The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed

Monday, January 26th, 2015 6:27pm CST

Categories: Cartoon News, People News, Book News
Posted by: Va'al Views: 74,320

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Via Jim Sorenson's Disciples of Boltax blog, we finally get a look at the cover for his and Bill Forster's upcoming Complete Allspark Almanac! Artwork by Marcelo Matere and Josh Perez, showing off the main Transformers: Animated cast of Dinobots, Autobots, Decepticons, and some humans too, from Optimus Prime to Shockwave, Megatron and Captain Fanzone, Omega Supreme plus Cheetor, Rodimus and G2 Sideswipe - make sure to check it out below.

It looks like The Complete AllSpark Almanac is just three short weeks away, with an ETA of February 18th at fine comic book stores everywhere. (Probably hitting Amazon shortly thereafter, available for preorder now.) Here's Marcelo Matere's beautiful cover for the book, with excellent Josh Perez colors. (Josh also lent his talents to some of the new bonus material inside the book.)

For those of you who missed our Radio Free Cybertron interview, this is going to be a massive, 472 page tome that combines The AllSpark Almanac, The AllSpark Almanac II, The AllSpark Almanac Addenda we put together for the Transformers Collectors' Club, and ten-ish pages of new content teasing more of what Season 3.5 might look like. We worked closely with Derrick Wyatt to ensure that the book was as close to 100% canon as possible, with all new material carefully vetted (and a bit of old material tweaked or recontextualized.) I hope that you all get a big kick out of this one. V1 and V2 are insanely hard to find and fetch ridiculous prices on the secondary market, so it's very nice to get this material back in print where everyone can get a copy.

Transformers News: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed

Credit(s): Jim Sorenson

This article was last modified on Monday, January 26th, 2015 6:38pm CST

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Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643400)
Posted by Deadput on January 26th, 2015 @ 7:07pm CST

...

That's nice.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643417)
Posted by padfoo on January 26th, 2015 @ 7:45pm CST

I miss animated, one of the Transformers incarnations in my opinion.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643421)
Posted by Deadput on January 26th, 2015 @ 7:53pm CST

padfoo wrote:I miss animated, one of the Transformers incarnations in my opinion.

Yup it was cool

I would of loved to see Sideswipe and Cheetor have some spin off episodes on cybertron while Ironhide and Jazz joined Earth's group.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643464)
Posted by Sabrblade on January 26th, 2015 @ 10:47pm CST

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643467)
Posted by Duke of Luns on January 26th, 2015 @ 10:58pm CST

Forgot all about this. I definitely have to pick this one up, cause I want to see what would have happened in Season 4.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643473)
Posted by Sabrblade on January 26th, 2015 @ 11:18pm CST

Duke of Luns wrote:Forgot all about this. I definitely have to pick this one up, cause I want to see what would have happened in Season 4.

If the second Almanac's coverage of season 4 is anything to go by, it'll predominately be text talking about the season's episodes with very few images of production art and concept sketches.

Still, the text in the second Almanac was very much worth a read, so any further text we get in this one should be great too.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643493)
Posted by leokearon on January 27th, 2015 @ 1:18am CST

So it has new material that wasn't in the original versions that is unfair.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643494)
Posted by Sabrblade on January 27th, 2015 @ 1:23am CST

leokearon wrote:So it has new material that wasn't in the original versions that is unfair.

How is it unfair? It both gives those who missed the first two another chance to get them, and gives those who did get the first two incentive to get this one, appealing to both audiences and enhancing the existing collection with a third book.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643509)
Posted by leokearon on January 27th, 2015 @ 2:48am CST

Sabrblade wrote:
leokearon wrote:So it has new material that wasn't in the original versions that is unfair.
How is it unfair? It both gives those who missed the first two another chance to get them, and gives those who did get the first two incentive to get this one, appealing to both audiences and enhancing the existing collection with a third book.

It's unfair for the people who already bought the original books as it means they would have to buy the same books twice just to access the new material. They should have just released the original two books together and put the rest in a separate comic/book.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643547)
Posted by Sabrblade on January 27th, 2015 @ 8:03am CST

leokearon wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
leokearon wrote:So it has new material that wasn't in the original versions that is unfair.
How is it unfair? It both gives those who missed the first two another chance to get them, and gives those who did get the first two incentive to get this one, appealing to both audiences and enhancing the existing collection with a third book.

It's unfair for the people who already bought the original books as it means they would have to buy the same books twice just to access the new material. They should have just released the original two books together and put the rest in a separate comic/book.

This book is not "Book 1 + Book 2 + Addenda + extra pages of new material". It's an entire recreation of the first two books and addenda with all of their materials reorganized and reintegrated to create a new book. It's not like when they did the Ark books and then just combined the two, with a clear dividing point between them, into The Complete Ark. They literally took the material of the first two Almanacs and melded them into a single new entity, with the added bonus of the Addenda and all new stuff thrown into the mix. Even without the new stuff, this book would still have been made the way it was since that's what Jim Sorenson had wanted to do with it.

