Spotlight: Optimus Prime

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« The Transformers: Spotlight #9 »
File:Spotlight OptimusPrime a.jpg
Does your man have an ass like mine?
"The Transformers: Spotlight Optimus Prime"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published August 29, 2007
Cover date August 2007
Written by Simon Furman
Art by Don Figueroa
Colors by Josh Burcham
Letters by Chris Mowry
Edits by Dan Taylor
Continuity IDW continuity
Chronology Escalation

Optimus Prime's search for answers about his predecessors leads to a dark discovery.

Synopsis

In the wake of his brush with death at Megatron's hands, Optimus Prime is pensive. To find out more about the sinister presence he felt while transferring his spark through infraspace, he takes Ark-32 and journeys to the Muta-Gaath Nebula—secret home of Omega Supreme. Unfortunately, another ship observes his transit, its inhabitants vowing to destroy whoever is inside the asteroid base that Omega calls home.

Optimus Prime quizzes Omega Supreme about Nova Prime. He believes that he encountered Nova while in infraspace, and was filled with a sense of dread, something only Megatron and Thunderwing normally cause. Omega explains that Nova Prime felt that Cybertronians were superior to other life forms and had a duty to impress their likeness on the rest of the universe. Optimus surmises that the Ark was not an exploratory vessel, but part of Nova's expansion, something Omega also suspected.

Seriously. Forget Sunstreaker or Prowl. Give this guy a Universe toy.

But before they can further pursue the matter, Monstructor smashes his way in to Omega Supreme's domain. The enraged combiner robot has come for Omega Supreme; Monstructor makes short work of him, ripping off his cannon arm within seconds and nearly crushing him with a shuttlecraft. Optimus Prime's weapons are repelled by an energy-dampening field, so Prime blasts open an airlock, sucking all three of them into space.

Omega Supreme uses his rocket-engine arm to transport himself and Optimus Prime as far away as he can, but they both know Monstructor is hot on their heels. Prime demands answers, and Omega explains that Monstructor was an attempt by Jhiaxus, at Nova Prime's behest, to combine minds and bodies of a group of Transformers to enhance strength and intellect. But the process failed, and the combined form "devolved into a monster". After Jhiaxus and Nova Prime disappeared aboard the original Ark, Omega locked Monstructor away in a dimensionally-displaced prison, an act which Prime finds reprehensible.

Further debate is ended as Monstructor's ship arrives, and the monster dives at them. Omega Supreme tells Optimus Prime that Monstructor has one weak spot, an area of his chest; unable to reason with the giant, Prime strikes the area, and Monstructor breaks apart into his components. Prime swears to the fallen robots that he will help them.

An Autobot cleanup crew arrives later, to restore Omega Supreme and take the Monstructor team prisoner. Omega warns Optimus Prime that if the gestalt technology falls into Megatron's hands, the result will be an all-consuming war. Jetfire takes the combiner robots away, leaving Optimus to reflect on the tarnished legacy of the Prime lineage.

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Notes

File:Sentineltruck.gif
Being Prime requires that your altmode have at least six wheels and a trailer. It's tradition.
  • When Optimus talks about the Primes, we see a picture of their lineage (the ones before Nova are shadowed). This caused some confusion among fans when "Spotlight: Blurr" introduced the concept of Zeta Prime, Sentinel's successor, even though this issue showed no Primes between Sentinel and Optimus; later, James Roberts would add in Nominus Prime between Nova and Sentinel!
  • The issue includes 2 pages of sketches by Don Figueroa—one of Optimus Prime in several stages of transformation (though it's the transformation design of Masterpiece/Dreamwave Optimus, not the IDW one), and the other of the various alternate modes of Sentinel Prime and Nova Prime.
  • Among the Autobots reporting in to Prime at the issue's opening are:
  • A similar scene starts off Escalation #1.
  • This issue establishes that the various combiner teams shown to date in the IDW universe (Technobots, Constructicons, Predacons, the odd Protectobot and Combaticon) aren't actually combiners yet.
  • Colorist Josh Burcham made the vents on the butt of Optimus Prime's Ion blaster a sort of ammo gauge, based upon an idea from fandom. After each subsequent blast, the blue glow dips lower.
  • Also, the Pretender Monsters are not Pretenders nor Decepticons, as they were locked away before the Pretender process and factions were developed. Stormbringer See IDW timeline.
  • This issue further establishes that the Pretender Monsters are AWESOME and that Monstructor is a total bad-ass death machine. But we already knew that.
  • This issue was reissued in December 2008 as a special 3-D edition, including a pair of cardboard unfoldable 3-D glasses.
  • Ironically, Monstructor, the final combiner realeased by Hasbro, predates Devastator, the first combiner realeased by Hasbro, in the IDW continuity.

Errors

  • A strange conversation occurs among the Monstructor bots:

Panel 1:

Unknown: Is it him?

Panel 2:

Birdbrain: Only one sure way to find out.
Bristleback: Which is?
Birdbrain: Smash our way in...

Panel 3:

Bristleback: ...and kill whoever and whatever we find inside!
  • It's possible that Bristleback did indeed chime in with his two cents' worth (particularly given the intertwined nature of this team), but considering IDW's history of misattributed speech balloons, it also seems likely that Birdbrain and Bristleback's speech balloons got switched in the second panel. Whatever the case, the conversation was not altered for the trade paperback version.

Covers (5)

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