The Last Stand

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's... oh. It actually is a plane.

Template:Comicnav 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 the Autobot 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 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 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..."

Credits

Writer: Jim Salicrup
Pencils: Frank Springer
Inks: Ian Akin, Brian Garvey
Colors: Nelson Yomtov
Lettering: John Workman
Editor: Bob Budiansky

• Originally published: December 4, 1984 (Cover date: March, 1985)

Major 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 (26) Grimlock (27) Swoop (28) Sludge (29) Slag (30) Bumblebee (31)	Megatron (18) Frenzy (19) Rumble (20) Skywarp (21) Soundwave (22) Starscream (23) Ravage (24) Shockwave (25) Buzzsaw (32) Laserbeak (33) Thundercracker (34)	Regulars Buster Witwicky (4) Sparkplug Witwicky (5) Guests "O" (15) Mister "O" (16) Jesse (17)

Errors

• The final battle mentions only Prime, Huffer, Ironhide, Bluestreak and Mirage were kept operational for the battle with the Decepticons, but throughout the battle, Sunstreaker is present alongside those four, and is seen standing by Prime after the Decepticons' defeat. He's so good he doesn't even need fuel to fight, it seems.
• Mirage's arm is bitten off by Ravage but it is reattached later.
• Many coloring errors throughout issue. In particular, several Autobots are colored as Gears.

Items of note

• 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.
• An alternate ending [1] was scripted and drawn, in case the series was unsuccessful; in this version, Shockwave never strikes, and the series ends with Optimus Prime declaring the Decepticons defeated once and for all. This ending was seen in some overseas printings of the issue.
• 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

File:MarvelUK-8.jpg

Megatron took first in the Prime Press contest

• U.S. cover: final battle by Mark Texeira
• UK issue 7 cover: reuse of art from U.S. cover
• UK issue 8 cover: Megatron holds the defeated Optimus Prime overhead by Barry Kitson

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• None yet identified

External links

• "Is it true there was an alternate version of #4?" at Tfarchive.com]
  
  
  From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.