Transformers: Beast Wars Omnibus [Paperback]

Being a massive Beast Wars fan, this was a no brainer as a purchase for me. Superb value for money too! This collects the two Beast Wars limited series put out by IDW, along with the Sourcebooks - more of which later.

First off, lets tackle the comics! Originally planned as part of the Dreamwave line up, the series didn't make it off the ground before the publisher collapsed (the less said about that, the better). Thankfully, IDW seized on the popualrity of Beast Wars and set out to chronicle the further adventures of the Beast Wars.

The Gathering starts off with a nice re-cap of the Beast Wars TV show (well, it has been some years since the show was on air and the UK is still bereft of DVD releases- why Universal, why?) before we are introduced to a whole new cast of Beast-era characters. Not wanting to step on the toes of the TV show (perhaps wisely, as its generally held in such high regard by fans), writer Simon Furman utilises the largely unfamiliar Japanese Beast Wars characters and injects them into the western continuity. The big plus about this is it allows Furman to further expand the established events of the TV show, whilst mixing in the Japanese flourishes (with great care!) to great effect, at least initially.

The story centres around Predacon General Magmatron's attempts to highjack the prehistoric Beast Wars to his own end. Hoping to gather the Axalon's scattered statsis pods,reformat the occupants into Predacons and build his own private army to overthrow the Maximals. He is betrayed by the deep cover Maximal agent Razorbeast who only allows half the abandoned Stasis pods to be reformatted as Predacons, rounding up the other Maximals himself (hence the series title!). From there, its a solid, entertaining and suspenseful read as Razorbeast and his often wary new allies try to prevent Magmatron suceeding in his goals. The art by Don Figueroa is particularly good, his style lending itself better to the more organic forms of these future Transformers than their modern day counterparts. The colouring is also of a very high standard for IDW, showing that all concerned have put a lot of effort into the series. The only downsides really is the huge cast involved, which means many characters are fairly broadly written and lack any real personality. Only Magmatron's core 'away team' and Razorbeast manage to forge sucessful identities of their own. Putting on my anoraky fanboy hat for a minute, there's also some nitpicking to be had in the appearance of Transmetal, Fuzor and Transmetal II non-TV show characters - evolutionary leaps that required specific macguffins featured in the TV series to come about. Its the only thing that doesn't sit right, but casual readers probably wont care overmuch. In fairness, The Sourcebooks do go some way in retroactively explaining these charcters but it does feel like the idea was hit upon with a slight lapse of concentration. Overall, a great start but perhaps a smaller cast would have sufficed.

Next up is the second (and sadly final) Mini-Series: The Ascending. This second tale is a brave attempt to fuse elements of the Japanese Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo cartoons. In this, its only partially successful. The ideas are sound, but the execution is a little flawed. I will confess, I am utterly unfamilar with the Japanese take on Beast Wars. So things like Angolmois and Unicron's heralds don't come across very strongly to me. Furman does his best to give concise expository dialogue to those unfamilar with these concepts, but I feel that more could have been made of them. There's a lot of great ideas bubbling away here, but they are not brought to full fruition. Perhaps we needed an additional 'back on Cybertron' series to expand these themes. Furthermore, the central villain of the piece is Unicron. I have nothing against Unicron, but this decade has spewed forth a number of core Transformers franchises with Unicron as the big lurking threat. Having him show up again here feels at best repetitive and at worst lazy. Again, this is due mainly to the characters' overuse in other TF works, but I'm just sick of the sight of him. I'm just wanting something new to threaten the world of the TFs, rather than relying on trusty standbys.

The other problem with this series is that it repeats the trick of the first - having agents in the field to delay and/or hamper efforts to return to Cybertron. It would seem that these new Beast Wars are doomed to shadow the events of the TV show originals! The lack of interaction with the TV cast also seems odd at this stage as Lio Convoy sets off to rescue those Maximals recently reactivated on prehistoric Earth. Again, the large cast aren't really developed and further new characters are introduced leading to a very busy series. The four issue series doesn't really support such a character heavy scenario very well. The main plot points are generally well realised, although the conclusion feels rushed and unsatisfying. The final panel perhaps also points to IDW feeling 'done' with Beast Wars by pretty much putting us straight into the starting point of the Beast Machines TV show. The series isn't helped by Don Figueroa abandonning ship halfway through having tired of drawing Transformers. His replacement Guido Guidi does a creditable fill in job, but his work here is nowhere near as strong as it is on All Hail Megatron. The colouring is also a little murky. Overall, I'd say this falls prey to 'difficult second album' syndrome.

Finally, we have the Sourcebooks. Essentially a series of charcater profiles in the format of the Marvel Universe handbooks which expand and add new touches to the original toy tech specs. In the case of the TV show cast, this means a complete re-write with new mottos and bios to have them match up with their onscreen personas (many of the original toys had differing specs as the toyline was initially concieved as a direct continuation of the 1980s series). As I breifly mentioned before, the Japanese concepts are worked in to reasonable effect. Writers Benson Yee and Simon Furman have perhaps slightly over egged the pudding with some explanations. Again, this larely effects the TV cast. Toys were frequently issued of given characters that did not appear in the TV show (e.g. Bat Primal, Croc Megatron and Rhinox' Transmetal form) and the reasons for these are a bit hackneyed and don't make for convincing reading. Likewise, some of the associated Japanese concepts (Maximals with Insect alt modes) lack clear explanation. Largely, the profiles are well written and give you a good,soild understanding of the characters and their abilities/ motivations which is to be applauded. By and large, the artwork is good, but varies wildly with so many artists being involved, some of whom struggle with the more organic nature of these Transformers. Matt Frank's work in particular is quite blocky and not really suited to these robots in disguise. Nick Roche's entries are also a bit hit and miss, which is a shame as he's proved himself to be a versatile artist elsewhere. There's also the addition of a glossary in this collected version of the Sourcebook which fleshes out a lot of the various elements that are mentioned and/or hinted at in the TV show and preceding comics in this volume. That this has been included is perhaps telling that a majority of readers (like myself) felt they were missing out on something. The other great improvement of this collected edition is that it adds in artwork missed out from the individual sourceboooks, corrects a large number of colouring errors and corrects spelling mistakes and other quality control problems that plagued the original releases.

In conclusion, this is a worthy addition to the Beast Wars cannon. Sure, its flawed, but those things only add to the charm and fuel the imagination. Should IDW chose to revive Beast Wars, I would certainly pick it up again - but on the proviso that they go to six issues so the characters and concepts can be properly fleshed out. Because of the nature of the comics, I can't recommend this to new readers as some degree of Beast Wars knowledge is required to get the best out of the series. One for the faithful converted only then, and for that I am giving it three stars. Its good, but its not great.