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"...And the Damage Done" Dark Cybertron Finale
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	March 26, 2014
Cover date	March 2014
Written by	John Barber and James Roberts
Pencils by	Brendan Cahill
Inks by	Brian Shearer
Colors by	Josh Perez
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	Carlos Guzman
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era (2014)

As Optimus Prime and Megatron confront Shockwave together, the salvation of all reality hinges on one question: can a 'bot really change who they are?

Synopsis

As time and space collapse around Cybertron, the Autobots and Decepticons continue their seemingly-futile struggle against the insurmountable Ammonite legions. While Arcee and Whirl share a moment of levity amongst the chaos, aboard the Lost Light, Hound calls for battle statistics, but Perceptor and Mainframe make it clear that they have barely made a dent in the seventy-billion-strong horde...

In Crystal City, a bewildered Brainstorm recovers from the surprise emergence of Optimus Prime's team through his chest. Before any explanations can be offered, Nightbeat, Kup, and Cyclonus all collapse, the taint of the Dead Universe having left them unable to survive in the living universe. While Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus head off to intervene in Shockwave's currently-raging battle with Megatron, the redemption-seeking Rodimus forgoes the thrill of battle for once to help get the stricken to Brainstorm's laboratory on the Lost Light for treatment. As they climb back up to the surface, Rodimus details for Brainstorm how they heard the singing that had been going on in Swerve's through a portal within Nova Prime's corpse, and used his technology to turn the deceased despot into a space bridge; Brainstorm is puzzled as to why he was on the other side of Nova's portal, but Nightbeat explains that it is because the scientist has been vicariously rendered undead as a result of exposure to Dead Universe energies during his research. As the team emerges on the surface, things suddenly take an even more unfathomable turn: with all of time contracting to a single point, the sky above Cybertron comes alive with images from the past, as every moment in time starts to occur at once.

Back underground, Starscream fights a losing battle against Jhiaxus, who has replicated his new body with his reactive armor, and is proving more adept at using it than Starscream himself. While they brawl, Metalhawk accesses Jhiaxus's computers and learns how the Regenesis ores are being used to facilitate Shockwave's plan, channelled from Shockwave to the Ammonites through Jhiaxus's ship. With a final barb to Starscream on the nature of self-sacrifice, Metalhawk gives up his life to link the Ore-14 that remains in his system into the delicate matrix, throwing the ores out of balance. Starscream is able to end Jhiaxus using the swords he did not know his new body had until the scientist revealed them to him, then he and Rattrap start heading back to the surface themselves...

...where Metalhawk's actions have successfully destroyed the Ammonites, causing them all to spontaneously explode and fall to Cybertron's surface in a burning rain. To take out the last remaining opponent, Monstructor, Mainframe crashes the Lost Light straight into the combiner, shattering him into his component Decepticon pieces, then calls upon Windblade, Chromia, and Nautica to help finish the separated villains off. The ship then picks up Rodimus, Brainstorm, and the wounded (with Nightbeat expressing some interest in the ship's mysterious origins), but Brainstorm soon begins to suffer some performance anxiety as the magnitude of the task before him begins to sink in. Rodimus baits him by remarking that Perceptor would certainly be up to the task, and even though Brainstorm knows what his captain is doing, he sets to work with renewed vigor all the same.

No sooner have Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus arrived at the site of Megatron and Shockwave's battle than Magnus is felled by a blast from the cyclopean Decepticon. Prime attempts to remind Shockwave of the kindly senator he once was, using his own journey from Prime to Pax to Prime again as an example of how it is possible for a 'bot to change their path, but the words have no effect on Shockwave, so Megatron tries a more dramatic example: recovering the Autobot insignia from the fallen Bumblebee's body and with a heartfelt speech inspired by Bumblebee's own words, he places it upon his own chest, and declares himself an Autobot. Confused and distraught at this display, Shockwave begins to lose his focus, and his control of the chronal drive integrated with his systems slips away, setting his mind adrift in time and space. His old, pre-shadowplay self begins to re-emerge, and horror seizes his mind at what he has become; Optimus reminds him again of their friendship, of simple and intimate details like a wobbly bench at their old meeting place... and Senator Shockwave quietly, calmly comes back to himself. Alas, he explains, the chronal drive cannot be deactivated, as it had been inextricably bound with him, and so he calls upon his old friend for one final, fatal favor. With the promise that he will always remember Shockwave as he was, Prime is joined by Megatron in firing upon Shockwave, destroying him and the time drive, which collapses into a singularity. Prime, Magnus, and Megatron make a futile race for safety, forced to leave Bumblebee's body behind as the black hole expands... but at the last second, the Lost Light swoops in, and Rodimus and the rest of his successfully-cured team snatch the trio from the jaws of death, the singularity collapsing behind them.

