The Razor's Edge

 

Writer: Ben Yee

Publication date: July 6, 2007

This is a prose story published on transformersclub.com, with a prologue in Hasbro Transformers Collectors' Club #14. The prologue and epilogue are set two weeks after the season one Beast Wars episode "The Spark," which introduced the show's second female character, Airazor. She and her fellow Maximals are trying to stop Megatron's latest madcap scheme, some made-up adventure that never happened on the show. Some fantastic literary writing here:

"Good work! Now let's go – AAAAHHH!!!"

He aimed his dinosaur head arm up at her and fired several lethal blasts into the air.

The majority of the story, however, is an extended flashback (very, very extended) to Airazor's past on Cybertron, when she was known as Wing Saber. The chronology here is very confusing, mostly because of Dawn of the Predacus, where Airazor had already been reverted to a protoform at this point. I guess she got better? Then became a protoform again later? I should probably stop considering Dawn of the Predacus, it was written way after all these other stories and seems to have only paid their continuity lip service at best.

Also, the Maximals and Autobots are apparently engaged in open war with the Predacons. Specifically engaged in the Great War, in fact. So is this the same Great War that the Autobots and Decepticons were fighting back in G1 times, or is this another Great War that started later? There's also an apparent conflict where it's said that the Pax Cybertronia is currently being written, and when it's completed the fighting will officially stop, but then at other times they talk about it in past tense as if it's already written and the only fighting is against renegade Predacons who have been disowned by the Tripredacus Council.

Wing Saber leads a three-person squad consisting of herself and two other female Maximals, Who and Cares. They're sent by the Maximal elders to investigate Predacon activities on the planet Nibari, home of green centaur aliens. The Predacons, under the command of a mysterious Leader misgendered as "it" to preserve the mystery of his identity for one whole scene before the author forgot and started defaulting to masculine pronouns, have taken over the planet and converted the Nibarians' factories into manufacturing plants for soulless, brainless robot foot soldiers. The Maximal Girl Squad teams up with the horse people and effortlessly plants a secret command code into all the robots so they can take control of them when it's convenient for the plot.

But the Leader of the renegade Predacon army at last reveals himself: oh my god, it's G1 Megatron! The Maximals are only mildly surprised to see him, like if the U.S. Army was fighting insurgents during the Iraq War and came face to face with Hitler. "Hey isn't he supposed to be Galvatron?" asks nobody.

They challenge Megatron to ritual Cybertronian combat. Megatron grouses that that's supposed to be one-versus-one, but the girls say that since they're so weak and small it's only fair that all three of them fight him at once. Megatron's like "yeah all right." They meet at dawn and start blasting the shit out of Megatron, whose armor falls off revealing that he was actually Flamewar wearing a Megatron costume from Spirit Halloween. Why do they keep putting Flamewar in these Beast Wars prequels? Who gives a flying fuck?

Flamewar says that one day the Decepticons will destroy the Maximals, because the Predacons suck. So I guess that whole thing about her going to work for Beast Wars Megatron in the last story didn't pan out? Did they forget to read that one?

This sucks hard. It's way, way too long, almost 50 pages, and feels like reading an unedited first draft of an amateur fanfic. There are constant misspellings, incorrect punctuation, weird formatting, pronoun disagreement, stupid made-up alien names, and a random > thrown in for good measure. Worse, it's so, so boring. Who gives a shit about Airazor's backstory that she doesn't even remember on the show? What was the point of any of this?

On the positive side, at least there was no mention of Deathsaurus.

Intimidation Game

 

Performance date: September 24, 2005

This story is another script for an audio drama. Flamewar has survived the destruction of her ship by the Tripredacus Council in the previous story and is being interrogated by Ricochet, the Autobot on the secret infiltration team who exposed her true identity to Bumblebee; Obsidian, who was a bad guy on Beast Machines but is a good guy here apparently; and K-9, whose toy was just a repaint of Wolfang. They want her to help them assassinate Deathsaurus (sigh) but she refuses because she is a true believer in the Decepticon cause.

