TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE #99

"THE WAR TO END ALL WARS, PART 4"
Writer: Simon Furman | Breakdowns: Guido Guidi | Finisher: Stephen Baskerville
Colorist: John-Paul Bove | Letterer: Chris Mowry | Editor: John Barber
Editor-in-Chief: Chris Ryall

Cover by Andrew Wildman

The Plot: In Zero Space, Primus appears to Spike in the form of his brother, Buster, informing him that he is "the Trinity" -- a perfect fusion of human, Cybertronian, and Nebulan.

Meanwhile, Jhiaxus attempts to convince Rodimus Prime to join him, but Rodimus refuses. The Wreckers travel through the Hub, demolishing it from within, while Starscream orders Shockwave to attack it from without. As Jhiaxus's men counterattack, Rodimus escapes and frees his fellow Autobots, and Starscream, now fully possessed by the Underbase, attacks Jhiaxus and destroys his physical body. Starscream reverts to normal and is rescued by Shockwave.

On Cybertron, the proto-Transformers seal themselves into protective cocoons while the Dinobots watch. On Earth, G.B. Blackrock attempts to repair Optimus Prime while Linda Chang readies an assault team to enter the space bridge and rescue Spike. But inside the main space bridge hub on Cybertron, Galvatron attacks and kills the technicians in charge.

Finally, the dark Matrix energy which once possessed the Deathbringer rises on Cybertron.

G1 Continuity: Grimlock mentions his encounter with the dark Matrix energy on the planet VS-QS, as seen in Furman's early TRANSFORMERS U.S. issues.

Body Count: Jhiaxus seemingly executes four Autobots in his attempts to level with Rodimus. Due to the coloring it's hard to tell who they are, but one appears to be Crosshairs and another, Brainstorm (who, I'll remind everyone, just came back to life earlier in RG1!).

Variant "retro" cover by Guido Guidi

My Thoughts: So when Starscream said "we are four" but that there should be five, he meant that there were five ancient Cybertronians who controlled the Underbase, but since Jhiaxus had erased himself from Cybertron's history and left, he was no longer one of them. So the other four possessed Starscream to get Jhiaxus back. Makes sense to me.

Now, how the Underbase will play into the bit where Primus has possessed Fortress Maximus and Galvatron and sent them out to do some pretty malevolent stuff remains to be seen. I'm guessing this is all a way to deal with that corrupted Matrix energy, though. Certainly the proto-Transformers sealed themselves into cocoons to stay safe from the energy, at least.

And while Grimlock watches them do this, before the energy arrives, he suddenly remembers something from VS-QS which had previously been suppressed. Whatever that is, I hope Grimlock doesn't prove a deus ex machina here. That would just be too much for Furman's pet character. But at the moment it appears Spike is being set up to fill that role, which would be fine with me.

Final Opinion: The whole Jhiaxus thing just... ended really fast. It seems like it should've been a longer-running plot. This is exactly what I was talking about last time when I worried Furman might have to cram a lot into these final issues after moving along so leisurely for the first fifteen or so. But nonetheless, I still hold out hope for a satisfactory conclusion to the other plot threads.

Available as part of Transformers: Regeneration One Volume 4 from Amazon.com.