Dear Skybound, Please Don’t Kill Optimus Prime

TO: Skybound Entertainment
FROM: ShadowWing Tronix, BW Media Spotlight
RE: Optimus' Graveyard Is Too Full

Dear Skybound,

For the record, I’m not too interested in the more adult take on Transformers you opted to go with. Between the already high human body count and the senseless death of my boy Bumblebee it doesn’t really invoke what made me a Transformers fan as a kid, nor the nostalgia that makes want to read and watch Transformers stories as an adult. This is not a critique or a rant. It’s just personal preference. Apparently you have enough readers that disagree with me and think it’s great,so you do you. They also enjoy the EarthSpark TV show but I found it a bit dull as I just can’t get into post-war stories long-term (though I do enjoy pre-war when Cybertron isn’t just fighting over which tyranny gets to run the planet) and thought previous shows did the few good elements better. That’s a whole other conversation.

All of that said, I have heard praise for your current treatment of Optimus Prime. One example sited by one particular Transformer fan I still follow is a scene where Optimus accidentally kills a deer, learns how fragile non-machine life is, and vows to protect it. Missing the context, I’m going to take their word for it when they say you have the best take on Optimus Prime in a while, which is faint praise when you remember IDW had him take over Earth as part of a “Cybertronian Empire” to “protect us”. Therefore, maybe you are finally the creators who can end a streak that has gone on way too long in this franchise: the constant deaths and resurrections of Optimus Prime in the Transformers Multiverse.

Pun totally intended, this is a plot that has been done to death, as it seems like every continuity since the original comic and cartoon runs are under the impression that dying and coming back is just part of being an Optimus Prime, or at least putting him at near death. Maybe if I can show you how overdone this idea is you’ll break the trend and let Optimus be Optimus.

We won’t count all the times anyone playing as Optimus died playing a Transformers game. I’d be in trouble.

Let’s start where it all began…the beginning. “Generation One” alone took offing Optimus Prime into a multiple time event. In the cartoons we all know about Transformers: The Movie, but there’s also an episode of the show where Optimus is heavily damaged in need of repair, especially after Laserbeak makes it past Autobot HQ’s amazing security system (as in “amazingly terrible”) to fire a blast into Optimus’ chest. Remember, it’s not just the actual deaths but the near deaths that we’re looking at here. I’m not even going to add the times he was just a head while his body was either locked up or dismantled between the show and comic. He was still alive. This is just the grim reapatron coming for him.

Season three also loved their Prime killing. “Dark Awakening” has Optimus back as a zombie before dying again thanks to the Quintessons, who also manage to completely rebuild him in “The Return Of Optimus Prime”. That would have been the end had The Transformers been given a proper season four since Optimus also got to be one of the Powermaster toys. Except the show ended with a three-episode miniseries fans treat as a fourth season, “The Rebirth”. Nothing happened to Optimus there outside of a lot of visions and visiting Alpha Trion for a while, but in Japan this was completely tossed out in favor of a full series, “The Headmasters“.

They changed a lot about what Headmasters, Targetmasters, and Powermasters are, but that’s another topic. Important here is that the story featured Optimus dying a few episodes in, meaning he got to be alive again for a month or so tops before getting the scythe again. Japanese kids are a lot more used to dead heroes than American kids, I guess. This is also where we point out the resurrection cycle Optimus goes through as well. I already mentioned Optimus coming back in the US show, but in Japan he would return in tie-in manga, where he’s rebuilt as Star Convoy (Convoy being Op’s Japanese name, his Powermaster toy becoming a brand new character). You can see the trend starting, but the G1 side doesn’t end with the cartoon.

Marvel Comics also had to kill Optimus off. Hasbro wanted focus on new toys, which meant new characters. Not realizing how attached kids were to Optimus because I’m not convinced they yet understand the importance of good stories in selling their toys or Michael Bay wouldn’t have been anywhere near them, they wanted Optimus replaced with the new leader, Rodimus Prime. We can talk about that misstep another time, though in the Marvel comics the story didn’t allow for Rodiums to show up. Hot Rod only appeared in Marvel’s take on Headmasters because he was retooled into a Targetmaster in the toyline, while in Marvel UK Simon Furman would make the movie adaptation canon for a whole host of reasons. Point is, Optimus had to die and Bob Budiansky wasn’t happy about it because he understood Op’s importance.

“Ah! Prime’s infected with Scraplets! Run!”

So he has Optimus die as a result of a video game, where he abandoned his morals to stop Megatron whether it was a fictional world or not. It’s a controversial story of sorts, but what matters is Prime died. Then the Powermaster toy forced his return, rather than the cartoon just trying to fix a mistake. So in the Marvel comics, Optimus returns as a Powermaster, his first Marvel resurrection.

