The Energon Pub

Is that waspinator I see in that stasis pod? The one next to him is harder to make out but looks like scorpoknoc?

Noooo! It hurts! I can't take any more teasing!

With under a week left to BotCon 2016, the official event comic - Dawn of the Predacus - writer John-Paul Bove has tweeted another teaser for what the story will be doing to the current established continuity and its narrative. You can check it out mirrored below, featuring art by Corin Howell!

To find out more about the comic, why not check out the interview we did with JP here on Seibertron.com too?

And here's the question: do the images shown in that third panel hint at what the souvenirs might be..?

You thinking rhinox and primal? I hard a time of spotting ravage at first.

Dr Va'al wrote:And here's the question: do the images shown in that third panel hint at what the souvenirs might be..?

Not necessarily: Primal and Rhinox seem to be based on their Dawn of Future's Past bodies, heavily stylised. The exhausts on the sides of Rhinox' head (C-Landmine) and the wheels on Primal's arms (C-Crumplezone) have me thinking that.

If anything, the souvenirs may be based on FubPub's rendition of Transformers: The Movie... Shattered Glass style (Out of the One, Many...), with:

Checkpoint, the Guardian out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Prowl)
... and his huntsmen, The Autotroopers out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Inferno and SG Ratchet)
X-Brawn, the Champion out of Rook (formerly SG Brawn)

New or unused pretooled heads of course.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Dr Va'al wrote:And here's the question: do the images shown in that third panel hint at what the souvenirs might be..?

Not necessarily: Primal and Rhinox seem to be based on their Dawn of Future's Past bodies.

Ah, yes, of course! My bad.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:If anything, the souvenirs may be based on FubPub's rendition of Transformers: The Movie... Shattered Glass style (Out of the One, Many...), with:

Checkpoint, the Guardian out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Prowl)
... and his huntsmen, The Autotroopers out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Inferno and SG Ratchet)
X-Brawn, the Champion out of Rook (formerly SG Brawn)

New or unused pretooled heads of course.

But none of those match what we know about the souvenirs, especially that none of them are Shattered Glass characters.

Sabrblade wrote:

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:If anything, the souvenirs may be based on FubPub's rendition of Transformers: The Movie... Shattered Glass style (Out of the One, Many...), with:

Checkpoint, the Guardian out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Prowl)
... and his huntsmen, The Autotroopers out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Inferno and SG Ratchet)
X-Brawn, the Champion out of Rook (formerly SG Brawn)

New or unused pretooled heads of course.

But none of those match what we know about the souvenirs, especially that none of them are Shattered Glass characters.

Well, their role in the whole seems to be as protagonists, considering a good SG Unicron created them. So they're no longer SG Autobots, so SG no longer applies to them, right? But that's a debate for a different thread.

I really don't know what to make of it other than the fact that it looks really cool

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:If anything, the souvenirs may be based on FubPub's rendition of Transformers: The Movie... Shattered Glass style (Out of the One, Many...), with:

Checkpoint, the Guardian out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Prowl)
... and his huntsmen, The Autotroopers out of Trailbreaker (formerly SG Inferno and SG Ratchet)
X-Brawn, the Champion out of Rook (formerly SG Brawn)

New or unused pretooled heads of course.

But none of those match what we know about the souvenirs, especially that none of them are Shattered Glass characters.

Well, their role in the whole seems to be as protagonists, considering a good SG Unicron created them. So they're no longer SG Autobots, so SG no longer applies to them, right? But that's a debate for a different thread.

We already know the factions and descriptions of most of the souvenirs and none of them fit those guys.

Souvenir centerpiece figure - TM3 Megatron

CW Legends Souvenir troop builder 3-pack - faction unknown but maybe Maximals (same CW Legends mold as the Golden Ticket figure, who is a non-BW character related to a familiar G1 character)

Non-CW Deluxe souvenir - A Maximal

CW Deluxe souvenir - most likely a Maximal

Other single souvenir - both mold and faction are unknown but it might also be a CW Deluxe Maximal.

And one of the latter three above features a headsculpt not found at U.S. retail (this is suspected to be the non-CW Deluxe souvenir). And an announcement mentioned there being CW Maximals for sale at BotCon, which is the source for the CW Deluxe souvenir, the unknown souvenir and the troop builder 3-pack possibly all being Maximals.

Whats with Prowl on the left there?

If this takes place after the cartoon would he not be dead or is it just Prowl 2 from the Headmasters?

Deadput wrote:Whats with Prowl on the left there?

If this takes place after the cartoon would he not be dead or is it just Prowl 2 from the Headmasters?

The Beast Wars cartoon is not solely tied to the G1 cartoon. It drew from multiple sources when it was made, treating the events of its history's Generation 1 as the stuff of legend and myth. All that happened in the G1 cartoon is not necessarily all that happened in the Beast Wars cartoon's version of G1.

Prowl's being alive here is not an inherent contradiction since we do not know if he ever died in the Beast Wars cartoon's version of G1. If he did, then he must have been resurrected as some point. If he didn't, then he's still alive. Or some dimension-hopping could have happened with this Prowl not being native to the BW cartoon's G1. Or some time travel could be at work with this Prowl being from another time when he was alive. There's several options here.

I was thinking the same thing, but then I remembered that the original Prowl, Ironhide and Silverbolt became the Maximal High Council and combine into Magnaboss.

Nemesis Maximo wrote:I was thinking the same thing, but then I remembered that the original Prowl, Ironhide and Silverbolt became the Maximal High Council and combine into Magnaboss.

