Transformation 322: Not the End.

12/7/2018

This week, it's the grand conclusion to the whole series that turned out not to be the grand conclusion. It's Unicron Vs. Prime, Light Vs. Dark and Circuit Breaker Vs My Nerves.

All in my look at On the Edge of Extinction Part 4!

17 Comments

Stuart

14/7/2018 05:10:34 pm

Just a test as I've had one person say their comment didn't post...

Tigerbread

14/7/2018 05:57:19 pm

It's telling of how good a 'bot that Optimus Prime is, that he killed Unicron quite thoroughly, with no chance for revival in this universe While Rodimus Prime botched the job. The berk.

John D. link

15/7/2018 09:35:15 am

Stunning work from Geoff Senior. I wonder how long he worked on it. Did he do the inks as well? Some of the concepts James Roberts has introduced are wonderful but he couldn’t have done it without Simon Furman’s magnificent work here. I think there could have been an issue or 2 in discussing Unicron tactics with the guys on Cybertron as there’s no sense of the residents apart from Xaaron, but maybe they had to rush the plot.
I never liked Death’s Head. I didn’t like how a non-Transformer could be more powerful than most Transformers. He is an interesting character but his personality could have been given to an existing toy.
The “next issue” box is spoiler-tastic!

Tigerbread

15/7/2018 02:02:04 pm

I've always been a bit biased about Transformer power levels myself. Cybertronians should always be tougher than the average giant mech.

Alex Smith link

19/7/2018 03:12:18 pm

Ah, but DH was fashioned from 'majik' and 'tekno', whatever the frig they are, and is thus far from the average mech.

But then he was put back together by Spratt fairly easily, so ho hum!

Jon Talpur

15/7/2018 08:49:19 pm

And it's adios, Geoff Senior, for a few years anyway. At least fans of the day could look forward to his work on the upcoming Death's Head limited series written by character co-creator Simon Furman. Oops....

With that Death's Head II announcement in Transformation, you could almost hear the collective "uh oh". This issue came out around the same time as Marvel UK's Havok #6, which featured a Liam Sharp cover, the editorial of which mentioned he would be providing the artwork for the upcoming Death's Head limited series, so the cat was finally out of the bag that the Furman/Senior limited series had definitively been shelved. The end of the 'old' Marvel UK is fast approaching.

Countering the maudlin feel of these final issues is the effort that's gone into the presentation recently, including the beautiful painted covers and multi-part poster that concludes this issue. It's nice to know someone at Marvel UK was okay to go the extra effort for such a dead comic walking, perhaps a reflection on how well thought off the glory days of peak sales were.

Charles RB

15/7/2018 11:32:20 pm

Looking forward to the upcoming comments on Marvel UK's 'Genesis 92' stabs

Simon Hall

16/7/2018 09:22:38 pm

Senior's work is awesome on this story. Nice that he was kept on into the 'Genesis' era on Hell's Angel. Although he might not have got the Death's Head he was expecting, he did go onto to do some stunning work on the character in the two Battletide limited series.

The cover by Staz is also excellent - I love his painted covers. Furman also pulls out all the stops in this story and I think its one of the best bits of his entire Transformers work.

I still have a huge soft spot for some of what comes next from Marvel UK; the initial stuff was all pretty good and felt very fresh. It's only into 1993 and the expansion of their range where things get a bit poop.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

18/7/2018 01:21:17 pm

I've got to be blunt - Circuit Breaker bringing pain to Unicron is ridiculous. Her powers are entirely self-created, not a mutant or someone who got stuck by lightning, and somehow she's become able to inflict this kind of pain on such a huge being. Perhaps Furman realised he'd written himself into a corner by bringing the Neo Knights along, hence why it becomes such a brief moment.

When did Optimus Prime gain the power to fly? I suppose on the toy you could put his guns on his back as rockets but flight by TFs without a flight mode has always felt unusual and wrong here. As for the speech to Primus, I think he's addressing the Matrix. There's a number of times over the years when the Matrix and/or the Prime carrying it have been treated as though they somehow are Primus rather than just carrying something he created - Unicron called Roadimus "Primus" back in Legacy, the whole "present and future versions of each other" in Time Wars makes more sense if you look at the Primes this way (although the absence of the Matrix in Optimus is revealed later), Unicron in this story certainly seems to think of the Matrix as the main piece of Primus and so on.

