The Final Battle!
| The name or term "The Final Battle" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see The Final Battle (disambiguation). |
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 This scale is actually correct. All other depictions are erroneous and should be ignored. | |||||||||||||
| "The Final Battle!" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | ||||||||||||
| First published | October 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | February 1987 | ||||||||||||
| Adaptation | Ralph Macchio | ||||||||||||
| Breakdowns | Don Perlin | ||||||||||||
| Finishes | Ian Akin and Brian Garvey | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Nelson Yomtov | ||||||||||||
| Lettering | Janice Chiang | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Bob Budiansky | ||||||||||||
Unicron attacks Cybertron, but one Autobot is about to light their darkest hour.
Synopsis
Ultra Magnus and the Autobots crash land on Junkion, where Galvatron catches up to Magnus and murders him, stealing the Autobot Matrix of Leadership for himself. He flies off to confront Unicron.
When Hot Rod and the other separated Autobots return from the Quintesson planet, the Junkions, led by Wreck-Gar, repair Ultra Magnus and reveal their planet of junk to be a giant spaceship. They head for Cybertron to combat Unicron.
Galvatron attempts to use the Matrix to make Unicron obey him, but the Matrix will not work for him. Unicron swallows Galvatron whole as he proceeds to attack Cybertron. The Decepticons attempt to fight back, but to no avail.
The spaceship piloted by Hot Rod and Kup flies right into Unicron's eye, and Hot Rod confronts Galvatron from inside Unicron. They battle briefly, and as Galvatron attempts to crush Hot Rod by the neck, the Matrix begins to glow. Hot Rod takes a hold of it, and is changed into Rodimus Prime. Rodimus dispatches Galvatron, and then uses the Matrix to destroy Unicron. Rodimus tracks down the Autobots still inside of Unicron, and they escape out of Unicron's other eye just before he is completely destroyed. Rodimus Prime then leads the Autobots to reclaim their homeworld, easily dealing with the diminished Decepticons, and leading Cybertron into a new age of peace.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Junkions | Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Notes
Differences with the film
The comic adaptation continues to be based on a slightly earlier version of the script than the finished film uses. Alternate scenes, details, and staging derived from the script include:
- Daniel describes the crash on Junkion as being "more fun than a rollercoaster." In the script, he specifically refers to a coaster at "Futureworld," but the comic refers only to "Funworld."
- There's another instalment of the "Ultra Magnus doesn't understand Perceptor" running gag that didn't make it into the finished movie that sees Perceptor describe the makeup of Junkion as "a chaotic amalgam of discarded ferrous and non-ferrous articulations."
- Springer is the one to declare "Showtime's over, we've got work to do!" instead of Ultra Magnus, as in the finished film.
- Ultra Magnus is drawn and quartered by the Sweeps, rather than blown to pieces (right).
- Looking down at the Junkions as their ship descends, Kup reminisces about the Crocodillos of Stronterom (but see "Errors," below).
- Though the dialogue has Hot Rod refer to them as the traditional cubes, the energon he offers the Junkions is in the form of a handful of long, thin sticks, per the script's call for "energon sticks." In the finished film, he offers them one of the small wafers previously seen being given to the Allicons on Quintessa.
- Hot Rod also talks some TV to Wreck-Gar, adding "Void where prohibited" after Kup has said his line. In the script, though, this line was attributed to Kup too.
- Instead of simply providing the Autobots with a ship, as in the movie, Wreck-Gar turns the entire planet of Junk into a rocket ship. The finished film features a vestigial reference to this abandoned idea, when Wreck-Gar describes the planet as a "sleek sexy import with turbo handling."
Other changes made to the story, usually in the name of condensing and simplifying it, which are not derived from the script include:
- In the finished film, the Quintesson and Junkion stories run parallel, and the story cuts back and forth between the two narratives. Per the decision to consolidate all the Quintesson scenes into one unbroken story for issue #2, this issue relates the Junkion portion of the story as one similarly-unbroken adventure. The scene of Galvatron returning to Unicron and learning that Ultra Magnus still lives, however, is cut, with Galvatron simply describing for Magnus how Unicron told him this information.
- Writer Ralph Macchio's fondness for expository dialogue requires Wreck-Gar to speak several lines without "talking TV," which results in the Junkion leader doing "caveman-speak" like a cartoon Dinobot.
- The Autobots' fight with the Junkions is cut, with Hot Rod and Kup's group arriving just as the Junkions begin to approach the others after Magnus's destruction.
- Kup provides an explanation for how his group found Magnus's, noting that they tracked their ship's exhaust.
- After the Autobots crash through Unicron's eye, only Hot Rod's battle with Galvatron is shown; all other scenes of both the Autobots dealing with the dangers inside the planet-eater, and of the Dinobots and Junkions battling him outside, are cut. In particular, this means that Jazz, Cliffjumper, Bumblebee, and Spike are never shown being rescued by Daniel—yet Bumblebee and Spike do appear among the Autobots when they reunite and escape Unicron's body in the final pages.
- Blurr is part of the Autobot group who travel inside Unicron.
Visual differences from the film, resulting from incomplete or outdated reference material include:
- Daniel's exo-suit is red and blue instead of white.
Continuity and plotting errors
Art and technical errors
- Just like the previous issue, this one is also simply called "Transformers: The Movie" on its cover, without a definite article, even though issue 1 was called "The Transformers: The Movie". The indica for all three issues identify the series' title as "Transformers: The Movie Vol. 1".
- Basically everyone on the cover is off-color to some extent. Especially notable are Hot Rod's grey boots; accurate to the movie itself, but not to either his standard Marvel colors, or to the colors uses in this mini-series.
- When telling how they tracked Ultra Magnus' ship, Kup's speech bubble points to Arcee.
- Once Wreck-Gar turns the planet into a giant spaceship, it becomes the same size as Kup and Hot Rod's shuttle from Quintessa. This makes no sense, since their shuttle landed on Junkion a few moments before.
- When eating Galvatron, Unicron's beard actually grows between shots.
- Spike is suddenly wearing the exo-suit he had in the film, instead of the space suit he wore in the previous two issues.
Other trivia
- Although he appears more in background shots, Blurr finally gets dialogue in this issue. One whole panel.
- According to a 2015 Facebook entry of Ask Vector Prime, the Unicron depicted in this comic was in fact blasted out of this dimension by the Matrix and later became the Planet X seen in the Galaxy Force cartoon.
Cover
Issue #3: The Autobots attack robot-mode Unicron.
Reprints
-
The Transformers Winter Special 1986 (Marvel UK, 1986) -
Classic Transformers, Vol. 6 (IDW Publishing, 2010) -
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 7 (IDW Publishing, 2014)
Reprint notes
Marvel UK
- All three issues of the mini-series were collected into one special for release in the United Kingdom. This reprint edits the date from 2005 to 2006, to keep continuity with the regular weekly comic's recent story "Target: 2006," which—working from an even older draft of the film than the one on which this adaptation was based—placed the events of the movie in that year.
IDW Transformers Classics
Like the regular monthly series, this mini-series also had its colors "remastered" for The Transformers Classics series of trade paperbacks, with varying degrees of success. The process was applied less thoroughly to these issues; notably, Hot Rod was not recolored into toy-accurate red-and-orange, unlike in previous volumes.
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