War Without End!

	; Optimus Prime hates YOU, personally!
	"War Without End!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	September 1993
Cover date	November 1993
Script	Simon Furman
Art	Derek Yaniger
Colors	Sarra Mossoff
Lettering	Richard Starkings with Gaushell
Editor	Rob Tokar
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

The name or term "War Without End" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see War Without End (disambiguation).

They're baaaaaack...

Synopsis

"So, which colors should I use for this page?"
"ALL OF THEM!"

In deep space, a group of construction workers are brutally slaughtered, without warning or quarter, by heavily armed brutes who enjoy their work... Yes, it's a team of Autobots led by Grimlock, and they've just stopped some Decepticons from destroying the planet of Nexus Seven. When Blades and Hound begin arguing about each other's conduct, Grimlock tells them to remember that they're all Autobots: "good guys". Later, Jhiaxus, the leader of this group of Decepticons, hears about the attack and decides to take matters into his own hands. Curiously, he has to explain to his aide Rook what the 'archaic' terms "Autobot" and "Decepticon" mean...

Optimus Prime is called for a meeting on an uninhabited world with Grimlock. (Actually some of Jhiaxus' Decepticons are still there but Optimus, Hot Rod and Kup kill them all) He's troubled: the war is over and all their old enemies are gone, but many Autobots like Grimlock have gone off looking for new reasons to fight. He himself is having visions of a great and terrible apocalypse, and worries he too is just looking for another reason to fight. This concern ends when Grimlock and his team reveal that this dead planet used to be inhabited and the Decepticon colonists "miscalculated", destroying the environment. Worse, they've found seventeen inhabited planets that have been violently eco-structured into replica Cybertrons! Optimus knows that even if Bludgeon lied about giving up war, he'd never be able to do all this... which is when Jhiaxus catches up and captures them all!

Meanwhile, on Earth, the G.I. Joe military unit send a message to Cybertron: Megatron is back with a new body!

Jhiaxus has big ol' yaoi hands.

On Jhiaxus' flagship, Grimlock and Prime are taken before the Decepticon leader to be informed of the truth: the Cybertronian Empire is not, in their mind, a group of Decepticons, but people who've put the war and the factions behind them. They realised Cybertron was a wreck four million years ago, while Prime was asleep on the Ark, and left it behind, leaving behind all the uncool losers like Straxus. The Autobots, the Decepticons, and the war are outdated ideas. When Optimus protests that the Empire, for all Jhiaxus' polite words, is still oppressing and killing worlds, Jhiaxus says that they simply don't care about other life forms: the genocides aren't about malice, the aliens just get in the way.

Optimus is left shaken by the discovery of this larger picture but Grimlock snaps him out of it, pointing out how the Cybertronians see too big a picture: the Autobots learned on Earth how important the 'lesser' life forms were. He breaks them out and they spring their fellow Autobots, cripple the ship with an explosive, and escape on a stolen vessel. Jhiaxus is annoyed but lets them run... so he can pursue them to their base and destroy all of them!

The Autobots now know the war is still on and even greater than they knew, but terrible as this threat is, Optimus Prime is still having visions: there's something even worse on the horizon...

Featured characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Others	Cybertronians
Sideswipe (3) Hound (4) Broadside (5) Blades (6) Grimlock (7) Swoop (8) Sludge (9) Slag (10) Snarl (11) Optimus Prime (12) Kup (14) Hot Rod (15)	Megatron (17) Bludgeon (18) Shockwave (19) Scorponok (20) Galvatron (21) Straxus (25) Ratbat (27)	Mott (23) Hawk (22) Mainframe (24) Buster Witwicky (26)	Swarm (13) Unicron (16)	Jhiaxus (1) Rook (2)

Breakdown and the Skyscorchers (Afterburner, Eagle Eye, Terradive, and Windrazor) appear in a gatefold pin-up included with the foil variant, but not in the story itself.

Quotes

"If there are any impressions to be made around here...me make 'em!"

—Grimlock shows some things never change.

"Is that so? Well, for your information, mister holier-than-thou, the creep you thought was surrendering was about to nail your worthless hide to a wall! And you know what, Hound? I should've let him do it...because you're a liability to yourself - and to us!"

—Blades, dick.

"Commander Jhiaxus, you must forgive my ignorance, but...Autobots? They are Cybertronians...Transformers. Just like us. Autobot - Decepticon, I do not understand the distinction."
"They are throwbacks, Rook. Anachronisms. A race out of time. It therefore falls to me...to bring them screaming into the present day!"

—Rook makes a good point and Jhiaxus ignores it.

"No! Nonono! It all sounds very wholesome. But however you dress it, it is still conquest and oppression! You - and this new regime - are as evil and contemptible as Megatron and his Decepticons ever were!"
"Hhh. How can I simplify this for You? It is not a question of good or evil - lesser beings simply have no value to us."

