THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CLUB AND CONVENTION TRANSFORMERS COMICS

Vector Prime: In the Beginning
Reviewed by Blackjack

"Some stones are bigger than others."
For an introdump and a set-up on how Fun Publications is going to handle the multiverse aspect, this story is pretty serviceable, establishing Vector Prime and Unicron as multiversal singularities. I am not a big fan of this insistence by Hasbro, and only consider it applying to whatever continuities it makes sense in, but here it works in the story. The threat of Unicron is established after being shown as pretty ineffective in recent fiction. The montage of different continuities, and using Vector Prime as a bridge between everything (I particularly like the retcon how Vector tried to maintain the balance of time behind the scenes during Beast Wars). Vector's monologue is well written, and I particularly like the part when he failed to save a world, showing that even a demigod has limits. This type of story truly is not for those not familiar to multiple Transformer continuities and such, and subjectively it is pretty good as a prequel.


This story is included in Fun Publications' first issue of the OTFCC magazine.

Starting with this issue, Fun Publications and Hasbro both insists that Primus, Unicron and the Thirteen are 'multiversal singularities' which means across the multiverse there are only one versions of them, and they either split their consciousness over several bodies across the multiverse, or do dimension-hopping like Vector Prime. Evidently this insistence does not hold true, especially when it is tried to be shoehorned into stuff like the G1 cartoon (with the Quintesson origin and all), or the newer series like the live action movies (with their own Fallen) or Animated. Mostly we just ignore it when it doesn't make sense.

Vector Prime, of course, hails from the Cybertron series. With this grand retcon, it also re-establishes Vector as being part of every multiverse. Obviously with a sword that allows space-time travel this makes sense for him.

Cybertron is shown in its 'Golden Age' model from the G1 cartoon, and later in its show model in the Cybertron cartoon.

The Protohuman that Vector Prime 'shakes hands' with in the third panel is what I nicknamed 'Hammer', the chieftain that received Dinobot's club.

In the scenes of early Cybertron, one of the generic Transformers is based on 'Big Red', one of the generics from the very first Transformers comic issue.

Throughout the montage Vector Prime's travels he sure meets a lot of important events from other continuities. Here are they:
-Optimus Prime opening the Matrix to drive away the Hate Plague from the episode 'the Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2' of the G1 cartoon.
-Buster Witwicky seeing Shockwave speaking to Optimus Prime's head, from Transformers #5 of the Marvel comics. (See goofs)
-Megatron II (BW Megatron) shooting the sleeping Optimus Prime in the head from 'The Agenda, Part III' of Beast Wars cartoon. It is revealed that, Vector Prime, being keeper of time and all, intervened and invisibly helped in keeping Optimus Prime's condition stable.
-Octopunch's shot ricocheting off Grimlock and hitting Primus from Transformers #60 of the Marvel comics and subsequently awakening Unicron.
-The Transformer armada battling Unicron from the final episode of Armada.

This retcon has it that Primus' primal scream from the Marvel comics not only wakes up Unicron's physical body in the Marvel G1 continuity, but also in all other continuities as well. Unicron's simultaneous death in all continuities (Armada-Energon, G1 comic, G1 cartoon, etc, although only the Armada cartoon death is shown) apparently causes the Grand Black Hole that is the main villain of the Cybertron series.

Apparently Octopunch is the one to blame for all the chaos caused by Unicron in all of the Transformers multiverse.

Unicron's existence creates anomalies and eddies, which reads as 'continuity goofs' to us. So essentially Fun Publications can pull out the Unicron card for any inconsistencies they may make.

Vector Prime left Cybertron long ago in the past, and is one of the members of the Thirteen still actually doing his job.


A bit of inconsistencies on how previous events have been portrayed.... in the cartoon Optimus Prime did not open the Matrix to expunge the Hate Plague in front of the three Decepticons, but rather the Autobots.

In Marvel Transformers #5, Buster Witwicky never saw Shockwave standing in front of Optimus Prime's head, but rather stumbles in with Optimus Prime alone.

In Marvel continuity, Primus is a giant face etched on the wall instead of the glowing ball of sphere it is portrayed as here.