Beast Wars (IDW Publishing)

Beast Wars is a comic book series by IDW Publishing, based upon Hasbro's toy line and the original television series. The series is set in-continuity with the television series, but also uses characters that were made into toys but not featured in the series.

For other uses, see Beast Wars (disambiguation).
Beast Wars
Publication information
PublisherIDW Publishing
Schedulemonthly
FormatLimited series
Publication dateFebruary 2006 onwards
No. of issues4 per miniseries
Main character(s)Maximals, Predacons
Creative team
Written bySimon Furman
Ben Yee (Sourcebook)
Artist(s)Don Figueroa

The first miniseries, The Gathering, was released between February and May 2006. The second miniseries, The Ascending, was a direct sequel and debuted in October 2007.

Background

After Beast Machines finished airing in 2000, there was no official revisiting of the Transformers continuity established by the Beast Wars animated series until after publisher Dreamwave Productions acquired the rights to the Transformers comic franchise from Hasbro. Although the Transformers convention Botcon created several storylines external to the Beast Wars continuity (such as The Wreckers and a continuation of Beast Machines entitled Transformers: Universe) as various comic book miniseries, the canonicity of such stories is disputable. Dreamwave first touched on the Beast Wars series with a prequel in 2003's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye. In 2004, the publisher's Transformers Summer Special featured Ain't No Rat, which was the first officially approved comic story to carry on directly from the events seen in the final Beast Wars cartoon. Dreamwave held a contest to select which Transformers continuity (Beast Wars or Robots in Disguise) would be the next to get its own book, and Beast Wars was the victor, with writers James McDonough and Adam Patyk and artist Don Figueroa as the initially planned creative team for the new series.[1] However, despite several pieces of artwork being released (and according to those involved with the project some impressive pieces remaining unreleased), Dreamwave's bankruptcy caused the end of the series before it began.

The story Dreamwave tried to produce will most likely remain lost, and it wasn't until 2006, when IDW began publishing Beast Wars: The Gathering, that the Beast Wars continuity was again officially revisited.

Publications

Issues

Special issues
  • Beast Wars: Sourcebook #1–4, written by Simon Furman and Ben Yee, October 2007–February 2008

Collections
  • Beast Wars: The Gathering, trade paperback, August 2006
  • Beast Wars: The Gathering Manga, trade paperback, March 2007
  • Beast Wars: The Ascending, trade paperback, February 2008
  • Beast Wars: Sourcebook, trade paperback, May 2008

Future

With the second series, The Ascending, climaxing with Megatron's return to Cybertron, it seems that further Beast Wars stories seem unlikely. However, writer Simon Furman has not ruled out a return, noting that stories could have taken place during Megatron's takeover, before Optimus Primal and the Maximals returned.[2]

On May 2020, IDW's President Chris Ryall and editor-in-chief John Barber announced a new Beast Wars comic book in development.[3]

See also
  • List of Transformers comic book series

References
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-11-13. Retrieved 2007-08-30.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) "Prepare for Beast Wars!" - Press release announcing Dreamwave's Beast Wars series and its creative team.
  2. "Beasts Shot (#4)". 8 January 2008.
  3. "IDW 2020 The Future of Comics Today! Panel - New Beast Wars Series Coming!". TFormers. May 27, 2020. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.