Ricochet tells her that they've planted a bomb inside her that will detonate unless she agrees to help them in exchange for a new identity to protect her from the Tripredacus Council. But she still refuses, claiming she would rather die than betray her people. The three Autobots and/or Maximals start laughing evilly and their holographic disguises fall away to reveal that they are really Predacons Scourge (not the Tracker, apparently? or maybe it is?? who knows), Buzz Saw, and Max-B (roger!). They were testing her loyalty to a completely unrelated faction to see if she could be trusted to join them!

Flamewar asks who they serve and they tell her she'll really get a kick out of this: it's a Predacon called... Megatron!! So I guess Beast Wars Megatron is out of prison by this time and actively recruiting followers to help him overthrow both the Tripredacus Council and the Maximal Council of Elders like he wanted to do in the cartoon. It seems like this should be fairly soon before Beast Wars begins then, despite taking place immediately after Descent Into Evil, which took place at the same time as or slightly after Dawn of the Predacus, which took place 300 years before Beast Wars. But maybe that isn't even in continuity, who the fuck knows.

Also this whole story is just one small section of the script, which also includes a play by “William Shakespearecon” and a commercial for the TV show The A-Team but With Transformers. I had to stop reading the rest of that shit because it was too cringe. Anyway this whole thing was completely pointless. Who keeps making all this crap?

Descent Into Evil

 

Writer: Ben Yee

Publication date: September 22, 2005

 

This appears to take place shortly after the events of Dawn of the Predacus, assuming you take them as belonging to the same continuity. It's not clear if you should, since this story has Autobots and Maximals coexisting near the end of the Great War, implying a more gradual shift from one to the other, which fits better with what was implied in Beast Wars. Ironhide is still alive in the post-G1 era here, but now he's joined by Ratchet, who either also came back to life or just never died in this universe. 

 

We're introduced to secret double agent Flamewar, a Decepticon known for spending too much time arguing on Internet forums. She's delivering a report to her secret masters, the Tripredacus Council, who are still colored mostly red. She explains how a squad of four Autobots you've never heard of infiltrated the secret lab of Deathsaurus, who I think was a character from the Japanese continuation of the original G1 Transformers cartoon who replaced Galvatron as supreme leader of the Decepticons. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the same character or if Japanese continuity isn't canon here and this is a Deathsaurus from an alternate universe. Also, his name is "Deathsaurus." What.

The Autobot infiltrators are overwhelmed by Deathsaurus's secret clone army of Insecticons. Why is this his master plan to "restore the Decepticon Empire"? The Insecticons suck. Also when did the Decepticons have an empire? Anyway, Ironhide and Ratchet have to come in to rescue their lost team. They fight Deathsaurus himself, who transforms into a two-headed dragon. Clearly this character is just a recolor of the version of Megatron from the Japanese Robots in Disguise cartoon. The insistence of Transformers extended media on not anglicizing the names of Japanese Transformers characters and maintaining every repainted and renamed toy as a separate character is simultaneously hilarious and baffling.

Deathsaurus defeats the good guys and leaves them to die as he sets his secret base to explode, but they escape. As Flamewar wraps up this epic tale, Bumblebee hacks into her transmission and reveals that her cover is blown and the Autobots now know that she is working for the Tripredacus Council. Also, Autobot scientists somehow sabotaged Deathsaurus's cloning technology so his glorious dreams for an Insecticon army will never come to pass. The Tripredacus guys perma-ban Flamewar from their server by blowing up her ship. Hey shouldn't Bumblebee be Goldbug now?

Lame and pointless but at least it didn't ruin anything from Beast Wars. Still not canon though.

Wait who descended into evil?

The Hot Rod; or, Three Dinosaurs

 

Writers: John-Paul Bove and Jesse Wittenrich

Performance Date: April 8, 2016

 

The Transformers wiki lists this audio play under the title The Hot Rod, with a note that the printed script had the alternate title of Three Dinosaurs. The script does indeed have that title, but the article doesn't mention where the supposed main title, The Hot Rod, originates. Since that is a terrible title and makes little sense in the context of the story, and there's also a completely unrelated audio play from BotCon 2022 also called The Hot Rod, I'm just going to call it Three Dinosaurs.

