Abduction

 

Writer: Simon Furman

Publication date: August 23, 2003

 

It's been one year since the end of Beast Machines, and Autobot news reporter Rook is still running around being an anachronism. He's in good company this time, however, as he arrives on the scene to break the story on the latest big scoop. Five G1 Autobot veterans of the Great War are arriving on technorganic Cybertron, having been lost in space for hundreds of years, I guess. You know them, you love them, some of the Transformers franchise's oldest and most iconic characters: Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Trailbreaker, and... Shadow Striker and Roulette, two OC fembots no one has ever heard of. I assume they must be cool, though, based on the company they're keeping.

Cheetor, Rattrap, Silverbolt, and Blackarachnia are some of the first in line to welcome home these long-lost children of Primus. Where are Nightscream and Botanica? They didn't get figures in the toyline this series is promoting so they don't get to show up. 

 

No sooner have the heroes of the Beast Wars and the Spark War introduced themselves to this gaggle of minor characters than the five Autobots, along with Blackarachnia and Silverbolt, are struck by beams of light from the sky and teleported away. "People come and go so strangely here," Rattrap doesn't say with a shrug, winking at the reader.

The seven abductees materialize above a lake of fire. "Welcome... to the PIT!" booms a disembodied voice. "The Pit" was mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon, seemingly as an analogue to "hell" in profanity. The Transformers afterlife is generally called the Matrix (contextually distinct from the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, first seen in The Transformers: The Movie) or the Allspark, but sometimes the Matrix refers specifically to "Transformers heaven," with the Pit being the term for "Transformers hell." The Razor's Edge used these terms, but in reference to physical production facilities on Cybertron where Autobots/Maximals and Decepticons/Predacons, presumably respectively, were brought online.

In this comic, the Pit doesn't seem to be any of those things, it's just an industrial welding cell. Robotic arms disassemble Silverbolt's reformatted Beast Machines body and put him back together as a purple repaint of his original Fuzor body from Beast Wars. Somehow he takes this a lot better than Blackarachnia, who has just been painted blue and is livid about it. The Autobots experience similarly minuscule changes, except for Trailbreaker who remains exactly the same.

Our heroes are taken to meet who appear to be the head honchos of this place: alternate-universe versions of the Vehicon generals Tankor and Obsidian, an evil alternate-universe version of Tigerhawk named Razorclaw, and Reptilion, a repaint of Transmetal 2 Iguanus. Silverbolt exclaims that all the versions of these characters from his own universe are already dead, even though Obsidian was still alive and well when he last appeared in The Wreckers: Finale. The four horsemen explain that our heroes have been brought here to "the Cauldron" for one purpose: to fight and to die.

The camera pulls back, and we discover that all of this is taking place inside a partially rebuilt Unicron! He's back, baby! For the fifteenth time! And this time, it's personal.

Meanwhile, the silent and inscrutable god of the Transformers, Primus, has become Zordon from Power Rangers and appears as a blue floating head in a tube as he communicates with a reincarnated Alpha Trion. The power of the Enemy is rising! For every Transformer who dies in the Cauldron, Unicron devours their spark, becoming stronger as Primus is reduced. There's only one bot who can save them all now. Primus summons his spark back from the Matrix: "Well..." says Optimus Primal," ...that's just PRIME!"

I can tell already that this isn't going to end well; Simon Furman-scripted promotional comics about obscure redecos rarely do. But this first issue of Universe is so much better than The Wreckers ever was that I'll take it. This is, what, the second time Unicron has returned in 3H/Fun Publications continuity, after possessing Razorwind for 25 seconds in Reaching the Omega Point? Then in IDW continuity he returned in both Beast Wars Neo and The Ascending. Is there any way we can limit Unicron resurrection stories to like one per decade? This Unicron fatigue is making me thirsty.

There's also this motion comic from the Transformers: Universe CD-ROM, which ostensibly describes the backstory for this series but doesn't appear to fit into its continuity at all. Color me shocked!