The Energon Pub

[Va'al]

Via the official Transformers Facebook page, we get a three-times one-page preview of the next issue in the Transformers: Windblade ongoing series from IDW Publishing. The three images are the process of Corin Howell's pencils and inks and Thomas Teyowisonte Deer's colours, as they achieve the final pre-lettering look for the Council of Worlds. Check them out mirrored below!

Windblade and Starscream aren’t just fighting for allies on Eukaris, they’re fighting to stay on the planet. Check out this sneak peek of Windblade #6 from IDW Publishing.

[MrBlack]

I always love seeing these, because they establish just how much of a collaborative process comic art creation is. The penciller generally gets the most credit, but it's the inker that brings order and detail to the work, and the colorist which adds depth and texture.

[megatronus]

Finally, the Mistress of Flame returns!

[Va'al]

Anyone looking for an actual preview for the upcoming IDW Transformers: Windblade #6? Mariel Romero delivers again, uploading three beast-tastic pages to iTunes, as the TF universe encounters some 20 year old friends... Check it out below!

Also, take a look at some rough pencils for Priscilla Tramontano's cover art, which eventually became the cover from a different angle used in this story's thumbnail, featuring Chromia, Windblade and an Unknown Flying Beastie.

BEAST WAR! On EUKARIS, the colonists are more than just robots in disguise—they're whole new breeds of Transformers! But while WINDBLADE and STARSCREAM struggle to gain allies on this brave new world, an ancient power seeks to force them off the planet!

[Windsweeper]

Interesting...

[Fires_Of_Inferno]

Heeheehee

*poof!*

[bluecatcinema]

So Eukaris is split into four tribes. And not a hint of the word "Maximal" just yet, I noticed... And Blackarachnia is some kind of soothsayer. That's new.

[Black Bumblebee]

Please don't have messed up Blackarachnia's personality... please, oh please....

[Down_Shift]

Still not feeling this art style.

[Munkky]

Still not feeling this art style.

Same. On one hand I'm happy that more of the characters I grew up with are being re-introduced in modern fiction, but on the other hand I don't like that those characters are appearing in Corin Howell's art style. It looks more like a fan-made web-comic than an official publication.

With that said, I'm surprised to see Beast Wars characters as obscure as Manta Ray (whose only toy came with McDonald's Happy Meals!) and Transmetal 2 Sonar, and Airazor's headcrest going *poof* like a real bird's when she's agitated is a nice touch. This is the first time since the Council of Worlds storyline began that I've actually been interested in one of the colony worlds. But with only two issues to go before Windblade Volume 2 ends it's looking like Eukaris' society and culture won't be explored very much, and most of it will just be summarised in a big exposition dump like the one last issue, where Moonracer just flat-out explains the ins and outs of Velocitronian society in a few sentences, and we don't really get to see much of it.

[o.supreme]

Please don't have messed up Blackarachnia's personality... please, oh please....

Why not... MTMTE totally messed up Japanese characters such as Star Saber and Dai Atlas.

[Shuttershock]

Still not feeling this art style.

Same. On one hand I'm happy that more of the characters I grew up with are being re-introduced in modern fiction, but on the other hand I don't like that those characters are appearing in Corin Howell's art style. It looks more like a fan-made web-comic than an official publication.

With that said, I'm surprised to see Beast Wars characters as obscure as Manta Ray (whose only toy came with McDonald's Happy Meals!) and Transmetal 2 Sonar, and Airazor's headcrest going *poof* like a real bird's when she's agitated is a nice touch. This is the first time since the Council of Worlds storyline began that I've actually been interested in one of the colony worlds. But with only two issues to go before Windblade Volume 2 ends it's looking like Eukaris' society and culture won't be explored very much, and most of it will just be summarised in a big exposition dump like the one last issue, where Moonracer just flat-out explains the ins and outs of Velocitronian society in a few sentences, and we don't really get to see much of it.

I agree. I'm finding this Colony Worlds arc to be a bit insubstantial. Velocitron was two issues and then we're off again. Feels like we're getting the theme park experience is all I'm saying.

[D-Maximal_Primal]

I'm excited for this one. Really excited. Beast Wars!!

[Dr. Caelus]

Outcasts, hm? So Tigatron and Airazor have probably been shunned by their respective clans for having an interracial relationship...

[Shuttershock]

Kind of wondering if these beastformers are linked to Onyx Prime. Like maybe Onyx brought Eukaris here or something.

[OptimusPrimeval]

Whilst I'm over the moon to finally have a continuity start in G1 and get all the way to some proper Beast Wars, I'm not feeling that recordicon-looking art style. It's done the long-awaited introduction of some favourite characters a disservice! I mean, who doesn't list Manta Ray and Sonar among their most anticipated Beast era toys/characters to return? It's a real missed opportunity.

