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"Dawn of Future's Past"
Publisher	Fun Publications
First published	September 28, 2006 (BotCon 2006) November 22, 2006 (retail ed.)
Cover date	Fall '06
Story	Pete Sinclair
Story consultants	Bob Forward and Benson Yee
Writers	Forest Lee, Pete Sinclair
Pencils	Dan Khanna, Alex Milne, and Marcelo Matere
Inks	Jake Isenberg and Terry Pallot
Color	Drew Eiden, Josh Perez, and Thomas Deer
Letters	Junemoon Studio
Continuity	Beast Wars cartoon (included in the 3H/Fun Pub Beast Wars continuity, the IDW Beast Wars continuity, and the Wings Universe)

A rogue Predacon steals a Maximal relic, and a group of Maximal explorers must pursue him.

Synopsis

Two Maximals, Unit 1 and Unit 2, are in pursuit of several Predacon criminals. Asking for details from the Maximal Defense Command Center, Unit 2 is informed that the intruder's most likely objective is to steal the Golden Disk; what exactly the Golden Disk is remains need-to-know information. The two are ordered to bring the criminals back alive; Unit 1 objects, but is suddenly blasted, knocking out his transformation cog. Unit 2 transforms into robot mode, checking up on his partner, before taking off after the Predacons.

Nearby, Megatron holds the Golden Disk with anticipation, and orders for his crew to withdraw. His lieutenant, who has been blasting at the pursuing Maximals with his eye beams, objects, feeling there is no honor in what he perceives as cowardice. Megatron grabs him and raises him to his eye level, telling him to never use the word "Honor" again. Letting go, his lieutenant asks what he plans to do, but Megatron pushes him along, not having the time to explain his plan in detail. Meanwhile, in a chamber beneath Cybertropolis, a mysterious benefactor, pleased with Megatron's results, calls in two of his agents, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. He informs them he has procured a ship for Megatron's crew, and that they are to ensure he reaches his destination, without being noticed by any Maximals.

Back on the surface, Megatron radios the rest of his crew, telling them to hurry with their ship, and as one of the troops radios back, the massive warship they have stolen, now called the Darksyde, brings them on board. Arriving too late to stop them from taking off, Unit 2 is authorized to commandeer a ship to chase them. Driving up to the Chromia 10, it's pilot is resistant at first, but when she's informed that he needs it for a chase, she allows him on board, telling him to get ready for a ride.

At the Maximal Defense Command Center, a status report is being compiled. The Tripredacus Council denies any involvement, and have been trying to capture him themselves for some time, which for once, seems to be the truth. The ship Megatron and his crew have stolen is equipped with a transwarp drive, and the only ship available with a transwarp drive and able to track them is the Axalon. The ship is currently being loaded up by its crew on a space station, one of whom is upset with the constant monotony of their mission, while Optimus Primal tends to one last piece of very special cargo. While Laserbeak and Buzzsaw inform their commander that they are in position, the Axalon leaves the space station.

Primal informs his crew that the Maximal High Council contacted them to rid themselves of their special cargo on a barren moon in the Alpha Quadrant before returning to their mission. The unhappy crew member objects even more, but before Primal can explain the cargo's significance, another crew member informs Optimus that they have an incoming audio-only transmission from Maximal Command. Bringing it up, Command informs them that they are assigned to intercept the Darksyde and retrieve the Golden Disk, and that this takes priority even over their mission to the Alpha Quadrant. But before they can, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw begin an assault on the Maximal ship, knocking out their engines, locking their energon flow system, and causing their shields to lose power.

Before the two former Decepticons can complete their attack, however, the Chromia 10 swoops in, attacking the two Predacons while the Axalon’s crew attempt to get its engines back on. The two Predacons start inflicting heavy damage on the Chromia 10, breaching its hull. But before they can finish it off, the engines of the Axalon come back online, and the Maximal ship blasts the two Predacon birds into oblivion. Chromia 10’s crew's signals are very faint, and with no time to get them out before their reactor explodes, the ship's Science Officer's only suggestion is to perform a remote spark core transfer to some of the blank protoforms in the cargo hold, a process which may cause them to lose much of their core mainframe, which Primal, unable to see any other option, orders him to do.

