The year was 2005. The treacherous Decepticons and their heroic Autobot counterparts descended upon the Earth and unleashed a new era of Transformers comics through IDW Publishing. Thirteen years and hundreds of issues later, that universe has come to a close. Transformers historian Chris McFeely distills the entire history into one handy guide as we remember the masterful storytelling of the first IDW Transformers run.
Cover by Sara Pitre-Durocher WWW.IDWPUBLISHING.COM • $5.99 The rise of powerful new Cybertronians and ancient relics in THE TRANSFORMERS: COMBINER WARS and THE TRANSFORMERS: TITANS RETURN.
The battle that united the Transformers with allies across the universe against a dire alien threat in REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION: HEROES, and REVOLUTION: TRANSFORMERS.
Written by: CHRIS MCFEELY The further adventures of Rodimus Based on stories written by: and Co., betrayed, alone, and trying to make it back home in THE TRANS- DAN ABNETT, JOHN BARBER, CULLEN BUNN, MIKE COSTA, FLINT DILLE, FORMERS: LOST LIGHT Vol. 1-4. SIMON FURMAN, CHRISTOS GAGE, ANDY LANNING, SHANE MCCARTHY, CHRIS METZEN, JAMES ROBERTS, NICK ROCHE, DAVID RODRIGUEZ, The Earth’s joining the Council of Worlds and Optimus Prime’s protection MAIRGHREAD SCOTT, and MAGDALENE VISAGGIO of it in OPTIMUS PRIME Vol. 1-5. Featuring artwork from stories drawn and colored by: ROBERT ATKINS, ZAK ATKINSON, JOHN-PAUL BOVE,
JAMES BROWN, JOSH BURCHAM, BRENDAN CAHILL, JUAN CASTRO, The secret shared history of Cybertron SEBASTIAN CHENG, CASEY W. COLLER, JEREMY COLWELL, DAVID GARCIA CRUZ, and Earth in REVOLUTIONARIES Vol. 1-2. ANDREW DALHOUSE, THOMAS DEER, MAX DUNBAR, ROMULO FAJARDO, The Dinobots adventures in the MARCELO FERREIRA, DON FIGUEROA, GUIDO GUIDI, ANDREW GRIFFITH, Cybertronian wilderness in TRANSFORMERS: CORIN HOWELL, CHRISTOPHER IVY, PHIL JIMENEZ, RON JOSEPH, DAN KHANNA, REDEMPTION OF THE DINOBOTS. JOANA LAFUENTE, JACK LAWRENCE, IGOR LIMA, MARCELO MATERE, FRANK MILKOVICH, ALEX MILNE, ROBBY MUSSO, FICO OSSIO, JOSH PEREZ, SARA PITRE-DUROCHER, LIVIO RAMONDELLI, JAMES RAIZ, JOHN RAUCH, Earth’s invasion of Cybertron and the awakening of NICK ROCHE, ATILIO ROJO, ROB RUFFALO, HAYATO SAKAMOTO, JAVIER Unicron in TRANSFORMERS/G.I. JOE: FIRST STRIKE and SALTARES, LIAM SHALLOO, BRIAN SHEARER, SARAH STONE, E.J. SU, TRANSFORMERS/G.I. JOE: FIRST STRIKE: CHAMPIONS. PRISCILLA TRAMONTANO, FREDDIE E. WILLIAMS III, JOHN WYCOUGH, The secret shared history between the Transformers and the Solstar Knights in KEI ZAMA, and ANDER ZARATE ROM VS. TRANSFORMERS: SHINING ARMOR. Letters by: TOM B. LONG Editor: DAVID MARIOTTE Cybertron’s occupation by the Knights of the Magical Light and the summoning of Unicron in TRANSFORMERS VS. VISIONARIES. Publisher: GREG GOLDSTEIN
COVER ART BY: SARA PITRE-DUROCHER
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Facebook: facebook.com/idwpublishing • Twitter: @idwpublishing • YouTube: youtube.com/idwpublishing The destruction of Cybertron’s colonies and the final battle for survival in TRANSFORMERS: UNICRON www.IDWPUBLISHING.com Tumblr: tumblr.idwpublishing.com • Instagram: instagram.com/idwpublishing TRANSFORMERS: HISTORIA. DECEMBER 2018. FIRST PRINTING. HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS, G.I. JOE, ACTION MAN, ROM THE SPACEKNIGHT, M.A.S.K.: MOBILE ARMORED STRIKE KOMMAND, MICRONAUTS, VISIONARIES PLUS! Find these stories and many more in suggested reading order in TRANSFORMERS: THE IDW COLLECTION Vol. 1-8 and and all related characters are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. © 2018 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved. IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 2765 Truxtun Road, San Diego, CA 92106. The IDW logo is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication TRANSFORMERS: THE IDW COLLECTION PHASE 2 Vol. 1-8, with more coming soon! may be reprinted without the permission of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Printed in Korea. IDW Publishing does not read or accept unsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork. EVERY STORY HAS A BEGINNING…
…and the story of the Transformers began over twelve million years ago, on the metal world of Cybertron. Its origins lost to the mists of time, Cybertron was home to a race of intelligent mechanical lifeforms that were born from the very substance of the planet itself, gifted with the natural ability to change their bodies into vehicles, weapons, and more. The very first of these “Transformers” to emerge from Cybertron was named Primus, and his birth was immediately followed by that of Adaptus, Mortilus, Epistemus, and Solomus. These first five, together known as the “Guiding Hand,” served as the leaders of the Cybertronian race, and for a time, there was peace.