Watching from afar, Soundwave peers into Megatron's mind, and is aghast to see him wearing the Autobot insignia. Galvatron chooses that moment to make his entrance—rescued from Crystal City along with Dreadwing by Skywarp, he approves of Soundwave's disdain for Megatron's change of heart, and proposes a new approach...

Rattrap and Starscream haul themselves up to the surface, and Rattrap begins needling his "boss", suggesting that Metalhawk's sacrifice will mark the departed NAIL leader the hero of the hour, making it hard for Starscream to remain in control. Tired of the rat's scheming, Starscream drops his own dizzying spin on the situation, pointing out how Metalhawk's actions could be interpreted as the willful murder of seventy billion lifeforms, and making it very clear to Rattrap that treachery and distortion of the fact is his game to play. Of course, it turns out he has just done this in front of the assembled Autobots...

Some time later, Optimus and Megatron avail of a moment of isolation together on the Lost Light to talk through what has happened between them. Megatron vows that his change of heart is not a trick while Optimus makes clear that if he could see through everything Shockwave had done and remember him as the friend he once had, he can do the same for Megatron. Together, the pair disembark the ship to meet the assembled crowd below, and to take the first steps into a new and different future.

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in timey-wimey scenes.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"There are billions of them and they're trying to kill us, Whirl!"
"Well, yeah, no, I get that—but they're usually busy fighting their own war. They've been, like, super-evenly matched forever, but..."
"BUT?!"
"A couple months back I might've accidentally ramped things up a bit. I killed their enemy's leader and one thing led to another and now they're helping Shockwave kill us..."
"Somewhere in there is a lesson about unintended consequences..."
"Did I ever tell you about how I started our war? You'll laugh your head off."
"You know what, Whirl? We really should've hung out more..."

—Arcee and Whirl

"That's how you want to end this, Jhiaxus—by cosplaying as me?"

—Starscream is not too impressed with Jhiaxus's new look

"That's the single most unpleasant thing that's ever happened to me."
"Could've been worse. We could've been doing the splits on the way out..."

—Brainstorm just had five 'bots jump out of his chest, but Rodimus looks on the bright side

Brainstorm: "How'd you guys manage to open a portal in my chest? Did you harness the power of bickering?"
Rodimus: "We heard a drinking song coming from Nova Prime's corpse."
Kup: "Just when ya think there are no new sentences..."

—Kup learns that the average conversation between the Lost Light's crew isn't so average, while Brainstorm looks for a new power to weaponize.

"All life is equal. I merely assign it a quantifiable value—zero."

—Shockwave

"Either someone just killed all the Ammonites, or they're combining into a poorly coordinated fireworks display."
"Cop out! You can't just explode! Where's the fun in that?!"

—Swerve and Whirl

"What have I done? What happened to me?! What have they turned me into?!"
"Fight it, Shockwave! Fight the Shadowplay! Think of who you were! Think of us! Think of—think of—think of our bench! The Ark-1 Memorial Park—our bench by the inscription! Next to the energon bar that was never open. The bench with the broken leg! Remember? You'd say, 'Forget overthrowing the Senate—I'd settle for a decent bench!'"
"...And I fixed it myself in the end, didn't I. My greatest achievement. From fixing a bench to breaking the universe. How did that happen?"

—Shockwave is brought back to himself by Optimus Prime

"On behalf of everyone you helped—every outlier you tutored—every function runt you took under your wing—every naive young law enforcer whose eyes you opened—and every miner you made sure was safe—Senator Shockwave, I promise you—I will remember you as you were."

—Optimus Prime, before delivering the final blow

"After all Shockwave did—not just now, with the ores and Nova and the Titan, but throughout the war... were you really able to look beyond all that and recognize him as your friend?"
"Does it matter?"
"If it didn't I wouldn't ask."
"Then you already know my answer."