Half a mega cycle later, on board the Darksyde, a plant by the Tripredacus Council informs his superior that his analysis of the Golden Disk has revealed some interesting properties. Promising to transmit more data later, he ends his communication as Megatron messages him for their coordinates, and to bring the Golden Disk back up with him. As Megatron removes his armor, another member of his crew informs him of the Axalon’s approach. Megatron orders his lieutenant to prepare for the transwarp jump, knocking him back when he objects, and orders for his crew to hail the Maximal ship. Back aboard the ship, Primal responds to Megatron's message, who informs him he is now leader of the Predacons. Primal informs Megatron that he is to surrender the Golden Disk, but the Predacon has his lieutenant fire upon them, and the transwarp portal opens to the Predacon's destination. The Maximals, still alive, quickly follows through, and the portal closes behind them, the two ships heading for destinations.

Many stellar cycles later, Megatron's secret benefactor, Divebomb, now reformatted to a technorganic form, informs his commander that the Golden Disk was destroyed in the Beast Wars, and that Megatron died in the Battle for the Sparks. With him gone, the true leader of the Predacons can now return... as Razorclaw, revived in a technorganic form, announces the Maximals will tremble before him!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• Characters mentioned but not seen in the comic: the Maximal High Council, the Tripredacus Council, and the Maximal Elders.
• Characters mentioned in Optimus Primal's bio: Optimus Prime.
• Characters mentioned in Megatron's bio: Megatron.
  • Of note, both Primal and Megatron are noted to have been online in the end days of the Great War.
• Cheetor's mini-profile notes he was a cadet in the Maximal Command Security Force, explaining his shared body type with them.
• This comic was based on a story concept originally pitched to Dreamwave Productions. The concept was for a three-volume maxi-series spanning the 300-year time gap between the G1 Era and the Beast Era, with six issues per volume making a total of 18 issues. The idea was pitched again to Fun Publications, but proved too ambitious for them at the time and was ultimately trimmed down to this single issue that was largely based on what would have been "Volume 3: Issue 6", the final chapter of the original 18-issue proposal.^[1]

Continuity notes

• Most of the comic takes place before the first episode of the Beast Wars cartoon. The epilogue, meanwhile, takes place some time after the Beast Machines cartoon. This scene was said by Pete Sinclair to take place 50–100 years after Beast Machines.
• The universal placement of this comic has a somewhat... complicated history. In the plainest terms, it is meant to be seen as the definitive prequel to the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons, which would make it, theoretically, occupy every universe that the cartoons are in. However, this was not always the case:
  • When first published, it was initially believed to simply be a part of the same existing Beast Wars expanded universe of BotCons past created by 3H Productions. Further evidence for this came to light when Fun Publications' 2007 prose story "Wreckers: Finale Part II" (which was written as a part of the 3H Beast Era) made explicit references to both this story and "Theft of the Golden Disk", a short animation also released in 2007 that was produced as an immediate prequel to "Dawn of Future's Past".
  • Statements by writer Pete Sinclair declared the previous year's BotCon comic, "Descent into Evil", to not take place in the same universe as this comic, despite that comic's events foreshadowing to certain aspects of the Beast Wars cartoon. This was done to make "Dawn of Future's Past" a fresh start not bogged down by anything that could have potentially interfered with the Beast Wars backstory conceived by the cartoon's original creators.^[2] However, "Descent" doesn't actually interfere with anything in "Dawn", so the original point was kinda moot from the beginning.
  • When "Theft of the Golden Disk" was released a year later, it was accompanied by online profiles for five of its characters. One profile in particular—Cryotek's—referred to the "Descent" character Deathsaurus as an associate of Cryotek's, suggesting a connection between the two stories. That same year, an online prose story titled "The Razor's Edge" was produced with the intent of bridging the gap between "Descent" and "Dawn",^[3][4] using characters from both stories in the same setting. However, the ill reception of that story quickly led to Fun Publications sweeping it under the rug and just never referencing it again,^[5] leaving its bridging intent lost on many.
  • In 2014, it was decided to fold "Dawn of Future's Past" into Fun Pub's then-relevant Wings Universe, but only "Dawn" since the other related media from 2005 to 2007 did not fit into the Wings Universe's continuity. At BotCon 2016, a printed version of the Wings comic "A Common Foe" featured a timeline of Wings comics on its back cover, in which "Dawn" was included.
  • Also at BotCon 2016, IDW Publishing produced that year's convention comic, "Dawn of the Predacus", with the intention of it taking place in IDW's own Beast Wars continuity from 2006–2008. At the convention, Pete Sinclair and writer John-Paul Bove declared "Dawn of Future's Past" to also be part of this IDW Beast Wars, with "Dawn of the Predacus" even featuring Optimus Primal, Rattrap, Rhinox, and Waspinator in the same toy-based bodies that they had in the 2006 comic to further tie the two together. Thus, "Dawn of Future's Past" had basically (and exhaustingly) been placed into at least three different Beast Wars continuities between 3H, IDW, and the Wings Universe, in spite of Sinclair's original desire to keep it standalone.
• Protoform X's stasis pod (distinguished by the red window with a yellow "X" on it) is seen being loaded up; "Bad Spark" established that part of the Axalon crew's mission was to dump it somewhere remote, a fact that only Primal and Rhinox knew.

