Darth Bombshell's Thoughts on Dreamwave's Generation One More Than Meets The Eye Profile Series

Our latest installment in the Seibertron.com Articles Section comes from staff member Darth Bombshell. Darth Bombshell wrote this article awhile back, but has decided to share it with the rest of the Seibertron.com community. In this article Darth Bombshell shares his thoughts on Dreamwave's Generation One More Than Meets The Eye Profile Series. Without further delay here is the article:


Darth Bombshell's Thoughts on Dreamwave's Generation One More Than Meets The Eye Profile Series

In late 2002, Dreamwave announced plans for their most ambitious project yet: a series of profile book on the original Transformers that would appeal to both the current and older fans of the Generation One characters. The plan was not met with the best reviews, but I was cautiously intrigued. I felt that the series had the potential to be the most informative and enjoyable series that they had produced up until that time.

And then the problems began.

The first of these problems occurred when the first volume of their planned four issue series, set for a planned release on December 2002, was not released. Fans had thought that the project, due to the immense undertaking that it would take to produce, had fallen apart. The official word was that, in order to incorporate fan demand, the format had to be changed from a four issues bi monthly series to an eight issue monthly series. I don´t think that many fans bought this excuse. In fact, I am almost definitely sure that many fans thought that it was an excuse to explain the fact that they could not get the books out on time, a theory not at all helped by the fact that Dreamwave was, at the time, developing a history of not releasing their books on time. The last two issues of the first Generation One miniseries had arrived unacceptably late, an act most fans thought was an attempt to squeeze a second miniseries out of the various plot points left dangling at the first miniseries conclusion. This would become ironic in that none of these plots are expanded upon at all. In fact, it seemed that Brad Mick, the writer of the second miniseries, was going out of his way to ignore most of the events that had occurred in the first miniseries. In any event, most saw the restructuring of the whole project as little more than an excuse to try to attempt to construct an overall continuity to their Generation One projects.

This would inevitably lead to what would end up becoming the most well known problem that the series would be blamed for. It was decided somewhere during the series run that the final issue would include what would ultimately become something of a “bible’ for their various Generation One series. Many of the plot points described in this issue (the origin of the Triple Changers, Cybertron´s history, explanation of the various ‘Master technologies, etc.) would become the hard and fast rules for their Generation One storyline, in the War Within series, the two mini-series and the upcoming ongoing series. Unfortunately, continuity problems arose almost immediately, the most famous of which was the fact that Shockwave developed the Triple Changer technology shortly after coming back online following the events of the Great Shutdown, a plot point which would be contradicted by the first War Within series, which would show Blitzwing as part of Shcokwave´s attacking force transforming between his various three modes, supposedly before he gained the ability to do that. This would become even more convoluted by the events of War Within: The Dark Ages, which state that Shockwave was using Blitzwing as a test subject for various technologies. Granted, the former was released before a set continuity was established, but the fact that the latter attempts, and fails, to try to bring together all these seemingly confusing elements together show how restrictive setting down a straight path that all future projects must follow unerringly can get.

The quality of the writing would suffer, as well. This series was designed to give each and every Transformer character that was released in North America as a toy between 1984 and 1990 a profile. In order to do this, Adam Patyk and Brad Mick, writers of the series, had to draw from two different sources: the tech specs for these characters and the established bios written for the characters from Marvel´s “Transformers Universe’ series written almost twenty years ago. This would ultimately lead to the series having two different types of profiles: profiles that were nearly carbon copies of the original slightly rewritten to make them look different (for those characters who had previously written bios) and bios written using elements from the tech specs (for toy only characters) and bios written completely from scratch. (particularly the Micromasters)

But all of these problems seem very moot when one realized the main reason that the series was being produced: to showcase new and exciting art of the Generation One characters. All the art in the series was drawn either by Dreamwave talent (such as Pat Lee, Don Figueroa and Guido Guidi) or freelance talent hired on for the project. (such as Matt "Jackpot" Kuphaldt and Joe Ng, later to do work for Transformers Energon and the upcoming War Within: Age Of Wrath miniseries). The art, like much of the elements of the project, is a mismatch of good and bad, the most horrendous of which, unsurprisingly, comes from Pat Lee. One need look no further than his drawing of Starscream in the sixth issue to realize this fact.

The final problem that the series faced occurred, ironically, on the first page of the first issue. The whole series was based upon the fact that some unknown force was accessing this information from the Vector Sigma computer. Fan speculation ran unabated throughout the entire series run as to who this person was. The final issue revealed to us who this person was: Beast Wars Megatron. When people realized this fact, many mistakenly assumed that it would be a prelude to a Beast Wars miniseries. Although not likely at first, it was probably apparent that it was planned, the fact that a potential Beast Wars miniseries may occur (should enough fans vote for it on the upcoming Summer Special poll) confirming this fact.

In the end, despite the many problems that the series faced, it was considered one of the more popular projects undertaken by Dreamwave, and would be of use as both a encyclopedia for fans and guideline for fans. It´s popularity would lead to the creation of a “sequel’ series for Dreamwave´s other Transformers project: Transformers Armada.

It too would not be welcomed so easily, but unlike its predecessor, would not prove to be as popular.