 

Three Dinosaurs is a fix fic for Dawn of the Predacus that retcons (some of) the continuity errors introduced in that comic. Oddly, the script was co-written by the writer of Predacus, and was released and performed the day after Predacus was published. Which raises the question, if they already knew there were so many issues with that story as soon as it came out, why was it written like that to begin with?

But I digress. This story is structured as a series of flashbacks within flashbacks, like the worst Russian nesting dolls you've ever seen. The frame story takes place shortly after Beast Wars: The Ascending, during Megatron II's conquest of Cybertron in the pre-Beast Machines era. Lio Convoy and Big Convoy, Japanese characters from the Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo anime, report to Legend Convoy on the spread of Megatron's transformation virus, which has now infected two thirds of Cybertron. Legend Convoy is a new character invented for this story, and I'm not sure why. The two Japanese Convoys were already obscure enough characters that it's cool seeing them here in this glorified cameo. Couldn't they have just been talking to each other, instead of having to share the stage with an OC no one cares about who outranks both of them?

But I digress. Abruptly Lio Convoy is like "Hey, didn't we fight a guy named Megatron who was red and turned into a dragon like 300 years ago?" They pull up an audio log by "Investigator Hot Rod" from the end of the Great War. In this second layer of narrative, Hot Rod, more successfully known as Rodimus Prime, makes his report on a case he worked shortly after the armistice between the Autobots and Decepticons, because I guess he's a detective now. He plays a series of interviews he conducted at that time, leading us to our third narrative layer. 

Hot Rod's first interview is with Blackarachnia, who in Beast Wars was a Maximal protoform born on Earth during the Beast Wars, but in this continuity is retconned to have already been alive and active on Cybertron before being turned into a protoform somehow and put aboard the Axalon for some reason. At this time, her name is "White Propionica," at which a guy named "Hot Rod" is taken aback. "I'd hate to hear what you'd call yourself if you chose to be a Predacon..." he remarks as he takes subtext out behind the woodshed and strangles it to death.

 

White Propionica flirts with Hot Rod less charismatically than a BioWare protagonist trying to unlock a romance achievement, then leads us into our fourth narrative layer, as she narrates the events she witnessed at the Advanced Plasma Energy Reactor power plant the week before Armistice Day. So now we're back even before Dawn of the Predacus.

White Propionica is a worker at the power plant when Megatron busts through the wall fighting the G1 Dinobots. "Antiquated oafs. You would NEVER catch ME in such a lumbering form," he sniffs. Because he was a T-rex in Beast Wars!!! Did you remember that???? The irony!!!!!!!!!

White Propionica observes that his current two-headed dragon alt mode is pretty much the same thing, but Megatron is scandalized: "It's not as though I'm actually organic. No. I'm one hundred percent metal, so any continuity errors there might be by having a dragon mode now but loathing another one later are unsubstantial." White Propionica then declares that she would NEVER use the Decepticon/Predacon activation code.

Because one day she will!

Megatron infects the computer with a "cyber-virus" that will cause the power plant to explode, blowing a massive hole in the planet and taking out multiple Autobot bases in the process. Then Grimlock comes in and starts fighting Megatron. White Propionica is knocked out in the chaos, and when she regains consciousness the power plant has been saved by a super-advanced AI program that she had never seen before.

Hot Rod's next interview subject is Dinobot, who hasn't yet taken that name but his current name isn't given. Pre-Dinobot tells Hot Rod about the epic sword fight between Megatron and Grimlock, the most honorable thing he's ever seen. Megatron was wounded and had to be dragged away from the battle, then Predaking took his place and fought Grimlock for hours. Grimlock's last words before losing consciousness were "Me Grimlock not die, me Dinobot."

"'Dinobot.' Hmm. That... is truly a name of honor," muses the Man Who Would Be Dinobot.

