Escape

 

Writer: Simon Furman

Publication date: July 31, 2004

 

Surprise, surprise, I kind of liked Escape! I know, I was as shocked as anyone. Specifically, I liked the first and last pages, and then everything that happened in between wasn't the worst thing that's ever happened. The worst thing that's ever happened is The Wreckers.

"They tell me I died," says Optimus Primal's internal monologue, as he recalls his and Megatron's deaths at the end of Beast Machines. "That should have been the end. That should have been enough! But no. It never ends. And now I can't help but feel that death... would have been a mercy!" Very Buffy Season 6.

Alpha Trion sends Optimus to where Unicron is hiding while he rebuilds his strength, "between dimensions—a part of none, in touch with all." Although he was resurrected in his original Season 1 Beast Wars body, when Optimus arrives inside Unicron he has been hideously recolored brown, green, red, and yellow. We then pick up from where we left him with Grimlock and Armada Megatron at the end of the previous story. Optimus sneaks into the Cauldron to free the imprisoned Transformers while his friends stand guard and immediately get into a fight with Reptilion, Tankor, and Obsidian.

Meanwhile, Trailbreaker and Purple Silverbolt are trapped in jail but decide that they can escape from their cells if they switch bodies with each other, so they reach through the laser bars and hold hands and this allows them to swap souls and then they can just walk through the laser bars (what).

 

Purplebolt breaks everyone else out of their cells and they all make a run for it as Optimus Primal fights Razorclaw. Unfortunately, some of the escapees have already been corrupted by the evil presence of Unicron or something, and Shadow Striker, that great and memorable character introduced in the previous issue, turns on the others and blows up the road in front of them with missiles. 

"Primus, hear me—we need the path. In the darkness of pure evil... shine a light!" prays Optimus Primal. This would have been a great time to repeat the "on hold" gag from the script reading but, alas, instead Primus opens a portal in the middle of the lake of lava in front of them. Optimus leaps headfirst through the portal and is teleported away to safety, leaving all the people he was sent to save to their fates.

As the others start following Optimus, Blackarachnia tells Purplebolt that she's turned evil again and remorsefully pushes him into the portal. "Blackarachnia, n—OOOO!" he screams. Later, Blackarachnia is taken by Unicron's generals to meet an old familiar face: the resurrected Tarantulas, somehow returned through space and time from where we last saw him in Primeval Dawn! I guess he was able to get that transwarp portal working back on prehistoric Earth? Does he still have the Matrix? And where the fuck is Airazor?

A note about the art: there are three different pencillers credited on this issue and it sure as hell shows. There are bizarre changes in character design from page to page, sometimes panel to panel. Sometimes Blackarachnia has over-designed "mechanical" facial features, sometimes she has a smooth humanoid face. One page has two panels side by side where Silverbolt has his normal head in the first one and then in the second he's morphed into some kind of hairy, demonic beast. It's incredibly distracting. 

 

But I really like the bookending art on the first and last pages. The first page has a close-up panel of Optimus Primal's beast-mode eyes at the top and bottom. The last page mirrors this layout with a close-up of Optimus's eyes, now in robot mode, reflecting the skyline of Cybertron at the top, but the bottom image is replaced with a close-up of Megatron's eyes, wreathed in flame.

"They tell me I died," Optimus repeats. "But if my sacrifice was undone, my spark reclaimed, what consequence for Cybertron itself... and Megatron?" TO BE CONTINUED...

This got me legitimately pumped, I cannot tell a lie. Megatron's back for the Universe War, baby! Will he work with Optimus Primal or against him? What will he make of technorganic Cybertron? What will his stupid redeco body look like? Will he cure Optimus's nihilism by singing "The pain that you feel / You only can heal by living / You have to go on living" to him? I can't wait to find out!

Sadly none of these questions will ever be answered because Megatron doesn't appear in the next issue and 3H Productions lost the Transformers license and went bankrupt shortly afterward. Well, easy come, easy go.