Does your man have an ass like mine?
| The Transformers: Spotlight > Issue # 9 | |
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Optimus Prime's search for answers about his predecessors leads to a dark discovery.
Synopsis[]
In the wake of his brush with death at Megatron's hands, Prime is pensive. To find out more about the sinister presence he felt while transferring his Spark through infraspace, he takes Ark-32 and journeys to the Muta-Gaath Nebula—secret home of Omega Supreme. Unfortunately, another ship observes his transit, its inhabitants vowing to destroy whoever is inside the asteroid base that Omega calls home.
Prime quizzes Omega about Nova Prime and the original Ark's mission; they both suspect it was one of expansion and conquest, rather than exploration as had been advertised. Omega explains that Nova Prime felt that Cybertronians were superior to other life forms and had a duty to impress their likeness on the rest of the universe.
Seriously. Forget Sunstreaker or Prowl. Give this guy a Classics toy.
But before they can further pursue the matter, Monstructor smashes his way in to Omega's domain. The enraged combiner robot has come for Omega Supreme; Monstructor makes short work of him, ripping off his cannon arm within seconds and nearly crushing him with a shuttlecraft. Prime's weapons are repelled by an energy-dampening field, so Prime blasts open an airlock, sucking all three of them into space.
Omega uses his rocket-engine arm to transport himself and Prime as far away as he can, but they both know Monstructor is hot on their heels. Prime demands answers, and Omega explains that Monstructor was an attempt by Jhiaxus, at Nova Prime's behest, to combine minds and bodies of a group of Transformers to enhance strength and intellect. But the process failed, and the combined formed "devolved into a monster". After Jhiaxus and Nova Prime disappeared aboard the original Ark, Omega locked Monstructor away in a dimensionally-displaced prison, an act which Prime finds reprehensible.
Further debate is ended as Monstructor's ship arrives, and the monster dives at them. Omega tells Prime that Monstructor has one weak spot, an area of his chest; unable to reason with the giant, Prime strikes the area, and Monstructor breaks apart into his components. Prime swears to the fallen robots that he will help them.
An Autobot cleanup crew arrives later, to restore Omega Supreme and take the Monstructor team prisoner. Omega warns Prime that if the gestalt technology falls into Megatron's hands, the result will be an all-consuming war. Jetfire takes the combiner robots away, leaving Optimus to reflect on the tarnished legacy of the Prime lineage.
Credits[]
| Writer(s): Simon Furman | |
| Art: Don Figueroa | |
| Colors: Josh Burcham | |
| Letters: Chris Mowry | |
| Editor(s): Dan Taylor | |
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Featured characters[]
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Others |
|---|---|---|
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Errors[]
- A strange conversation occurs among the Monstructor bots:
Panel 1:
- Unknown: Is it him?
Panel 2:
- Birdbrain: Only one sure way to find out.
- Bristleback: Which is?
- Birdbrain: Smash our way in...
Panel 3:
- Bristleback: ...and kill whoever and whatever we find inside!
It's possible that Bristleback did indeed chime in with his two cents' worth (particularly given the intertwined nature of this team), but considering IDW's history of misattributed speech balloons, it also seems likely that Birdbrain and Bristleback's speech balloons got switched in the second panel. Whatever the case, the conversation was not altered for the trade paperback version.
Items of note[]
Being Prime requires that your altmode have at least six wheels and a trailer. It's tradition.
- The issue includes 2 pages of sketches by Don Figueroa—one of Optimus Prime in several stages of transformation (though it's the transformation design of Masterpiece/Dreamwave Optimus, not the IDW one), and the other of the various alternate modes of Sentinel Prime and Nova Prime.
- Among the Autobots reporting in to Prime at the issue's opening are:
- Springer (presumably the one reporting on Kup's status)
- Ultra Magnus (with a new lead on Scorponok—possibly implying that he cut another deal with Swindle)
- Wheelie, making his first appearance in the IDWverse, wondering if anyone can hear him. The reason for his transmission would be shown almost a year later in his own Spotlight.
- Hound reporting Sideswipe's desire to follow up on Sunstreaker's disappearance.
- A similar scene starts off Escalation #1.
- This issue establishes that the various combiner teams shown to date in the IDW universe (Technobots, Constructicons, Predacons, the odd Protectobot and Combaticon) aren't actually combiners yet.
- Also, the Pretender Monsters are not Pretenders nor Decepticons, as they were locked away before the Pretender process and factions were developed. Stormbringer See IDW timeline.
- This issue further establishes that the Pretender Monsters are AWESOME and that Monstructor is a total bad-ass death machine. But we already knew that.
Covers (4)[]
- Cover A: Optimus in spotlight by Don Figueroa and Josh Burcham (colors)
- Cover B: Optimus with gun by Gabriel Rodriguez
- Cover RI: Uncolored cover A
- Cover ComicNewsi.com: Optimus at console by Don Perlin
Advertisements[]
- Devastation, including a 6-page preview
- The Ascending
- Megatron Origin (back cover)