Released Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007.

Not fully read it yet, but while skimming through it in the store while waiting to buy it, I noticed one thing.

Blackarachnia sure is......orange.

As is BB.

I guess orange is the new black!

Yeah what's up with that? I thought I knew my TF's pretty well, but there's definitely some stuff in here I've never seen.
Have only read a few entries so far and it's good, but some things are a bit odd. Just kinda weird seeing Apache and then B'boom a few pages later looking pretty much the same. Is the only difference between the toys a slight shade of blue?

The art is good, but I find it to not be as impressive as the DW G1 profile books tbh. Some pics seem too small while others seem overly large. I feel they could have added a bit more text here and there as well.

I like profile books though, so I'll continue buying these.

I gave it a once-over, only reading the bios. I'll go back more thoroughly later.

Pretty good so far and basically everything I was expecting...save for some of the very "liberal" liscenses taken with a few color schemes (why is BB orange?).

I noticed that they nicked my motto for Autocrusher/crasher that I wrote for his BWII Universe profile. Guess the IDW guys read those things. Which is kind of embarassing, considering how awful most of those profiles are (I wrote them way back when I was in high school). Oy. If I could delete those things off the face of the interweb I probably would.

Okay, the lack of alternate art for alternate forms of characters was hurting.

Why show TM2 Cybershark for robot mode and regular non-TM hammerhead shark for his beast mode?

AND WHY WAS BB COLORED LIKE SUNSTORM???

Seriously, that and the Blackarachnia thing were errors that should not have happened.

Yeah, I'm not really a fan of how they tried to cram all of the forms for each character into the one entry. They really should have at least extended the number of pages for those with Transmetal and Transmetal 2 forms.

What in the name of crap is up with the coloring on Dinobot?

Reading all the way through Antagony's bio...

"Weaknesses: Other than her arrogant sense of self worth and place in the grand scheme of things..."

Sounds like a certain psychotic fangirl we all know of, hm?

Ok, can someone explain BA's first vok transmetal body? That made me go "HUH?" when I read it.

McDonalds.

i like how many people they're including in these books. but if they can remake antagony, then why not catacyslm? i know he never had a character, but that'll be 2 people from that storyline being brought into the beast wars world (at least) and he gets shafted. the color problems really bothered me, too, especially the aforemention orange bots and dinobot having the 10th anniversary colors

i also want to know where they're going with the airazor bio! are we gonna see primevil dawn finished or are they gonna re-imagine that whole thing as a tie in to the current beast wars comic storyline

Wait wait wait.

Let me see if I got this straight.

They left B'Boom and Apache, two characters who share a bodyform and coloration and AN ISSUE OF THE BOOK... they left those two the same visually(when there IS an official alternate color scheme available for Apache)...

But BB... who does NOT have any body double in the BW series AT ALL...

Him... they gave a new completely made-up color scheme.

What the sweaty hell?


M "No, Really. What In The -ing Hell Were They THINKING?!" Sipher

Most of the profiles are really no better than the tech specs that came with the toys. Also, Dinobot's art is crap. You can't convince me that was the best piece anyone could come up with. And speaking of Dinobot, why do established characters like him and Depth Charge get single pages while Archadis and Corahda get two page spreads?

Yeah man, it's weird, but don't have an aneurysm over it. It's just a comic.

Anyway, I picked this up today and while I haven't read very much of it, I have looked over all the art and I can't say I'm as impressed as I'd hoped to be. With artists like Don, Su, and Roche on staff, you think they could have gotten some better character art. A lot of it was as good or slightly below the quality of art found in DW's MTMTE profiles, which I thought was disappointing. And unfortunately, most fo the characters don't seem that appealing in the first place, so I'm not terribly inclined to jump right in and blitz through the whole thing.

Yeah, this one was a real let-down. I want my money back.

How kosher would it be to scan an example of this made up color scheme nonsense?

Few (preferably small) images used for critical purposes falls under fair use.

erm wow, well i can assure you guys that manterror and mantis dont look the same and that anyone i coloured (especially show characters) are accurate, (with show characters being show accurate) i dare someone to say inferno isnt accurate.. spent like an hour getting as many screen caps of him as i could to make it perfect

I for one like having a source book.

Especially one that has the Autorollers and BW2 Dirge in it



Oh and its a nice high quality printing that is nice to hold.


I'll gladly buy the next volumes.

i had a quick look thru it and think ill just wait for the trade...

and does anyone know if they are gonna do profile books like that for the other continuities?

Dangit, Simon and/or Ben.

It's "She stoops to conquer", not "She swoops to conquer." You killed Airazor's terrible obscure pun.

Wow, from the sounds of things I might not bother picking this up at all, what a shame.

I wasn't gonna be the first to say that, but now that it's out there.... yeah, weak.

Antagony isn't really a herald of Shokaract, but instead is a Vok experiment like the flying island, designed to test Cybertronians? That's... wrong.

I love the Bigmos art, and the profiles for Coelagon and Bonecrusher. However, I think really important characters like Dinobot got the short-shrift. And since everybody's beast mode pics are so small and there's usually so much empty space on the pages, it would have been nice to see all those undepicted modes side-by-side, i.e. TM2 Cheetor.

