The Combiner Wars Continue: Transformers # 40!

AFTER the “Opening Salvo” and Part 1 of the first two issues in IDW’s Combiner Wars crossover, “Transformers” # 40 shows the readers the pieces of the puzzle. And there’s a lot of moving pieces. The issue begins by showing a shuttle on its way to Cybertron. The shuttle is commanded by Jetfire, and is manned by the OG Protectobots. In this continuity, they’ve never been a team, much less a combiner. Despite the fact that the Protectobot Rook was introduced in the Combiner Wars toyline, here you have Hot Spot, Groove, Blades Streetwise and First Aid, who has arrived after spending a lot of time on the ship The Lost Light of “Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye” fame. Streetwise even jokingly themselves “Protectobots,” because they are composed of “a doctor, a cop, a firefighter, an infiltration expert and a fire.” Guess that team name is in continuity now. Interestingly enough, First Aid is here due to his capacity as doctor of Patient 619, who is being ferried to Cybertron for treatment. Patient 619 happens to be Mirage, who is experiencing nasty visions of a burning Cybertron. In his vision, he says “I must help them choose,” to Ironhide—who also happens to be having the same visions on Cybertron.

Beyond Dark Cybertron: The Comics Transformed

This is an epic time to be a Generation 1 Transformers fan—if you read the comic books.

The 30^th anniversary year for the Transformers, 2014 has already seen one important run end. The original Marvel Comics continuity, begun in 1984 by writer Bud Budiansky, originally finished in 1991 with issue # 80—not bad for what began as a four-issue limited series.  That run was picked up by IDW Publishing in 2012, written by the last writer on the Marvel run, Simon Furman, and ran from # 81 to # 100, finishing the series as Furman had originally envisioned it more than two decades before.  The Marvel UK run, which existed in its own continuity, ended in 1992.

There are various other splinter continuities that either continues very slowly or abruptly ended, the most obvious one is the eye candy but overly dense plotting of the Dreamwave comics. (We have of course left out things like the movie universe, the animated universe and the Prime reality).