Cirex d'Lyrandar

I am risking nothing

I AM SORRY FOLLOWERS, I LOVE MY MOMMY

Will not risk.

Like. Yeah, all the stuff you expect to see is there.

He's got his big ol' gun rack.

What appears to be a rock he uses as a punching bag.

Whetstone for sharpening his knives. All the Real Manly Violence Man stuff you'd think would be there.

But also a pair of nunchaku. Doomguy has never used nunchaku in any of his games. Those are just there because apparently he's the kind of dork who likes to play around with nunchaku and pretend he's doing kung fu.

Also a jump rope. Gotta keep his cardio up for all that running and jumping he has to do.

He reads Guns & Bullets magazine, but he also reads Science Monthly. Which makes sense that he'd be a bit of a techie since....

...he seems to have made his new Praetor Suit by disassembling the old one and rebuilding it to be higher-quality. You can see from the guts of the suit that it's powered armor, and he just... knows how to work that.

He's mad. Not stupid.

He also reads cooking magazines, of course. His only friend is Doom J.A.R.V.I.S.; He's gotta be self-sufficient. Though how he got those pizzas delivered is certainly beyond me.

And, of course, he has a collection of regular books that he likes to read as well. Though his taste in literature reveals a certain trend.

Also, he reads comics.

So many comics.

So, so many comics that he's left discarded comics lying around on his munitions cases. This man is a nerd.

And if you doubt his nerd cred, remember that he even keeps collectible toy displays. Doomguy is explicitly the kind of person who will go out of his way in a firefight with the forces of Hell itself to go snatch up a new toy for his collection.

He even has collectible toy figures hanging out on his computer desk. He put a little hard hat on one of them.

On the other side of his desk, he's got some leftover pizza from the inexplicable delivery service, plus takoyaki flavor chips and some candy. It seems Doomguy is a fruity candy kind of guy, not a chocolate guy. Man after my own heart.

Oh, you know he has shredded every single surface of the Fortress of Doom at some point. How do you think he learned to react so quickly in combat?

That is, of course....

When he's not ROCKING OUT with one of his three separate guitars. I bet the middle one's his favorite. It has a place of honor under the giant demon skull.

Some people might say that a record player and casette tapes are old-fashioned but cut him some slack; He's a Gen X-er.

Of course, there's one thing that any walk through Doomguy's room reveals more than anything else. The one thing that matters more than the world to him. The thing that drives him in his every waking moment.

He loved his bunny rabbit. My favorite thing about the portrait - Well, my favorite thing about it is that it's a piece of fanart that got officially canonized, but aside from that - is that he's wearing his Praetor Suit in it.

That's not something he brought from home. He commissioned an artist to paint that after becoming a Night Sentinel. He still loves his poor, late bunny rabbit.

Even though the Energon Universe is still relatively new, there's still room for expansion by adding other Hasbro IPs to the mix.

Now, at present, Skybound is taking their time; Megatron only got his cannon back a few issues ago, and it took over a year for G.I. Joe to officially come together, let alone start fighting Cobra. And that's before all of the mysteries that still have yet to be answered over in Void Rivals.

Now, I think that the slow burn approach is a good idea. It keeps the setting focused, and builds the foundation for the entire shared universe. Skybound isn't doing what IDW did with Revolution, which was to smash everything together all in the same event, with only a mini-series (Action Man) or a handful of issues from your ongoing (Micronauts & Rom) if you were lucky; oh, and they take two already established, mutually exclusive seres (Transformers and G.I. Joe) and try to force them into the same timeline. No, they are taking their time. For most of the EU so far, Kirkman has gone on record saying that there would be sticking with just Transformers, Void Rivals, and G.I. Joe, and have no more than four series at any one time.

Now, that being said, we've already started to see them lay the groundwork for the introduction of additional Hasbro IPs.

First off, in Void Rivals #17, Springer talks about the years he spent living in the Sacred Ring's northern wastelands to Hot Rod, and by comparison, the short time on Agorria waiting around is a "Prysmosian Wedding."

Now, this could be nothing, but I think this line might be a hint that the Visonaries exist in the Energon Universe, and it's only a matte rof time until they make their appearance.

Here's hoping that, if I'm right, they get a better showing than in IDW, where they didn't exactly make a good first impression on readers; killing fan-favorite Kup and having some of the traditionally heroic Spectral Knights join the villainous Darkling Lords in trying to genocide Cybertron will do that.

What's less in doubt is that, in the G.I. Joe segment of the Energon Universe Special 2025, this guy showed up.

Matt Trakker, codename Spectrum, leader of the MASK Team, from the MASK (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) franchise (which to me always seemed like what would happen if you mixed together Transformers and G.I. Joe).

Of course, there doesn't seem to be a MASK Team yet; just Matt, who's living by himself, is working on something secret, and is seemingly familiar with Cybertronians, given his understated reaction to seeing Hound, and ability to fix him quickly.

His presence means that it's only a matter of time until the rest of the team, and their adversaries, VENOM (Vicions Evil Network of Mayhem) show up. MASK is also a logical addition to the Energon Universe, given the Hasbro tieing it into G.I. Joe over the years, hence why we the readers were introduced to them via Clutch. Also, it would be really easy to tie-in the verse's overall focus on the actual substance of Energon by having it be the energy source for their transforming vehicles and the various mask powers.

Of course, it could be a while; like I said, Skybound is fond of the slow burn.

Perhaps I spoke too soon about the possibility of Rom ever making an appearance. Because the blacked out figure on all of those covers looks blocky enough to be a Spaceknight to me (especially the feet). Plus, the strange mutations bring to mind the shapeshifting Dire Wraiths.