Stranger Eons

Starscream orchestrates a Decepticon retaliation against Unicron, while Bumblebee goes to Omega Supreme for answers about the planet-eater's origins.

1 Synopsis
2 Featured characters
3 Quotes
4 Notes
5 References
6 External links

Synopsis

Disparaging all those leaders who have come before him, Starscream explains to the assembled populace of Cybertron and the survivors of the destroyed colonies his plan to eliminate Unicron. Starscream has sent Bludgeon out into the universe to round up the many scattered cells of surviving Decepticons who never returned to Cybertron after the war ended. Between them, these Decepticons form a vast communications network that allows them to track down Unicron's location and intercept it. Now, this united "Decepticon Vengeance Division" surrounds the monster planet with a stasis web that prevents it from moving away...

Still dealing with the loss of Caminus, Aileron finds no comfort in Arcee's stoic assurance that they will be able to get through the threat of Unicron. Before the pair can argue their feelings out, Bumblebee apologetically interrupts to question Arcee; the sight of the Omega Sentinel they found inside Unicron clearly unnerved her, and he wants to know why. Aileron is ready to defend Arcee's honor, but Arcee confesses the secret reason: long ago, she fought alongside the Sentinels during the first disastrous attempts at Cybertronian expansion to other worlds. She assumes one of the Sentinels must have found Unicron, long ago, and suspects it could have been sent by Shockwave. Since they obviously can't trust anything Shockwave would tell them, Bumblebee heads off to see the only other 'bot who might have the answer, but when Aileron tries to tag along, 'Bee is reluctant to let her. Aileron explains that she needs something to do in this time of crisis, an urge Bumblebee himself is very familiar with, and agrees to let her join him as he visits the hangar containing the comatose Omega Supreme. Of course, since the giant Autobot has been offline for years, there's no way 'Bee can actually talk with Omega; he is just here to scope out the situation, hoping perhaps Soundwave can be called upon to read Omega's mind. That becomes unnecessary, however, when 'Bee rests his hand upon Omega's forehead, and a crackle of dark energy overcomes the little 'bot, darkening his eyes...

The Torchbearers watch from afar as Pyra Magna silently looks out over the horizon, still clutching the deceased Mistress of Flame's forgehammer. Pyra thinks the gift of the hammer was one last parting jab from the Mistress, to remind her of what the Mistress believed she should be; bitterly, Pyra stabs the hammer's shaft into the ground, and leaves it standing there as she walks away, angrily certain that she could never forget the Mistress, even if she wanted to.

Starscream joins Optimus Prime and the rest of the Council of Worlds in their war room, though he is far from welcomed by his old political partners. Starscream assures them he is not who he used to be, revealing Shockwave's plan to build a new Decepticon empire after letting Unicron eat Cybertron, and how he has no desire to go along with it. Windblade proposes adding the rest of the Cybertronian fleet to the Decepticon armada for the attack on Unicron, but Starscream insists the Decepticons can do it alone, while Optimus remains confident in his belief that Starscream intends to betray them all. The argument is interrupted by a transmission from G Nebula 89, which turns out to be from the starship Sabre captained by the long-absent Chromia, who was sent to search for Liege Maximo months ago. Maximo's reappearance on Cybertron had led all to assume the Sabre was lost, but it turns out they had a run-in with the Maximals and sustained damage to their comms which has only just now been repaired. And none too soon, because the Sabre has just run across the Decepticon fleet as it begins its attack on Unicron!

Somehow merging minds with Omega Supreme, Bumblebee is granted a glimpse into the distant past, where Unicron's origins are hinted at. Long ago, on a distant, unknown world consumed by war, an alien scientist created a doomsday device that would end the conflict by ending all life. The energies released by this device tore across the cosmos, through space and time, destroying the world of Prysmos... using its magic to mutate the surviving aliens into the Dire Wraiths... and obliterating the war-torn world's star system, leaving only a black star, orbited by the now-lifeless world.

Chromia and her crew watch in awe as the Decepticon fleet unleashes an unspeakable amount of firepower against Unicron, to no apparent avail. Bursting through the conflagration, the Maximal Army comes flying up from Unicron's surface, the sight of which is enough for Chromia to call retreat. But the crew of the Sabre are not the only ones departing the scene; Unicron too warps away, the stars once again winking out in its wake. As the Maximals close on the fleet, the Decepticons think they're in for a fight, but all is not as it seems; Bludgeon reveals that Unicron is his true master, and welcomes the Maximals aboard his ship! There, the Eukarian-looking Transformers shed their beast-skins to reveal their true forms—spiked devil-robots cast in the image of their progenitor Liege Maximo—as Bludgeon declares that they shall be the final evolution of the Decepticons!

