The Transformers universe has never felt richer than under the guidance of John Barber and James Roberts, who are taking the property into a long anticipated direction.
Following the events of the Chaos storyline, Optimus Prime finds himself lost and isolated on a post-war, primordial version of his home planet, with nothing but two halves of a depleted Matrix of Leadership lying before him. While the remaining Decepticons have been inhibitor-chipped and imprisoned, the Autobots scramble to deal with an escalating refugee crisis from Cybertron’s returning civilian population: numbering in the thousands and referred to as Nails, their distrust and hatred for the “warlike” doesn’t distinguish between Autobot and Decepticon.
Pre-TDOOP, Optimus Prime was a character that had lost some of his shine in recent years, victim to lacklustre appearances and thoughtless misuse to the point of reader fatigue. Past clumsy efforts have seen Optimus reduced to a pontificating caricature of himself, with some lip service paid to his ability as a leader, while other attempts to ground the character have resulted only in making him seem whiney and indecisive. In TDOOP, James Roberts and John Barber knock it out of the park. In their rendition, Optimus Prime’s commanding presence is evident on the page. He speaks with impressively genuine poise and conviction, while his internal narration is one of curiosity and contemplation which properly tempers that exterior. We see these qualities undiminished, as Optimus grapples with irrelevancy in this story, and to the Autobots who ignore, undermine and argue around him. And helplessness in the face the Nails situation spiralling out of control. His ultimate solution and his overall arc in this story is emotional and satisfying, involving a sacrifice that Optimus himself notes as, “uniquely selfish.
There’s always existed a knee-jerk dismissal of the Transformers comics and cartoons. That the old 80’s show was just a 22 minute toy commercial, and it’s true, it was. But it’s also true that those 22 minute toy commercials were a platform for some damn good stories that are still being enjoyed to this day, and likewise The Death of Optimus Prime, begins some of the best Transformers fiction, science fiction and comic fiction I’ve ever had the privilege of reading.