I’ll teach this mud to mess with Megatron!
Transformers: Generation One vol. 3 #0
Dreamwave (December, 2003)
WRITER: Brad Mick (also the creative director under his real name, James McDonough) ARTISTS: Pat Lee, Don Figueroa, & Joe Ng INKERS: Elaine To, Rob Armstrong, & Erik Sander COLORISTS: Espen Grundetjern & Rob Ruffolo ADDITIONAL COLORING: David Cheung, Jong-Im Lee, Elliot Kravhik, & Sigmund Torre FLATS: Kenny Li & Ferd Poblete LETTERER: Ben Lee
Narration tells us how Scourge and Shockwave met, leading to how Shockwave learned so much about Cybertron, as well as the events of “War & Peace”, the last miniseries. Long time fans will recognize Unicron eating Lithone at the beginning of the issue and the narrators: the Quintessons! They also want to find out what happened to Megatron, who is alive and not so well on Junkion as Wreck-Gar brings him the remains of the Decepticlones from The Age Of Wrath (which at the time just looked like Seeker bodies). Things are about to get worse for the Transformers.
What they got right: This is a set-up for things to come that shouldn’t alienate casual fans but give the longterm fans something to drool over. Unicron attacking Lithone like he did in Transformers: The Movie (we even see one of the robots is named Arbulus), and the Quintessons. Interestingly the Quintessons use “it” rather than “he” when talking about Shockwave and Megatron, which could have been important had the series gotten that far.
What they got wrong: I’m sure this was part of the planned storyline, but why is Unicron headed for Earth rather than Cybertron? Until Transformers Prime he didn’t have any link to the planet before. In the movie Cybertron was just next in the way, kind of like Galactus. (Not surprising since Marvel was teaming with Sunbow to produce the show at the time.) In the comics and later shows Unicron and Primus, the entity that formed Cybertron, have a long-standing rivalry. In Prime they decided to have Unicron be the core of Earth for some reason which only works because it’s a new take on the planet-eater. And in GI Joe Vs The Transformers they wanted to combine the movie villains, Unicron and Cobra-La, so Earth worked there as well. Earth seems an odd choice here though.
Recommendation: A decent intro into where the series is going, so it’s worth adding to the library if you’re going to have the entire Dreamwave run, or want to see what it’s about. Not much else, though.
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