Writer: John-Paul Bove
Publication date: April 7, 2016
This is the earliest story (allegedly) set in Beast Wars continuity that I could find. According to a Twitter promo for this comic, it takes place in 2035, or 29 years after season three of the G1 cartoon. Optimus Prime and Galvatron somehow die off-screen, while Ironhide and Prowl have somehow come back to life after being violently murdered in The Transformers: The Movie. Literally, Ironhide says that Megatron killed him and he came back to life, so the G1 cartoon seems to be more or less in continuity here.
Cicadacon, Sea Clamp, and Ram Horn, the three members of the Tripredacus Council, are apparently Decepticon generals now, and they want to sue for peace because their diabolical master plan requires a temporary ceasefire. Also, all three of them are red from head to toe, presumably because they were colored red in their extremely brief appearance in the Beast Wars cartoon. I never took that literally, like we were supposed to think they were all monochromatic. I thought that was just a cost-cutting measure to save money on animation, which was also why they appeared in shadow most of the time and had kind of generic undetailed character models instead of looking like their toys. But no I guess canonically they were all just red for some reason.
Much of the cast of Beast Wars appears in the comic as Autobots and Decepticons fighting in the Great War, which makes no sense with what the Beast Wars cartoon directly stated and implied about post-G1 Transformers lore. Beast Wars took place 300 years after the original series and the Maximals and Predacons were supposed to be the descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons. But here they're literally the same individuals who fought alongside the original Optimus Prime and Megatron and they directly knew the G1 cast. That don't make no sense.
Tarantulas is here and he's always shouting and laughing weirdly, which to be fair isn't inaccurate to his Beast Wars characterization, but the text directly draws attention to it by having Ram Horn repeatedly complain about how loud he is. Ha ha ha, it's soooo funny, more of this, please. Slit my throat.
Tigatron has a cat head instead of a normal robot head like everyone else (including himself in the cartoon) because I assume there was some obscure toy of him that looked like that and he goes to make peace with the Decepticons. He encounters forces under the command of Beast Wars Megatron, who introduces himself as Megatron. So did he just now take that name after Galvatron (aka the original Megatron) died five minutes ago, or was he already going by that, or are we supposed to assume that was always his name? Because if the rest of this comic is anything to go by, it is literally impossible for two different Transformers to share the same name. The reason Ironhide and Prowl had to have their deaths from Transformers: The Movie undone by magic is so they can combine with the Aerialbot Silverbolt to form Magnaboss, because those were the names of the three Maximals in the toy version of him. So by that logic is this Silverbolt then also the Fuzor Silverbolt from the Beast Wars cartoon?
But then we see Optimus Primal, Rhinox, and Rattrap flying around in the Axalon and it seems like Optimus Primal gets his name by Rattrap comparing him to the recently deceased Optimus Prime. "He sounds so heroic, don't he? So Optimus Primey? No, Optimus Primal. I mean look at that face."
What.
So are we seriously supposed to believe that these same three guys have been flying around in the same ship for three hundred years? In Beast Wars they didn't seem to know each other that well at first, and Optimus didn't seem like he'd been in command that long. In the first episode Rattrap even makes fun of his lack of leadership experience by asking him if it was his first day on the job. You dipshit, he's been giving you orders for centuries. Also the Axalon is explicitly "an exploration ship, not a battle cruiser," so what is it doing here? Are these guys out exploring deep space while there's a war on?
They explore their way over to Unicron's severed head in orbit around Cybertron, which is apparently where the Tripredacus Council hides out. Their cover blown, the Three Caballeros initiate their master plan and detonate some kind of bomb, destroying Unicron's head. But by sheer dumb luck the Axalon blunders between Cybertron and the explosion, its shields deflecting most of the blast before it can reach the planet. I'm not sure which side is stupider here.