Yes, first, because Simon Furman seemed determined to replace Optimus with Grimlock, who had since become his pet character despite being the absolute worst choice to lead the Autobots. Gears would have been better, and he didn’t do much in the comics. Heck, he has the same colors and was killed and rebuilt in the early Marvel comics, so he fits! Thus Optimus dies again in battle with Unicron, another of Furman’s obsessions over the years. Except he didn’t fully die, he just rewrote Op’s Powermaster partner, Hi-Q, into Optimus because Furman hated the “Masters” for some reason. So another death and resurrection…until Generation Two where he does it again, torn apart by the Swarm and rebuilt in the same issue to give the Swarm a soul or something with the Matrix.

If you’re keeping score, you’re either a better person than I am or think I’m actually done. Oh, you poor child. That was just the original and second generation.

Beast Wars had a cliffhanger for season two going into season three where Optimus is attacked by another Megatron, a time-displaced Predacon namesake, who tried to kill him during the 4 Million Year nap I’m not listing because EVERYBODY was part of that “death” and “resurrection”. He succeeded in blowing up Optimus’  head, starting the history rewrite, but the Maximals managed to fix his head, making his first near-death in a while…or his first near-death chronologically in-universe if you don’t count Orion Pax. This would end the original cartoon continuity depending on how you look at Beast Machines but at least we’re done killing and restoring Optimus Prime…in THIS continuity.

Dreamwave is my favorite comic book take on the original Transformers, though I do find it interesting that when they had human deaths it was a case of trying too hard, but when Skybound did it with much more bloody deaths it’s treated as being edgy and “mature”. Granted the first G1 miniseries was rather weak as a story, but that’s not what we’re discussing. I’m also not putting that Optimus resurrection on the list because, again, everyone on that Ark got blowed up on the trip back home, but he would get another chance during the better written ongoing. In fact every Optimus got to suffer the death or near-death routine in Dreamwave, or at least a teased death.

Dreamwave had three series going: The War Within was set in the past, just after Optimus’ rise to power, the main Generation One series was set in present day after the second miniseries, and Armada/Energon was an alternate version of the current toyline. They decided all three had to get Optimus out of the picture, and apparently “I have some other work to so I’m sending a specialist team on this assignment for the readers to focus on” wasn’t an option. Everyone had to believe Optimus was dead and they had to carry the fight on without him, despite how little timeline sense it made for The War Within. Energon shunted him to Unicron for awhile but everyone still thought he died. It was also the only time Optimus made peace with the humans without conquering them in the comics, which is amazing given that this was a Furman story. There would be a similar conclusion to this joint event planned in which Optimus would return to the fold in all three books, but that’s when Pat Lee’s sins caught up with him for screwing over his staff and Dreamwave was shut down before it got there. I think we can trust Kirkman to avoid that mistake.

“Sorry, Megatron, I’m not into that.”

IDW’s first continuity of Transformers stories also took a shot at killing and restoring Optimus, almost as soon as he landed on Earth. Megatron blew up his body but Optimus managed to stuff himself into one of his components for awhile until he got a new body. Still counts. I don’t know what the second continuity did but if they didn’t kill him, they’d be the first. Even the namesakes aren’t safe.

Back in Beast Wars, Optimus Primal also had his body blown up and put into a new body. He only stayed dead in Beast Machines after sacrificing himself to reformat the planet and stop namesake Megatron, because that’s where the continuity ended, much like the Dreamwave comics. The anime version of Armada had his body disintegrate until he was brought back. Transformers Animated had him die and come back in the same episode to show off the magic key the “human” Sari had. The Bay movies had him die and be brought back in the second movie. In the “aligned” continuity, Optimus Prime lost his memory at one point, while at the end of Transformers Prime he also did the ultimate sacrifice to restore the planet thing, only to be brought back in Robots In Disguise. That’s the second one. I don’t remember if he died in the original Robots In Disguise but that would have required an asterix anyway since Fire Convoy of Car Robots wasn’t intended to be an Optimus Prime until Hasbro needed a filler line and borrowed Takara’s previous filler line between Beast Wars and Beast Machines/Beast Wars Returns. Not that it stopped Lioconvoy of Beast Wars II from nearly dying on an alien planet until the magic energy there brought him back, and in Japan that was tied to the US Beast Wars, which was set in the G1 cartoon continuity.. Even being Prime adjacent puts you in the crosshairs.

This is why I’m reaching out to Skybound, and EarthSpark if they haven’t already done it. Please break the cycle. Please DO NOT do a story where Optimus dies and later returns. There are other ways to tell a story about the other Transformers not having Optimus around but still doing their thing. Rescue Bots rarely had Optimus stop in and they did okay. Optimus was just the narrator for Transformers Go! and he didn’t die once. The problem is the list of continuities where an Optimus doesn’t die and I’d rather see that list grow. So please, STOP KILLING OPTIMUS PRIME! It’s on you, Skybound. You already killed Da Bee and that’s already a strike against you. I’ll be kinder to you if this run eventually ends without a dead/restored Optimus Prime story. It’s been done enough. Let Optimus live!

Sincerely
Troy A/ShadowWing Tronix
BW Media Spotlight
"Living is the right of all sentient Optimus Primes"

Think they’ll listen?