Nemesis Prime Orgins?

I think a lot of that had to do with how IDW rushed Simon Furman to wrap up his incredibly large and intricate storyline in a handful of issues so they could reboot everything with All Hail Megatron. I think a lot more would have been done with Nemesis Prime if Furman had been given the chance.

And hey, its not like you can kill the undead. Nova Prime was just fakin' defeat to test Galvatron and will pop up again as long as there is a red Prime to repaint.

Switch, your avatar rocks!

So say we all!

i was waiting to see if anyone was going to go outside of 'Prime'

in theory there could be multiple Nemesis' around. sine Unicron is everywhere.
you also have Energon Dark Crumplezone, and Dark Leobreaker... as well as Jap. Dark Nitro Convoy and Dark Fangwolf.

Armada Linkage Ravenus

Energon comics 4 horsemen (Rhinox, Airazor, Cheetor, and Terrorsaur)

anyone that can get minipulated by unicron... i was wondering if Energon Prime could have been 'touched' by megs and had a Nemesis made.

You're forgetting that when Scourge/Black Convoy's stasis pod scanned the tanker truck, it also scanned Optimus/Fire Convoy and Junko at the same time. So really, there is a part of Prime in Scourge somewhere. Storywise, it's why their heads look so similar.

I'm not so sure.
*looks around*
You might not want to read this, Oracle.

It's like you said, the Dead Universe saga really was long and intricate, and in all that time I never got any inkling that Nova Prime was anything but a cold-hearted, 100% evil dude. From the very first moment they mentioned him in Spotlight: Prime I just knew they were setting him up to be nothing more than pure-bred evil, and that's exactly what we wound up getting. That's a lot of issues and a lot of opportunities to show that there's more to Nova than just being evil, but we never got it.

I might be compelled to think that Furman might have done something more with Nova if he had more time, but his track record with writing supremely evil villains doesn't really convince me. Unicron, Armada Galvatron, Sunstorm, The Fallen, Shokaract, Nemesis Prime; they're all handled pretty much the same way.

It's cool if you like that type of character, but I'd prefer it if we got a little more variety/personality in our supremely evil villains.

Sorry in advance, Oracle!

Heh, I didn't forget that... it just seemed so problematic. I mean, by that logic, ANY stasis pod could scan another Transformer, and become some kind of clone/soulmate, right? I always took that to be an excuse for the extremely minor physical resemblance between the two, but not a terribly valid reason for Scourge/Black Convoy being a true "anti-prime".

I suppose it could be argued that in his original Autobot state, he had also been a Prime ranked officer, so he's now like an evil Autobot commander, but it doesn't seem like a good reason for him to be Fire Convoy's "nemesis" in the literary sense.

Maybe the whole notion of a "Nemesis Prime" just indicates something grander to me... mirror universes, evil twins, cosmic doppelgangers and all that...

zmog

That's the way I took it too. He scanned Prime and that truck. So he had the truck mode, with a robot mode that resembled Prime. He had the same spark he had before. So I agree with you, he was not a true "nemesis" Prime.

*Sigh* Your criticisms of Furman's Nemesis Prime rings true Mako-san... An evil villain is cool on a superficial level, but what makes one memorable and understandable is if there is more to them than just a desire to be evil. Tho' i did get a sense of Furman's Nemesis Prime having a characteristic motivation for his actions, in the end he did seem to just end up as another big bad villain.

What i think might be interesting to see is the process of corruption that Nova Prime went thru' to eventually become Nemesis Prime. Perhaps we should have a 'Nova Prime' spotlight that prequels the whole Dead Universe story, something that can give us a sense of the kind of character Nova Prime was in his reigninig Autobot days.

I think what ultimately defines a 'Nemesis Prime' is whether he is a character that has become an antithesis to the relevant Autobot Prime and bears some physical similarity to him and/or shares his title of 'Prime', the details of how he comes to be are not so important. CR Black Convoy i would consider a type of 'Nemesis Prime' because he has chosen to be Fire Convoy's opposite in every way whilst bearing some physical resemblance to him and taking his title of 'Convoy' as well. He is a dark mirror opposite of Fire Convoy.

I don't think all Nemesis Primes have to be 'spark-linked' to or a clone of a good Prime in order to be called a 'Nemesis Prime'. IDW Nova Prime/Nemesis Prime was Optimus Prime's predecessor, a unique character of his own.

Now see, *THAT* would be great. The way Omega Supreme described Nova, I initially pictured him as a stern, no-nonsense kind of guy; the kind of leader that wasn't friends with his troops (like Optimus) but nonetheless cared about them and looked out for them. I had imagined (or hoped) that Nova wouldn't hesitate to make the controversial decisions and that at the end of the day it wouldn't cause him to lose any sleep, *BUT* that he was still a good guy deep down and really did hold the Autobot code in high esteem. I thought that there must have been a really good story as to why he left the Matrix behind (and who knows- maybe there still is). I liked to think that he decided that the Matrix belonged on Cybertron with its people, and so he left it behind in the hands of Alpha Trion or someone really trustworthy while he went off into space. And then, after returning home and seeing how badly everything was going, he'd pull seniority and demand the Matrix back from Optimus. I had imagined that he'd be the Autobot that everyone hated but deep down was still a good guy. I wanted him to be the villain that the Autobots couldn't just shoot. There was a goldmine waiting to be tapped there, but Nova got plugged into the usual ultimate villain formula, and that's really why I'm so bummed out by his whole portrayal.

You mentioned that it seemed Nova had some other motivation early on in the story. I'm going to have to go back and re-read the whole thing, I think. It was a pretty big story and when you're waiting a month inbetween chapters, it's easy to forget some of the details. I think I must've glossed over those parts or forgotten them. I do know that Shokaract at least had a moment at the very end where he showed some redeeming qualities, so I'll cut him a little tiny sliver of slack.

Not necessarily, no... but when they're personified as literally a black, evil version of Optimus, then I find myself looking for a more direct existential doubling, rather than just a thematic or symbolic one.

In the case of Nova Prime, I have to say... he never really felt like he lived up to the "Nemesis Prime" moniker. He never came off as much of a character, much less an arch-opposite for Optimus. Even now, I never consciously identify him as "Nemesis Prime". He's just Nova Prime to me.

In short, Furman's concept for Nova Prime was pretty cool, but never really lived up to the potential. Hrmm. Kind of like the whole Furman IDW story arc come to think of it...

zmog