« Optimus Prime #19 »
"There is... logic, in what he says."
"The Falling Chapter 4: The Hallowing"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	May 30, 2018
Cover date	May 2018
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Sara Pitre-Durocher
Colors by	Josh Burcham
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Mariotte
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era

With Optimus Prime gone, Starscream believes his time to shine has finally arrived, but he's in for a rude surprise.

Synopsis

Though his official biography tells the story rather differently from how it actually happened, Starscream has led a life that has seen his every endeavour meet with failure, from his youth as a street hustler in Iacon—where he ran afoul of police officer Orion Pax for the first time—to conning his way into a job as a senator for Vos, only to be left drinking his sorrows away when he finds none of the appreciation or glory he'd hoped for. From there, he joined the Decepticons and witnessed Orion Pax's fall, and his rebirth as Optimus Prime.

Today, Starscream watches Optimus Prime fall once again—from Onyx Prime's mothership down into the ruins of Crystal City, where Optimus, and the Matrix of Leadership within him, are consumed by the miniature singularity at the city's heart. Confident that history has proven Optimus will eventually come back to life, Starscream realizes he has a limited time to act; the time has come for him to finally fulfill the prophecy Metrotitan spoke of, to become the savior of Cybertron destiny claims he is. Devastator believes he has deduced the true meaning of the prophecy: Starscream is the reincarnation of Megatronus, the Fallen Prime. Bumblebee dismisses the notion as absurd, but Starscream figures he can work with it nonetheless, and has Devastator carry him to where the body of the defeated Metrotitan lays.

Aboard his ship, Shockwave instructs Liege Maximo to take a squad of Maximals and finish off the Autobots who were aboard Metrotitan when he was shot down. Maximo's half-hearted protestations at being tasked with such gruntwork are silenced, and he does as ordered, leading the beast warriors down to locate and pick off the survivors: Arcee, Aileron, the Torchbearers, and the badly-wounded Jetfire. Maximo's forces arrive at Metrotitan at the same time as Starscream, Bumblebee, and Devastator, and Starscream orders Devastator go and join the battle as well. Bumblebee offers no rebuke; instead, he appears to be talking to someone else, who Starscream cannot see, and then suddenly disappears...

Windblade, the Mistress of Flame, and Marissa Faireborn watch events unfold from afar, amazed to see that anyone has survived the fall of Metrotitan. Faireborn contacts Trypticon, urging him to get the next generation of protoforms who live within his body to safety; the Dinobots want to join the fight, but Trypticon overrules them, spacebridging himself to Earth to get the protoforms out of the line of fire.

While Arcee holds off the beasts, and the Torchbearers merge into Victorion to engage Devastator, Aileron helps the injured Jetfire get to safety. Starscream, meanwhile, is left alone to clamber up to Metrotitan's head, where he discovers that the fallen Titan still lives. Metrotitan confirms Devastator's belief that Starscream is the reincarnation of Megatronus, and for one, shining moment, Starscream's life of failures and defeats makes sense to him, all his struggle part of some great destiny... until it is all ripped away a second later, when Shockwave appears and reveals that the prophecy is nothing more than a work of fiction, invented and sown into history by him, which Metrotitan only believes in because Shockwave used Regenesis ores to reprogram his mind. If Cybertron had an intelligent leader, Shockwave says, they might have been able to see through his machinations—but by manipulating history and "destiny" to place a fool like Starscream on the throne, Shockwave ensured the planet would become divided, left weak and vulnerable for the force of chaos that is soon to descend upon them all. Shockwave punctuates these revelations with a powerful blast that finishes Metrotitan off and leaves Starscream utterly shattered spiritually.

Elsewhere, Optimus Prime awakens within a shadow-shrouded mirror of Crystal City. He initially believes he has died and gone to the Afterspark, but as he picks his way through the ruins, he realizes he is, in fact, in Infraspace, the transitional limbo between life and death he visited once before. And he's not the only one... as from the darkness, Bumblebee appears to greet him!

Featured characters

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

Quotes

"I know one universal rule—whatever the game, the easiest way to win... is to kill all the other players."

—Arcee

"What are your orders, my lord?"
"You're a giant green monster, Devastator. What do you think I'm going to order you to do? Engage in a discussion on the finer points of decorative soldering?"

—Devastator and Starscream

"I'll just slow you down. Leave me and fly. I'll be okay."
"Did four million years of war make you idiots decide suicide is always Option One?"

—Jetfire and Aileron

"I should have had faith. But everybody—Optimus, Megatron, Windblade even... all they ever did was cast doubt. I thought belief was nonsense. That the universe was just entropy. But now I see it. The universe was always on my side."

—Starscream about 10 seconds before discovering otherwise.

"I needed a fool in charge of Cybertron. A powerful leader—an Optimus, a Megatron, an Arcee, perhaps even this Windblade—they would have seen what was coming. But I knew you would never look past your own reflection."

