Yay! Some new faces from the TF-verse show up in Windblade #6

[icon_uk]

Now, with one (I think only one) not very flattering represntative (and even less flattering than usual) a certain highly popular subset of the Transformers-verse has been rather un-represented so far in the IDW take on the genre...

The Windblade series (#6 of which has a preview up here) which is looking at the introduction of the 13 lost Titans Colonies and how they relate to Cybertron.

As for the subset of the Transformers I'm talking about, well here's a clue;

One word...



MAXIMISE

"Beast Wars" was a fairly groundbreaking attempt to revitalise the cancelled for a year (in the USA at least) TF franchise, and with a cartoon relying on still nascent CGI (and doing a spectacular job of it) managed to become a fan favourite.

In fairness, since the conceit of the series is about robots taking on organic alt modes it's perhaps not surprising it's not been big yet. We've seen Rattrap in "Robots in Disguise" as an opportunistic, underhanded aide of Starscream, which has not been his finest hour, ethically speaking.

Anyway, after a brief mention of Velocitron from Transformers Galaxy Force, we get to this...



Airazor and Tigatron were the first to Maximals to be "born" on Earth (blank Protoforms taking on an Earth mode as their first alt-form), and so were very strongly connected to it



Blackarachnia was the first Predacon to be born on Earth, a Maximal protoform stolen and turned into a Predacon by their mad sciencist, but who was eventually redeemed by true love (Seriously, her Catwoman-esque relationship with the Adam-West-Batman-esque Silverbolt is both a thing of beauty and utterly hilarious)

A spider as a time sensitive in the TF verse is not without precedent, Arcee underwent the Maximal process and ended up with a similar ability in one of the Botcon special comics (The one that killed off Daniel Witwicky and Wheelie in one well placed, if somewhat meanspirited, suicide pact explosion), her grief meant that she became sort of like the Maximal version of Clyde Bruckman, she could see the future of any Transformer, but only inasmuch as she could see how they would die).

The Blackarachnia design isn't Beast Wars or even Beast Machines though, it's her appearance in Transformers Animated (an equally awesome series in it's own right) which had a completely different backstory for her character, but heyl BLACKARACHNIA!!



Add Cheetor and Dinobot to the mix (Love Airazor literally bristling with Dinobot). Sonar was a BW character, but not in the cartoon.

Interested to see where this goes...

Comments

[kamino_neko]

Sonar was a BW character, but not in the cartoon.

That's got nothing on Manta Ray. Until IDW put her in their Beast Wars comic, she existed only as a Happy Meal toy.

[q99]

To be fair, even totally made up characters aren't rare.

I like it when they branch out into minor and new characters. Bigger universe and all that.

[kamino_neko]

Oddly, though, her design here seems to be based on Depth Charge...wonder if that was a miscommunication, late-in-game character swap, or deliberate redesign?

[icon_uk]

I suspect Depth Charge's name hadn't been decided on so they went with the generic animal name which could sound sort of sci-fi ish if looked at the right way.

[megaspork]

The writer went on record in an tumblr post that she chose Manta Ray because of her canon status as a fembot due to the idw beast wars sourcebook.

[dustbunny105]

Rhinox has also made a small appearance in IDW, heck if I can remember where.

This gives me such mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's great to see more of these characters again and I'm interested in seeing what their world is like. I'm also really curious to see whether this Cheetor has any precognitive abilities, since Blackarachnia apparently has that role cornered on a much more official scale than the original Cheetor ever did. On the other hand, Rattrap is one of my favorite characters from the Beast Wars cartoon and so it just gets in my teeth that he's already running around being portrayed in a way that I don't like instead of being introduced here with the others. And, yes, I realize I still might not like his portrayal even if he did first appear here, but at least I could hope :P

[q99]

Rhinox was in the Galvatron flashback issue of RiD. He was the last remaining guardian of Onyx Prime's fortress after Onyx left (presumably, to this world!).

[dustbunny105]

That was it! I knew it was a flashback, couldn't remember where from. In hindsight, I guess I could've just checked the wiki...

