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Primus: All Good Things

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"Primus: All Good Things"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published September 26, 2012
November 28 (2nd printing)
Cover date September 2012
Written by John Barber
Art by Brendan Cahill
Flashback art by Guido Guidi
Color by Joana Lafuente
Letters by Chris Mowry
Editor Carlos Guzman
Continuity 2005 IDW continuity
Chronology Current era (2012)

Across both the past and the present, ancient powers result in the rise of new leaders for Cybertron... but will they save the planet, or doom it?

Contents

Synopsis

In the past...

Ages ago, on the war-torn planet of Cybertron, home to a race of shape-changing robots, a leader emerged who ended the fighting: Nova Prime. Seeking to rediscover the lost principles of their legendary gods, Primus and the Guiding Hand, Nova gathers his closest friends and advisors, Jhiaxus, Galvatron, Cyclonus, and Dai Atlas, and leads them on a quest into the bowels of the planet. There, they find the home of the Guiding Hand, Crystal City, and its guardian Omega Supreme, who allies himself with Nova to help accomplish his goal of bringing peace and prosperity back to the wounded world. Together, they raise Crystal City to the surface and usher in a new age of freedom... but in time, Nova's ambition begins to grow, and he has an Ark built that he may travel to countless other worlds and share his gift of freedom with them. Additionally, further studying the legends of the Guiding Hand, he explores ways to fulfil the prophecy that claims "all shall be one", and tasks Jhiaxus with re-engineering six volunteers, giving them the ability to combine their bodies and minds. Horrified at this perversion of the ancient texts, Dai Atlas informs Omega Supreme, who shares his concern: it's not just freedom Nova seeks for all, but freedom from individual will. Omega attacks the monstrous new combined Transformer, Monstructor, causing the beast to rage out of Nova and Jhiaxus's control, resulting in a battle that devastates Crystal City. Dai Atlas despairs, but Nova dismisses the city as having outlived its usefulness, and departs to make ready for the launch of the Ark. In time, Omega triumphs over Monstructor, and reveals to Dai Atlas the great secret of Crystal City, which he never shared with Nova: beneath it dwells Metrotitan, a slumbering Titan. It is not for them to awaken it, however; that task will be carried out by a great Cybertronian in the future. For now, its energies will be used to aid Dai Atlas in leaving the planet himself when the time comes, to preserve the teachings of the Guiding Hand when Cybertron once again feels the inevitable grip of war. As the Ark departs and Crystal City collapses back beneath Cybertron's surface, Dai Atlas remarks on Omega's apparent knowledge of the future, but Omega explains he knows merely the path, not the destination. Uncertainty allows Dai Atlas a measure of optimism, but Omega sees little point in having hope.

In the present...

Disregarding Bumblebee's instructions, Starscream takes Metalhawk into the wilderness outside Iacon to help search for the missing Ironhide and the Dinobots. There, they spot Blurr doing the same, forcing Metalhawk to realise that Starscream was correct: Bumblebee was lying about waiting until morning before sending anyone out, fearing that Metalhawk and Starscream would curry favour in public elections if they helped find the missing Autobots. When a patch of ground explodes in front of Blurr, the pair decide to go down and help, but he rebuffs their offer and instead calls in Autobot High Command to secure what he had found in the subterranean cavern revealed by the explosion: an underground city, and the dormant body of a Titan. Rather than Bumblebee—who is busy dealing with a disappeared Decepticon spaceship—the call is answered by Prowl, Wheeljack and Sideswipe, the latter staying up-top to guard the entrance while Blurr leads the others into the cavern. Wheeljack is quick to detect teleportation energy and realizes that the Titan has quantum jumped to Cybertron with foreboding results: its molecules enmeshed with those of the city, Metrotitan's anti-protons are interacting with the city's regular protons, threatening to cause the impending explosive collapse of local reality.

A call from Sideswipe brings Prowl back to the surface, where it turns out Starscream has had the Decepticons and several NAILs peacefully assemble with the express purpose of letting them know the Autobots are hiding something from them. Prowl gives them some sparse facts about what has occurred and tries to get a perimeter set up to protect lives (though Blurr objects to his taking charge of the situation), and then angrily returns below for an update from Wheeljack, who has discovered that the Titan is still alive. Their options are two: use a containment field to contain the impending antimatter explosion, or save the titan by halting the flow of anti-protons with the possible side-effect of collapsing Cybertron and its star system into a singularity. Prowl chooses the first option, but then realizes that Starscream is spying on them, and leaves Wheeljack to work while he chases after the Decepticon. The chase brings Prowl and Starscream directly in front of the Metrotitan's head, with a most unexpected result... the Metrotitan awakens. The titan credits the presence of Starscream as the cause, identifying him as the great Cybertronian who will unite the planet, something even Starscream himself has trouble believing. Labels of "good" or "evil" matter not: in Starscream, the titan sees a conqueror. Happy to have been activated one final time, the titan shuts down, and a dumbfounded Starscream asks Prowl what they should tell everyone. Prowl advocates silence, naturally... but unfortunately for him, all the other Decepticons and Autobots entered the cavern while they weren't looking, and heard the whole exchange.