This whole story is full of embarrassingly on-the-nose references and callbacks and in-jokes, but Beast Wars Dinobot naming himself after the G1 Dinobot faction is something I really don't mind. It wasn't necessary, but it's better than Blackarachnia having a past life as "White Propionica" or Megatron continuity-nitpicking his own backstory.

The third interview is with Megatron himself. Most of it is cringe fandom meme humor but there are a few bits that do a good job of nailing Megatron as a genocidal, narcissistic, fascist psychopath, so good characterization there.

Finally, White Propionica comes back and reveals that the AI program that saved the power plant was a reference to "Grimlock's New Brain," an episode of the G1 cartoon where Grimlock gets Flowers for Algernoned. Apparently super-genius Grimlock left contingency protocols in dumb Grimlock's brain that would activate in the event of a number of crises, one of which was Plasma Energy Reactor Meltdown. 

Grimlock saved the day, only to be turned into a protoform when the Tripredacus Council's stupid transmatter wave weapon went off in the preceding comic. We get slightly more information on what exactly that means, White Propionica observing "his spark still beats, but its identity totally wiped. As though he's starting it all over again." Hot Rod tells her to transfer the AI program with smart Grimlock's identity into Grimlock's protoform. It won't completely restore his old identity, but Hot Rod believes that "old stompy" won't stay down for long. 

Back in the first layer, Legend Convoy says to Lio Convoy, "Tell me, where is Grimlock? For I much desire to speak with him." Lio Convoy replies "lol the transformation virus got him last week."

"So all of this was pointless!" Legend Convoy doesn't say.

They send a distress call to Hot Rod, who disappeared from Cybertron before his giant mechanical body could be downgraded to Maximal size. Just like in The Transformers: The Movie, Judd Nelson is once again Cybertron's last hope!

"Hahahahahahahahaaa!" says Megatron, presumably not from the same room where the rest of the scene was taking place.

A few cool ideas and some good worldbuilding, but mostly this was pretty bad and embarrassing. You can tell it was written by fans exclusively for a fan convention. I just wish there was video footage of Judd Nelson being forced at gunpoint to read this slop.

Dawn of the Predacus

 

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 be 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.

The Ewok Who Was Afraid: An Ewok Adventure

The Ewok Who Was Afraid: An Ewok Adventure

Author: Helena Clare Pittman

Illustrator: Ron Fritz

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: January 1986

Timeline Placement: 1 ABY

 

Finally, a book about everyone's favorite Ewok, Wicket's brother Willy. Widdle "Willy" Warrick is a cowardly, dimwitted, lazy, gluttonous fatass. So it's understandable why his older brother, Weechee, balks at having him as a partner in the Ewoks' annual subterranean whitewater rafting competition. Willy promises his brother that he can be brave, but just looking at the mouth of the cave where the race takes place makes him shit himself in terror. Not of being lost forever in the dark or being bashed into shapeless pulp against rocks or drowning, but of "cave spirits." 

 

With his regular partner, Paploo, in the infirmary after being trampled by a space horse and his brother useless, Weechee decides to pilot the raft by himself. It immediately smashes itself into shapeless pulp against rocks, leaving Weechee lost forever in the dark.

Meanwhile, Willy randomly finds a magic blue stone lying on the ground. He recognizes it as one of the rocks that Logray gives to the village warriors to fill them with courage. Weird, that kind of rock is usually white.

The newly brave Willy goes to the cave exit to wait for his brother. All the other contestants finish the race and start asking one another "Hey, what happened to Weechee?" "I don't know." "I thought he was right behind me." "Well I know that there wasn't anyone left behind me." Then they all go home without a second thought. Weechee is clearly hated by his fellow Ewoks, and I can't blame them.

But Willy decides that something must have happened to his brother, so he pulls a log into the river and rides it through the cave. He finds Weechee lying on the riverbank and tells him to hop onto the log. The two brothers then ride the log through the rapids and out of the cave without dying, so Weechee probably could have just swum out and been fine. 

