Destiny, Part Five

« The Transformers: Regeneration One #95 »
"Destiny" Part Five
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	October 23, 2013
Cover date	October 2013
Writer	Simon Furman
Penciler	Guido Guidi
Inker	Stephen Baskerville
Colorist	John-Paul Bove
Letterer	Shawn Lee
Editor	John Barber
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

As battle rages on Cybertron's surface, the Wreckers infiltrate the Warworld, but when their confrontation with Bludgeon goes wrong, help arrives in a most unexpected form!

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Featured characters 3 Quotes 4 Notes 4.1 Artwork and technical errors 4.2 Continuity errors 4.3 Continuity notes 4.4 Real-life references 4.5 Other trivia 4.6 Transformers references 4.7 Furminated 4.8 Covers (3) 4.9 Advertisements 5 External links

Synopsis

Cybertron is a battlefield: Omega Supreme and Monstructor grapple, Soundwave and Blaster engage in a sonic duel, Ultra Magnus leads the charge against the army of Blitz Engines, and the airborne Autobots unleash their combined firepower against the Warworld. Bludgeon permits the Decepticons to join the fighting themselves, but surprises them by electing to remain on the Warworld, secretly aware that the Wreckers have managed to land a ship on the giant craft's surface and have penetrated its hull.

In the Primus chamber, deep within Cybertron, Grimlock awakens, free of possession by Primus and needing to be brought up to date by his Dinobots. As they attempt to talk, the demons come spilling into the chamber, and a furious Grimlock, his eyes glowing with the power of Primus, transforms to dinosaur mode. The roar he unleashes takes the fight right out of the creatures and sends them into genuflections. The Dinobots proceed to head back to the surface, and the demons loyally follow their new master, prompting Slag to recall Hot Rod's plan to reintegrate the Cybertronian race, and Grimlock to speculate that this is all part of some grand plan...

Aboard the Warworld, Bludgeon launches a sudden, vicious solo attack on the Wreckers, affecting their perceptions with his Metallikato mind-tricks and walking all over them. Roadbuster urges Kup to escape and locate their primary target—the reservoir of Matrix energy animating the Blitz Engines—but Bludgeon pursues the elderly Autobot as he makes for the craft's bridge on a rail-transport car.

Down on the planet's surface, the Decepticons join the fight, pushing the Autobots back even further. Crosshairs is not optimistic for the conflict's outcome, but Ultra Magnus holds out hope for a miracle, even as the bridge his team is standing on is blown out from under them. But he is not wrong to hope: that miracle soon arrives in the form of the Dinobots, who, along with the loyal demons, tear into the Decepticons and their weapons of war. The tide of battle is turning, as Blaster claims victory over Soundwave, circumventing his opponent's senses-distorting sonic trickery by simply bombarding him with face-rocking tunes.

On the Warworld's bridge, Bludgeon stands over a fallen Kup, preparing to deliver a killing stroke with his sword, when suddenly, in a flash of light, Hot Rod returns from his trip through Zero Space, now transformed by the power of the Matrix into Rodimus Prime! Stunned by Rodimus's ability to snatch his sword out of the air, Bludgeon realizes that Rodimus is the opponent who is fated to destroy him, and demands that he grant him his destined death. Rodimus is only too happy to oblige, seizing the skeletal samurai's leg and hurling him through the Warworld's "windshield". Sent hurtling down to Cybertron's surface, Bludgeon burns up as enters the planet's atmosphere, and dramatically explodes on impact. Just when Rodimus and Kup think they have a moment's respite, however, the Warworld begins to quake: Starscream, urged on by Shockwave, has had an attack of conscience, and has returned with the Ark to bring the legendary vessel's firepower to bear on Bludgeon's ship! As the Warworld comes apart around them, the Wreckers race to abandon ship.

Down below, the fight has definitively tipped in the Autobots' favor: with the Warworld crumbling, the flow of Matrix energy being projected to the Blitz Engines ceases, and the drones begin staying down under the Dinobots' and demons' assault. Magnus leads one last mighty push back against the Decepticons, and Omega Supreme triumphs over Monstructor, blasting him to bits. The Warworld explodes, filling the sky with fire, but as the onlooking Autobots cheer, aboard the Wreckers' craft—safely making its way back to the planet's surface—Rodimus Prime is not yet ready to celebrate. The visions shown to him by Primus in Zero Space still haunt his memory... as within Cybertron, the face of the Transformers' creator-god begins to glow...

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks or visions.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Why are we even still here?"
"For the simple reason, Starscream, you have yet to specify a new flight plan."

