Primal Fear!

« Transformers: Generation 2 #3 »
Frenzy wouldn't die for another nine issues.
"Primal Fear!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	November 1993
Cover date	January 1994
Writer	Simon Furman
Artist	Derek Yaniger ("Old Evils")
Penciler	Manny Galan ("Primal Fear")
Inkers	Jim Amash and Marie Severin ("Primal Fear")
Colorist	Sarra Mossoff
Letterers	Richard Starkings with Gaushell
Editor	Rob Tokar
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

Prime and the Autobots fight Jhiaxus and his Cybertronians on a planet where an entity draws out their most primal rage. Also, Bludgeon and his Decepticons return.

Synopsis

"Primal Fear!"

Optimus Prime and Jhiaxus fight on an unnamed planet in the K'tord Nebula. Jhiaxus is glorying in the release of combat. Despite the gruesome injuries he is receiving and inflicting, so is Prime.

Overhead, in the Autobot shuttlecraft Darkstar, Hound is the only Transformer still intact; the corpses of Jhiaxus's troops surround him. Hound is desperately trying to reach anyone on the communicator. He begins taking out his frustration on the equipment, but then struggles to regain his calm. He begins recording a message about how Optimus Prime's Autobots, fleeing Jhiaxus, tried to hide in the K'tord Nebula, from which many ships never emerge. However, once within the nebula, tempers began to fray among the Autobots, and the Decepticons stopped simply tracking the shuttle and instead attacked. Hound ends the message by saying it's not an SOS, but a warning that something about this planet causes uncontrolled fear and rage, so anyone listening should stay away.

Below, Grimlock, Kup, and other Autobots are fighting Jhiaxus's troops with vicious intensity. Optimus Prime manages to slip away from Jhiaxus for a moment and begins struggling to find his pacifist core. Jhiaxus, deprived of the distraction of combat, begins suffering flashbacks to the tyrannical sadist he was a long time ago. He realizes that he's losing the icy control he's cultivated for so long. Prime returns and tells him that only by confronting and facing down the violent savage within can they truly evolve and become more than just pre-programmed responses. Jhiaxus silently agrees, and as they reject the unreasoning violence, tendrils of black psychic energy flee their bodies. Prime examines the energy and realizes it is a non-physical living thing that feeds on rage.

Refusing to be manipulated by the shadow-stuff, Optimus Prime and Jhiaxus order their troops to stop fighting (having to physically restrain them in some cases). They declare a temporary truce, and Jhiaxus allows the Autobots to leave. On the bridge of his ship, Jhiaxus muses over what the experience on the planet has taught him, while ordering that the infestation be bombed from orbit, so the Cybertronians can colonize the planet safely.

"Old Evils"

Jhiaxus returns to his flagship, the Twilight. He angrily muses about how the recent incident reminds him of when the Cybertronians were a darker and far more violent group. He thanks the Maker that there are no such Transformers around now.

Meanwhile, in "another galaxy", just such a group of Decepticons are attacking an alien craft. Bludgeon, in his titanic Warworld battle cruiser, presses the attack against the frog-like space pirates. They fight back, briefly, before the weapons of the Warworld breach their hull, killing the crew, while leaving the ship intact enough to pillage.

After their victory, Bludgeon muses about his next step. He has built an army of Transformer shells, but the only way to grant them life is with Optimus Prime's Creation Matrix. Bludgeon decides the only way to draw Prime away from the safety of Cybertron and the Autobase is to threaten that little planet Prime has protected in the past... Earth.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Cybertronians	Others
Optimus Prime (1) Hound (3) Grimlock (4) Slag (5) Blades (6) Kup (7) Swoop (8)	Stranglehold (12) Bludgeon (13) Fangry (14) Quake (15)	Jhiaxus (2) Rook (9)	Scrul (10) Khyogi (11)

Quotes

"All pretense of bravado is swept away by one last wheezing appeal for mercy! I tell them... I have none!"
"Jhiaxus...you're boring me!"

—Jhiaxus and Optimus Prime, hopped up on alien 'roids.

"Let us see, Jhiaxus... Let us see which one of us begs for mercy!"

—Optimus Prime, scary-ass individual.

"Me calm, but me still want to fight!"
"Yeah, well... even the most advanced races have their evolutionary throwbacks."

—Grimlock and Blades

"How many times have I told you not to rouse me before I'm fully bloated!"

—Captain Khyogi, who needs his own Rubber Ducky.

"They're fighting."
"Good. I like it when they struggle."

— Stranglehold and Bludgeon

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em G2

• Don't get too attached to the way Bludgeon's new army looks.
• Those necks...

Continuity notes

• While the black psychic gunk bears a cursory resemblance to the Swarm (which features heavily in subsequent issues), it doesn't appear to be related to it.
• A likely source for the story is one of Furman's own. The UK story "Distant Thunder!" contains nearly all the same themes and the same basic plot of this story.
• Fangry apparently survived having Grimlock's fist through his midsection in "End of the Road!".
• Times are so dark and gritty that even the heroic Autobot spacecraft has a dark and gritty name, Darkstar.

Real-life references

• The black psychic gunk is presumably a sly reference to the symbiote empowering Venom, who was mega-popular in the '90s. At one point (see above), the goo even takes the shape of a spider!

Furminated

• A variety of Cybertronian troopers are already dead in the issue's opening pages.
• The crew of the pirate ship dies when their ship is violently depressurized by the Warworld.

Cover

• Transformers: Generation 2 #3 cover: Optimus Prime vs. Jhiaxus, by Derek Yaniger.

• 
  "Gee, axe me?"

Advertisements

• None yet identified.

Reprints

• Transformers: Dark Designs TPB: Megatron, Swoop, Bludgeon, Grimlock's toe and half of the Liege Maximo, by Andy Wildman.
• Transformers: Dark Designs hardback: Megatron and the graves of Starscream, Bludgeon, Fortress Maximus and Optimus Prime, by John Byrne and Chris Blythe.
• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 90: Generation 2 Part 1: Red Alert, by Dreamwave Productions and Kup, by Derek Yaniger.

• 
  Dark Designs TPB
  (Titan Books, 2002)
• 
  Dark Designs hardback
  (Titan Books, 2002)
• 
  The Definitive G1 Collection Vol. 90: Generation 2 Part 1
  (Hachette Partworks, 2020)