Beast Wars: The Gathering hits the halfway point.

As at least one person commented, the first issue felt like a toy commercial. #2 & #3 solved that problem.
Spoilers follow.

Unlike “Infiltration” which is building a new Transformers universe from the ground up, “The Gathering” relies hardily on the Beast Wars television series. I’d go so far as to saying that you NEED to see all the way up through midway into season 3 to even come close to understanding whats going on. Magmatron’s invasion of Earth is a direct result of Ravage’s failure to capture Megatron.
And thats where things get cooking. After a single issue with no familiar faces unless you count some Japanese imports, They dig up Ravage’s remains and salvage his spark to match up to an unused protoform. Then Magmatron goes after Megatron with much better success.
On the Maximal side, Optimus Primal can see through the haze a tiny bit as Razorbeasts crew go after some Ark tech to fix their transwarp doohickey…

oh I’m talking in circles here to people who either won’t ever understand or already get it. I like Beast Wars. Its really nice to not only get back to some of these characters but also this form of storytelling with extremely high stakes and very limited time and abilty to shift the battle one way or the other. In the same way I complain that DC or Marvel needs to cater to more casual fans with their big books, IDW has has turned Beast Wars into a book only a BW lover could read. Since I fall into that category, I won’t complain.