Is Battletrap here the first significant appearance of a character explicitly killed off in the UK comic? Up to now Furman's generally avoided this sort of thing but it's another sign of how the continuity has been given up on at both ends.

Regarding Doctor Who Magazine's survival, we're about a couple of months away from a big expansion and reformatting issue (#180) when the title made a bold statement for the future by starting to reprint the 104 part TV Century 21 Daleks strip - I remember a letter wondering if the title planned on being around for enough issues. (Current DWM readers and staff will no doubt laugh at this.) With the videos stepping up and the New Adventures the title seemed to have found a clear audience to keep on going. John Freeman has posted about the proposed crossover and it seems to have been Marvel US who scotched it rather than Neary. https://downthetubes.net/?p=3239

The poster was an amazing piece at the time but is it me or has the artist not realised Prime is supposed to be closing the Matrix, not struggling to open it?

Alex Smith link

19/7/2018 03:21:13 pm

The comics are remarkably consistent in only flying Transformers being able to fly in robot mode but I think Prime's rocket boots are established at the end of the Underbase saga when he pushes himself and Scorponok out of the path of said Underbase.

Alex Smith link

19/7/2018 03:24:24 pm

Oh, and I think Battletrap makes it into G2, so maybe he's just a hard bastard?

Tigerbread

20/7/2018 09:10:02 pm

Pretty sure Prime is struggling to fully open and unleash the matrix (because it's been tainted, it's resisting him) I never thought he was trying to close it

Tim Roll-Pickering link

20/7/2018 10:43:19 pm

When he grabs and purifies it, it does appear as though he's managed to close the gap that's been there since its rediscovery, almost as if the partial opening has signified it being tainted. He only then opens it inside Unicron. Given how the poster has clearly been sourcing from the story itself (as opposed to more general scenes), Prime would appear to be purifying the Matrix rather than using it long distance.

Cradok

27/7/2018 12:25:55 pm

This isn't Battletrap's first appearance sine Time Wars, he appeared a few issues ago listening to Primus' story. And he's one of the casualties in Time Wars that isn't blasted apart, decapitated or similar, he's just thrown against a wall and still looks relatively intact. It's not that much of a stretch to say he was recovered at some point later and repaired.

I'm not usually one for 'personal canon', but I feel the moment Prime seizes the Matrix has consequences related to Time Wars. As of Time Wars, Prime was merely a reconstruction of the original, based on a copy of his memories, and doesn't actually possess the Matrix, yet he's still able to use it to communicate with Rodimus, and knows that his presence will cause the rift to worsen. My feeling is that Prime acquiring the Matrix, cleansing it and using it to kill Unicron - which next issue will explicitly say that he was bathed in its light - means that this Optimus, Powermaster Optimus, was retroactively made the real Optimus, and even though he didn't carry the physical form, still the 'bearer' of the Matrix.

John d. link

20/7/2018 03:24:54 pm

I think the circuit breaker moment was nice continuity with the early days. Is there any excuse at all for the neo knights or was it a brazen "we can do super heroes honest" advert?

Stuart

20/7/2018 05:07:58 pm

Shameless advert!

Felicity

30/12/2019 07:21:18 pm

The speech Optimus Prime makes “in space” was as he was flying from Cybertron to Unicron, who might have been close enough together for all this to be happening in Cybertron’s atmosphere. I guess Unicron doesn’t have his own atmosphere or he wouldn’t have had to tell Galvatron “Speak with your mind!” when he was floating right in front of him. It’s hard to tell what’s air and what’s space when it’s always night because Cybertron left its sun back in issue #1. The cartoon essentially treated space as being just like the night sky, i.e. there is air in space (unless they specifically say there isn’t, like when Spike asks “What do we do when the air runs out?”). The default state is, space is just the night sky, complete with air.

Kudos on standing up to Trump! What did your Transformers placard say? ☺

Transformation 322: Not the End.

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