Chief Chirpa is waiting with Mr. and Mrs. Warrick when they get back to shore. Willy starts to tell them about his magic courage rock but when he goes to pull it out he realizes it must have fallen into the river at some point, meaning he really didn't need it to be brave after all. This is a stupid ending because there's no way to know when he lost it; he could have dropped it clambering off the log five seconds ago. What should have happened is he pulls it out to show everyone and Logray says "that's not one of my magic rocks, that's just a regular stone," showing that Willy's bravery was always inside him all along. 

But since they didn't do that, instead Chief Chirpa bestows on Willy the sacred fire shell, the Ewok symbol of bravery, apparently. If he was truly brave, he would have left this black-hearted son of a bitch to die.

Wicket Goes Fishing: An Ewok Adventure

Wicket Goes Fishing: An Ewok Adventure

Author: Melinda Luke

Illustrator: A. O. Williams

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: January 1986

Timeline Placement: 1 ABY

 

Wicket is sick of babysitting Woklings, probably remembering his tribulations in The Baby Ewoks' Picnic Surprise. So when he finally has a day to himself, he leaps at the chance to try out his new fishing rod. Unfortunately for him, his mom catches him on his way out of the village and tells him to take his little sister, Winda, along. Wicket is pissed, but dutifully puts Winda on the back of Baga, his pet bordok, and leads them toward the river. Along the way, she loses his bait, eats all his food, and breaks his fishing rod when she throws it into a bush, causing Wicket to get poison ivy when he retrieves it.

Wicket complains to his mom that his little sister is a total bitch, but of course she takes Winda's side and sends Wicket to go see Logray for a treatment for his rash. Logray has just the thing Wicket needs, but roofies his Cortizone-10 so Wicket falls asleep and dreams of when he was a Wokling and followed his brother Weechee around, accidentally losing all his arrows and breaking his brand new bow. Weechee yelled at him and made Wicket cry, so he promised himself that if he ever had a little sibling he would never be mean to them.

Upon waking, Wicket is filled with guilt and goes to apologize to Winda. Before she goes to bed that night, he invites her to go fishing with him tomorrow. Yeah but with what rod, Wicket?

Cute book, sweet story.

Wicket and the Dandelion Warriors: An Ewok Adventure

Wicket and the Dandelion Warriors: An Ewok Adventure

Author: Larry Weinberg

Illustrator: Deborah Colvin Borgo

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: November 1985

Timeline Placement: 1 ABY

 

We return to Endor to find all our Ewok friends now bearing the art style of their animated TV show. Which is a shame, because while those designs are fine, the unique charm of the old designs was a big part of what made those books so memorable. Oh well, RIP.

Wicket and Princess Kneesaa are out gathering blumfruit berries with Wicket's dad, Deej, when Wicket is almost eaten by ants, somehow. Deej pulls him to safely, but in the process he falls backward and cuts himself on the fungus of a Rokna tree. The illustration shows his blood dripping from the tree and everything, it's gnarly, man. Deej gets dementia and starts aging at a hyper-advanced rate. Logray, the Ewok medicine man, declares that there's only one hope for him: a potion brewed from the tail feather of a giant lantern bird, the egg of a frosch, and a star-shaped needle from a Dandelion Warrior.

Wicket's asshole older brother, Weechee, blames Wicket for their father's illness, so Wicket wants to go collect all the ingredients to redeem himself. Logray says that Deej's only hope is for his three sons to work together. Wicket will get the needle, Weechee will get the egg, and their overweight, dim-witted brother Willy will get the feather, which he accomplishes easily after accidentally drinking some of Logray's Fizzy Lifting Drink and floating up to the lantern bird nest.

On his quest, Wicket finds a Gupin who has been captured by the Dandelion Warriors, a race of fierce flower people who fire their quills at the two of them as Wicket frees his new friend. Fortunately, one of the quills that almost impales them has a star shape on it, so Wicket's part of the quest is already completed.