—Starscream being clueless and Shockwave being logical. Some things never change.

"Maybe you're right Soundwave. Compared to you, I am just a blunt instrument. But my philosophy...
KERAAANNNNG!!!
"...is play to your strengths!"

—Blaster turns the volume up and wins the final round of Guitar Hero from Soundwave

"Final computation: I have taken your measure, gestalt...and found it wanting!"

—Omega Supreme, delivering the killing blast through Monstructor's midsection

"Autobots--one last charge! Those...creatures are fighting and dying for Cybertron! Can we do less?"

—Ultra Magnus, maybe there was something to Hot Rod's Plan to bring the Demons to the surface after all

"Well, that's just prime!"

—Rodimus, stealing the catchphrase of Optimus Primal.

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

• In his appearance on the Warworld's bridge, Skullcruncher is almost completely miscolored. His face is colored green, instead of the toy and comics' gold. In addition to his arms sporting the same shade of green, it's a much lighter green than he was portrayed with in the original Marvel run, and there's no pink to be found.

Continuity errors

Continuity notes

• Snarl's popped back up after being oddly absent from issue #94; guess he was just off-panel for the whole thing!
• We saw Bludgeon's vision of his own death in issue #93. That seemed to imply he had died on the battlefield, but that's not quite how things unfold here.
• Blaster, in defeating Soundwave, notes that "The flip-side to hyper-senses [is] hyper-pain". This was, of course, the nucleon-derived affliction Blaster himself suffered from during his time in the Nursery, as seen in #86.
• Tailgate makes his first appearance in Marvel U.S. G1 continuity, but is only shown for one panel, getting blasted by Needlenose. However, his toy was used as a model for Wipe-Out, who appeared waaaay back in issue #27.
• Let's be straight-up, here: Blaster and Soundwave never had any kind of rivalry in the Marvel comics. Their grudge match here, along with Omega's throwdown with Monstructor, feels a lot more like Simon Furman tying off stories he started over in the 2005 IDW continuity—specifically, in Spotlight: Blaster and Spotlight: Optimus Prime, respectively—that he never got to bring to a conclusion before his time on those books ended. However, Soundwave's attempt to assassinate Blaster in issue #92 certainly supplies a score to be settled, while Monstructor may well be the only Decepticon combiner left after the zombie Predacons, Terrorcons, and Seacons were vaporized in issue #86. The Constructicons (and thus, Devastator) last put an appearance in in issue #41, but were never seen again in the original Marvel Comics run, nor Regeneration One.
• The more detailed rendering we get of the partially-reconstructed Thunderwing lets us see his inner robot within his Pretender shell, something that never appeared in the Marvel US comics (but did put in a brief appearance in the UK series).
• On page 12, Monstructor clobbers Omega with a statue of Star Saber.
  • Star Saber himself would later make a full appearance in the Marvel G1 continuity via the prequel miniseries, Secrets & Lies.
• Magnus squeezes two Furmanisms into one speech balloon as he declares the demons are "fighting and dying for Cybertron! Can we do less?"

Real-life references

• When Roadbuster's right arm is chopped off by Bludgeon, it continues to fire as it hits the ground, homaging the fate of Dillon in 1987's Predator.
• Grimlock quips that he "never look gift dinohippus in mouth". The Dinohippus was a kind of prehistoric horse; see, 'cause he's, like, a dinosaur, so he talks about prehistoric equivalent of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
• When Blaster unleashes the sonic blast that fells Soundwave, he strikes an air guitar pose. The sound effect that accompanies this, "Keraaaannng!", is of course an onomatopoeic rendering of an electric guitar power chord, but is also likely a reference to UK rock music magazine Kerrang!.

Other trivia

Transformers references

• When Bludgeon demands death, Rodimus responds with a grim "Request granted." This echoes back to one of his more famous scenes in the Marvel UK series (pictured), from issue #114, when he slew a Decepticon begging for mercy with a roar of "Request denied!"
• Grimlock instructs the demons to "munch metal", one of his more famous quotes from The Transformers: The Movie.

Furminated

• A couple of generics, and Tailgate, take hits from the Blitz Engines. Tailgate survives, only to be killed off for real in #100.
• Bludgeon gets tossed out of the Warworld, but next issue reveals that he survived - just barely.

Covers (3)

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• Cover A: Rodimus versus Bludgeon, by Andrew Wildman and Jason Cardy.
• Cover B: Blaster versus (purple!) Soundwave, by Guido Guidi.
• Cover RI: Grimlock and the demons versus a Blitz Engine, by Geoff Senior and Josh Burcham.

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External links

• Simon Furman's Script (W)rap