The Energon Pub

Now don't be bitter. They have NOT made Snarl, Skywarp, Buzzsaw, Scourge, Laserbeak, Hard Head, Hydra, Bonecrusher, Razorclaw, Scorponok and most other recycled names their G1 counterparts. Just a few have had that happen, and with Grimlock it's stated he's G1 Grimlock on the original Tech Specs!

Scaleface wrote:Now don't be bitter. They have NOT made Snarl, Skywarp, Buzzsaw, Scourge, Laserbeak, Hard Head, Hydra, Bonecrusher, Razorclaw, Scorponok and most other recycled names their G1 counterparts. Just a few have had that happen, and with Grimlock it's stated he's G1 Grimlock on the original Tech Specs!

Prowl- le owl- is also stated this way I believe.

With Prowl, it's presented more as a mental disorder, like he think's he's Napolian or Jesus. This crazy guy think's he's Prowl, the great military advisor.

Scaleface wrote:With Prowl, it's presented more as a mental disorder, like he think's he's Napolian or Jesus. This crazy guy think's he's Prowl, the great military advisor.

Interesting thought there. A Crazy Blue Owl who thinks he is Prowl is something I like the sound of!

Read it twice over the weekend, and as much as I saw what happened to Razorbeast coming, it's still a tad of a disappointment seeing how he seems to be the most important participant in these Beast Wars Stories. I would have much preferred to some some other scum get some time in the spotlight for a change.

Pacing seems decent, we might not have 3 issues worth of story crammed into issue #4 this time. Art as always is stunning.

Just read it for the 3rd time in more detail...anyone else notice when the pack jump outta the ship and you see the belly of the ships its in the shape of a maximal emblem....nice touch

Only thing that really bugs me is that out of all the characters they make into "The Pack" some wreckers esc group (aside from Lio who is a lion & Apache) are given the most lame beast modes ever...really..

A giraffe, a penguin, a horse and a rabbit, yes I'd crap myself with fear if i ever engaged them in battle.

I get the feeling that Furman could have used better characters and cast the group better, be interesting to know the rationale behind this.

All in all seems to be going well, can't wait for issue 3.

Oh 1 question, WTF is Angolmois??? is it something featured in BW Neo?

If a 7 foot tall penguine with lasers ever divebombed me out a spaceship, I might crap myself too.

Scaleface wrote:Now don't be bitter. They have NOT made Snarl, Skywarp, Buzzsaw, Scourge, Laserbeak, Hard Head, Hydra, Bonecrusher, Razorclaw, Scorponok and most other recycled names their G1 counterparts. Just a few have had that happen, and with Grimlock it's stated he's G1 Grimlock on the original Tech Specs!

The most likely reason why they didn't make Buzz Saw Buzzsaw is because Fun Publications beat them to it last year. If they didn't, I have no doubt that Furman would have done it in the Sourcebook. As for the rest...well, they haven't appeared in the Sourcebook as of yet, and they've gotten paper thin characterization thus far in Gathering/Ascending, so who really knows?

i_amtrunks wrote:Interesting thought there. A Crazy Blue Owl who thinks he is Prowl is something I like the sound of!

Yeah, that's pretty much the only way it works for me, especially considering Furman's assumption that Magnaboss Prowl is G1 Prowl.

skyshadowprimus wrote:Oh 1 question, WTF is Angolmois??? is it something featured in BW Neo?

Yes, it was featured in BWII as the MacGuffin all the bots were chasing. BW Neo reveals that it was Unicron's distilled life force.

Scaleface wrote:If a 7 foot tall penguine with lasers ever divebombed me out a spaceship, I might crap myself too.

Let alone a Giraffe with an extendible claw and a psychotic Rabbit.

And I think you would find more people are killed/severely injured by Horses than Lions.

Darth Bombshell wrote:The most likely reason why they didn't make Buzz Saw Buzzsaw is because Fun Publications beat them to it last year. If they didn't, I have no doubt that Furman would have done it in the Sourcebook. As for the rest...well, they haven't appeared in the Sourcebook as of yet, and they've gotten paper thin characterization thus far in Gathering/Ascending, so who really knows?

I don't know about that. After all, they established a long while back that this Buzzsaw ans Laserbeak are former Maximal Protoforms turned Predacon by a shell program. It would have been very odd to then say "Yes, but before they were Maximals, they were Decepticons"... unless they wanted to say the Protoforms on the Axalon were reformatted war criminals and it was a penal ship... which is a bit of a stretch.

Scaleface wrote:

Darth Bombshell wrote:The most likely reason why they didn't make Buzz Saw Buzzsaw is because Fun Publications beat them to it last year. If they didn't, I have no doubt that Furman would have done it in the Sourcebook. As for the rest...well, they haven't appeared in the Sourcebook as of yet, and they've gotten paper thin characterization thus far in Gathering/Ascending, so who really knows?