But when he gets back to the village, he discovers that he now has to go rescue his stupid brothers. Kneesaa and Teebo accompany him to find Willy, who got stuck up in the bird's nest when the lantern bird returned and sat on him. Teebo is able to speak the language of the beasts to convince it to move. Meanwhile, Weechee has gotten his egg but was chased by the frosches over a waterfall and is stuck on a tree branch. Wicket saves him but despairs because there's no way to get back to the village in time to save Deej. So the Gupin transforms into a giant bird and flies all the Ewoks home. Logray brews the potion and Deej is saved.

Logray tells Deej that he has three great sons, to which Weechee replies that that may be true, but Wicket is the real hero of the day. That's nice and all but this guy still deserves to get his ass kicked, Wicket shouldn't even have had to redeem himself since he didn't do anything wrong in the first place. Except almost getting eaten by ants.

 

Okay kids' book but I'd just watch the episode. Which isn't called "Wicket and the Dandelion Warriors," it's called "To Save Deej," which is an objectively worse title because no one knows who Deej is.

Han Solo's Rescue Mission: A Cruise Along Book

Han Solo's Rescue Mission

Author: John Whitman

Illustrator: Kilian Plunkett
Medium: Picture book
Publication Date: March 1998
Timeline Placement: 0 ABY

 

The Empire is after a group of Ithorians stranded on their home planet of Ithor. Han Solo volunteers to take the Millennium Falcon on a rescue mission to get the Ithorians out and deliver them to Bimmisaari, a planet invented by Timothy Zahn in Heir to the Empire. Han gets the Ithorians on board right before the Empire arrives, but the Falcon's navicomputer is damaged by TIE fighters and Han flies into an asteroid field! Space slugs lunge from their asteroids, trying to eat the Falcon. Maybe this is how Han realized that the space slug they hid inside in The Empire Strikes Back wasn't a cave! A much more interesting revelation than how Han Solo got his last name.

At last, Han reaches Bimmisaari, but the Falcon's landing gear has been damaged! Thanks to some expert piloting, Han is able to set her down safely. "Now that's what I call a fun ride!" he quips.

This story can be used to headcanon an explanation for Momaw Nadon's whereabouts after the Battle of Yavin, as various sources depict him being exiled from Ithor at various times. Maybe he was among the Ithorians Han rescued here, explaining why he was there in Star Wars Missions but absent in Galaxy of Fear. You remember who Momaw Nadon is, I'm sure. It's this freak.

Otherwise, same thoughts and comments from the previous Cruise Along Book apply here.

Luke Skywalker's Race Against Time: A Cruise Along Book

Luke Skywalker's Race Against Time

Author: John Whitman

Illustrator: Kilian Plunkett
Medium: Picture book
Publication Date: March 1998
Timeline Placement: 0 ABY

 

The Empire has discovered the Rebellion's secret base, and it's up to Luke Skywalker and his squad of X-wings to destroy the incoming Imperial Star Destroyer before it reaches them! Yavin Base should already have been evacuated by now so presumably this is one of the several interim bases the Rebels set up before settling in on Hoth. Also worth noting that, for how overpopulated the post-Yavin period of the EU is, there aren't many stories focusing on Luke as a fighter pilot. You'd think that would be like his main role in the Rebellion after how he took out the Death Star, but most of the time he's just going on reconnaissance or rescue missions with Han and Leia or flaffing about with his father's lightsaber. In fact, since Red Squadron wasn't reformed into Rogue Squadron until after the Battle of Yavin, it's possible this story represents their first mission together as a starfighter unit.

The X-wings evade a flock of mynocks, who attempt to drain their power. One mynock latches on to Luke's X-wing and manages to chew through a wire before he's able to shake it loose. "Hey, no passengers!" Luke quips.

At last they come upon the Star Destroyer. The Rebel pilots spar with Imperial TIE fighters, but the TIEs just can't keep up with the Rebels' maneuvers. Making it through the defensive fighter screen, the X-wings begin their assault on the Star Destroyer. Luke himself fires the killing shot and the Star Destroyer explodes "as bright as sun." That shot must have been one in a million! Their mission accomplished, the X-wings return to base, hopefully to evacuate it before the Empire sends a good dozen more Star Destroyers to replace the one they lost.

