Prime Directive

This article is about the first Dreamwave G1 mini-series. For the 2007 movie's prequel comic called Prime Directive in solicitations, see Movie Prequel.

What is Cosmos doing on this cover? Why are glass shards flying away? Why is Spike only shown as a mysterious silhouette? Ah, Dreamwave covers. Always full of mystery.

Prime Directive is a six-part miniseries published by Dreamwave Productions in 2002, and set in the main G1 Dreamwave continuity. It centers on the revival of the Transformers after a catastrophe several years prior. Four of the six individual issues topped Diamond Comic Distributors' sales charts for the month they were released in (with one issue losing to another Dreamwave Transformers title and the other one to a special publicity stunt by Marvel), an accomplishment no other Transformers comic title has achieved before or afterwards.

While the series was simply titled Transformers: Generation 1 when it was released, it was dubbed Prime Directive when collected in trade paperback form.

	Prime Directive issues:	»
Preview #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6

Overview

Prior to the events in the series, The Transformers had been gone from Earth for several years, having all vanished and thought destroyed in the destruction of their Ark II ship. The ship was carrying the victorious Autobots and their captive Decepticons back to Cybertron, but exploded soon after launch. Afterward, the sinister Lazarus collected their inert forms and found a way to control them, planning to sell them on the black market. However, the U.S. government has plans of its own... as do the Transformers themselves.

Prime Directive, originally only titled Generation 1, was the first mass-market Transformers comic in nearly a decade, an absence reflected in the storyline.

The mini-series marked a brief phase of highly successful Dreamwave Transformers comics: After an introduction by a six-page preview issue, the first regular issue, released in April 2002, debuted at #1 of Diamond Comic Distributors' sales charts, an accomplishment repeated by issues 2, 3 and 6. Issue 4 ranked second behind Dreamwave's own Transformers: Armada #1, while issue 5 was beaten by Marvel's Fantastic Four #60 (which sold for a mere 9¢), with 705,109 copies ordered versus Generation 1 #5's 122,829 copies. Generation 1 peaked with issue 3 in June 2002, with 131,586 copies ordered, although issues 1, 2 and 5 saw a second printing run, and issue 1 even saw a third printing run.

Back then, rumors were circulating that Dreamwave had manipulated the market through a special deal with Diamond to ensure their success, or that Hasbro had set up an account to order large numbers of the Transformers comics. in fact however, Hasbro had apparently ordered less than 200 copies per issue, and primarily because they were not guaranteed free copies from their contract with Dreamwave. Later that year, other companies also reported high sales of "nostalgia" titles, thus further challenging those rumors.

Prime Directive established a new G1 continuity that drew on elements of the cartoon but also incorporated some elements of the old Marvel comics (most notably, the mention of Spike Witwicky's brother Buster, who originally only appeared in the Marvel comics) and generally does not fit well into any particular previous story. A second Generation 1 volume called War and Peace followed, and an ongoing series after that.

Many fans found the series impressive for the great amount of care and detail put into the artwork. The glossy print and computer coloring were worlds beyond the newsprint paper and dotted coloring of the Marvel Comics series. Others felt that the storyline was needlessly decompressed (almost two whole issues pass before any of the Transformers actually speak), that the visual storytelling was unclear, and that the overall pacing suffered for the sake of needlessly dramatic splash pages.

Creative team

The series was written by Chris Sarracini and penciled by Pat Lee and Edwin Garcia (and, allegedly, also by Sigmund Torre).

Notes

• "Prime Directive" was also the name of the original Transformers movie script, and a working title for IDW Publishing's Movie Prequel mini-series.
• The Prime Directive trade paperback collections are the only official release of the eight-page preview story for the second Generation 1 volume, War and Peace... which doesn't actually have a lot to do with the actual story of War and Peace, due to a sudden change of writers.

Collections

DreamWave
Transformers Generation One, Vol. 1 TPB

• ISBN 0973083727
• ISBN 978-0973083729
• Date published: December 4, 2002
• Pagecount: 160

IDW Publishing reprint
Transformers Generation One, Vol. 1 TPB

• ISBN 1933239816
• ISBN 978-1933239811
• Date published: February 22, 2006
• Pagecount: 144

International printings

Japan

Transformers G1 Vol. 1 (トランスフォーマーG1)

• ISBN 4902314134
• ISBN 978-4902314137
• Date published: December 17, 2003
• Translator: Hiroto Ishikawa, Katsuya Akitomo
• Publisher: JIVE Ltd. (JIVE American Comics Series)