Besides, how would text and production materials that aren't in panel form work in a comic book? It's not like the new stuff is gonna be some sort of story.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643593)
Posted by Shockwave7 on January 27th, 2015 @ 10:28am CST

Glad I waited to pick up the Almanac. Looks nice. I still like TFA the best of any recent transformers TV series (yes, even TF Prime). I wish they could have carried it on. Sigh...

Looking forward to reading up on what the next season WOULD have been like, if Cartoon Network and Hasbro had been smart enough to keep the series going...

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643639)
Posted by Bleak5170 on January 27th, 2015 @ 12:39pm CST

Where the heck are Bulkhead, Prowl, and Ratchet??

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1643729)
Posted by Sabrblade on January 27th, 2015 @ 4:11pm CST

Bleak5170 wrote:Where the heck are Bulkhead, Prowl, and Ratchet??

Prowl's the motorcycle Fanzone's riding on.

Bulkhead already got his fair share of cover spotlight by having the whole cover of the first Almanac to himself (and Sari).

And Ratchet was never one for unwanted attention.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1647823)
Posted by Va'al on February 7th, 2015 @ 3:57am CST

With the arrival of the Complete Allspark Almanac hitting soon, co-writer Jim Sorenson has updated his blog Disciples of Boltax with an overview of the second volume in its first iteration, covering some of the behind the scenes of the book, page by page. They include references to TV shows, comics series, videogames, self-referential lines and more Transformers goodness - and you can read them all here!

A while back, Bill Forster and I did a series of posts called Secrets of the Almanac. We went behind-the-scenes on all of book 1 and about a quarter of book 2 and shared our thoughts. I figured, with The Complete AllSpark Almanac just a few weeks away, I'd pick up where we left off. I'll just ramble on about what I remember, and especially anything that Chris McFeely missed in is excellent (and flattering) Annotated Almanac II. By-the-by, here is Part One of Secret of the Almanac II, and here are parts one, two, three, and four of book 1.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1647907)
Posted by triKlops on February 7th, 2015 @ 10:41am CST

Very cool that this was done.
I am on the fence about getting the compiled book as I have the 2 individual books but if after reading the article i find out there is extra info contained within, it will be bought ASAP.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1648078)
Posted by Sabrblade on February 7th, 2015 @ 5:34pm CST

triKlops wrote:Very cool that this was done.
I am on the fence about getting the compiled book as I have the 2 individual books but if after reading the article i find out there is extra info contained within, it will be bought ASAP.

This article doesn't say either way.

But the main announcement article for the Complete book does.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1648398)
Posted by Va'al on February 8th, 2015 @ 1:52pm CST

It looks like Jim Sorenson took the weekend to update his Disciples of Boltax blog with another section of behind the scenes tips on the Allspark Almanac, adding to the post we reported on the other day! Check out the blog here - it includes parts of the Addenda, from the Transformers Club magazine and the Stunticon Job story.

Summer of 2011... Animated had come and gone, and then Fun Publications went and did an awesome BotCon set featuring the Stunticons and a few other new Animated goodies. I even got asked to write a few of the tech specs for the lithograph. Pete Sinclair and I got to talking and one thing led to another and soon Bill and I had been tasked to write a 16 page AllSpark Almanac Addendum, featuring the events and characters and places of The Stunti-Con Job and Moving Violations. The big constraint was that they wanted about half of the pages devoted to covering BotCon itself, which we did in the style of the Part II, out-of-universe material.

They were pleased with our work, and agreed to give us a few pages in the club magazine itself to continue the theme. We did six more pages the next year, though it never was quite the right time to revisit the format... until now, that is!

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1648430)
Posted by Editor on February 8th, 2015 @ 3:47pm CST

have to say i'm looking foward to this release.

I have book one, but I missed out on book two, as i just wasn't paying attention when it was released.

Glad I pre-ordered this one a few weeks back.

Re: The Complete Allspark Almanac Cover Art Revealed (1657942)
Posted by Va'al on March 2nd, 2015 @ 4:44pm CST

Jim Sorenson, co-author with Bill Forster of the Allspark Almanac and regular Seibertron.com presence, has updated the Disciples of Boltax blog with an eight-page preview of this week's Transormers: Animated release by IDW Publishing: The Complete Allspark Almanac! Check them out mirrored below, and head to the blog here to find out more about the small contest held for fans of both this and the original release of the same pages.

Then it hit me... there are numerous pages that aren't completely new but are a BIT new. New art, new context, new photos, integrated in with the existing material So, why not showcase them?

Then I thought, why not make it a game? The first person who replies in the comments who can correctly identify every difference will get a doodle of the character of their choice. 8 pages, (at least) 8 differences. Go for it!