#80 - "End of the Road!"

Credits

Writer - Simon Furman / Penciler - Andrew Wildman / Inker - Stephen Baskerville / Lettering - Rick Parker / Colors - Nel Yomtov

Story

On the planet Klo, the Autobots are being massacred. Warned to their arrival, the Decepticons have managed to kill most of them, and a small search team is looking for the few survivors. When Weirdwolf loses their scent in a swamp, Fangry takes point and leads them away. Grimlock and the others then rise from their hiding places, and Prowl berates him for foolishly rushing into battle and leading them into the ambush. The argument is interrupted by the Decepticons, who have returned.

At the ambush site, the complacent Decepticons are suddenly attacked by the Neo-Knights. Rapture, Thunderpunch, and Dynamo fight the Decepticons for a few moments, then are joined by Optimus Prime, who leaps to the group from a spaceship overhead. The ship lands, transforming into the Last Autobot. He explains that he was created by Primus to guide the Transformers after his death, and he was the one who merged Optimus Prime and HiQ into Optimus' new body.

The most popular Optimus Prime pin-up ever

The Last Autobot announces that the Autobot-Decepticon war must now come to an end. Bludgeon denounces him as a fraud, and the Decepticons attack Optimus. While Optimus fights them off, Grimlock and his survivors join the fight, and the Last Autobot calmly resurrects the Autobots who were killed.

Realizing that the Decepticons will soon be overrun, Bludgeon orders the Decepticons to retreat. He tells the Autobots that the Decepticons have been shamed by their defeat, and are now honor-bound to live the rest of their lives in isolation. The Decepticons then run away, and Bludgeon secretly orders his troops to sneak off-planet to fight another day...

Optimus Prime tells his troops that Cybertron is now safe, thanks to the intervention of the Last Autobot. After Klo has been rebuilt and the Neo-Knights have been returned to Earth, the Autobots can go to Cybertron and live in peace.

Notes and Comments

• The cover was labeled as "Issue #80 in a four-issue limited series," a tribute to the origins of the series.
• Optimus Prime's new form (created by The Last Autobot) is modeled on the Action Master Optimus Prime toy.
• The Last Autobot is never seen again after this issue.
• The letter column printed farewell essays from Simon Furman and Nel Yomtov. Simon explained why the comic was cancelled (low sales), briefly mentioned his Transformers UK annual story "A Distant Time and Place" (which occurs after the events in this issue), admitted that he didn't think the Transformers comic book will return, and recounted all of the people who worked on the comic. Nel wrote about the amount of work needed to color almost a hundred issues of robot-oriented comic books, as well as his favorite issue of the series (issue #13).