LogFAQs > #877495357

Jesse_Custer posted...

Bad gimmick aside, this cover obviously has some hint of a story, but it's a fairly generic one involving a dark possible future.

No possible dark future at all. In the previous issue the Decepticons were battling the Autobots, and due to the fact that they had just recently found a source of fuel to replenish themselves, were soundly beating the Autobots. Suddenly, the fuel the 'Cons had gotten started to poison them, as they had forced Sparkplug Witwicky to make it for them & he sabotaged it, and the Autobots managed to win the fight. And we the reader were thinking that this is how the story all wraps up, as The Transformers comic was just a 4-issue mini-series(back then sales numbers were unavailable to the average joe, so we couldn't know that the comic sold extremely well & Marvel decided to make it a permanent thing. So, as I said the Autobots had won, when on the last pages, Shockwave debuts on the scene in gun mode and blast everyone .
Issue 5 opens with all of the Autobots minus Optimus dead with their bodies hanging from the ceiling, and all of the Decepticons minus Megatron dead in the Ark's medical bay. Megatron is barely clinging to life, and Shockwave basically forces him to say "Yeah, I fucked up big time, you'd make a better Decepticon leader" and Shockwave assumes command. Optimus is also barely clinging to life, except Shockwave just has his head there to force Optimus to use the Creation Matrix (the comics' version of the Matrix of Leadership back before the Matrix actually became a thing in the movie) to allow Shockwave to create the Constructicons, the Coneheads, etc.

So, as I said, not a dark possible future, but basically the stark present reality at that moment.
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