His knowledge imparted, Omega Supreme dies, leaving Aileron to rouse Bumblebee from his trance. The pair race outside in response to the sounds of chaos, and stare into the sky to see that Unicron has arrived, and has transformed into a titanic robot form that now looms over Cybertron. But Bumblebee has learned what Unicron is... and knows that the only way to stop it is for all the Transformers to die!

Featured characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	Maximals	Other Cybertronians	Others
Optimus Prime (1) Windblade (3) Bumblebee (6) Arcee (12) Aileron (13) Omega Supreme (14) Pyra Magna (15) Jumpstream (16) Stormclash (17) Skyburst (18) Rust Dust (19) Dust Up (20) Chromia (29)	Starscream (2) Soundwave (4) Wideload (7) Broadside (8) Sledge (9) Bludgeon (10)	Beast Megatron (34) Optimus Primal (35) Inferno (36)	Fireshot (21) Vanquish (22) Moonracer (23) Knock Out (24) Obsidian (25) Strika (26) Elita One (27) Greenlight (30) Lancer (31)	Rom (5) Unicron (11) Marissa Faireborn (28) Dire Wraiths (32) Prysmosians (33)

Quotes

"Starscream was right about me. I pretty much never know what I'm doing."

—Bumblebee

"You didn't know when to stop talking about me, Mistress. You claimed I abandoned the Way of Flame... but I never relinquished my duty to Caminus or her people. I simply refused to serve the Primes' hypocrisy—or yours. Did you give me the forgehammer to remind me of what you thought I should be? To hammer my spark down a bit? Well, you didn't need to, Mistress. I will never forget you... not matter how hard I try."

—Pyra Magna eulogizes the Mistress of Flame

"The star system gone... the heart of the storm remained... the ghosts fled... no... not ghosts... Wraiths... spread far away... power coalesced... a lone planet... orbiting a black star... lifeless... alone... Unicron."

—Bumblebee has a vision

Notes

Continuity notes

Windblade still believes Bludgeon is dead following the events of Salvation, but we learned he was still alive back in Optimus Prime #13. Starscream must have sent him off into space sometime between issue #14 and his subsequent loss of power in the 2017 Till All Are One annual.
The idea that a veritable Decepticon army still existed in space was first established in More than Meets the Eye #26.
Wideload sarcastically refers to Bludgeon's battle talk as fitting the era of "the first civil war".
Arcee's history with the Omega Sentinels as part of Cybertron's attempted expansion was detailed in Optimus Prime #18.
As we noted last issue, Omega Supreme has been offline since sustaining severe injuries in Robots in Disguise #11.
This is the first time that the Mistress of Flame's hammer-shaped badge of office has been given a name: the Forgehammer.
Chromia left Cybertron to pursue Liege Maximo in Till All Are One #9. Her fate, and that of her team, has been a hanging question until now, what with Liege's reappearance in Optimus Prime #15, and Windblade's own inquiry about what happened to them in #16 going unanswered. Turns out they were okay, folks.
Though it's not entirely clear from the visuals, the energies released by the alien doomsday weapon were responsible for the destruction of Prysmos, an event which, per Transformers vs. Visionaries #1, the former inhabitants of the planet believe was caused by the de-alignment of its three suns. The destruction of Prysmos has been established to be a recent event that happened within the Visionaries' lifetimes, which would indicate that the doomsday device's powers reached across space and time to cause it (as implied by Omega's narration, which says the machine reached not just "across worlds," but "across reality").
Compounding the unclear visuals, the narration ("giving rise to new magicks, new wars...") could be read as implying that the magic of Prysmos was created by Unicron's birth, but rather, it is intended to establish that the Dire Wraiths and their dark "magicks" were created from the "magic" of Prysmos. The Wraiths were established to hail from the Dark Nebula in More than Meets the Eye: Revolution, and though the presence of a "black star," left by the activation of the alien device, might make it seem that this region of space is the Nebula, Rom vs. Transformers #1 established that the Space Knights destroyed what was considered to be the Dire Wraith homeworld centuries ago. The Wraiths didn't contest this (ROM #14 revealed they infiltrated Earth specifically to transform it into a new home), but this new development indicates that the world the Knights destroyed must have merely the planet to which the Wraiths migrated following their creation.
The visual of a "dead world" orbiting a "black star" has been a component of the Onyx Prime/Unicron mytharc since 2015's The Transformers vol. 2 #47. We still don't have the full picture, but Unicron was shown orbiting a black hole in his debut in First Strike #6, and the 2017 Transformers annual would show that the planet Antilla, home of Shockwave/Onyx Prime following the end of the First Cybertronian Civil War, did the same...
Bludgeon spoke of the approach of a "master" back in issue #14; the most logical choice at the time was that he was referring to the impending arrival of Onyx Prime (especially since Onyx later turned out to be Shockwave, who actually used to be Bludgeon's master), but it turns out that, like we speculated, he was indeed referring to Unicron!
The Maximals reveal that they are wearing Pretender-like outer carapaces, and their true inner forms look aesthetically similar to Liege Maximo. Not only does this speak to Onyx Prime and Liege Maximo's long-running alliance, but it also connects some dots regarding Bludgeon and his own obsession with attaining Thunderwing's bio-carapace technology from way back in Stormbringer.