[Munkky]

Whilst I'm over the moon to finally have a continuity start in G1 and get all the way to some proper Beast Wars, I'm not feeling that recordicon-looking art style. It's done the long-awaited introduction of some favourite characters a disservice! I mean, who doesn't list Manta Ray and Sonar among their most anticipated Beast era toys/characters to return? It's a real missed opportunity.

I get the impression that Manta Ray and Sonar were picked specifically because they're female, and not really because they're interesting or well-liked characters. You can easily replace them with Terrorsaur and Depth Charge in that scene and it wouldn't change much. Mairghred Scott seems to have a major thing for female representation in comics, she's even said on her Tumblr that she writes Windblade specifically for the female fans. To be clear, I have no problem with female characters (Airazor was one of my first Transformer toys when I was a kid) or female fans (so long as they leave their identity politics at the door, same goes for male fans).

The Windblade comic does like to emphasise how gynocentric (made by women, for women, about women) it is, and it wouldn't surprise me if Scott or someone else in IDW genuinely believes the LIE that comic, gaming and geek culture is a misogynistic boy's club that excludes women. Having read a few of her Tumblr posts and interviews, Scott strikes me as the kind of writer who cares more about equality and diversity in entertainment than she does about story and characterisation.

[Optimizzy]

ok...Im chiming in here.

Im not particularly pleased with how the beast wars are being incorporated here. Its very slapdash. And I agree with the "lets put some more fembots here" Airazor and Blackarachnia are fine, but Sonar? Nah. Its a bit much. I mean, I'm all for awesome characters being female, I'm not that ok with having to deal with uninteresting character BECAUSE they are female. I would have preferred a different character as more iconic, but it is cool that they are being represented. As long as she makes them interesting.

Anyway, I don't really like the way this world works. Velocitron had an interesting environment that was out there and crazy this...

...what, they are tribes? separated by what kind of ecosystem they live in? I'm bored.

and I hate that. I should be uninterested. I have been waiting for an IDW incorporation of Beast Wars for a while and this is sub-par. Maybe it gets better, but I'm seeing less quality with these issues.

I guess expectations are what's getting me...and they were high expectations. But shouldn't I have high expectations at this point?

I mean, it doesn't seem bad, not even a little bit. It just seems...meh.

[Optimizzy]

and another thing...

The whole thing about female fans for female fans, well, jeez I hope not. I never thought of the Windblade series as anything like that. I enjoyed the first series immensially and have been following this one but it's starting to sour. If this was written in this way to appeal to female fans...that's kinda sexist. Female fans want quality too, and their tastes are as varied as male fans as assuming a HUGE population of fans will like a particular thing "just because" is stupid. So I really hope that wasn't the goal.

Honestly, I think this series was probably supposed to go a lot longer. Then got shortened. That probably messed up Scott's story planning and she had to truncate much of the arcing stories. That's what I'm guessing cause there is no way this was planned like this.

I really hope all these are are quick introductions and we can see some different teams flesh them out. Maybe a 4 part on Velocitron and likewise on Eukaris. That would be awesome and all would be forgiven.

[megatronus]

I get the impression that Manta Ray and Sonar were picked specifically because they're female, and not really because they're interesting or well-liked characters. You can easily replace them with Terrorsaur and Depth Charge in that scene and it wouldn't change much. Mairghred Scott seems to have a major thing for female representation in comics, she's even said on her Tumblr that she writes Windblade specifically for the female fans. To be clear, I have no problem with female characters (Airazor was one of my first Transformer toys when I was a kid) or female fans (so long as they leave their identity politics at the door, same goes for male fans).

The Windblade comic does like to emphasise how gynocentric (made by women, for women, about women) it is, and it wouldn't surprise me if Scott or someone else in IDW genuinely believes the LIE that comic, gaming and geek culture is a misogynistic boy's club that excludes women. Having read a few of her Tumblr posts and interviews, Scott strikes me as the kind of writer who cares more about equality and diversity in entertainment than she does about story and characterisation.

Honestly, if inserting DepthCharge and Terrorsaur wouldn't change the scene much, why even comment on that choice?

I hope you realize that, just by making that comment you are (perhaps unwittingly) bringing your own identity politics into the conversation. There's a really good reason why it's important for women to have a voice in an area where they are typically underrepresented, such as comics. The status quo is by default male-oriented. Instead of bashing the 'identity politics' of a woman writer, maybe we should be more welcoming of her unique perspective.

[megatronus]

ok...Im chiming in here.