Yeah, and two out of three are right there in the picture. It doesn't fit the ratios we were given, but repaints of CW Ironhide and Prowl in their Magnaboss colors could be interesting.

But more likely it's purely for the story since they were used pretty heavily in the club comics. Plus G1 Ironhide is right there fighting TM3 Megatron (who isn't looking so impressive, pretty small and weak looking).

Emerje

If a pre-Beast Magnaboss is in the story, I'd imagine it would just use the existing retail Ironhide, Prowl and Silverbolt. Doing repaints of those three wouldn't really fit what we know about the remaining exclusives.

Maybe 5-bot Magnaboss would just feature two more '84/'85 'bots who die within the story? If it's bridging G1 and BW, there's room for G1 characters to bite the dust (would also explain why Silverbolt is slumming it with Prowl and Ironhide rather than forming Superion).

RevTibe wrote:If a pre-Beast Magnaboss is in the story, I'd imagine it would just use the existing retail Ironhide, Prowl and Silverbolt. Doing repaints of those three wouldn't really fit what we know about the remaining exclusives.

Maybe 5-bot Magnaboss would just feature two more '84/'85 'bots who die within the story? If it's bridging G1 and BW, there's room for G1 characters to bite the dust (would also explain why Silverbolt is slumming it with Prowl and Ironhide rather than forming Superion).

I could see that happening. Hopefully we'll get an offical configuration for Magnaboss in the comic. It might just be the Optimus Maximus limbs on Silverbolt though.

The comic preview on Page 1 of this topic has Silverbolt in his CW toy body, so if there's any combining done between the three in this comic, it'll probably just have the three in their regular retail CW toy bodies.

Live from a hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky, this slightly jetlagged reviewer brings you a fresh update frome the 2016 BotCon event, in addition to the stellar work the news crew are doing in updating on the ground situation: a review of the event exclusive 'Dawn of the Predacus' comic - read on below!




Synopsis
In the last 48 hours of the Great War between Decepticons and Autobots, new measures are taken, paths chosen, fates decided, and acts of sacrifice kickstart a whole new saga...



Story

A comic which is clearly, undoubtedly, obviously, a pack-in story with a set of toys. A big toy advert. A narrative tying together toys that share a theme. Easy to get wrong. And yet, John-Paul Bove in his first official IDW Transformers writing gig, delivers a story that works on a number of levels.



Much as anticipated in the interview we conducted with him, the comic contains a very good balance of fictional universes, setting up threads between G1 and Beast Wars which we both know the developments of, and others that could still yield something very very different - time will tell if we'll get an exploration of the latter, I suppose.



What works particularly well is the blend of lighter-hearted humour to what is, effectively, a fairly dark chapter in the history of the two narratives, and the end of a war in general - once again as a testimony to the two universes, with the G1 gravitas (resulting silly at times) and the BW intentional silliness.

Art

Corin Howell fits this melange excellently, too, with artwork focusing on the fraught, tired, elated - and wonderfully skeptical and sarcastic - emotions that are running amok across the different factions, not just two as we might think. The simpler, cartoony style fits the tone set by the script, and still delivers some great pages with a grim undercurrent.



Both of which are undoubtedly helped by Bove returning in his role as colourist on the book, injecting his own authorial perspective of tonalities and emotive hues to the visual side of things, helped out by letterer Chris Mowry from the IDW stables. The lighting definitely heightens that contrast pointed out above, with contrasting, but not jarring, results.



Visual and verbal together, you might ask? Read some thoughts below, and make sure to look closer at the two covers available for the comic at the event, variant by Sara Pitre Durocher and string pulling, and 'regular' cover with all the souvenir characters by Robby Musso (both in thumbnail).

Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

Having read this in-hand, on-site, as soon as I possibly could, I feel odd giving a review and a mark to the book but you know what? It's good, and not just as a 'let's featured all the new toys and some old ones and sorta mash them together' way. Compared to previous releases from the BotCon team, we are several notches higher here, even with the full reveal of the souvenir figures in its pages - and even the main cover.



That may very well be Bove's writing, and the control he has over the art with colouring Howell's work, but the synergy between the two is palpable, as the overall tone of the book is set well by mixing light and heavy, positives and negatives, humour and gravitas, past and future. If you get a chance to read the issue, please do. It's truly enjoyable.. in fact, it's just Prime.

Dr Va'al wrote:
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This. This just drove me insane. that is awesome and I love it

That revelation about a certain Inferno though man it was just you know.


I won't say anything else but those who read it will know what I'm talking about.

I'll look forward to reading it in December when diamond releases it...if i remember. Totally spaced off last years which I was surprised about but then again Botcon comics are never a seek to get comic.

*Some people* (Which I Kannot Identify) are being arses about the comic.
JP has some answers.

http://wordmongerer.tumblr.com/post/142 ... mers-story

Dr Va'al wrote:*Some people* (Which I Kannot Identify) are being arses about the comic.
JP has some answers.

http://wordmongerer.tumblr.com/post/142 ... mers-story

In response to this, I've gone and made corrections to some of the complaints that those "some people" were making, but a lot of their points are still pretty valid, as some of JP's arguments really do conflict with what was depicted in the BW cartoon.

Sabrblade wrote:

Dr Va'al wrote:*Some people* (Which I Kannot Identify) are being arses about the comic.
JP has some answers.

http://wordmongerer.tumblr.com/post/142 ... mers-story

In response to this, I've gone and made corrections to some of the complaints that those "some people" were making, but a lot of their points are still pretty valid, as some of JP's arguments really do conflict with what was depicted in the BW cartoon.

Valid point does not warrant being an arse about it, though.