in this comic. Either that or the comic artists were just really good at maching the over design asthetic to the original concept art with designs of their own. Do we know for sure if Ratbat, Prowl, and Silverbolt are actual TransTech designs or if those were created specifically for these comics? While I know Silverbolt was intended to be in the cast I don't know if we ever got concept art for him outside of his appearance in these comics. 3. Axiom Nexus could very well have been intended to be used in a very different way. As we know that dead characters were intended to be in the original TransTech concept but we don't know how they intended to resurect those characters who had died. I think it's possible that Axiom Nexus was originally intended to be an oddity on the newly Technorganic Cybertron that would still act as a hub between different realities. This could also explain why the TransTechs have more mechanical designs following the events of Beast Machines where the entire goal was finding balance between the organic and technological. However instead of different versions of the same character being about to coexist in Axiom Nexus it would instead make inhabitants amalgamations of their different counterparts throughout the multiverse. Hence why Cheetor looks more like a Cybertronian car and less like a cheetah because he's taken on aspects of other Cheetors who never left Cybertron. This also explains why Depth Charge is alive and well here because he's from another universe where his death in the Beast Wars never happened. It also seems that "TransTech Rattrap" is just Beast Machines Rattrap so I assume that he would be in the series but would have never go to Axiom Nexus allowing him to retain his Beast Machines design. 4. It was never said if Megatron would have been G1, BW, or some other Megatron entirely but if we're going off this idea of the multiverse being part of the central plot he could very well be an entirely new Megatron from a different Cybertron. And maybe at first he could seem like a possible ally rather than a hostile, doing evil things in secret much like the version we eventually got in the comics. This Megatron wouldn't be as bold as G1 or BW and instead operate in secret. He doesn't have the same desire to rule Cybertron either, but instead prefers a high ranking position where he can't work in secret without drawing attention to his real motives. The idea of the Axiom Nexus being part of the original TransTech concept could potentially reconcile the seemingly G1 continuities between U.S. cartoons, Japanses Cartoons, U.S. Marvel Comics, U.K. Marvel comics, and the fact that Beast Wars itself isn't a direct continuation if any single continuity but rather seemingly a mix of several. BTW I think Transcendant Technomorphs was originally suppose to be either Transorganic Technomorphs or Transcendant Technorganics when it was continuing from Beast Machines. Either way it'd still be shorted to TransTech. Also... TransTech Nightscream just looks like his Beast Machines design but with a far better head sculpt. No more emo hair, replaced with a visored robot head that actually improves that design. He's the one design that I kind of doubt was intended to be a TransTech at all just because of how much it looks like Beast Machines Nightscream and doesn't really match the aesthetic of the other designs.
So I found in one of the comics there's a gorilla in a zoo named Garry... I wander if Garry the gorilla is intentional reference to Garry Chalk voicing Optimus Primal?
Did you not see the disclaimer in the first post? I do not advocate piracy however in the absence of any official resources this might be the only way some people will ever have access to these comics. This seems to fall in line with the forum's own policies on torrents online. Being that they'd only allow links if that was the only way to watch certain episodes. Once they became more widely available the links would be take down. Plus, I never shared any links in the first place. I'm strictly using this to as a personal resource to read comics I wouldn't otherwise ever have had access to.
So um question... hopefully someone can explain this to me. Why are comics not just in order... What I mean by this, as an example... Transformers Collector's Club #18 ends with Cliffjumper going through a portal with three components of Nexus Prime. #19 continues the story from the perspective of the 3 Nexus Prime components who mention that Cliffjumper got separated from them. Transformers Timelines #3 continues the same story from Cliffjumper's perspective who mentions the 3 red and blue robots (referring to the components of Nexus Prime.) Transformers Collector's Club #28 has Cliffjumper finally reunited with the the three robots he originally went through the portal with. The "out of order" part of the story here is that #18 is technically followed by #3 They're different titles but they're still continuing the same story line and there's no clear reason why they're separate titles at all. If it's continuing the same story it should follow the same order from that story. Instead you have to go back and forth between two different comics to follow one cohesive story line? And I feel like if you didn't already know these comics were connected and the correct order of events numbering the comics this way would make it impossible for any first time readers to follow what the heck was going on. #19 and #3 seem to happening concurrently with each other both following the events of #18. #19 works as a follow up but going from #18 to #3 feels like why even bother with numbers at that point? There's also stories that don't actually follow the events of the previous comic and take place in a different universe entirely. And I constantly feel completely lost because they're picking up from where another comic series I haven't read left off rather than picking up from where the last issue of the comics I am reading left off. As another example I just finished reading the origins of the G2 Transformers getting their "super powers" in Timelines but I've already read the continuation of that story in the Collector's Club over a month ago. Why did Fubpub produce their comics this way? It's confusing as all hell. And yeah from my research Funpub produced both the Collector's Club comics and the Timeline comics as separate titles with totally mismatching numbering when it really feels like this all should have been done together under one title with a more cohesive numbering system. This makes my brain hurt. And TF Wiki was also not really that helpful in trying to figure out the correct order for these comics. I didn't even see anything that mentioned these stories were meant to follow each other. The wiki is actually even more confusing because there are multiple pages with identical looking links which makes even finding the page I'm looking for damn near impossible. The comics pages are not as well organized as the cartoon series listings. I find navigating them a huge headache. The site I'm reading the comics on is much better organized but still doesn't really give me a way I can tell what order the issues go in. I can read Collector's Club in order or Timelines in order, but I can't read them BOTH in their intended order since they're separate and the numbers of one don't follow the numbers of the other... And I can't seem to find any source that tells me the order the stories are meant to follow.
There's a reading guide for all the Fun Publications Collectors Club/BotCon media on the TFWiki community blog here: Fun Publications Transformers Reading Guide It's absolutely true that Fun Pub's fiction output was incredibly convoluted to follow, and frankly over time it gets way, way more complex than just "continue Cliffjumper's adventures in one comic, and the others' adventures in another comic". If you're dead set on reading it all, be warned that you're getting yourself into a really tangled web of stories, As for the specific question of why there are two separate comic series, that's just because they were released via two separate avenues: Timelines was released once a year for BotCon attendees, and the Collectors' Club Magazine was released every other month for Collectors' Club members.
If you want to read Timelines "in order", this is my best attempt: Timelines Story Compilations - MEGA But also yeah, western comics seem to really struggle with accessibility and cohesive readability a lot as a whole, and for some reason Transformers in particular is just terrible at it going all the way back to Marvel UK. The Timelines fiction is even worse than usual since it was originally released over such a long period of time (TCCM 6 issues a year, Timelines once a year) and for such a small audience which was expected to be extremely familiar with the fiction already. Retroactively it's a lot denser than it was made to be.