Im not particularly pleased with how the beast wars are being incorporated here. Its very slapdash. And I agree with the "lets put some more fembots here" Airazor and Blackarachnia are fine, but Sonar? Nah. Its a bit much. I mean, I'm all for awesome characters being female, I'm not that ok with having to deal with uninteresting character BECAUSE they are female. I would have preferred a different character as more iconic, but it is cool that they are being represented. As long as she makes them interesting.

Anyway, I don't really like the way this world works. Velocitron had an interesting environment that was out there and crazy this...

...what, they are tribes? separated by what kind of ecosystem they live in? I'm bored.

and I hate that. I should be uninterested. I have been waiting for an IDW incorporation of Beast Wars for a while and this is sub-par. Maybe it gets better, but I'm seeing less quality with these issues.

I guess expectations are what's getting me...and they were high expectations. But shouldn't I have high expectations at this point?

I mean, it doesn't seem bad, not even a little bit. It just seems...meh.

and another thing...

The whole thing about female fans for female fans, well, jeez I hope not. I never thought of the Windblade series as anything like that. I enjoyed the first series immensially and have been following this one but it's starting to sour. If this was written in this way to appeal to female fans...that's kinda sexist. Female fans want quality too, and their tastes are as varied as male fans as assuming a HUGE population of fans will like a particular thing "just because" is stupid. So I really hope that wasn't the goal.

Honestly, I think this series was probably supposed to go a lot longer. Then got shortened. That probably messed up Scott's story planning and she had to truncate much of the arcing stories. That's what I'm guessing cause there is no way this was planned like this.

I really hope all these are are quick introductions and we can see some different teams flesh them out. Maybe a 4 part on Velocitron and likewise on Eukaris. That would be awesome and all would be forgiven.

You're making this lengthy judgement on the material based on 3 preview pages...

I don't see this as 'Beast Wars' so much as the appropriation of Beast Wars characters. We saw the same thing with Velocitron and the presence of Moonracer and Knockout.

The uninteresting characters aren't uninteresting because they're female; they're uninteresting because they are cameo, throwaway characters (probably). Making them male does not automatically put a point in the 'interesting' column. Actually, besides for Fateweaver, we have a 1:1 ratio male and female characters. Is there something necessarily wrong with that?

[Shuttershock]

ok...Im chiming in here.

Im not particularly pleased with how the beast wars are being incorporated here. Its very slapdash. And I agree with the "lets put some more fembots here" Airazor and Blackarachnia are fine, but Sonar? Nah. Its a bit much. I mean, I'm all for awesome characters being female, I'm not that ok with having to deal with uninteresting character BECAUSE they are female. I would have preferred a different character as more iconic, but it is cool that they are being represented. As long as she makes them interesting.

Anyway, I don't really like the way this world works. Velocitron had an interesting environment that was out there and crazy this...

...what, they are tribes? separated by what kind of ecosystem they live in? I'm bored.

and I hate that. I should be uninterested. I have been waiting for an IDW incorporation of Beast Wars for a while and this is sub-par. Maybe it gets better, but I'm seeing less quality with these issues.

I guess expectations are what's getting me...and they were high expectations. But shouldn't I have high expectations at this point?

I mean, it doesn't seem bad, not even a little bit. It just seems...meh.

and another thing...

The whole thing about female fans for female fans, well, jeez I hope not. I never thought of the Windblade series as anything like that. I enjoyed the first series immensially and have been following this one but it's starting to sour. If this was written in this way to appeal to female fans...that's kinda sexist. Female fans want quality too, and their tastes are as varied as male fans as assuming a HUGE population of fans will like a particular thing "just because" is stupid. So I really hope that wasn't the goal.

Honestly, I think this series was probably supposed to go a lot longer. Then got shortened. That probably messed up Scott's story planning and she had to truncate much of the arcing stories. That's what I'm guessing cause there is no way this was planned like this.

I really hope all these are are quick introductions and we can see some different teams flesh them out. Maybe a 4 part on Velocitron and likewise on Eukaris. That would be awesome and all would be forgiven.

You're making this lengthy judgement on the material based on 3 preview pages...

I don't see this as 'Beast Wars' so much as the appropriation of Beast Wars characters. We saw the same thing with Velocitron and the presence of Moonracer and Knockout.

The uninteresting characters aren't uninteresting because they're female; they're uninteresting because they are cameo, throwaway characters (probably). Making them male does not automatically put a point in the 'interesting' column. Actually, besides for Fateweaver, we have a 1:1 ratio male and female characters. Is there something necessarily wrong with that?

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the feeling here is "why were these random characters from the Beast Era who only got a little comic time selected as seeming front runners? Because they were female?"