Everyone pulls out so Wheeljack can contain the explosion, and the Decepticons return to Iacon carrying Starscream on their shoulders, spreading the word that he is their new conquering savior. Wary of the Metrotitan's choice of words and the populace's acceptance of a power they do not understand, Metalhawk watches from afar, and is approached by Omega Supreme, who knew the titan from ages past. Asked by Omega for his opinion, Metalhawk admits his long-held opposition to the idea of conflict and conquest as the only way to unity is badly shaken, and Omega ponders his own long-standing belief in the hopelessness of the Cybertronian race. But perhaps, Omega speculates, the Metrotitan returned to make them question their beliefs and paths... and in questioning them, allow them to change. Having departed Cybertron in the past because of his fear that the war would change him, Metalhawk is given pause to realise that change is not immutable or inevitable—it is something brought about by the individual, and it is something he can help bring about for his planet.

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Quotes

"Primus is the voice—his words lead to the truth.
Primus is the steel—his is our body, his our spark.
Primus is the sun—the hope for a better tomorrow.
I am his bullet—I am the promised dawn made real."
 "That's... charming. I didn't think you cared for poetry, Starscream."
"I'm not particularly religious either, but that part about the bullet is pretty funny, right?"

—Starscream and Metalhawk


"Hey, Starscream. What do you get when you cross Prowl with no witnesses? That's not a joke. Shut up or get shot."

—Sideswipe


"It's, on a scale from reasonable to something Brainstorm would come up with... about 0.6, 0.7 Brainstorms."
"Meaning...?"
"If I start this going and the anti-protons keep accumulating, we'll get an uncontrolled antimatter reaction and a cascading effect of protons falling to a point, probably creating a singularity."
"Meaning...?"
"Planet-sized fireball and our entire solar system turning into a supermassive black hole."
"That's 0.6 Brainstorms?"
"You, uh, you do know what he gets up to, right?"

—Wheeljack and Prowl


"Your castle falls, Prime."
"I have no need of this city any longer. It was a mere symbol, Dai Atlas."
"It was the legacy of Primus."
"I am the legacy of Primus!"

—Dai Atlas and Nova Prime

Notes

Continuity notes

  • This issue contains the second of two interlinking stories with the title prefix of "Primus", told through the 2012 Transformers annuals. The stories' unifying theme is that of exploring and revealing a lot of new information about the earliest days of life on Cybertron, embodied in the presence of the Titans, which appears in this story following its disappearance at the conclusion of the More than Meets the Eye annual.
  • This is the first time we learn that there was war on Cybertron before the Autobot/Decepticon conflict. By establishing this, the issue repairs a continuity error from the best-forgotten Heart of Darkness #3, in which Thinkbox, hailing from a time of war, was able to recognise Galvatron, despite the fact that Galvatron left the planet before the 'Bot/'Con war began. Now that we know there was another war, this makes sense. In later years, issues #21, #30, and #34 would give further details on the First Cybertronian Civil War and Galvatron's role in it. It would also implicitly confirm that "the ancient one" Nova briefly refers to here who told him about Crystal City was, in fact, Alpha Trion.
  • As in the More than Meets the Eye annual, an "opposite" of Primus is referred to as a figure of fear but never named, keeping up IDW's long-standing refusal to name-drop Unicron. However here, the giant spherical building with a small hole is reminiscent of Unicron's planetary mode.
  • The Crystal City previously appeared in the Drift mini-series, built on the planet Theophany by the Circle of Light. This issue reveals that it was only a successor to the original city, with the original hewing closer to the traditional depiction of the city in classic Transformers media (see "Transformers references," below).
  • The More than Meets the Eye annual used "Metrotitans" to refer to the whole species, but this issue abandons that almost immediately; here, they are referred to only as "Titans," with "Metrotitan" being used as the unique name of the single Titan featured in this story. Nobody in the reading audience really noticed, though, and years' worth of comics would pass before it was clearly reiterated.

