The Last Stand

This article is about the comic issue in the Marvel US Comics. For the Titan Books collection, see Last Stand.

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Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's... oh. It actually is a plane.
"The Last Stand"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	December 4, 1984
Cover date	March 1985
Writer	Jim Salicrup
Pencils	Frank Springer
Inks	Ian Akin, Brian Garvey
Colors	Nelson Yomtov
Letters	John Workman
Editor	Bob Budiansky
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

The Autobots make a desperate gamble to defeat the Decepticons.

Synopsis

Some of the Autobots accuse Sparkplug of betraying them by giving the Decepticons the fuel conversion they needed. Panicked, Sparkplug and his son attempt to escape, but when Jazz blocks their path with a wall of flame, Sparkplug suffers a heart attack. He is rushed to the hospital by Ratchet.

Huffer tells Optimus about a discovery he made in the Ark's memory banks: Just after the ship crashed, its barely functional computers detected the Decepticon Shockwave arriving on Earth in pursuit. With the last of its power, the Ark modified five Autobot warriors to combat him, thus creating the Dinobots. They traveled in a shuttle to the Savage Land to confront Shockwave, at which point contact was lost. Huffer has Ratchet dispatch a probe to search for the lost Dinobots.

At the hospital, Sparkplug undergoes emergency treatment and dreams of his Army service in Korea, where he was forced to repair North Korean vehicles. He further recalls sabotaging those vehicles...

With no new fuel sources forthcoming, the remaining Autobots are forced to make a desperate gamble to fight the Decepticons one last time. All the Autobots sacrifice their remaining fuel resources to Optimus Prime, Huffer, Ironhide, Bluestreak and Mirage. These five prepare to fight the Decepticons within the volcano that the Ark has crashed into, as the Decepticons arrive to destroy the Autobots once and for all.

In the Savage Land, Huffer's probe has found something and starts to dig it out—until a giant purple hand crushes it...

Although the Decepticons begin to win the battle by virtue of their greater numbers, at the moment of apparent victory, the Decepticons all fall, writhing in internal agony. As he reveals to Buster at the hospital, Sparkplug had corrupted the fuel he provided to the Decepticons, and they are now poisoned. Optimus Prime proclaims the debt that they, and the entire world, owe to Sparkplug Witwicky.

But suddenly, a gigantic blast from above knocks out all the Autobot troops... and Shockwave stands supreme!

"NOT the end..."

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Optimus Prime (1) Brawn (2) Sunstreaker (3) Mirage (6) Jazz (7) Huffer (8) Windcharger (9) Ratchet (10) Gears (11) Ironhide (12) Bluestreak (13) Sideswipe (14) Snarl (30) Grimlock (31) Swoop (32) Sludge (33) Slag (34) Bumblebee (35)	Megatron (18) Decepticon medic(19) Reflector (20–22) Spyglass (20) Spectro (21) Viewfinder (22) Frenzy (23) Rumble (24) Skywarp (25) Soundwave (26) Starscream (27) Ravage (28) Shockwave (29) Buzzsaw (36) Laserbeak (37) Thundercracker (38)	Buster Witwicky (4) Sparkplug Witwicky (5) "O" (15) Mister "O" (16) Jesse (17)