—Megatron and Optimus Prime

Notes

Continuity notes

• Whirl cracks about starting the Transformers' war, which he essentially did by showing Megatron the path of violence when he beat him to within an inch of his life while he was in custody, as seen in issue #22 of the 2009-2011 ongoing series. He's entirely aware of the consequences of his actions, and although he's putting a morbidly humorous face on it here, More than Meets the Eye #10 showed us he's carrying a lot of issues over it.
• The idea that those tainted by the Dead Universe are unable to survive outside of it was a major plot point back during Simon Furman's tenure on the 2005 IDW continuity, but it hasn't been a factor in any subsequent plots until now.
• Nightbeat doesn't forget things, so when he gets Tailgate's name wrong and calls him "Tailpipe" instead, he's certainly doing it to aggravate Cyclonus. Per his Spotlight, Nightbeat is a longtime student of the Ark-1, so he's almost certainly making a deliberate reference to Cyclonus's Ark-1 crewmate Tailpipe, who was introduced back in Chapter 1.
• The images that appear in the sky as time collapses include Windblade, Tailgate leaping onto Tyrest's back from More than Meets the Eye #21, the Ark-1 leaving Cybertron, the Deceptigod, the aged Ironhide from ongoing #31, Megatron in his battered stealth bomber body from somewhere between ongoing #30 and Robots in Disguise #14, Megatron ripping the Matrix of Leadership out of Optimus from All Hail Megatron #7, the aforementioned scene of Whirl beating up Megatron from ongoing #22, and Starscream in his original Earth mode body.
• Nightbeat takes a curious interest in the Lost Light; the ship's mysterious history has not been the subject of much discussion, but the unexpected presence of a Sparkeater on board in More than Meets the Eye #3 led Drift to speculate that "horrific things" must have happened on board the ship in its past. Further, in what seemed like nothing more than an easter egg at the time, Nightbeat observed Rung constructing a model of the Lost Light in a flashback to four million years ago in More than Meets the Eye #9, which suggests the ship had a reputation even then. More than Meets the Eye #37 finally explained the full circumstances of Nightbeat's spotting of Rung and the Lost Light model.
• Prime vows to Shockwave that he will "remember [him] as he [was]", which was the hope pre-Shadowplay Shockwave expressed in More than Meets the Eye #11.

Transformers references

• Mainframe remarks on Prowl's "keen sense of spatial awareness", a reference to his ability to "observe 800 moving objects, compute their probable paths of movement, and determine the proper countermove" from his original Universe profile (and countless James Roberts' issues).

Real-world references

• The title of this chapter is a reference to the Neil Young song, "The Needle and the Damage Done".
• When Starscream deploys his swords, the sound effect used is "Snikt", the sound effect used for Wolverine's claws.

Errors

• Brainstorm's got his briefcase cuffed to his wrist this issue, when he didn't have it with him in the last chapter—though that's almost certainly an error on the last chapter's part, not this one's.
• Chromia and Nautica have reverted to the James Raiz versions of their character models, with simpler helmet designs and a large clear visor over the latter's face, after abruptly switching to alternate models with Chapter 9. Again, this is arguably something previous issues got wrong, that this issue corrects.
• Windblade has a similar model change, going back to her "monobreast" chest design. Unlike the other members of her group, it only lasts a single panel.

Edits

Similar to the pack-in versions of various other existing IDW comics, the version of this issue available with the Generations Deluxe Class Arcee toy was also subject to some changes:

• Multiple edits right on page 1 (not counting the "previously" page): In panel 1, Ironhide's first speech bubble has Slag's name changed to "Slug"; appropriately, Slug's third speech bubble correcting him that "Plus—my name's Slug, now!" is omitted entirely. Furthermore, Arcee's first speech bubble is changed from "Stupid, stupid Minicons." to "Annoying little Minicons." Lastly, Arcee's second speech bubble in panel 1 and Whirl's final speech bubble in panel 2 have three instances of "kill" changed to "destroy" between them.
• On page 2, Arcee's caption in the large two-page spread panel has the word "dies" changed to "ends", making this possibly the first time the word was changed in such a manner when it referred to an abstract thing rather than individuals. Furthermore, Perceptor's caption in panel 4 is changed from "…assuming they're not already dead." to "…assuming they're still alive."
• Three changes on page 5: Megatron's first speech bubble in panel 1 is missing the sentence "You have gone mad.", with the speech bubble itself resized accordingly; and Shockwave's third speech bubble in panel 4 has the words "killing" and "died" changed to "destroying" and "fell", respectively.
• Two changes on page 7: Rodimus's first speech bubble in panel 3 has "corpse" changed to "body", and Nightbeat's first speech bubble in panel 4 is changed from "I imagine, Brainstorm, it's because you're dead—well, not dead dead. More like 'nearly alive.'" to "I imagine, Brainstorm, it's because you're not alive—well, not strictly alive. More like 'nearly alive.'"
• Three changes on page 9: Starscream's speech bubble in panel 1 has the word "kill" changed to "destroy", which the speech bubble itself minimally resized; his first speech bubble in panel 6 has the word "dying" changed to "falling"; and his third speech bubble in the same panel has "stupid armor" changed to "precious armor", again with the speech bubble itself resized accordingly.
• Two changes on page 10: Swerve's second speech bubble in panel 1 has "killed" changed to "blew up", and Chromia's second speech bubble in panel 5 has "moron" changed to "bolt-brain".
• On page 12, Brainstorm's fourth speech bubble in panel 3 has "building blocks of life and death" shorted to simply "building blocks of life".
• A whole five changes on page 13: Brainstorm's caption in panel 1 has "death" changed to "destruction"; Optimus Prime's final speech bubble in panel 2 has "died" changed to "ended"; his first speech bubble in panel 3 has "You died" changed to "You were gone"; his second speech bubble in the same panel has "I bled to death" changed to "I suffered", with the speech bubble resized accordingly; and lastly, his third speech bubble in the same panel has "fatality" changed to "loss".
• On page 14, Megatron's first speech bubble in panel 2 has "to live and die according to our class" shortened to simply "to live according to our class".
• On page 19, Galvatron's second speech bubble in panel 5 has "all you died for" changed to "all you fought for."
• Three edits on page 20: Rattrap's third speech bubble in panel 2 has "you killed Metalhawk" changed to "you took down Metalhawk", with the speech bubble itself resized accordingly; Starscream's speech bubble in panel 3 has "Metalhawk murdered 70 billion sentient beings" changed to "Metalhawk destroyed 70 billion sentient beings"; and his second speech bubble in panel 4 has "just another genocidal despot" shortened to simply "just another despot", with the speech bubble itself resized accordingly.

Trivia

• When originally released on digital platforms, this issue was missing its final page.
• Starscream is somehow aware of the term and meaning of "Cosplay". This is a terrifying thought indeed.

Covers (4)

• Regular cover: Shockwave versus Megatron atop of a pile of the fallen, by Phil Jimenez and Romulo Fajardo Jr.
• Sub cover: Shockwave crackling with power, by Casey Coller and Josh Burcham (miscredited as Joana Lafuente).
• Cover RI: Wraparound cover of Generations Metroplex stomping over the surface of Cybertron as Optimus Prime leads a team of Autobots running ahead of him, by Jiminez and Fajardo Jr.
• Hasbro exclusive cover: Arcee, by Phil Jimenez and Romulo Fajardo Jr., exclusively available with Generations Deluxe Class Arcee.

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Reprints

• The Transformers: Dark Cybertron Volume 2 (June 11, 2014) ISBN 1613779984 / ISBN 978-1613779989
  • Collects Robots in Disguise issues #25–27, More than Meets the Eye issues #26–27, and Dark Cybertron Finale.
  • Bonus material includes covers from each issue.
  • Trade paperback format.

• The Transformers: Dark Cybertron (February 11, 2015) ISBN 163140072X / ISBN 978-1631400728
  • Collects Dark Cybertron #1, More than Meets the Eye issues #23–27, and Robots in Disguise issues #23–27, and Dark Cybertron Finale.
  • Bonus material includes a 26-page "Behind the Scenes of Transformers: Dark Cybertron #1" by John Barber, with additional commentary by James Roberts, Brendan Cahill, Phil Jiminez, Andrew Griffith, and Carlos Guzman. This in-depth page-by-page breakdown includes script extracts, various stages of lineart, character/location/ship designs, and more!
  • Bonus material includes a cover gallery.
  • Hardcover format.

• The Transformers: The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 6 (October 18, 2017) ISBN 1684050855 / ISBN 978-1684050857
  • Collects Dark Cybertron #1, More than Meets the Eye issues #23–27, and Robots in Disguise issues #23–27, Dark Cybertron Finale, and Windblade (2014) issues #1–4.
  • Hardcover format.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 60: Dark Cybertron, Part 2 (February 21, 2018)
  • Collects Robots in Disguise issues #25–27, More than Meets the Eye issues #26–27, and Dark Cybertron Finale.
  • Bonus material includes a "blow-by-blow account of Dark Cybertron's hidden secrets", a cover gallery and a forward by Simon Furman.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Dark Cybertron Volume 2 – cover art by Phil Jimenez and Romulo Fajardo Jr.

• 

  Dark Cybertron – cover art by Casey Coller and Joana Lafuente

• 

  The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 6 – cover art by Marcelo Matere and Tom B. Long

• 

  The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 60: Dark Cybertron, Part 2 – cover art by Mark Brooks (Brainstorm) and Andrew Griffith (retro)

External links

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