The Transformers #78
Marvel (May, 1991)
“A Savage Circle” WRITER: Simon Furman PENCILER: Andrew Wildman INKER: Stephen Baskerville COLORIST: Nel Yomtov LETTERER: Rick Parker EDITOR: Rob Tokar
On board the Ark, Galvatron stumbles upon the stumbling Megatron and attacks him, thinking destroying his alternate universe former self will help purge the insanity of his reality’s Megatron from him. Then for some reason he stops, acknowledging that this isn’t the Megatron that will become him and yet not sure. That’s how alternate realities work, genius! It is nice to see a Galvatron/Megatron acknowledge he’s insane, though. Instead they team up against Shockwave. Meanwhile Ratchet comes out of the stasis pod like he was just born and gets into a fight with Starscream, realizing that he is still linked to Megatron mentally. So he sets off the Nucleon (which for some reason Starscream now knows what it is) and crashes the Ark. Sadly, this will not end anything if ReGeneration One has anything to say about it and sadly it does, as does the next issue.
Meanwhile, Grimlock shows up with Decepticon ships he and the Dinobots just happened to steal four million years ago. Convenient, isn’t it? We get to see Prowl praising Grimlock and calling himself a moron, which is exactly how Furman wants you to think of both. Grimlock = savior, Prowl = buffoon, Furman = character destroyer. The Decepticons, through the fine art of dart board decision-making (replace “dart” with “Bludgeon blindly stabbing the map screen”), decides to begin the new Decepticon empire (I must have missed the old one) on the planet Klo, which we’ll see in the final issue. That was the closest thing to a fun scene in this whole comic…and the last batch of issue.
Finally, Hi-Q states that the Powermaster bombing process merges the binary-bond partners and now Hi-Q is completely Optimus Prime. I wonder if this happened for the other Powermasters but Furman only acknowledges the X-Masters when he’s forced to. Blackrock is still against staying on a doomed planet to find some “Last Autobot”, an out-of-nowhere reveal that makes Primus looked well thought out, because he can still save Cybertron…somehow. And yet, Thunderpunch convinces them by going on about how the Neo-Knights practically saved Cybertron on their own…which is bullspit when you actually read #75. Dynamo had no powers on Cybertron, Rapture held him for mere seconds, Circuit Breaker lost the last of her sanity zapping Unicron with everything she had, and Thunderpunch got knocked flat on his back. Optimus destroyed Unicron with the not-so-evil Matrix…somehow…but his full-of-himself speech is enough to convince Blackrock to go for it. Because reasons.
I wish this was almost over. At least after these last two issues I get a minor reprieve. Seriously, if you want to watch interesting ideas die with bad writing and ruining of good characters in favor of pet characters, then get this. Otherwise, don’t waste your time or money.