Errors

• Cover: Megatron is colored mostly brown.
• Page 1: Brawn is colored red and blue instead of green and yellow. Several generic Autobots are seen in the second inset panel.
• Page 2:
  • Panel 1: Windcharger is colored with a red chest and head and blue arms, instead of gray torso and red arms. Standing behind Huffer is a off-colour version of Jetfire's original character model (based on the Macross Valkyrie toy)
  • Panel 2: Ratchet's face and chevron are colored red instead of their usual grey/white.
  • Panel 4: Why does Ironhide have yellow accordion knees?
• Page 3:
  • Panel 2: Mirage is colored with red arms and a white head. Jazz (seen holding back Ironhide) is colored mostly blue with red legs, instead of mostly white with black details.
  • Panel 5: Jazz fires what's supposed to be his flamethrower, but is in actuality his photon rifle.
• Page 5: Ratchet has an all-red head again and red legs. (Again, the consistency of this indicates that it might be an earlier color scheme.) Optimus is barely as tall as Ratchet's ambulance mode.
• Page 9: A bunch of vaguely Reflector-like robots are suddenly hanging around in the Decepticon fortress. (Issue #1 pretty clearly indicated that the only Decepticons on Earth are the ten introduced in that issue, a point even more explicitly stated by Shockwave in the next issue.) If that's supposed to be Frenzy on one of the repair beds, he's completely off-model.
• Megatron has an off-center Decepticon sigil throughout the issue.
• Page 13: Bumblebee is colored approximately like Sideswipe.
• Wheeljack, Trailbreaker, Prowl and Jazz are all shown to be up and about in this issue, yet they are not shown among the donor Autobots in the Tubes of Transference.
• Page 14: Brawn is shown among the active Autobots, even though he was not among those recharged for the final fight. Frenzy and Rumble are shown as active despite page 9 stating they had been knocked out of action last issue. The next issue reinforces their injury status.
• Page 16: There's Brawn again! And Windcharger!
• Page 18:
  • Panel 5: Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are both shown among the Autobots; there's a generic lying on the ground.
  • Panel 6: Cliffjumper is among the Autobots. Seriously. Wasn't the whole "last five Autobots" like a really big plot point just a couple of pages ago? Sheesh. And Skywarp, Rumble and Soundwave are among the Decepticons attacking, despite being reported as out of action nine pages earlier.
• Page 19:
  • Panel 3: Skywarp is shown again despite being off action. Either that or the Seeker is a miscoloured Thundercracker.
  • Panel 6: Who're those generic guys on the ground?
• Page 20: A generic Decepticon can be seen between Megatron's legs. Frenzy and Rumble are once again present.
• Page 21: There's Sunstreaker again! Several generic Decepticons as well. Mirage magically has his left arm again, after it was bitten off by Ravage; whatever damage was done to his chest/head by Buzzsaw has likewise vanished.
• Page 22: And Windcharger, colored like Mirage. Bluestreak's left door/wing is missing.

Items of note

• First Appearances- Autobots: Grimlock, Slag, Sludge, Swoop, Snarl (Only video, not in person).
• First Appearances- Decepticons: Shockwave, Medic, Spyglass, Spectro, Viewfinder.
• Cameos: Ted Koppel (voice only), Mitchell Roland, Doris Roland, ballet girls, Trailbreaker, Wheeljack, Sparkplug's Army buddy, North Koreans, hospital crew, United States military.
• Advertised as part 4 in a 4-issue limited series, but the ending and letter column both make clear that issue #5 of what was now an ongoing was forthcoming.
• The narrative box makes a quick reference to the World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front: "Meanwhile, all's quiet on the Decepticon front..."
• According to a text box in the letter column, Transformers #5 was originally going to be drawn by the team of "Vince Giarrano, penciling superstar-in-the-making" and "Brad Joyce, inker extraordinare". This did not come to pass, and while Joyce did eventually ink issue #10, Giarrano would never work on the series.
• Jetfire's original character model (based on the Macross Valkyrie) appears in the first panel of the second page, but he is miscolored and partially obscured by Huffer's arm.
• An alternate ending was scripted and drawn for a UK reprint of issue #4 in Transformers: The Complete Works, Volume 2; in this version, Shockwave never strikes, and the series ends with Optimus Prime declaring the Decepticons defeated once and for all. Some have theorised that this ending was created by the US comics in case the series failed to progress past issue #4. However, the art on these panels, particularly a closeup of Optimus Prime's face, in the very final panel, is markedly different to Springer's so it seems much more likely that this version was simply drawn for the UK printing by one of their own artists.
• A second alternate ending was published in the Federal Comics Super Special edition. It expands the second panel of the penultimate page (or, the second panel from the link within the previous note) into a final splash page, eliminating the other panels entirely. Additionally, any page that mentioned the Shockwave subplot was dropped.

Covers

• 
  US issue #4 - Rare Brown Megatron appears!
• UK issue #7 - Megatron isn't even allowed on the UK cover
  UK issue #7 - Megatron isn't even allowed on the UK cover
• UK issue #8 - Megatron took first in the Prime Press contest
  UK issue #8 - Megatron took first in the Prime Press contest
• 
  Collected Comics #2 - Megatron is allowed on this UK cover

• US issue #4 cover: the final battle, by Mark Texeira.
• UK issue #7 cover: reuse of art from US cover.
• UK issue #8 cover: Megatron holds the defeated Optimus Prime overhead, by Barry Kitson.
• Collected Comics #2 cover: Reuse of US issue #4's cover.

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• GoBots motorized model kits - inside front cover.

External links

• "Is it true there was an alternate version of #4?" at Tfarchive.com