Sunday (minor) events

With Saturday being the big, main day, Sunday is a bit of a winding down day, only being about two-thirds as long, and two-thirds as many panels.

10am - Script reading
11am - Activision (posted in the news section)
noon - Simon Furman (below)
1pm - Jagex TFU MMOG (posted in the news section)
2pm - Costuming (I didn't stick around for it, as it seems to be a regular feature now)
3.30pm - Close

Simon Furman Panel
I missed the first 5 minutes, as I had to send some PMs to people before the end of the convention, and the panel room was out of range of the Wifi that covers the rooms.
When I did get there, he was showing slides of the unpublished Dreamwave comics - Beast Wars, Energon, War Within. I will post up the pics I got as soon as I upload them.
BW #1 - Story to follow the Summer Special. First issue was mostly a recap of the cartoon, then back to the dream sequence of the Summer Special, and then the end of the 3rd Season... showing Megatron breaking free, forcing the shuttle to crash back to Earth (remember - Beast Machines doesn't follow on directly from BW, so they could do just about anything between the two series in an ongoing comic)
Energon #31 - was apparently printed, but never made it out of where-ever it was printed/stored. The issue featured a flash-forward by Over-Run, talking about it to the Autobot Traitor, who is revealed to be a member of the High Council. Alpha Quintesson is also shown to be running his own agenda, while on Unicron's leash.
#32 & #33 Covers shown. Ghost Starscream eventually gains his solid state over several issues.
War Within V3 #4 - was fully coloured and lettered, ready for printing. He showed us some pages, including Quintessa (where most of this issue was centered). Also showed us a couple new Seekers - Atomic Pile & Critical Mass.

Regeneration One
He's excited that the "team" is back together.
First up, he talked about how he was originally pulled into the UK Transformers comic. Then he talked about his time with the comic, highlighting some pivotal events/issues - Target 2006 (their own universe, as they couldn't mess with the present day too much), #150 Origin Story (something that wouldn't be easy to get approval for today, but at the time, no one at Hasbro said no), #56 (taking over from Budiansky, who was tired of writing Transformers and only thought the series would last a few more issues anyway), #68 (Furman wanted Wildman to start with this issue but the editor wanted someone else to draw the Neo-Knights issue), #75 (Wildman was meant to draw it, but couldn't fit it in his schedule), #80 (had to wrap up as much as possible in a couple issues, as the quest for the Last Autobot was to be lengthy, and Optimus wasn't planned for resurrection for quite a while).
The new RG1 comic will use some Gen2 elements, but not others (no Liege Maximo or Swarm), so it's a bit like a new Gen2.
Plot elements that Furman wants to wrap up this time:
- Action Masters/Nuecleon
- The underworld creatures from #76
- Ultra Magnus
- Wreckers (different line-up to Gen1 Wreckers, but will be featured from #81)
- Ark crashing on Earth and its passengers (Shockwave, Starscream, Megatron, Ratchet, etc).
- Megatron/Ratchet symbiotic situation (to be a big element of the first story ark of RG1).

No Marvel characters (like Circuit Breaker) will be used. A new human called Circuit Smasher will be introduced, who is similar to CB, but is not related to Circuit Breaker.

Furman was initially planning a 4-6 issue mini-series for RG1, but was then offered 20 issues, to bring it up to #100. It is written to absolutely END at #100, with no intention or allowance for it to become an ongoing series after that.
(on a side-note, the day before* I asked the IDW senior editor Jon Barber if the series could become an ongoing if it ended up being really successful - and he said it wouldn't be something they'd say no to, but would have to be a real hit for that to happen)

The First story arc - Loose Ends Parts 1-5
Second story arc - Natural Selection

Someone asked about the "First 13" concept that Hasbro have made the founding concept of their current Aligned (Prime/WFC/etc) Universe, noting that it was mentioned in Furman's Ultimate Guide a few years beforehand. Furman mentioned that he'd forgotten that he threw that in there, but did confirm that that is where Aaron Archer got the idea from, and expanded on it to be current Canon in the History of Cybertron.

(*I also asked Jon Barber about why we haven't seen anything more from the Movie Universe from IDW, like we did after the first two movies - he said that they are currently focusing on the MTMTE, RID & RG1 comics, so won't be looking into doing any more Movie comics until closer to the 4th one. We also had an "off-the-record" talk about the challenges of making sense of Bay's TF3 in comic form and having to explain a lot of plot & character elements with his (Barber's) prequel comics, to such an extent, that he made watching the movie a lot easier)


The Fan-choice winners at future Hall of Fame awards, will now been named "the Hartman Award", in honour of the founding brothers of BotCon back in 1994.

A couple of the Film Fest entries have been uploaded to youtube, by the guy who won 2nd & 3rd places. These two are really funny, especially the "green energy" video. First place went to one that had a 2yo kid being indoctrinated into Transformers.

This was in the dealer room - a collection of just about every Minicon/Micron released. I saw them setting it up Saturday Morning, but forgot to go back after they were finished, as it was off to one corner of the room.

Another gallery from the Custom Class, with more pics of the completed figure.

And for those who knew about the Peter Cullen/Optimus charity t-shirt from a couple months ago, the artist who organised it, managed to meet up with Peter Cullen at BotCon.