The Gathering

"I vill break you..."

Transformers, Beast Wars: The Gathering is a comic miniseries published in 2006 by IDW Publishing featuring characters from Beast Wars. It is the first major comic to feature Beast Wars characters. It was followed by The Ascending.

Transformers, Beast Wars: The Gathering issues:
#1 | #2 | #3 | #4

Overview

Predacon general Magmatron travels back to the era of the Beast Wars on prehistoric Earth. He's supposed to pick up where Ravage failed and retrieve the rogue Megatron, but his actual plan is to gather an army from the Axalon's stasis pods and return home to conquer Cybertron. However, Lio Convoy has inserted Razorbeast into the Predacon forces to stop him. Razorbeast manages to keep some of the awakened protoforms as Maximals and then stalls for time and tries to contact Cybertron. Finally, the new Maximals arrive in the nick of time and defeat the Predacon forces. Magmatron is trapped in a timeless void, while Razorbeast and all the other characters settle down in the past to wait and see if Cybertron got their call and will send help.

Errors

• The cartoon suggests that most of the stasis pods were either damaged or destroyed, so their undamaged status is something of a minor retcon.
• The writers of the series, in explaining Depth Charge as a Transmetal, said the Earth's atmosphere was permanently charged by the Planet Buster explosion, causing the process. In light of this (and even regardless of it) how the pods spew forth "standard", Transmetal and Transmetal 2 Transformers is a mystery.
• K-9 and Noctorro are featured, even though Alsatians and brahmin bulls wouldn't exist for another few million years.

Items of note

• The story for this series was a significant revamp of the scripts which Furman previously submitted to Dreamwave Productions for what was to be titled Shell Game. Selected artwork that Figueroa submitted for these original scripts was reused in the rewritten issues. Originally the plot was to tie into "Ain't No Rat".
• This series takes place during the third season of the Beast Wars cartoon and disregards the finished and unfinished 3H Productions' Botcon/OTFCC comics. Both comics play around with this era and the non-show Beast Wars characters.
• Razorbeast's decision not to fool with the timestream by eliminating Megatron is questionable at best, since Megatron was originally from his era and was himself interfering with time. However, it might be argued that any changes that Megatron was going to make in the past were already (from Razorbeast's perspective) part of history, so when Razorbeast went back, stopping Megatron then could theoretically have affected the specific future from which Razorbeast came. (Neither Ravage nor Depth Charge, who both traveled back in time shortly before Razorbeast did so, seemed to be concerned about this.) Yeah, time travel gives us a headache too.
• The control art for the robot mode of the 6" Titanium Series Optimal Optimus can be found among Don Figueroa's concept work in the back of the collected volume.
• The Gathering and The Ascending both feature numerous characters who were previously exclusive to Japan, including Halfshell, Magmatron and both Big Convoy and Lio Convoy.

Creative team

The Gathering was penned by Simon Furman and penciled by Don Figueroa, the same team that was due to produce the stillborn Beast Wars series for Dreamwave Productions.

Collections

The gang gets ready to retake the comic that is rightfully theirs.

• The Gathering TPB (Aug 2006) ISBN 978-1600100062
• The Gathering Manga (Dec 2006) ISBN 978-1600100253