—Jhiaxus explains the situation to a sarcastic Optimus Prime.

"We're a joke and everyone knew the punchline, except us."

—Optimus Prime gets a little emo.

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

Optimus Prime is depicted on the cover as having bullet casings lodged in his head, despite the fact that the casing remains in the chamber of the firing weapon, only the bullet itself being launched.

Continuity errors

Optimus Prime mentions Galvatron among the threats the Autobots have overcome. In the US continuity, most of the people who actually encountered one Galvatron ended up dead, and the few that survived didn't learn his name. So how does Prime know it? (In the UK continuity, Optimus encountered Galvatron (or Galvatrons) on several occasions, but whether this issue has a place in UK continuity is debatable.)

Continuity notes

Grimlock and others revived with Nucleon can transform again, with no explanation. Since "Another Time & Place" doesn't fit into this continuity, we are to assume they found some other way of canceling Nucleon's effects. A later letters page briefly explained that upon retaking Cybertron the Autobots had found a proper energy source, restoring their transformation.
The Last Autobot was activated at the end of the Generation 1 comic to watch over the children of Primus. He appears to be no longer around.
Grimlock cites Earth as a place where the Autobots learnt the value of human life. That's a big step for him as aside from a few exceptions, he did not see the value of human life for most of the G1 run.
Megatron and the Joes' cameo is a tie-in to the prequel run in G.I. Joe: Megatron has gained his new body in an alliance with Cobra. A version of the same scene appeared in "Goin' South", although Optimus was around to pick the phone up in that story and Megatron was in a town and not the Ark.
Jhiaxus' describes the Cybertronian Empire as "one race", made up solely of former Decepticons who left Cybertron shortly after the Ark set off four million years ago (Rook doesn't even understand the difference between Autobots and Decepticons.) They have been spreading and conquering the universe ever since, while the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth and Cybertron were fighting an ancient war that was long over. Essentially, Jhiaxus is saying the whole Marvel G1 canon was insignificant and meaningless!
The Autobots now have warp gate technology.
On page 16, Optimus Prime reflects on threats faced in the original Marvel comic series. Optimus later refers to Bludgeon's claim to be taking the Decepticons into voluntary exile from the final Generation 1 issue.
Pages 25–26 tie in to the G.I. Joe comics tie-in from issues #138–142.
Page 28 shows Straxus in a flashback, describing him as a "small-minded tyrant".
Page 31 depicts a flashback of Ratbat attacking Buster Witwicky, presumably from issue #37 of the US series.

Real-life references

The cover tagline "This is not your father's Autobot!" is a play on the then-current advertising slogan for Oldsmobile cars.

Other trivia

The term "Autobot" isn't even mentioned, nor the symbol shown, until the end of the first battle: Grimlock symbolically wipes mud off his Autobrand when telling Blades to remember "we the good guys".
In a letter to readers, Furman, for the first time, admits he was wrong to think Transformers had ended. He also says he thinks he is "confident we can make TRANSFORMERS GENERATION 2 a hit"... which was a bit of a porkie as he would reveal years later that Jhiaxus' name is meant to sound like "gee, axe us", as he thought it wasn't likely they'd last beyond twelve issues.
As the first issue, this was 50% longer than normal - 33 pages of action instead of the usual 22.
In the first draft of the fold-out cover's battle scene, Generation 1 Megatron was used rather than the Generation 2 tank model.^{[First draft? Published where?]}

Furminated

A variety of unnamed Decepticons get blasted to shreds by Grimlock's squadron.

Covers (3)

Generation 2 #1 cover A: Optimus Prime with bullets in his head, by Derek Yaniger.
Generation 2 #1 RI cover: foil version of cover A.
Generation 2 #1 fold-out cover: Three-part fold-out cover depicting a brutal battle between Autobots and Decepticons.

It's the 90s so let's be EXTREEEEEEMMMMME!
It's a foil cover, not a black repaint.

Reprints

Transformers: Dark Designs TPB: Megatron, Swoop, Bludgeon, Grimlock's toe and half of the Liege Maximo, by Andy Wildman.
Transformers: Dark Designs hardback: Megatron and the graves of Starscream, Bludgeon, Fortress Maximus and Optimus Prime, by John Byrne and Chris Blythe.
Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 90: Generation 2 Part 1: Red Alert, by Dreamwave Productions and Kup, by Derek Yaniger.

Dark Designs TPB
(Titan Books, 2002)
Dark Designs hardback
(Titan Books, 2002)
The Definitive G1 Collection Vol. 90: Generation 2 Part 1
(Hachette Partworks, 2020)

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War Without End!

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