« Transformers #30 »
"War World: We Are Not Meant To Be Darkness"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	May 19, 2021
Cover date	April 2021
Written by	Brian Ruckley
Art by	Anna Malkova
Colors	David García Cruz
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Tom Waltz and Riley Farmer
Continuity	2019 IDW continuity

Optimus makes one last attempt to make Megatron see the error of his ways—but when negotiations break down, Cyclonus finally gets his chance to avenge the past by killing Pyra Magna.

Synopsis

In the ruins of Iacon, Optimus Prime holds one last meeting with Megatron in the hopes that he can convince the Decepticon leader to change his ways. Using Pyra Magna and Strika as intermediaries, the pair meet via hologram under the flag of a temporary truce; despite these niceties, however, Megatron has no patience for his old compatriot, nor the Matrix of Leadership he carries within him. Megatron has thousands of Cybertronians willing to fight for his vision of the future... and "Orion Pax" is nothing but a remnant of a Senate that no longer exists, a pretender to the throne with no authority to stop him.

Pyra Magna can't believe that Optimus would jeopardize himself by holding a face-to-face meeting with Megatron, but Prime insists that agreeing to Megatron's offer might just prevent any further death and destruction. Pyra Magna simply points out that Megatron has already conquered Iacon and Tarn, seized the energon fields, control the arsenals, recruited monsters like Shockwave and rallied just about every Cybertronian who ever craved violence to his cause. The Decepticons have all but won—he has no reason to cooperate with Optimus, and Optimus has nothing to back up his words. Optimus corrects her: he has nothing... except, perhaps, Pyra Magna herself.

Optimus points out that the conflict has already taken a grave toll on their civilization, and that their most recent clash destroyed the Pyramid responsible for creating all new Cybertronians. Megatron sneers that Optimus only cared about the nascent Titansparks hidden in the facility that the Autobot leader could have harvested and weaponized against the Decepticons had the battle at the Pyramid not ended with the loss of all sixteen sparks. Despite the missteps of his predecessors, Optimus has seen the path history takes if Megatron continues down this road; despite Megatron's mockery, Optimus warns him that he will not stand idly by; he will find a way to resist the Decepticons. That's all Megatron needed to hear; the Decepticon coldly orders Strika to cut his transmission and end the meeting. Strika does just that—but once Megatron's gone, she plants a suppressor spear into the ground to speak privately with her erstwhile comrade.

On the way to the meeting place, Optimus asks if he can trust Pyra to follow his instructions; the former general admits that she has no idea, as she'd never met Optimus until now or been able to judge his character. Optimus cuts the subtlety and asks the question point blank: will she stop if he commands her to? During the War of the Threefold Spark, Pyra did not stop when Nominus Prime ordered her to. Pyra admits that she deliberately violated his orders to capture Turmoil; when she and her crew pursued his warship into space, she only intended to disable his ship and rescue the prisoners he'd taken. Somehow, they wound up destroying Turmoil's warship and killing everyone aboard; despite everything, however she does not regret her actions. To regret is to ask for forgiveness, but Pyra views her situation as a crushing debt that must be worked off and repaid—with her life, if need be. To kill a monster, Pyra became a monster... and she grimly muses to Optimus that another monster will surely rise to destroy her.

Although Strika warns Pyra that she's backing the wrong side this time, Pyra points out that they once fought together to defend a democratic government from a tyrant. But while Pyra Magna slept through the Nominus Edict, Strika had time to re-evaluate her worldview and came to see the Autobot government as another kind of tyranny all together. Now that they're alone, and shielded from all sensors, Strika reveals she lured Pyra for another reason: on Sixshot's orders, she's here to oversee Pyra's execution—a murder carried out by a vengeful Cyclonus! Unfortunately for the Decepticons, the old general is cannier than they thought; on cue, Sunstreaker and the other veteran Companions drop their concealing shimmer field and charge into battle. Scatterspike calls for their reinforcements, and Red Wing assumes that the undertrained members of Security Operations will be easy pickings, but when Rust Dust drops Nautilator, she realizes that they're dealing with highly trained veteran soldiers. Jumpstream uses her teleportation power to take out Hooligan, while Windcharger puts his magnetic arms to good use by pulling Nacelle's limbs and chassis to their limit from afar. Amidst the melee, Cyclonus squares up to fight Pyra, shouting that she went too far in spite of the amnesty... but these furious accusations provoke an unusual response from the general: she simply tells her attacker that she's been waiting for him. As Cyclonus readies his blade, Pyra kneels, ready to accept her fate...

Despite Optimus's idealism, Pyra knows that Optimus has neither the manpower nor the strength to stand up Megatron and tells him as much. Pyra lays out her plan: while she and Strika act as holographic intermediaries, Optimus must gather his forces and retreat from Iacon. Pyra will lay down her life if need be, but points out to Optimus that wars create monsters. Optimus has other ideas, however; he grimly notes that if Megatron has his way and restarts the cycle of conquest and colonization, then he will unite the people of Cybertron in darkness and turn the galaxy against them. Someone must oppose this; whatever else they are meant to be, he notes, the people of Cybertron are not meant to be darkness.

Cyclonus stands over his victim, ready to deliver the killing blow—but before he does so, a vision of Paragon suddenly appears over his shoulder to restrain him, and this vision draws the old soldier back from the brink. A moment passes before Pyra rises to her feet, and although the two share a brief moment of understanding, Pyra tells him that she can't tell him where to go or what to do next—only he can make that decision. As the other Companions mop up the stragglers, Jumpstream teleports to Pyra's side to point a gun at the grieving Cyclonus, but Pyra orders Jumpstream and her other soldiers to leave him be — the universe has granted her a momentary reprieve. As the Companions head out, and as Jumpstream asks if they'll be supporting Optimus, Pyra muses that the universe has seemingly offered her an opportunity to work off her debts—and anyways, she likes this new Prime more than any of the Decepticons. As it turns out, Optimus had long since abandoned Iacon before his meeting with Megatron; as his followers trek through the badlands that ring the Cybertronian Mountains, the Autobot leader briefly halts the procession to scale the body of a long-dead Titan and stare out at the ravaged city he once called home, a quiet moment of mourning for everything they've lost.