But this was not to last. Seeking to push their race to new heights, Adaptus advocated attacking neighboring planets, believing that only in the crucible of conflict could the Transformers adapt and evolve. His brothers in the Guiding Hand disagreed, leading Adaptus to turn on them, sparking a destructive war. But Adaptus could not stand against the united power of his four siblings, and so retreated to Cybertron’s moon, Luna 1. There, he activated a weapon that bathed Cybertron in an electromagnetic pulse, erasing the minds of the entire population, including his brothers. Fitting Luna 1 with massive engines, Adaptus turned the moon into a massive spacecraft and fled to plot anew, while the remaining members of the Guiding Hand, their memories of their true selves lost both to them and to those around them, adopted new identities and integrated into the planet’s population. In time, the Transformers built a religion around the lingering memory of who the Guiding Hand had once been, mythologizing them as gods. Using a wormhole network to travel through time as well as space, Adaptus was afforded a horrifying glimpse of the distant future: a planet-sized robot rampaging through the universe and destroying other worlds. Adaptus went into hiding and began secretly raising an army to prepare for the coming of this monstrous adversary.
Desiring to share the gospel of the Guiding Hand with the rest of the universe, a group of Transformers departed Cybertron aboard a fleet of Titans—giant Transformers who turned into colossal city- starships. They took with them a powerful talisman known as the Matrix of Leadership, a life- giving photonic crystal that Primus had generated from his own body before losing his memories. Primus himself—now going by the name “Rung”—remained on Cybertron and began studying psychiatry, while the robot who had been Epistemus, hungry for knowledge from new worlds, left with the explorers.
On their travels, the explorers crossed paths with the Omega Guardians, an ancient organic race from the planet Ki-Aleta, and Epistemus elected to remain on the planet and study with them. He dedicated himself to his pursuit of knowledge so completely that he eventually discarded his body, leaving behind an orb of pure information capable of answering any question, which became known as “the Magnificence.”
The other explorers’ story would eventually take a tragic turn. After contracting the wasting disease atrophosia, they sought aid on the world of Mederi, a medical center established by the Omega Guardians. Alas, the explorers were unaware that Mederi was actually a euthanasia clinic that peacefully ended the lives of its patients with illusions of their greatest desires. Unwittingly convinced by these illusions that they had found a perfect world, the explorers encoded a map to the planet into the Matrix and sent it back to Cybertron, before Mederi killed them. But the map was lost, and the explorers also entered the realm of myth, remembered in Cybertronian legend as the “Knights of Cybertron,” who had never returned to their homeworld because they had found the promised land of “Cyberutopia.” Back on Cybertron, in the Knights’ absence, the planet’s society had descended into barbarism, the populace splitting into scattered tribes led by thirteen Transformers who dubbed themselves “Primes.” Out of this era of ambition and empire emerged a key figure: the leader of a tribe of beast-form Transformers named Onyx Prime. Wishing to unite the tribes, Onyx resorted to duplicity to accomplish his goal, secretly sending his servant Megatronus to stage a series of “false flag” attacks all across the planet. Using the supposed threat Megatronus posed as a catalyst, Onyx was able to convince the other Primes to join together, then brokered a peace between their army and Megatronus’s. Together, these Thirteen Primes built a new unified Cybertronian civilization, beginning with the glittering Crystal City.
Master artificer Solus Prime forged new weapons and artifacts that paved the way for progress, including the Enigma of Combination, and the Star Saber, a sword wielded by the leader of the Primes, Prima, into the hilt of which was incorporated the Matrix.
Around eight million years ago, pushing for expansion, Onyx convinced the other Primes to annex other planets into the burgeoning Cybertronian empire. The first colonization mission, to the planet Antilla, ended in disaster when the Antillan natives fought back, triggering a war between them and the Cybertronians that ravaged their entire world. To end the conflict, an Antillan scientist created a doomsday weapon intended to scour the planet of life—but the energies the weapon released had infinitely more far- reaching effects. They rippled out into the universe, through space and time, destroying the mystical planet Prysmos and using its magicks to mutate what Antillans survived into shapeshifting monsters that the universe would one day know as the Dire Wraiths. Antilla itself was left a lifeless world of rust deserts, orbiting a black hole at the center of the galaxy.