TRANSFORMERS: WAR WITHIN: THE AGE OF WRATH #2

Writer: Simon Furman | Pencils: Joe Ng | Inks: Ferd Poblete
Additional Inks: Tracy Ho & Erik Sander | Colors: Josh Burcham, Sig Torre, & Ruffs
Letters: Ben Lee

The Plot: Megatron leads the Decepticons once more, and the Autobots serve him as slave labor. After torturing Starscream, Megatron chats with Shockwave about a cloning experiment.

Meanwhile, Megatron's clone warriors chase down the Autobot Getaway. Elsewhere, the Autobots work under Decepticon supervision deep beneath Cybertron's surface. When Brawn rebels, he is shocked into submission. At the same time, Getaway continues his escape. Megatron receives a report from Soundwave stating that the Autobots have dug a shaft all the way to the center of Cybertron.

Getaway lures the Decepticon clones into an Autobot ambush, and they are wiped out -- save one for study by Perceptor.

Continuity Notes: Megatron refers to his cloned troops as a "million-strong Aerospace Extermination Squadron". Shockwave asks where he got them, but Megatron is not forthcoming with answers. He later has some kind of telepathic conversation with unseen individuals who provided the troops and are helping him conquer Cybertron.

G1 References: Though not revealed in this issue's interior, the mystery being supporting Megatron's efforts are obviously the Quintessons, based on the inexplicable spoiler image on issue #1's variant cover (which also spoiled the return of Megatron himself, but at least that happened in the same issue rather than being teased as an ongoing mystery).

My Thoughts: So this time around, Furman is justifying the WAR WITHIN title by digging a tunnel to Cybertron's core for some as-yet-unrevealed purpose. It's kind of silly how every one of these mini-series must include action beneath the planet's surface in order to justify Dreamwave's bizarre choice of branding, but Furman deserves credit for trying to make it all work. It would've been just as easy to ignore the subtitle and do his own thing.

Also nice to see is that Furman, James McDonough, and Adam Patyk all appear to be playing nice together at last. Previously, the writers seemed to be doing their own separate things, leaving readers to take Dreamwave's word that all these stories took place in the same continuity despite all evidence to the contrary. But here we have the origin -- or at least the chronological debut -- of the aerospace clones who had already popped up in the G1 ongoing by this point, who were noted in that series as being relics of the "Age of Internment". Now this series may be called AGE OF WRATH, but it's not hard to see that it's probably also the Age of Internment, given that the Autobots are all, well -- interned by the Decepticons and their army of clones.

Further continuity crossovers include Starscream's massacre of the Transformers' high council which was brought up the ongoing too (as noted last issue), and Furman's tying in the Quintessons, who were poised for some major developments in the second year of the McDonough/Patyk half of the equation. Between all these factors, we finally have a TRANSFORMERS universe which begins to feel like a cohesive whole rather than two disparate segments.

Of course this all happens just in time for Dreamwave to collapse under the weight of its own corruption, but hey -- at least they were trying!