The Energon Pub

I've always been a fan of what-ifs, reinterpretations, "Bizarro"/opposite versions, and the like, and after seeing the new Kreon "Warriors" and Thomas Perkins' stuff I got to doodling alter-versions of... Tarantulas for some reason. I dunno, guess I've always really like his design. Anyways, I thought I'd share some of these parallel Tarantulases.

80s Tarantulas

Specifically, as he may have looked in the cartoon, so it's a bit more simplified and animation-friendly.

Ninja Tarantulas

Contrary to the show, the toyline portrayed Tarantulas as a dull-witted ninja, so I went a little nuts with the idea. I was originally thinking he doesn't transform so much as he poofs into smoke and re-poofs as a spider (this IS supposed to be a weird parallel dimension Tarantulas, after all), although his limbs ended up looking like they could do a General Grievous-esque split to create 8 legs, maybe even using his kunai to complete the look.

Reverse Tarantulas, "Dipteras"

The Owlman to Tarantulas' Batman (or vice versa I suppose), the polar opposite who has an entirely different identity. The Heroic Dipteras, as you my have guessed, turns into a humble fly, the natural prey of spiders. That might seem backwards, but from his perspective "our" Beast Wars is the sick twisted perversion of everything he loves.

Not bad! Nice bright colors.

Thanks!


Parasite Tarantulas

This Tarantulas had a far more insidious (and delicious!) way of dealing with his Megatron.

That Parasite Tarantulas is deliciously creepy. Awesome!

Thanks!

Cosmic Tarantulas

So, uh, I didn't really have a story for this one. Just sketching around and it kinda just came out.
Maybe it's a Tarantulas that successfully absorbed the Vok (and is slowly becoming a floating head himself). Maybe his mysterious unnamed ancestors were far more eldritch than anyone thought. Maybe he's if Nintendo made Beast Wars (I swear every one of their franchises has an Andross-type boss/enemy). Maybe we're not meant to know; one of those universes our dimension-hoppers pop in, see this, and bravely turn tail and flee.

Tarantula Tarantulas

This Tarantulas turns into an actual tarantula instead of some stylized generic spider. As such he's quite a bit bigger, and thus somewhat of a counterpart to Rhinox -- who, incidentally, is a styled generic mammal in this universe, because... I dunno, perhaps the 'real world' people are some type of arthropod and so can easily identify a particular spider but think mammals all look the same.

Is that a cape, or are they really his arms? Let's keep it ambiguous!

I thought I'd wrap up this little project by revisiting the "reverse" world:

As you may have guess, Dinocon's beast mode is inspired by the "Fighting Dinosaurs" fossil and Hailstorm by "The Ant and The Grasshopper" fable. Bugikin's a pill bug since that was the least intimidating bug I could think of (the gag here is Waspinator seems like a threat but really isn't, so his reverse counterpart would be the opposite).
The colors are strictly swaps of the original's primary and secondary colors; the resemblances to Rhinox and Sky-Byte are just an odd coincidence.

I severely doubt an official version could/would use "Murdamal"... but this ain't official!