I don't know about that. After all, they established a long while back that this Buzzsaw ans Laserbeak are former Maximal Protoforms turned Predacon by a shell program. It would have been very odd to then say "Yes, but before they were Maximals, they were Decepticons"... unless they wanted to say the Protoforms on the Axalon were reformatted war criminals and it was a penal ship... which is a bit of a stretch.

(Typing while Knocking on wood)
Perhaps Furman could come out and say that Protoform X was not the only thing the Axalon was supposed to be getting rid of...

i_amtrunks wrote:

Scaleface wrote:If a 7 foot tall penguine with lasers ever divebombed me out a spaceship, I might crap myself too.

Let alone a Giraffe with an extendible claw and a psychotic Rabbit.

And I think you would find more people are killed/severely injured by Horses than Lions.

Maybe so but in the grand scheme of transformers Dragons, T-Rexes, Raptors, Tigers, Crocadiles, Bears & Snakes are far more awe inspiring and fear inducing than a bunch of zoo rejects.

Thanks for Angolmois info..makes more sense now, i thought it was the name of a villian first till i read the latest posts..cheers

So I assume you would have a problem with G1 Ironhide being a family van? Doesn't exactly strike fear into the enemy!

"DECEPTICONS, YOU ARE GOIN DOWN. right after mom takes the kids to soccer practice. DOWN. YOU. DECEPTICHOPS!"

Darth Bombshell wrote:Oh, and it looks like we have our confirmation-that-isn't-exactly-confirmation that the Magnaboss trio of Prowl, Ironhide and Silverbolt are not only the original G1 characters, but the Council of Elders and head of the Maximal faction.

I still hate that idea.

Okay, I got the issue today and I read nothing of the sort. They had the three in Cybertronian form as leaders yes, but said nothing about them being THE Prowl, Silverbolt and Ironhide of old. Besides, we saw in Transformers: Universe #2 or 3 that Magnaboss was head of the Maximal council in the post Beast Machines era. This is just keeping up with this story. Great work. He did have a rank of 10, and SOMEONE has to be leader of the Maximals. He's the counterpart of Tripredacus, so this works.

I prefer Magnaboss being the Maximal Council to having Prowl as Lio-Junior, his Japanese counterpart, who is supposed to be Lio-Convy's son. As for Buzz Saw and Lazorbeak, furman is just going by the tech specs that he was given for BW, in which neither were the G1 bot, but they took names similar to theirs.

Scaleface wrote:They had the three in Cybertronian form as leaders yes, but said nothing about them being THE Prowl, Silverbolt and Ironhide of old. Besides, we saw in Transformers: Universe #2 or 3 that Magnaboss was head of the Maximal council in the post Beast Machines era. This is just keeping up with this story. Great work. He did have a rank of 10, and SOMEONE has to be leader of the Maximals. He's the counterpart of Tripredacus, so this works.

Two problems: first, you apparently missed Ironhide saying that unless they find out what's going on, they will once again (emphasis mine) see civil war break out. Considering that there's been a lasting peace between Maximal and Predacon for a long time, only people who were around during the Autobot/Decepticon thing would consider an all out interfactional conflict a return to civil war.

Second, "Universe" doesn't count in the context of this story. Just because Magnaboss showed up there does not mean that he's the same character here.

According to Optimus Primal's Timelines bio he served near the end of the Great War with the Decepticons. So Maximals were around there.

As for Magnaboss in Universe, I like that he's the leader in both. It' means they don't really contradict each other that much. Why make up a new leader of the maximals when one exists? He had a 10 rank, and no one is using him for anything else.

So far the Maximal council could be the same characters as their G1 namesakes or they could just as easily not be. I'm not too bothered either way. AS for the "civil war" comment, I'd imagine that Cybertronian history, at least pertaining to the Autbot/Decepticon conflict that nearly destroyed the planet (or did, sometimes) would probably be fairly well known.

Well most people in positions of politcal power have years of experience behind them and its only been 3 centuries since the great war so any Maximals "created" in the beast wars era unless reformatted would still be pretty young.

Under this set of rules its hard to discount the names as just coinsidence

Finally read this at the weekend.

Did I miss something or did the rage infection seem to come out of nowhere?

Now that Lio Convoy's Pack has landed on Earth can I understand why people were confused by the decision to treat B'Boom and Apache as separate characters. At first I assumed Apache would be on Cybertron and thus have a Cybertronian form but now they're both going to be in the same place looking identical I'm really not sure I appreciate the wisdom of it.

Leonardo wrote:Did I miss something or did the rage infection seem to come out of nowhere?

Now that Lio Convoy's Pack has landed on Earth can I understand why people were confused by the decision to treat B'Boom and Apache as separate characters. At first I assumed Apache would be on Cybertron and thus have a Cybertronian form but now they're both going to be in the same place looking identical I'm really not sure I appreciate the wisdom of it.