One thing I do (occasionally) like about this comic is Beast Wars Megatron's written voice. It's not perfect but I can hear a lot of his lines in his voice from the cartoon, and his introduction when he "yessss"es his way out of the shadows is pretty cool. I don't like him being a high-ranking commander in the Decepticon army, though. Apparently he's a Triple Changer whose alt modes are a car and a two-headed dragon? Is this another stupid toy no one knows about?
Megatron II rejects the Three Musketeers' order to stand down. He presses the attack against the Autobots, and it's revealed that Predaking, the original G1 Predacon Combiner, is working for him! Also Terrorsaur and Waspinator are his immediate subordinates as well. They've just known him for 300 years, I guess. Everyone just knows everybody forever. And Waspinator's name is already Waspinator! He's not even a wasp yet! What the fuck is happening?
Predaking fights Tigatron and Airazor, because of course they already know each and are already soulmates or whatever. But then the Three Amigos come down to Cybertron and combine to form... not Tripredacus, but a different Combiner called Predacus, who lends his name to the stupid title. This was in no way apparent to me from the comic itself, but apparently Tarantulas and Ravage are also part of this combination. Shouldn't his name Pentapredacus or something then?
Everything about this is stupid and I hate it. First, Ravage is already in his bipedal cat-headed body from Beast Wars. Why isn't he still a nonverbal quadrupedal cassette? All the other G1 characters still have their G1 bodies, and in Beast Wars they explicitly say that he was rebuilt after the Great War. Second, Ravage and Tarantulas are like peons compared to the Tripredacus Council. Why would the top three dudes share their body and consciousness with these lackeys? Third, of course it's Ravage and Tarantulas. They were working for the Tripredacus Council in the show, you see. And since those two are the only characters shown to be working with them, it means they are the only two who could ever work with them. This sucks.
Also, apparently Magnaboss also has two extra components? One is Tigatron for some reason, and the other is some rando named Unit-3 who's only even there because Perceptor, the gay microscope Transformer, died off-screen trying to make contact with Autobot Unit 3, who were all wiped out except for this one guy, who adopted the name "Unit-3" in their honor (???). Except this character's name isn't even Unit-3, it's Under-3, because that's what was printed on the plastic McDonald's bag he came in when you got him with your Happy Meal. I guess the writer of this comic thought no one would be able to take a character named "Under-3" seriously.
This sucks.
Anyway, Predacus kills Predaking for no reason that makes sense. Tarantulas tearfully tells Megatron that Predaking committed suicide for no reason that makes sense. Tarantulas has also been working for Megatron for 300 years, and has also been a double agent operating right under his nose for 300 years. Megatron must be stupid!
Megatron still refuses to stand down however so Ravage shoots him with a sniper rifle and he falls over, then the Three Stooges bend the knee to the Autobot "Primal Council," whatever the fuck that is, and just like that the Great War is over.
Oh I forgot but also the fallout from the explosion of Unicron's head that reaches Cybertron has the effect of turning whatever Transformers it touches into protoforms, which in Beast Wars were like Transformer fetuses essentially, robots who hadn't yet achieved consciousness or solid mechanical form. But here they're apparently like brain-damaged, amnesiac Transformers, I guess? (???) This happens to Airazor (but not Tigatron, who also starts as a protoform in the show????), as well as Grimlock (for some reason???????? was he even anywhere in this goddamn story??????????????) and Inferno. I take this to mean that the heroic Autobot firetruck Inferno is supposed to be reborn as the insane pyromaniac fire ant Inferno, because fuck you.
With the war over, everyone agrees to retire the terms Autobot and Decepticon, because those are reminders of the millennia where the Transformers were a divided race. Instead, everyone will now be known as either a heroic Maximal or an evil Predacon, because... wait a minute...
Megatron goes to jail and the Tripredacus Council studies blueprints for a new Transformer, who I happen to know is called Magmatron and will play some role in future Beast Wars tie-ins. "(Not) The End," the comic promises.
This sucked and I hated almost every moment of it! I do not consider anything about this canon in the slightest.
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