Anyway, thanks :)

[long_silence]

Cheetor was a precog? I don't remember that at all.


I guess it's time for a rewatch

[dustbunny105]

Eh, well, vaguely. He has a few precognitive dreams during the series, but I don't recall that anything was ever really made of it and they may have been dropped altogether somewhere along the way. Need to do a rewatch myself... I won't be surprised if it's ignored altogether in the IDW verse, but it could be neat to see it expanded on.

[icon_uk]

Don't really recall him showcaseing that particualr ability, but all the Transmetal 2's seem to have been given extra powers that were never developed because the show ran out of time, TM2 Blackarachnia was definitely telekinetic and though not technically TM2, Optimal Optimus appeared to have some sort of Spark Whisperer power.

[dustbunny105]

I don't think the dreams were ever acknowledged as precog, even by Cheetor; they were just something that happened on occasion. I didn't even remember them until the preview.

The extra TM2 powers, I completely forgot about. Didn't properly make it up to the TM2s on my last rewatch, since it was with my younger siblings and they bailed on me pretty early.

[deh_tommy]

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE BEAST WARS *RAAAAAWR*
Considering Silverbolt is already in the comics as leader of the Aerialbots, does that mean there won't be any Fuzor incarnation of the character?

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

WE have two Tankors, so maybe he could be the feather one?

[kamino_neko]

They've played a bit with the 'same name' stuff - the two Tankors, Dent originally being Prowl, before the other Prowl got too prominent for him to keep it.... OTOH, they've also had issues with naming Knock Out's Conjunx, since he's Prime Breakdown, but G1 Breakdown is currently kind of important...

[q99]

There may be, but likely to be a name-change if he appears (the two Tankors basically serve as one 'unit').

However, it seems likely that fuzors are from a *different* colony, at the end of the Windblade mini one of the worlds shown had two-fuzors on panel, and no standard beast bots, while this one is all standard and no fuzors even with representatives of all tribes present.

[janegray]

I really wish I could have enjoyed Transformers Animated... It was creative, original, and in particular I really liked Blackarachnia.

But I could never warm up to it because of its character designs. Hated them, couldn't even stand to look at them. I know it's a shallow reason, but cartoons are a visual medium too, and even with comics it's difficult to enjoy a great story if you hate the art :(

But I did truly like Blackarachnia, so I'm glad to see her in IDW :)

[trooper924]

See, I'm the opposite. I actually loved the designs, but the story itself was...well, not bad, but I didn't really think it was this great masterpiece that people made it to be. It's okay, but the franchise has done better.

[icon_uk]

I liked both, the style took a little getting used to but when I saw they had actually managed to make the toys work within the same design parameters I was more sold on it.

There were so many interesting questions the series asked and answered; What would happen if a Protoform scanned a human? (Sari) Why don't the Decepticons have a rallying cry like "Autobots, transform and roll out!" (They do, Megatron gives us the awesome "Decepticons, transform and rise up!"). Why doesn't Megatron just kill the hell out of Starscream? (He does, repeatedly as it turns out, thanks to random immortality)

Plus it was the first series to actually give us senior Autobots who were... basically and fundamentally... a family-size of bag of assholes (Sentinel Prime you repeatedly wanted to slap in the face, with a hammer) who were capable of fairly horrible actions (The backstory to Jetfire and Jetstorm is fairly ghastly)

As a genuine question, rather than looking to start a fight, what is your favourite?

[trooper924]

You know, two of the reasons I didn't care so much for Animated's story is that: 1) Since the series never got a fourth season to tie up loose ends, some of the questions it raised never got answered. Like, how did Sari's protoform get into Dr.Sumdac's lab? Whatever happened to Blackarachnia? And what will happen to Cybertron now that Sentinel is in charge? It makes the series feel incomplete on the whole. And 2) I've never really been as keen on the whole "morally ambiguous" autobot idea as other people and I just think that series' like the IDW comics and the Prime cartoon handled the concept a whole lot better

But anyways, to answer your question, I don't really have a favorite series, there are things I like and don't like about each series, but if I had pick a series I'd watch on a regular basis, it'd be the G1 cartoon for it's cheesiness and unintentional hilarity.