The tech spec for Blendtron Rartorara says "In beast mode Rartorarta is a fish/hornet hybrid, and the most freakish of all the Blendtrons. He can impale his foes with his stinger which is sharpened to be no thicker than a molecule. Rartorarta can also inject his opponents with deadly venom which has no known cure and causes the luckless Transformer to die a slow and painful death." I guess the writers just threw in some "28 Days Later" in the poison.

As for Apache and B'Boom, it would be nice if they looked at each other and noticed the similarity, or maybe some other transformer calls one by the other's name, just to acknoledge the similarity.

Scaleface wrote:The tech spec for Blendtron Rartorara says "In beast mode Rartorarta is a fish/hornet hybrid, and the most freakish of all the Blendtrons. He can impale his foes with his stinger which is sharpened to be no thicker than a molecule. Rartorarta can also inject his opponents with deadly venom which has no known cure and causes the luckless Transformer to die a slow and painful death." I guess the writers just threw in some "28 Days Later" in the poison.

As for Apache and B'Boom, it would be nice if they looked at each other and noticed the similarity, or maybe some other transformer calls one by the other's name, just to acknoledge the similarity.

Ah, right. So Rartorarta infected Razorbeast? I thought Rartorarta had been infected, too.

I agree that a little acknowledgement of Apache and B'Boom's similarity would be welcome.

It would be sweet if they suggested painting one red and the other blue in comic.

Then they could both look at each other and in unison call blue...

I thought the severe abdundance and use of anemalgois or whatever the stuff they were feeding to Shokaract was causing the disturbing and crazy effect of the TFs on Seibertron, and then Ratorata (SP) gave a shot to Razorbeast to keep Magmatron from using him to help Cybertron, because Shokaract is the bad future coming...

Scaleface wrote:I guess the writers just threw in some "28 Days Later" in the poison.

More like they threw in some "G1 Series Finale"; Transformers had that plot decades before 28 Days Later did.

tigertracks 24 wrote:I thought the severe abdundance and use of anemalgois or whatever the stuff they were feeding to Shokaract was causing the disturbing and crazy effect of the TFs on Seibertron, and then Ratorata (SP) gave a shot to Razorbeast to keep Magmatron from using him to help Cybertron, because Shokaract is the bad future coming...

Indeed. Angolmois seems to be like highly addictive, super-power granting PCP. I get the impression that it infuses the TF with a small fraction of Unicron's life essence, granting them great physical power, and making them more aggressive and violent (a.k.a. evil). It's almost like taking the energy that created G1 Galvatron and making a cheap Knock-Off to market on the streets.

While the Blendtrons have been fueling Shokaract with most of the stuff, in the hopes that enough of the life essence will turn him into a demigod, I get the impression that they are also keeping Cybertron off balanced by leaking a bit onto the streets, fomenting civil unrest by addicting both Predacons and Maximals to the stuff. With so much attention focused on faction rivalry, no one is likely to figure out what's really going on. Also, given that the Blendtrons are canonically loyal to Unicron himself, I wouldn't be shocked if they're manipulating Shokaract somehow.

The other possibility is that Shockaract and his Blendtrons are unwitting victims of the process the same as the Maximals and Predacons on the street. Someone else (Antagony maybe?) might be putting it into circulation, and the Blendtrons just happen to keep snapping up the largest share of the stuff.

One issue I will have with this plot though is if Razorbeast is able to infect the others like the Angolmois is viral. It would be an interesting idea, but since the substance is supposed to be finite and hard to find, it doesn't make much sense for it to be reproducible in such a fashion... Unless the only way to make more angolmois is by infecting Cybertronians with a bit of the energy, letting it corrupt their sparks, and then 'harvesting' it from them. In which case, the idea of the Blendtrons leaking the stuff on the street makes much more sense.

Also, I wish that instead of saying "all that remains is rage" they had said "all that remains is hunger". That seems like it would be more in keeping with Unicron's nature, the infecteds' desire for more Angolmois, and Shokaract's ever-growing lust for power.

tigertracks 24 wrote:I thought the severe abdundance and use of anemalgois or whatever the stuff they were feeding to Shokaract was causing the disturbing and crazy effect of the TFs on Seibertron, and then Ratorata (SP) gave a shot to Razorbeast to keep Magmatron from using him to help Cybertron, because Shokaract is the bad future coming...

Maybe but Rartorata has been on Earth since The Gathering and I don't recall seeing any infected individual (like a member of the Pack, for example) bringing it from Cybertron to Earth. Unless the "incurable poison" in Rartorata's sting has, in this continuity, always been Angolmois but then why did he look infected on page 21 when he looked normal previously? Is that his 'manic attack' face with glowy eyes?

Caelus suggested events make a good story, actually. It reminds of the socio-political concerns of Megatron: Origin but without the poor execution.