Transformers: Beast Wars – The Gathering #1 Graham Crackers Comics Nick Roche Variant 2006

Author: Simon Furman
Art: Dan Figueroa
Cover Art: Nick Roche, Patrick Brower

Magmatron narrates a brief summary of the Beast Wars to his troops. He has arrived back in time on prehistoric Earth, sent by his superiors to retrieve Megatron where Ravage failed. However, he has no intention of doing this — his plan is to build an army and take it back to the future. To this end, he's engaged Razorbeast and various others (based on Beast Wars toys who weren't in the show) to assist him in finding crashed statis pods and forcibly programming the protoforms inside as Predacons. The other Maximals and Predacons on the planet are to be kept unawares by chronal displacement, allowing the future Predacons to interact with their environment but not be noticed. We flashback to Cybertron where Magmatron explains this plan, with another flashback that reveals Razorbeast is a Maximal spy. Razorbeast is instructed to send word to Cybertron if he can, or act to try and foil Magmatron if that's not possible.

The first protoforms emerge as Predacons, before a Maximal emerges and squashes Spittor (one of Magmatron's troops.) Razorbeast's plan becomes clear — he's programmed as many pods as he safely could to emerge as Maximals. He flees the Predacon camp and sends out a signal to the newly programmed Maximals... and a second, parallel Beast Wars has begun...