Prime Directive issue 1

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You! Imagine I have a chair to sit on!
The Transformers: Generation 1 #1
Publisher	Dreamwave Productions
First published	April 4, 2002
Cover date	April, 2002
Writer	Chrislock
Penciler	Patimus Prime
Inker	Robonus
Colorist	TheRealT!
Letterer	Dreamer Design
Editor	Hot Rog
Graphic design	Paulceptor
Continuity	Dreamwave continuity
Chronology	Modern era

Lazarus has weapons for sale while Spike learns that he can't escape his past.

Synopsis

Humans have discovered the Transformers again after a year and a half of searching. Decepticons and Autobots are captured by a human organization and used as metallic puppets of war. Grimlock leads the Autobots and Decepticons in a slaughter of humans at an oil plant—and the slaughter is shown! The U.S. Government contacts the only person on record as ever having known about Transformers: Spike Witwicky, who currently is a working man taking care of his infant son, Daniel.

It is revealed that the Autobots had united with humans to defeat the Decepticons. Together, the two races built a giant ship known as the Ark II, which they planned to transport themselves and the captive Decepticons back to Cybertron. Also aboard were a handful of Earth scientists and Sparkplug Witwicky. The Ark II exploded before exiting Earth's atmosphere, and no humans survived.

However, the U.S. military reveals to Spike that it has found one of the surviving Transformer bodies...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Hound (7) Optimus Prime (8)	Megatron (1)	Manny (2) "The Pisser" (3) Spike Witwicky (4) General Hallo (5) Lazarus (6)

Errors

• None yet identified.

Items of note

• The final page of the issue serves as a dramatic reveal of the Transformer that the U.S. forces have found. The collected volumes do not present this image in the same way, losing a lot of the dramatic impact.
• Following the story is a 2-page fictional news article entitled "Reliving the '99 Ark II Tragedy—What Happened?"
• James Raiz, Alan Wang and Kenny Li created a large lithograph that contained over 600 characters from multiple Transformers continuities. Each issue of Prime Directive came in two cover variants, Autobot and Decepticon, and each variant of each issue had a 2-page center spread which was 1/12 of the lithograph. Split up, it was 4 issues wide by 3 issues high.

Covers (6)

• Regular Cover: Autobots wraparound by Pat Lee
• Regular Cover: Decepticons wraparound by Pat Lee
• 2nd printing: Prime and Bumblebee by Pat Lee
• 3rd printing: Omega Supreme by Pat Lee
• Foil Cover: Battle wraparound by Pat Lee
• Incentive Cover: Superion wraparound by Pat Lee and James Raiz

• 
  Autobot cover
• 
  Decepticon cover
• 
  Foil cover
• 
  2nd printing cover
• 
  3rd printing cover
• 
  Incentive cover

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• BotCon 2002
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• Prime Directive #2
• Darkminds: Macropolis #3
• Warlands TPB #2
• Predaking lithograph
• Starscream poster
• Transformers posters (back interior cover)