« The Transformers: Heart of Darkness #3 »
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	May 25, 2011
Cover date	May 2011
Written by	Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
Art by	Ulises Fariñas
Colors by	Andrew Crossley
Letters by	Shawn Lee
Editor	Andy Schmidt
Assistant editor	Carlos Guzman
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	2010, before Infestation.

Galvatron gathers his army against D-Void, but meets an old friend...

Synopsis

On the planet Spindrift, a former battlefield in the Transformers' civil war, the alien crew of the Murkdipper are hunting vapor eels when they are attacked by a cloud leviathan. The sudden appearance of Galvatron saves them from the monster, but his actual goal turns out to be the liberation of Thinkbox, an old deactivated Headmaster who is used to power the alien ship. He proceeds to take Thinkbox with him to the Realm of Wrecks, an area of the planet littered with dead Transformer bodies from past battles, and revives them all to join his growing army.

As Galvatron returns to Gorlam Prime with his new troops, he explains to them that he has visited numerous worlds, resurrecting or recruiting Autobots, Decepticons and even other robotic lifeforms in preparation for the showdown with D-Void. Cyclonus has his doubts about whether or not D-Void really exists, but his leader assures him that the threat is very real.

Galvatron's next destination is the planet Dykayra, where ruins similar to those beneath Gorlam Prime have been found. As his scouting party makes their way past old Autobot corpses, he wonders what happened to the seemingly long-gone culture that built the ruins, and suspects a connection to D-Void. Inside the ruins, they're surprised to find another portal to the Dead Universe, and even more surprised to see the figure emerging from it... their old leader, Nemesis Prime.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

• TBD

Notes

Continuity notes

• The planet Spindrift is portrayed as having been a battlefield in the Transformers' war, but Thinkbox is referred to as a Headmaster despite that technology being a modern invention by Scorponok. In addition, Thinkbox recognizes Galvatron, but Galvatron has been in the Dead Universe for almost the entirety of the Great War. A year later, the 2012 Robots in Disguise Annual would patch this error up by explaining that there was a war on Cybertron before the modern one. Issues #21, #30, and #34 would explain this to be the First Cybertronian Civil War, revealing the ancient Headmasters to be a faction of combiners against whom Galvatron fought.
• One of the dead Transformers Galvatron resurrects on Spindrift has a head vaguely reminiscent of Nancy. This was odd at time of publication, because Spotlight: Arcee had established Arcee as the only female Transformer. In retrospect, however, there is no longer a conflict because later comics would depict female Transformers as definitely existing throughout ancient Cybertronian history; so, the army of dead bots from the First Cybertronian Civil War depicted here may well include females among them. Among the bodily variation of the resurrected warriors when Galvatron is talking about the cosmic chill of the D-Void, there is a bot whose boxy curvy line art and crested, audial-"bunned" face strongly resembles a Paradron medic or, as the pink and gray coloration chosen adds to, Arcee herself. In this specific case, the coloration could be attributed to another continuity error if the artist thought Arcee was present despite having last been seen very alive vowing to warn the Autobots about Galvatron. But this still leaves open the question of the intent behind the line art for their gender, as there had yet to be any bot who isn't female drawn that way when this issue was initially released.

• He's probably just using his usual flowery style of talking, but if Galvatron really has an army of over one million, he's just increased the Transformer population of the IDW-verse by a lot of percent, based on the (now inaccurate) population figure of 10,000 given in Spotlight: Prowl. Uh, wow.

Transformers references

• One of the planets that Galvatron recruits from is apparently the planet Junk.

Errors

• The "hair" for Capt. Karrg and Master Eeems varies from panel to panel.
• On page 14, Galvatron's name is misspelled "Galavtron".
• On the two-page spread across pages 15 and 16, the treads on Galvatron's back are not colored in.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Galvatron, Cyclonus, and Scourge in battle, by Ulises Fariñas, with colors by Andrew Crossley.
• Cover B: Galvatron bringing dead Transformers to life, by Casey Coller and Joana Lafuente
• Cover RI: Pencil sketch version of cover A

• 

  "Die, IDW!"

• 

  I give you life... Liiife!"

• 

  Incentive Cover

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