Transformers references

The three Decepticons we see Bludgeon recruit are the Demolition Team, a squad of Mini-Cons released as part of the 2006 Transformers: Classics toyline. Unsurprisingly, they're not Mini-Cons here!
In addition to the Worldsweepers, which should be familiar to any longtime IDW readers, other types of ship seen in the Decepticon Vengeance Division fleet include Warworlds (originally from the Marvel Generation 2 comic, but which have also shown up in IDW continuity), and multiple ships cast in the image of the Nemesis from the Generation 1 cartoon, and the Revenge from The Transformers: The Movie, their class was named in Robots in Disguise #32 as the "Worldburners".
Bumblebee and Aileron walk past Robots in Disguise Scorponok on page 6.
Chromia's ship is named the Sabre, after the Cybertronian spacecraft from the Marvel Generation 2 comic.
G Nebula 89 is a region of space featured in the Super-God Masterforce and Victory cartoons.
The panels illustrating Unicron's transformation are "shot"-for-shot matches to elements of his transformation sequence from the 1986 movie.

Other franchise references

The airships seen above Prysmos are scaled-up and redesigned versions of the Visionaries Sky Claw chariot.

Real-world references

The title of this issue, "Stranger Eons", is a reference to a quote from the H. P. Lovecraft horror story The Nameless City: "That is not dead which can eternal lie/And with strange aeons, even death may die." The concept of "death dying" goes hand-in-hand with Bludgeon's line that, in killing Unicron, the Decepticons "will kill death."

Errors

On page 2, Sledge calls Wideload "Sledge". This is corrected in the trade.
It's not strictly an error, since he was last seen heavily damaged and in need of repairs, but Bludgeon has returned to his original Pretender shell design from Stormbringer, rather than the new one he sported in Salvation and Optimus Prime following exposure to Trypticon's corrupted energon.
On page 13, Elita One is titled as the "Carcerian delegate" while her actual position is the Carcerian First, her appointed delegates being Obsidian and Strika.
Marissa Faireborn is shown on Cybertron, coordinating with the Council. While this wasn't an error at the time of publication, she would proceed to later appear in the concurrently set, though delayed, Optimus Prime #22 on Earth and the following two issues of that series and vanish from this one. So it's a retroactive error.

Deathlist

Omega Supreme; finally succumbs to his injuries after mind-melding with Bumblebee

Other trivia

This issue also includes a four-page G.I. Joe back-up strip, "Last Stand," a short coda for the unfinished Scarlett's Strike Force. Since we covered that series on this wiki, it's got its own article here.
When information about the Unicron back-ups was originally solicited, issue #2 was going to have a Micronauts strip, rather than a G.I. Joe one.^[1] That story ultimately wound up being published in Unicron #4.
Other backmatter includes the second installment in a series of interviews with creators from IDW's past. This issue, it's the IDW's second-ever writer Transformers Nick Roche and All Hail Megatron scribe Shane McCarthy.
Despite appearing on the cover of this issue, Firestar doesn't appear in the issue itself; it's possible that she was added to have a representative of Caminus, since the previous delegates for Caminus are otherwise occupied.

Covers (5)

Cover A: Starscream and the council by Alex Milne and Josh Perez
Cover B: Bumblebee, Starscream, Bludgeon, Chromia, Elita One, Virulina, and Matt Trakker by James Raiz and David García Cruz; connects to Raiz's other covers for the series to form a larger image
Retailer incentive Cover A: Optimus, Bumblebee, and Windblade, by Casey Coller and John-Paul Bove
Retailer incentive Cover B: Bumblebee by Francesco Francavilla; connects to Francavilla's other covers for the series to form a larger image
Second printing: Cover A art with only the council members colored.