The fans of the Beast Wars saw very little production make way for the Beast Wars comic books. The rumor mill had many various tales of comic books to be released by Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics and the latest with Bench Press Comics (as reported in TRANS-FORUM #8).
A few comic books did fortunately see print. One such comic book was published by 3H Enterprises, the creators of the BOTCON conventions. The comic book was written by the legendary Simon Furman and drawn by the fantastic Andy Wildman, both who worked on the long running Marvel Comic book Generation One series in the US and the UK.
It was the first comic book which fit into the world of the Transformers as told by the cartoon series from Mainframe, Claster, and Alliance.
However, it was not the first Beast Wars Transformers comic book. The first was a mini-comic book printed by Hasbro. It was released with the basic Megatron versus Optimus Primal set which came out in January of 1996. It told the basic Beast Wars tale that Hasbro had devised introducing the Maximals and Predacons led by Optimus Primal and Megatron respectively. It was unique merely for the fact that many of the concepts of the original Transformers were maintained in the stories of the Beast Wars. However, an almost empty feeling was left thinking that the Autobots and Decepticons were no more and their stories were to be ignored, not to mention that the initial Beast Wars figures were released under the Kenner banner instead of Hasbro.
Once the television show was released, this feeling was no more as it was explained that the Maximals and Predacons were the descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons.
Several rumors were discussed through many informative sources (and reliable) that Dark Horse was to obtain the rights to publish a Beast Wars comic book. Rumors ended after the GIJoe Extreme comic book was cancelled by Dark Horse.
Recent rumors, as continually reported by 4-Color Review, state that Bench Press Comics has been working with Hasbro to produce both a Beast Wars comic book and a Generation One comic book. Apparently, the deal has been stalled because Bench Press Comics reported this before they were suppose to. Marvel seemed to express interest in the comic book also, but that was quieted quickly also.
Hasbro's stalling seemed very appropriate with the announcement that the FOX television network purchased the rights to the Beast Wars show. The show will now be called Transformers Beast Machines. Perhaps the comic book will be published now that a new name for the toy series has been established.
This article was originally published in TRANS-FORUM #11 (July 1999) by the owner of SEIBERTRON.com
