I don't see anything apart from the G1 Cartoon and movie as the canon to the cartoon. I didn't even know there were transformers comics till the late 90's.

The toy bios maybe cross over into the cartoon a bit.

I don't consider Beast wars to be part of G1 at all. The only reason the third season reveals that they are on earth and they find the ark is because of all the 'fan' feedback they received through the early internet that was pretty much 'Truk not Monkey'. I consider that entire part of the story from season 3 to be a total fan wank. When they started the show Hasbro wanted something completely removed from the then G1/G2 world of transformers. (this comes from the behind the scenes interviews and extras on the DVD's)

I agree that the Dreamwave Transformers were pretty G1 in their execution. whether it's canon or not. meh.

I consider the IDW comics to be an Alternate G1.