At Decepticon Headquarters, Megatron rages that Optimus outplayed him: the Autobot leader and his followers are too far away to mount a surprise attack. Blitzwing points out that they've got the city to themselves, but a furious Megatron cuts him off: if Optimus still lives, then they will never truly have control of Cybertron...

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashback or hallucinations.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"I became part-monster, but I cannot tell you I regret it, because that would be asking for forgiveness. And some monsters are beyond amnesty. I put myself in debt to fate. To justice. A couple of megacycles in stasis haven't cleared that debt. I was the universe's answer to Turmoil. I'm still waiting to see what answer the universe has to me. And whatever that answer may be I still cannot tell you I regret what they did."

— Pyra Magna

"Windcharger? Nuh-uh. Didn't sign up for this. Get out of there, Nacelle!"
"What? Who's Windcharger?"
"Me, Seeker. ME."

— Red Wing, Nacelle, and Windcharger

"I am certain as I can be that if Megatron shapes Cybertron's destiny, he will turn it into a dark place. Intentionally or not, he will turn us into a darkness that will reach across the universe and consume others. His nature, and the force he unleashes, will insist upon it. And I am compelled to oppose it. We are not meant to be darkness. That is all."

— Optimus Prime says the thing

"Not this cycle, then."
"What do I do now?"

— Pyra Magna and Cyclonus

Notes

Continuity notes

• Pyra Magna notes that the Decepticons control almost all of Iacon and Tarn. In issue #19, Megatron ordered Jhiaxus to prepare his followers in Tarn, and in issue #26, Andromeda was on her way there to investigate a mysterious communications blackout—the implication here is probably that Jhiaxus pulled off a coup akin to what went down in #23.
• Megatron notes the disappearance of the sixteen Titansparks Perceptor had stored away in the previous issue, and claims that they were lost when the Forge Pyramid was destroyed at its conclusion.
• Optimus refers to his time within the Matrix of Leadership, which occurred in issue #25.
• Strika uses one of Soundwave's suppressor spears to keep her conversation with Pyra Magna private; Soundwave used similar devices in issue #5 and #14 to keep his meetings private.
• After a long build-up the confrontation, we finally learn the whole story behind the relationship between Pyra Magna and Cyclonus: Paragon was aboard Turmoil's ship at the conclusion of the war, and was presumably killed when Pyra Magna pursued and killed him, though the reveal that his death was accidental is a new one.
• When Jumpstream reunited with Pyra Magna in issue #26, the general ordered her follower to reunite the Companions left on Cybertron. Jumpstream has been doing just that off-panel, as she returns in this issue alongside Windcharger, Groundbreaker, Sunstreaker, and Rust Dust with her. Notably, Groundbreaker's painted green and red instead of his usual colours; as per #26, these colours were adopted by many Cybertronians as a sign of protest against the perceived injustice of Pyra Magna's imprisonment.
• Prowl's one-panel cameo in this issue features his pet flyt Green perched on his shoulder as he leaves Iacon.
• The final shot of the comic depicts Optimus staring out at the ravaged city of Iacon atop the head of an immersant Titan; both this panel and the preceding closeup scene of him scaling the "mountain" are deliberate callbacks to the very first sequence in issue #1, which showed Rubble doing the same thing to take in the sight of a pristine pre-war Iacon.

Transformers references

• Pyra Magna describes Turmoil doing something unspeakable to the planet Neutronia, an ill-fated Cybertronian colony planet that first appeared in The Covenant of Primus.
• Turmoil first appeared in IDW's first Transformers continuity as the main antagonist of Spotlight: Drift. He's accompanied by Megabolt, a Decepticon who originated in the 2001 Robots in Disguise toyline, although the lighting makes it difficult to distinguish his standard green-and-gold color scheme and, as a result, inadvertently makes him resemble the original "Megatron Megabolt" toy.
• Demolisher is a continuity-transplanted version of the Armada Decepticon who'd previously cameo'd in the previous IDW universe as well as the Transformers vs. G.I. Joe crossover comic.
• Groundbreaker is shown dual wielding a version of the crossbow weapon that came with his original 1988 toy.
• Obscure Seekers in this issue include both Nacelle and Hooligan, who sport made-up bodies based on the Siege Starscream mold.

Errors

• On page 8, panel 4, the UK spelling "pretence" slips through in Strika's speech bubble.

Other trivia

• Originally solicited for release on April 21st, this comic arrives nearly a month late, landing instead on the 19th of May at the same time as the also-delayed issue 29. In a reversal of the norm, this comic came out in print form first, with the digital release following one week later on May 26th.
• This issue was originally solicited as "War World: The General".^[1]

Covers (3)

• Cover A: A flower amidst the ashes, by Stefano Simeone
• Cover B: Cyclonus and Pyra Magna, by Priscilla Tramontano
• Retailer incentive cover: Pyra versus Cyclonus, by Blacky Shepherd and Sid Ven Blu

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Reprints

• Transformers Volume 4: Declaration of War (January 19, 2022) ISBN 1684058066 / ISBN 978-1684058068
  • Collects Transformers (2019) issues #25–30, Transformers Valentine's Day Special, and Escape issues #1–5.
  • Bonus material includes alternate covers.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Volume 4: Declaration of War – cover art by Cryssy Cheung

References

External links

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