Apelinq's War Journals

 

Writer: Rob Gerbracht

Publication date: February 17 – June 29, 2001

This is a series of short in-universe journal entries made by everyone's favorite Optimus Primal repaint, Apelinq! You're a better person than I am if you give two shits about Apelinq, but I have to admit that I leaned a little closer to my TV screen when he briefly appeared as the leader of the Maximals at the beginning of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. That's a deep cut.

In his journal, Apelinq chronicles the events on Cybertron leading up to Beast Machines: members of the Imperial Peace Marshals going missing, a terrorist attack on the New Cybertropolis spaceport, the Tripredacus Council calling for martial law. Of course, all of this is the work of Megatron as he begins his conquest of Cybertron. Apelinq makes mention of Hot Rod still being active but absent, the same as he was in Three Dinosaurs, only Apelinq calls him "Rodimus." Three Dinosaurs was written for IDW's Beast Wars continuity, whereas the War Journals were still written under 3H Productions' tenure, so it's interesting that they have this little plot detail in common. Especially since neither involved Simon Furman recycling his own ideas.

Apelinq writes that Rodimus's "unique physiology" renders him immune to Megatron's transformation virus. What physiology is that? Does he mean being altered by the Matrix? Is Hot Rod supposed to have become Rodimus Prime again in this continuity? Perhaps more details will be forthcoming in The Wreckers.

Apelinq detects the arrival of both Optimus Primal's Autobot shuttle and Primal Prime and his crew from Primeval Dawn. Apparently they found a way to return to Cybertron in that final chapter that was never written. Apelinq goes to investigate and while trying to find a way to close the transwarp portal that brought Primal Prime to Cybertron, he and the Vehicon Mirage (no relation to the G1 Autobot, or at least I hope not) are pulled through the portal and sent to prehistoric Earth. Why is there a Vehicon named Mirage, you might ask, when the Vehicons were all mindless drones until Megatron created his three generals during the events of Beast Machines? To which I answer, shut up.

Primal Prime himself records the next entry in Apelinq's place, and when next we hear from Apelinq, he's filling us in on the blanks left over in his role in Reaching the Omega Point. Mirage is dead, apparently, so that character was completely pointless. Apparently the "plot device" that Packrat and Onyx Primal saw crash to Earth, starting this whole thing, was Apelinq's "transfer interlink," whatever that means. So it had nothing to do with the Shokaract plot, I guess? Did I just imagine that Antagony said she wanted it? I could go back and check, but I won't.