Transformers references

• Rattrap calls Rhinox a "rhinoceros," mirroring how he called Rhinox a "bulldozer" in "Beast Wars (Part 1)" .
• Scorponok's pre-beast robot mode takes cues from Energon Scorponok.
• Waspinator wanted to call the Darksyde Buzzer-Bot, after the Playskool Go-Bots character based on him.
• The Chromia 10's name comes from Airazor's Japanese ID number, C-10.
• Primal's finishes his transmission with the Maximal Council by saying "wish us luck"; Laserbeak, having listened in on the conversation, notes he's heard that before, in reference to Optimus Prime's line about "a little energon and a lot of luck" in The Transformers: The Movie.
• The device used by Tarantulas to examine the Golden Disk is based off the border of the Golden Disk Keys packed with the Cybertron mold-toys from this year's toys.
• The Timelines Megatron toy is a redeco/retool of Cybertron Red Alert, but here it is revealed that that body is actually a suit of armor, accounting for why the BotCon toy looks different from the pre-beast Megatron seen in "Beast Wars (Part 1)", which used a model from Mainframe Entertainment's other cartoon, ReBoot, with Megatron's head. Following this precedent, Rattrap's helmet can come off to show his brain-like top of his head underneath, matching his silhouetted model as seen in the opening.
• Razorclaw's new technorganic body is based on the Cybertron Leobreaker toy with a new head; this design would become a toy for BotCon 2009. He also sports a new Predacon symbol. Divebomb and the rest, meanwhile, all have new technorganic versions of their original designs.
• The Maximal Command Security Force are all based on the Cybertron Clocker body type, while having various modifications to their heads and color schemes that provide a variety of homages. Specifically:
  • 9K, of course, is based on Beast Wars K-9, and uses the axe of Energon Strongarm.
  • Getout's color scheme is based on Generation 2 Skram.
  • High Beam's head is based on his Generation 2 toy's head.
  • Overshoot uses the Machine Wars Skywarp/Thundercracker body-type head, and his color scheme is loosely based on Armada Wheeljack.
  • Shatterpoint uses Energon Shockblast's head, and his color scheme is based on Generation 2 Drench.
  • Stopgap uses the Machine Wars Skywarp/Thundercracker head, and his color scheme is based on Beast Wars II Diver.
  • Switchblade uses Armada Cyclonus's head, and his color scheme is based on Beast Wars II Ikard.

Real-world references

• The title of this comic stems from the 1981 X-Men storyline "Days of Future Past".
• The Axalon is to dump Protoform X in the Alpha Quadrant, the sector of space where Earth is located in the Star Trek universe.

Errors

The spellchecker was already "excecuted" by this point.

• When Megatron orders Waspinator to execute the transwarp jump, "execute" is misspelled "excecute". This was later fixed in the 2011 rerelease.

Other trivia

• The mass-retail release of this comic featured several pages of bonus material: some sketches by Marcelo Matere, and profiles for Optimus, Megatron, Cheetor, and the Maximal Command Security Force.
• The comic was re-released in 2011 as part of the Shout! Factory Beast Wars online exclusive complete series box set. The comic itself measures a measly 4.75" x 7.125" (12.065 x 18.098 cm).
• Writer Pete Sinclair claimed that the Rampage, Tantrum, and Headstrong appearing in the story are actually descendants of the originals, who died in the Great War. This never factored into any fictional appearances, however.

Covers

• BotCon Edition: The Maximals have Megatron surrounded; by Makoto Ono.
• Diamond Edition: Pre-beast mode Maximals versus Predacons; art by Joe Ng.
• Shout! Factory DVD Edition: Same as the BotCon Edition.

References