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Natural Selection, Part Four - Transformers Wiki

Grimlock and the Dinobots clash, and Hot Rod is presented with a choice of divine import.

Synopsis

Hunted by the Decepticons and the Gene Key-modified Autobots alike, Snarl, Swoop and Sludge withdraw to the bowels of Iacon to evade their pursuers. Figuring that they can't hold out for long against a whole planet, the Dinobots elect to put their own house in order before they go out by forcing a confrontation with Grimlock. The trio proceed to strike at the Nursery in order to draw their former leader to them; their intrusion is detected at the Civil Defense Hub, but, recognizing it as a summons from his Dinobots, Grimlock takes out the on-duty officer Treadshot before he can send in any troops.

Gene key sonic canyons natural selection.jpg

At the Sonic Canyons, Scorponok supervises Perceptor and his crew as they draw near to completing construction on his massive Gene Key, pontificating about his plan to heal the rift in Primus's grand plan that came about as the result of the Transformers' civil war, thus ensuring his place in history as an architect of peace. Perceptor opines that with chaos being the natural order of things, perhaps the war is part of Primus's plan, causing a sudden swell of rage in Scorponok that he fights to suppress, insisting to himself that he has evolved beyond being a creature of aggression.

Wheels continue to turn back on Earth: Optimus Prime makes his way to the crashed Ark, intending to remove its threat from the planet, though unable to decide whether it is altruism or atonement that motivates him. Little does Prime realize that Galvatron has already seized the Ark, and is preparing it for lift off. As he does so, the inactive Shockwave, who wired his damaged body into the ship's systems following its crash in order to save his own life, lifts his head...

In the depths of Cybertron, Hot Rod senses that he is intended to choose between the two items he has found in a secret chamber: the Sword of Primus, with which he can use to fight the encroaching Demons, or the Covenant of Primus, bearing knowledge. Deciding that what he requires are answers, Hot Rod grasps the disc and is shown a vision of primordial Cybertron, as the Demons—Primus's first creations—rise from the planet and worship around a stone effigy of their maker. Time spins on and Hot Rod sees free will take root among the Demons, who turn upon one another, prompting Primus to wipe his experiment clean, sundering the planet's surface and destroying his creations. Realizing that some Demons survived the purge within the planet and that Primus intends for him to finish the job, Hot Rod takes up the sword and turns for battle.

Inferno natural selection.jpg

Grimlock arrives at the Nursery and calls out for the Dinobots, explaining that he has found a cure for Nucleon. The Dinobots emerge and attack him, accusing him of going too far, and Grimlock is reluctant to fight back, having risked so much to save them. Faced with the end at their hands, however, he refuses to lie down and die and transforms to fight back... at which point Scorponok's troops arrive, having followed Grimlock via a homing device Scorponok had placed in his new body. Rather than them fight directly, Grimlock orders the Dinobots to take cover and shoots open the containment capsule holding Inferno, whose uncontrollable Nucleon-induced internal combustion ability causes a massive fiery explosion that takes Scorponok's men out. The Dinobots emerge from the smoldering Nursery to be met by Grapple, Crosshairs, Blurr and Hosehead, drawn there by the enemy comm-line chatter about taking down Grimlock. While Hosehead goes to try and contain Inferno's heat issues, Crosshairs and Grimlock agree to coordinate an attack between their groups to take Scorponok down and reverse the Gene Key's effects.

In the skies over Cybertron, the Autobot ship Valiant emerges from hyperspace, returning from Earth with casualties of the recent conflict there. Unsure of what to do, Pounce and Wingspan contact Scorponok, who instructs them to provide the Valiant with a landing flight plan... and then use the planet's defenses to blow the ship out of the sky!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Quotes

"Take down Scorponok and use Gene Key to put things straight. Most of us die in process, naturally."
"Naturally."

—Grimlock and Crosshairs are pretty genre-savvy.


"They are the enemy, the hunted, the dead walking!"
"Who?"
"Us?"

—Snarl and Swoop realise that Highbrow is talking about the Dinobots.


"Dinobots are public enemy number one."
"Again"

—Snarl and Sludge on their infamy.

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

  • It's barely worth pointing out something like this at this stage in the proceedings, but Sideswipe's head is laughably off-model. Additionally, he's got red thighs and a black midriff, which both ought to be white; his shoulders and biceps are also coloured entirely red when they're normally black and white, respectively, but that's done in accordance with the colors of his Universe character model.

NaturalSelection4-PounceWingspanBlow.jpg

  • Pounce (at the console) and Wingspan (standing) appear with different body and helmet designs, which utterly misses the point of their being clones. Apparently, Pounce has been drawn with a more toyetic head, with individual eyes, while Wingspan's is based more on the clones' character models, which gave them goggles. Normally indistinguishable (being clones), they're individually identifiable because Wingspan has been drawn with a very toyetic flip-down neck panel.
  • "Aggression" is misspelled as "agression" on page 6 when Scorponok is talking to Perceptor.

Continuity errors

  • Despite being shot in the face and left for dead two issues ago, Slapdash is shown on search patrol.

Continuity notes

  • Hot Rod had a vision of confronting a Demon with a sword back in issue #84.

Real-life references

  • Hot Rod's choice seems to be deliberately paralleling the origin of Marvel Comics superhero Captain Britain, in which young Brian Braddock is offered a choice by divine powers between a sword and another artifact (an amulet in Brian's case, the covenant in Hot Rod's) representing violence and non-violence, respectively. Both Braddock and Hot Rod choose the non-violent option; for Braddock, this marked him as worthy to become a super-hero. Whatever could that mean for Hot Rod?

Other trivia

Transformers references

  • The disk found by Hot Rod last issue is here identified as the Covenant of Primus from Beast Wars (where one of its two appearances took place in an episode that Furman himself wrote). Rather than a book, as it appeared there, the covenant is reimagined as a Golden Disk, a famous method of information storage also introduced in Beast Wars, many of which have subsequently appeared in Transformers lore.
  • The Valiant was previously used as the name of an Autobot ship in the Fun Publications Cybertron story "Force of Habit".

Furminated

  • Treadshot gets his head bashed into a console by Grimlock; it doesn't look especially fatal, but he doesn't appear again in the series.

Covers (3)

  • RG189 cvrA.jpg

  • RG1 89 cvrB.jpg

  • RG1 89 cvrRI.jpg

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External links