Dawn of Darkness
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| "Dawn of Darkness" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | ||||||||||||
| First published | 2nd December 1989 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | 9th December 1989 | ||||||||||||
| Writer | Simon Furman | ||||||||||||
| Art | Geoff Senior | ||||||||||||
| Letterer | Glib | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Marvel Comics continuity (Marvel UK) | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | 1989 | ||||||||||||
How do you kill a Demon?
Synopsis
The Demons attack Bumblebee, who runs over to where the Autobots and Decepticons are fighting. Cindersaur spits a jet of flame at one of the Demons, who merely returns an even larger one, the flame engulfing the Firecon. The Autobots wonder how to tackle the Demon.
Meanwhile, at Autobase, Seawatch starts blabbering about how the Demons fed on the Decepticons' life-force, a point Emirate Xaaron finds interesting...
In the Underworld, the Autobots fight the Demons with their blasters. The Decepticons discuss the situation and agree to help but it is to no avail—the Demons merely feed off the energy. Then Emirate Xaaron and Red Hot arrive with an artillery gun that fires pure energon. Xaaron's gambit works and the energon overloads the Demons who explode.
Xaaron explains that, according to legend, the Demons were the flipside of the Matrix's good creatures and were entombed by Primus. There may be thousands more below and if they attack again in force, "None of us will survive!"
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Others |
|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Will you please stop fighting? We have something of a situation here!"
- —Bumblebee trying to get everyone's attention.
"Raagh! Dumb 'con! Now we munch demon!"
- —What Grimlock lacks in subtlety, he makes up for in enthusiasm.
"What do we do? I mean, the Autobots are our enemies, but if they're telling the truth about these creatures..."
"...then we've gotta help them destroy these things! Well?"
- —Windsweeper and Ruckus unsure about their role in the overall narrative scheme of things.
Notes
Artwork and technical errors
- TBD
Continuity errors
- This story takes place between the US stories "Skin Deep" and "Yesterday's Heroes!" However it was reprinted before them, and consequently pre-empted the resurrection of Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebee, due to the US material being interrupted by reprints of old UK stories and thus throwing off attempts to make the two strips tie into one another.
Continuity notes
- The Demons would return again in the US story "Still Life!".
- It's not clear if Cindersaur is dead or not, but he is mentioned as still functioning in the later US story "The Last Autobot?".
Real-life references
- The joke on the cover is lifted from Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Other trivia
- TBD
Back-up material
- Additional Transformers story: "All the Familiar Faces!"
- Other strips: Action Force - "Law of the Jungle!" and Combat Colin
- Classic Covers Calendar: The twelfth and final in a series of monthly calendars that showcased inks from covers of yesteryear with new colours. This December edition used Barry Kitson's inks from issue 145.
Foreign Localization
Swedish
- Title: "Mörkrets Gryning" ("Dawn of Darkness")
Cover
- Issue #247 cover: The Demons interrupt the Autobots and Decepticons fighting, by Jeff Anderson.
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Issue #247
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- Classified ads
- The Punisher comic
- Action Force Special Corps mailaway offer (back cover)
Reprints
- Transformers: Aspects of Evil: Rodimus Prime and Unicron fight, by Stephen Baskerville. Cropped version of issue #254's cover.
- Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Vol 19: Perchance to Dream: Megatron (from early IDW promo art), by Guido Guidi above a retro scene of the Battlechargers (from Marvel UK #255 cover), by Stephen Baskerville.
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Aspects of Evil TPB
(Titan Books, 2005) -
The Definitive G1 Collection Vol. 19
(IDW Publishing, 2017)