What's interesting about the illustrations in this book is that no human characters ever appear. It's all space vistas and ship-to-ship combat. Luke Skywalker's Race Against Time and its sister book, Han Solo's Rescue Mission, were both packaged with Micro Machines toys, so I guess it's no surprise they emphasize the vehicles over the characters. That's all right, though, because the space combat looks cool as hell. And the text was written by Galaxy of Fear author John Whitman, who seemed to have his fingers in all kinds of obscure EU miscellanea in the '90s. 

 

More engaging starfighter combat than many EU adult novels. Thumbs up!

The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot

The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot

Author: Eleanor Ehrhardt

Illustrator: Mark Corcoran
Medium: Picture book
Publication Date: March 1979
Timeline Placement: 0 ABY

 

Han, Chewie, and the droids are delivering a shipment of supplies to Tatooine, where the Rebellion is doing relief work to help the population during a planet-wide drought. When R2-D2 stops working, Han oils up his joints, causing the little robot to go berserk and hijack the Falcon. Unable to regain control of his ship, Han calls for help from Rey Luke, who's waiting on Tatooine for the delivery of the parts so the Rebellion can build a super-vaporator. Luke hops in his X-wing and is able to use the Force to bring the Falcon under control and guide it in for a landing. It isn't explained exactly how he does this, but presumably he didn't use telekinesis on the whole ship as this is still a few years before he'll fail to levitate his starfighter out of a swamp.

The leaders and technicians of the super-vaporator project meet to discuss all the setbacks they've been experiencing, from sabotaged droids to missing equipment, when suddenly the conference room explodes! Fortunately, C-3PO is the only one injured, and he's taken to the droid maintenance bay to be repaired. This scene feels oddly prescient, as Han Solo and Princess Leia will later be present for the bombing of the Senate in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's The New Rebellion, published 17 years later. Although poor Threepio is an innocent bystander here, exploding droids will also be involved in that future terrorist attack.

C-3PO is given an oil bath, but this just makes him feel worse. Even more distressing, it causes him to lose his voice! Some random R5 droid working in the repair bay becomes the hero of this book when it deduces that Artoo and Threepio have both been treated with contaminated oil. The droid flushes their systems and they're fully healed. The three robots go to report their discovery to the project leader, Captain Egoreg, whose name is clearly a tuckerization of Capetian Gorge, when they accidentally burst in on a group of Jawas engaged in thievery. 

 

Of course, those subhuman Jawas were behind everything! They've been sabotaging the relief effort's efforts to bring relief for their own profit. As junk traders, the Jawas realized what American manufacturers did long ago: the lower quality product you sell, the faster it will wear out, forcing the consumer to spend more money on a replacement. To that end, they've been secretly damaging the Rebellion's equipment and droids so they throw them out and the Jawas can resell them to the locals, I guess. You know, it's not completely clear, but that doesn't matter right now because the droids and the Jawas tussle and the heroic nameless maintenance droid is knocked over, allowing Artoo to claim all the glory for himself when he sounds the alarm.

Han and Chewie come running, with Chewbacca bellowing a mighty Wookiee roar that causes all the Jawas to simultaneously freeze in their tracks and shit their robes. The Jawas are taken to be punished in some undisclosed way and Princess Leia awards Chewbacca a medal for his heroism. This is the second medal she's given him within the last few months, probably because she's still trying to live down getting canceled on Twitter for passing him over at the Yavin awards ceremony.

Chalk up another win for Eleanor Ehrhardt, who is fast becoming one of the most underrated EU authors in my eyes. More so than the story, however, what really shines about The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot is the wonderfully weird illustrations of Mark Corcoran. His whimsical, exaggerated art style and almost psychedelic watercolors are completely unique in the EU, and do a lot to make this book an absolute must-read.