[Optimizzy]

I think if you read what I'm trying to say, it's that I don't think 2 issues will do it justice and from what I have seen its not promising. So yes, I am making a theory on the quality based on available evidence. Last time I checked that was ok. Also, to Shuttershock, yes, to me it smacks of "picked cause girls" and I hate that. and I should correct something I wrote above: my irritation was at Manta Ray not Sonar. I got them confused somehow. Why not Depth Charge seriously???

But like I said, I bet there will be some fleshing out later and the rough stuff now will get smoothed over.

[Henry921]

Whilst I'm over the moon to finally have a continuity start in G1 and get all the way to some proper Beast Wars, I'm not feeling that recordicon-looking art style. It's done the long-awaited introduction of some favourite characters a disservice! I mean, who doesn't list Manta Ray and Sonar among their most anticipated Beast era toys/characters to return? It's a real missed opportunity.

I get the impression that Manta Ray and Sonar were picked specifically because they're female, and not really because they're interesting or well-liked characters. You can easily replace them with Terrorsaur and Depth Charge in that scene and it wouldn't change much. Mairghred Scott seems to have a major thing for female representation in comics, she's even said on her Tumblr that she writes Windblade specifically for the female fans. To be clear, I have no problem with female characters (Airazor was one of my first Transformer toys when I was a kid) or female fans (so long as they leave their identity politics at the door, same goes for male fans).

The Windblade comic does like to emphasise how gynocentric (made by women, for women, about women) it is, and it wouldn't surprise me if Scott or someone else in IDW genuinely believes the LIE that comic, gaming and geek culture is a misogynistic boy's club that excludes women. Having read a few of her Tumblr posts and interviews, Scott strikes me as the kind of writer who cares more about equality and diversity in entertainment than she does about story and characterisation.

Oh, boy. I know I look forward to discussing identity politics when reading Transformers comics.

If Scott's goal really is to write a comic for women, I think that's misguided. I can understand wanting to broaden the demographic and increase sales, but I don't see how injecting a quota of diversity is necessary in a series where the principal cast already includes characters who can turn into dinosaurs as readily as they turn into jets and the personalities of said characters run the gamut. In my opinion, the inclusion of gender specific tropes doesn't add diversity to this fictional universe, it detracts from it by making it more like ours' without the benefit of making characters more relatable, just more easily shoehorned into one other broad character archetype.

A quick and non-scientific perusal of board members who identify as female in our own Cartoon and Comics forum indicates female fans actually enjoy MTMTE most of all, and that series has a principally "male" cast (and an entirely "male" cast for Season 1). I don't know all of said female fans' thoughts on the Windblade miniseries, but at least one of them doesn't care for Windblade and her occasional Mary Sue traits. I don't have access to IDW's own data, but I'd be very surprised if an increase in female readership could be attributed to the Windblade introduction and/or miniseries rather than they got more female readership thanks to better quality work in general from Barber and Roberts than they had under Mike Costa.

I remember the fuss made about the Windblade miniseries and the historic event of an all female creative team and wondering why this was so significant it merited celebration, because to me the gender of the author or artist is immaterial to enjoying their work and I still feel treating the creative output of an all female team as something special and unique undermines the value of the story they're telling and adds another unnecessary burden of expectation. Treating an all female team as you would an all male team sounds egalitarian to me. Treating it as special reminds us all that it's different, that it's "other", and I don't feel that's to anyone's benefit. Probably made for a nice press release, I suppose.

If Scott wants to bring in more diversity, fine, it's her book. I just don't see that goal as conducive to expanding the TF universe. Want more female characters? We did that last year. More beastformers? We already have a bunch whose origins haven't been fully detailed. Still, Beast Wars homages sell... but we already have one as a major character with an arc under Barber's pen, and one Scott has appearing in her work for no other reason than to be comic relief.

Upon reading the preview I didn't feel like any of these characters were specifically chosen for their gender, though I certainly felt it was odd that Depth Charge wasn't chosen to lead the water beastformers. I can't imagine Hasbro has toys in the pipe for non-show Beast Wars characters, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.


TL; DR: Scott, just tell a good story. If you insist on adding "diversity" that doesn't significantly improve your narrative, that hurts not only your series, but the larger universe.

[ZeroWolf]

Hmm or maybe manta ray and sonar are throw away characters in throw away roles leaving depth charge (having a bounty hunter as your tribe leader or representative wouldn't be as good as you think) for a bigger role in this quickly expanding universe. Same as terrasaur, people wouldn't be happy if terrasaur was used like that but apparently people aren't happy that he wasn't used like that. Are people really this annoyed that girls took these cameo spots