[burkeonthesly]

I liked that Transformers Animated finally gave us the Decepticon counter to "Autobots, transform and roll out!"

[icon_uk]

"Transform and rise up!" is even thematically appropriate for Megatron both as the leader of the generally flight-capable Decepticons, AND a revolutionary

[burkeonthesly]

Right? The wordplay really did it for me.

[thanekos]

Here's hoping for Predacon.

After all, there was Gigatron.

[terrykun]

Words cannot accurately convey my excitement for this, and the degree to which I'm hoping for King Neptune and/or Magmatron.

[azure_flame_god003]

Ah Silverbolt and Blackarachnia. One of the best things in Beast Wars. Hopefully they'll get together here as well. :)

[rainspirit]

Man, this reminds me how much I liked Beast Machines. I'm probably a minority there...

[icon_uk]

You know the rule "On scans_daily it's NEVER just you"!

I liked Beast Machines too, it went to come interesting places storywise, and though a couple of characters got thrown under the bus (Rattrap became too untustworthy especially early on, and Nightscream had the ongoing problem that he was RIGHT about pretty much everything he said, but the story could never acknowledge that he was or else it would have derailed the plot) the designs and richness of the CGI compensated for the most part.

[q99]

I'm mixed on BM. On the one hand, it had some cool stuff. On the other hand, it had such a *small* world so to speak, and closed off doing more beast era stuff pretty hard, all other BW stories either ignore it, or manage to al~l take place around the time of the original show.

[deh_tommy]

I imagine your first paragraph was talking about Rattrap, but Rhinox appeared in flashback during Robots in Disguise (IDW), Tankor (Beast Machines) made a cameo appearance in Blurr's pub from the first Windblade miniseries and Waspinator was a supporting character during said minseries and the Dark Cybertron storyline.

[dustbunny105]

Whoa. I also totally forgot about IDW Waspinator. How I remembered Rhinox's throw-away appearance and forgot about Waspinator as a recurring character, I have no idea...

[deh_tommy]

"No one carezzzz about Wazzzzpinator..."

[icon_uk]

"...but Wazzzzpinator have PLAN!"

[icon_uk]

I had completely forgotten poor put-upon Wazzzzpinator's appearance!

[q99]

Tankor (Aka Fat Tankor) has shown up a couple times outside of that. Him and Tall Tankor (aka Octane the triplechanger from G1) are a duo.

[kamino_neko]

A couple more thoughts re character designs...

Blackarachnia's clearly specifically based on her toy.

Her spider mode doesn't much match either design, but takes most of its cues from the toy (red bit at the forward end of the abdomen, which appears to be primarily purple, eyes not set into the yellow part of the head, more substantial cephalothorax), and the robot mode has a bunch of kibble that the animation model doesn't have - the extra legs on her back, the feet on her arms - interesting thing about those is they're in the extended leg position, not the folded back arm position (which I totally have mine do as pseudo-weapons). The all-purple belly matches the animation model, and the brown lower legs are new to this version. (I'll assume her arm legs being purple rather than gold is a colouring error in that panel.)

Airazor's design, I like, overall, but I think her chest might be a little too broad for how the rest of her is drawn, especially for being formed out of her beast-mode head.

I adore Cheetor's face.

Sonar lacking the long pointy finger her toy and other fictional appearances have had...is something I'm torn on. On the one hand, I like what we can see of her look, and it's certainly more consistent with the other Eukarans' (Eukariotes? ... Nah.) bodyplans, but...it was such a random detail, it's a pity to lose it.

General thoughts...I like the look of the more mechanical beast modes, though I do wonder how it is that they so strongly resemble Earth species given that the Eukarans have presumably never been to Earth...

[terrykun]

Convergent evolution. Unrelated species which evolved to fill the same niche.

[q99]

Yes, just like turbofoxes are unrelated to our canines.

Rattrap is from another world and definitely based on a rat-like species.

[locuatico]

yay! dinobot is FINALLY back! *.*

[insolent_one]

WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!