I have to say, the presentation on this is really nice. The cover and page stock is excellent. And I really like the artwork as well. I agree that some of the pictures were way too small, and the coloring and mode inconsistencies were distracting.

What got me the most were the massive amounts of empty space on each page. What a waste. Like Thy said, it would have been nice to see more art in that space.

very true.

though on a plus note i can say that at least 50% of the show characters will definatly be show accurate... cause i did them

as long as inferno doesn't look like antagony, i think we'll be ok

They reimagined her (and I'm assuming Shokaract, Fractyl, Packrat, Vice Grip, Sandstorm, Windrazor) for the purposes of The Ascending. Yeah, it's wrong and retcons her established bio and history, but what can you do? It can always be passed off as their IDWverse-Antagony-type character.

I thought the bios were skimpy. Let's see if they use more of the established Universe profiles that were done for the other convention characters. It'll be a hoot to see how (or if) they address The Covenant.

Glen

I meant "wrong" in the sense of the Vok. Antagony had no effect on the BW show continuity, so IDW could create an analogous character with somewhat different background just as they have done for many others; G1 Galvatron comes to mind. But since the Vok's actions existed in the BW cartoon canon, there's only so much that the new writing team can do--and they'll be constrained, as with so much else in these stories, by the need to not have it actually have any impact on the in-show events. Leading to something overly complicated and tripping over itself in an effort to tie up every loose end while not actually making a difference. After both "Dawn of Futures Past" and "The Gathering," I just can't envision any other result.



Since the book already has not included Ariex, Capricon, or Cataclysm, I'm expecting it to omit all non-toy characters. On a similar note, I hope for Transmutate.

Ben Yee confirmed no Covenant- only characters with toy equivalents.

Looking over Airazor's bio: "although her Cybertonian memories remain intact."

Does that mean she remembers being the pilot of the Chromia-10?

that's obviously what they're eluding to

Wow...from the looks of things it seems this was not worth the wait. While I was waiting and waiting for this to come out and looking to get this weekend, I might keep my money and get the trade next summer.


Dark Destroyer

Funny that she never mentioned any of her memories. "Hey Tigatron, remember when I was a pilot and you were a cop and we both got blown up?"

The Dawn of Future's Past retcon worked better with amnesia, I think.

i'll agree with that. just seemed strange that they never mentioned being on cybertron, but now airazor remembers it

Sunstreaker as a Headmaster...can you imagine what that'll do to his ego?


SP

I think you're in the wrong thread.

Despite myself, I must admit I'm marginally pleased with the BWII and BW Neo folks showing up. HOWEVER, I'm with some of the others on what the frag is with the coloring on some of them, BB as the best example. Questions raised on Apache and B'Boom as well. The name game, I'm wondering, such as Lio Junior (not to mention his bio).

here are some of ben yee's thoughts since he helped put this together. he's equally outraged with the bb miscolor
http://www.bwtf.com/cbreviews/idw/bwsourcebook1/

b'boom and apache are somewhat different, dirent face colour missile colours fur shades and chest detial

Not just that, but the styles gives the face mask a slightly different shape too.

My biologist heart is breaking:



Going back to the "pun" that Swift and I commented on earlier in the thread:

Airazor is a peregrine falcon.
The hunting dive of a peregrine falcon is called a "stoop."
Airazor said "She stoops to conquer!" right before diving at her target.
It is more appropriate in context of her beast form than "swoop," since anything with wings can swoop but only a bird of prey can stoop, and the term seems to be most closely associate with peregrines. And so her original motto would have contained references both to her beast mode and a somewhat famous literary work.

I'll try bringing it to Ben's attention, maybe it can be changed for the TPB.

to be fair, i doubt many people, including ben, knew that.

I might wait for the trade so I can get everything in one book...

Yep, I already have the trade pre-ordered; I'm eager to read this, but I think I'll wait in this case for the big book, in the hopes some of these little errors are fixed. (And to save money. ^ ^) Usually, though, I buy the IDW issues separately, and then buy the trade; it's handy, I have copies to lend, in that case.

Looking forward to it, though; most of the original bios consisted of "Beware the savage_________ who is awesome and hated by all who know him. And can pop a wheelie. (Seriously, Rhinox?)"

Hmm, I was already to go buy this tonight, but after reading Ben's review I think I'll wait for the trade.

Hopefully get more artwork and some fixed colors.


Any idea when it's out?

I doubt many people know much about anthropoids or gamma waves or anti-matter or the Boer War. Doesn't mean people should just cut it out of official retrospective works without asking or looking into it.

I think that the worst thing about this book is that it fails in every way to make me want to track down or pick up any of the toys depicted. When More Than Meets The Eye came out, I picked up half a dozen G1s off eBay and fiddled with some toys I hadn't touched in years. Here, I mostly find myself simply.. not caring. Even the Show characters get soulless, overly-simplified bios.

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed. The bios are pretty short and don't really give me a good idea of the character (not always), there's tons of empty space on the page, the pictures are small, the layout bothers me, some choices are just weird (what's up with Cybershark's pictures?), plus the color errors. How could nobody have noticed BB?