Transformers references

PrimusAllGoodThings-introdump.jpg
  • The flashback sequences in both this issue and the More than Meets the Eye annual are drawn by Guido Guidi in a retro style evocative of the original Marvel Generation 1 series—particularly the inking work of Ian Akin and Brian Garvey and the limited-palette, not-always-entirely-inside-the-lines coloring of Nelson Yomtov. This issue, though, takes the whole "retro" concept substantially further than the More than Meets the Eye annual did, with many more flashback pages and many more loving references to the classic Marvel series. The first page of the comic is a direct homage to the first page of the first Marvel issue, and the whole comic is filled with scripting that deliberately evokes early Marvel quirks, including unnaturally stilted and florid dialogue and narration, as well as an introdump that specifically homages the classic Decepticon panel from the first issue. It even busts out the classic Marvel square-with-pointy-corners robot speech balloons!
  • Galvatron and Cyclonus's poses on page 2 are evocative of the classic character models, although neither is directly based on his actual character model.
  • Crystal City is visually based on its original appearance from the original The Transformers cartoon episode, "The Secret of Omega Supreme", which is also the origin of Omega's role as its guardian.
  • In his first appearance since issue #1, Blast Off is now drawn in the body of his Fall of Cybertron game counterpart. The same applies to Brawl.
  • The first panel on page 18 is an homage to this panel from the first Marvel issue, with added Omega Supreme and More than Meets the Eye's Tailgate.
  • Beast Machines Tankor makes an unusual but fun cameo in the crowd of Decepticons. By sheer coincidence, Hasbro would wind up producing a new toy of the character two years later, leading him to graduate up from "Easter egg" to fully-fledged character in IDW continuity, beginning in More than Meets the Eye #25.

Real-life references

  • The title, "All Good Things" is a shortened version of the phrase "all good things come to an end."

Errors

  • In the More than Meets the Eye annual, Cyclonus claimed to have seen Titans before, and even prayed in their shadow. While nothing explicitly stated contradicts this, the obvious implication of the issue is that by Nova Prime's time, people believe the Titans gone from the face of Cybertron. Much later in the series, it was indicated that there was some overlap between the departure of the Titans and Nova's rise to power, smoothing the issue out.
  • Further, the issue seems to confuse the Guiding Hand — that is, the five gods of Cybertron — with the Knights of Cybertron, the group of early Cybertronians being quested for over in More than Meets the Eye. After the mythical introduction we received to the Hand in the More than Meets the Eye annual, leaving the nature of their existence itself in question, for Omega Supreme to appear here and factually state he knew them and that they lived in Crystal City seems rather off. Plus, the Titan is identified as one of the Guiding Hand's fleet, and the other annual made it clear the Titans were the fleet of the Knights. (There is the possibility that this discrepancy is intentional, mirroring how real world religions will sometimes conflate once-separate figures, but it seems unlikely.)
  • On page 27, Cybertronian is misspelled Cybertonian.

Other trivia

  • A bonus section after the story includes several pages of notes from John Barber's script and the accompanying sketch pages by Guido Guidi.

Foreign localization

Japanese

  • Title: "Primus: Subete ni Owari wa Kanarazu Otozureru" (プライマス 全てに終わりは必ず訪れる, "Primus: The End Arrives for All")

Covers (3)

  • Cover A: Metrotitan looms over Starscream and Prowl, by Tim Seeley and Joana Lafuente
  • Cover B: Omega Supreme versus Monstructor as Nova Prime and Jhiaxus look on, by Andrew Griffith and Joana Lafuente
  • Cover RI: Prowl, Bumblebee, and Wheeljack and half a Titan, linking with the More than Meets the Eye Annual 2012 RI cover, by Jimbo Salgado
  • 2nd Printing Cover: Nova Prime, Galvatron, Cyclonus, Jhiaxus, and Dai Atlas (art taken from second page of this issue), by Guido Guidi
  • (thumbnail)

    Cover A

  • (thumbnail)

    Cover B

  • (thumbnail)

    Cover RI

  • (thumbnail)

    2nd Printing Cover

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Reprints

  • The Transformers: Robots in Disguise Volume 3 (April 17, 2013) ISBN 1613776268 / ISBN 978-1613776261
    • Collects Robots in Disguise issues #10–11 and Annual 2012.
    • Bonus material includes a cover gallery, and Barber's script notes and Guidi's sketches for the Annual.
    • Trade paperback format.

External links

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