—Shockwave drops a truth bomb on Starscream

Notes

Continuity notes

• Starscream's biography was originally mentioned in his profile in issue #3 of the Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook.
• Starscream appears in three separate bodies in three separate time periods seen in his flashback.
  • First, he appears in the earliest form he ever had, previously seen in Till All Are One #12 (but shown here in color for the first time), based pretty directly on his classic Generation 1 character model.
  • Next, we see him as a senator for Vos, a part of his past that we first properly learned about in the Optimus Prime 2018 Annual. Here, he sports the design seen in Spotlight: Blurr.
  • Finally, we see the events of Autocracy #8, in which Megatron betrayed and shot Orion Pax. Naturally, Starscream appears with the design he had in the Autocracy series, which originated in Megatron Origin #3.
• The reappearance of Metrotitan on Earth in The Transformers #54 after his apparent death in the 2012 Robots in Disguise annual is at last explained; Shockwave used his Regenesis ores to move him through space and time. Further, as we surmised back in our notes for last issue, based on what we saw in issue #10, Shockwave confirms that he made up the "Dark Cybertron" prophecy and used his ores to reprogram Metrotitan to believe in it.
• Optimus Prime recalls his first trip to Infraspace, way, way back in Escalation #6. He also mentions Garrison Blackrock's voyage there, as seen in Revolutionaries #8.
• While in Infraspace, Prime's hand brushes a circular symbol containing a curled tendril, and speaks of "Onyx's footsteps". The symbol is the one seen on the front of the Talisman, the mysterious relic that was the central plot device of Revolutionaries, an apparent creation of Onyx Prime's (or rather, as we now realize, Shockwave's), the true purpose of which has still yet to be revealed.

Transformers references

• As seen in his opening flashback, Starscream's earliest body appears in the color scheme of his Marvel Comics incarnation, distinguished by its blue head and white feet.
• A high-society robot seen in Starscream's flashback is colored like the GoBot Tux.
• Another robot in Starscream's senator-era flashback, who drags him out of a bar and preps him for a press conference, is based on Armada Swindle, Mini-Con partner to the Starscream of that universe.
• More recognizable characters appear among the ranks of Shockwave's Maximals:
  • On page 7, the crowd includes Longhorn, Night Viper, Triceradon, Striker, and in beast mode, Geckobot and Quickstrike. The crowd is block-coloured, so Triceradon and Striker could arguably be any of the other characters who share their toy moulds, but it seems pretty safe to assume their identities since they, like all the other characters, are from Beast Machines.
  • Striker, Triceradon, Longhorn, Geckobot, and Quickstrike reappear in beast mode on page 11, which continues the Beast Machines theme by adding Deployers Rav, Mol, and Dillo, all also in beast mode.
• Shockwave sheds his Onyx Prime disguise entirely to reveal that, like Optimus, Soundwave, Starscream, and Windblade before him, he has adopted his "evergreen" design.

Real-world references

• Starscream's comment about Devastator being a "giant green monster", and Devastator's follow up about being told to "smash" everyone, are of course a reference to The Incredible Hulk and his favorite thing to do.

Errors

• On page 5, "ethereal" is misspelled as "etherial". This is corrected in the trade paperback.
• Devastator explicitly refers to Starscream as "the resurrection of the Prime Megatronus", yet it has been established that the Fallen's true name was struck from the record. Maybe Alpha Trion or Starscream told Scoop?
• On panel 6 of page 16 (as Starscream's ego shatters) there is an extra space between "with" and "an". This is corrected in the trade paperback.

Other trivia

• Two additional Regenesis ores are named for the first time in this issue, used by Shockwave in conjunction with Ore-1 to condition and position Metrotitan: Ore-10, "Deception," which grants control over the mind, and Ore-9, "Space", with the power to teleport. Ore-9 came from Velocitron (and how appropriate is that that an ore governing instantaneous movement through space should come from the planet of speed?); Ore-10's origin is not mentioned.

Soundtrack

• "Controller" by Hercules & Love Affair^[1]
• "The Strangers" by St. Vincent^[2]

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Optimus Prime, Starscream, and Windblade at the mercy of Shockwave, by Kei Zama and John-Paul Bove
• Cover B: Our cast, within the silhouette of Starscream, by Casey Coller and John-Paul Bove
• Retailer incentive cover: Black-and-white lineart version of Cover A

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Reprints

• Optimus Prime Volume 4 (November 21, 2018) ISBN 1684053633 / ISBN 978-1684053636
  • Collects Optimus Prime issues #15–21.
  • Bonus material includes art from most covers.
  • Trade paperback format.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 85: The Falling Part 2 (June 3, 2020)
  • Collects Optimus Prime issues #18–24.
  • Bonus material includes a cover gallery and an intro by Simon Furman.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Volume 4 – cover art by Marcelo Matere

• 

  The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 85: The Falling Part 2 – cover art by Dreamwave and Kei Zama

References

External links

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