it shows how little he takes his leadership seriously, like how TF86 #0 shows how hes abusing the trust of his troops to lead them on a suicide run just to lure megatron away from cybertron.

 

I think Prime was mistaken not to make Prowl his successor. Unfortunately, as much as I liked most of Furman's writing in Marvel G1, I never liked how he ignored Prowl's tech spec and made him a whiner just to make his favourite, Grimlock, look better.

Budiansky wrote characters better for the most part. When Prowl commanded the Autobots due to Shockwave's capture of Prime, he was logical and level headed.

He orchestrated the deal with G.B. Blackrock to acquire the earthbound Autobots a steady fuel supply.

But I digress, I never liked Optimus Prime as a kid and it continues to bug me how Prowl usually gets shafted in fiction.

 

I personally think each writer had characters that one didn't quite grasp while the other did better. Furman had Rodimus, Bludgeon, Nightbeat and Thunderwing as his strongest characters, whereas Budiansky had Shockwave, Blaster, Ratchet and Circuit Breaker.

 

I'm not sure I'd pick the same characters from that list- I rather liked Furman's take on Shockwave, for instance- with the 'logical' computer on legs thing a lot more of a vain façade than a literal truth, but I doubt anyone would deny that Budiansky's Blaster is far, far more iconic than Furman's.

What's fascinating is how very different some of those character interpretations are.

 

I agree apart from Circuit Breaker.

 

Eh, I hated Furman's Circuit Breaker. Budiansky wrote her much better IMO. Budiansky's CB was much more methodical and did her research. I found Furman's CB to be just a one-note ragefest.

 

Oddly, I was the opposite. I found Budiansky's CB annoying because she seemed so unreasonable.

 

The other way around for me. Budiansky's CB I felt was the more reasonable one and actually took some time to study the Cybertronians despite her hatred for them (when Skids was captured, she actually examined him) and when the Battlechargers incident happened, she actually decided to accept the help of the "robots". She also could have easily killed Jazz in her debut episode, but she spared him. All I remember of Furman's CB is just being angry 24/7 with no method or analysis, and that is something that made CB interesting for me in the Budiansky era.

 

I know I've expressed some of these thoughts before, in the Marvel read along thread in particular, but I do think perhaps part of the reason that Marvel Optimus underwhelms is that he's a reasonably realistic portrayal of a flawed leader with unrealistic expectations projected at him. However, whilst he's one of the most exposed characters in the storyline, we also still know frustratingly little about him, and what we do know, chiefly about how he came to power, seems on the face of it to be a mess of contradictions.

So- this is one attempt to resolve them...

First off, "Prime" is not a title which was bestowed upon him as leader of the Autobots. This may fly in the face of later renditions of the franchise, but, in the context of the Marvel comic, it is almost indisputable. He is "Optimus Prime" at a point in his life when he is merely the captain of the Iaconian athletics team - "State Games". He is "Lieutenant Commander Optimus Prime" at a point early in the war, clearly long before the siege of Iacon, when he attempts to gain the knowledge of the Underbase, and lastly, during the siege of Iacon itself, whilst lobbying for him to be appointed Supreme Commander, Emirate Xaaron cheerfully advertises him to the Council of Autobot Elders (he really wanted Tomaandi to go down to the toyshop and pick up a reconditioned Armoured Convoy of his own) as an officer who would be a magnificent leader, and whose name is Optimus Prime. If "Prime" meant what the cartoon universe appears to have it mean, and what later iterations of the franchise interpret it as meaning, then the address in "Flames of Boltax" for instance, would convey a sense of "He's a good man, that Corporal Supreme Commander there. With a name like that he'll have good promotion prospects."

Then, of course, there's that line in "The New Order" which introduces the whole concept of the Creation Matrix - that- "It is logical to assume an Autobot of his stature contains within him the Creation Matrix. It is said once every ten millennia a new Autobot leader is chosen and encoded with the Matrix. I calculate with 99.7% certainty that before leaving Cybertron, Optimus Prime was the last such Autobot."

This line is intriguing because of its ambiguousness. Looked at straight on- and remembering that of course, at this point in the continuity, there is no idea of having the Matrix as a tangible Christmas decoration stuffed inside Optimus' shirt- it's purely a computer programme, it can easily mean two distinct and separate things.

The first, and most straightforward interpretation is that, once every thousand years- for whatever value of 'years' is being used, of course- the Autobots pick someone to be their leader and program them with the Matrix. However... this makes no sense at all. If the Matrix is held exclusively by "the leader", then it implies that Shockwave has based his plan on cunningly deducing, based, apparently, on the fact that Optimus is very tall, that Optimus Prime is the Autobot Leader. He will go on to discover that he is purple and that Bumblebee is yellow, before his plans to conquer the universe grind to a permanent halt when he is trapped forever in a logic puzzle beyond his comprehension as a result of his accidentally googling the initialism 'FIRRIB'.

Not only that, but in an absolute sense, Optimus is not THE Autobot Leader. He's the leader of the Autobots on Earth on those occasions when he's not taken time off to attend his own funeral and go on holiday to the afterlife for a bit, but even after being appointed field commander of the entire Autobot army in "And there shall come a Leader", he still addresses Tomaandi as "sire", and later, after Tomaandi's death, appears at best co-eval, and probably subordinate to Emirate Xaaron, until the latter's death during "Edge of Extinction". He's an Autobot Leader. Probably the most famous in-universe, certainly the most revered, whether deservingly or undeservingly, but- he's a Prince, not a King.

This isn't a problem with the text itself, since it clearly says "A new Autobot leader is chosen and encoded with the Matrix." In other words, once every ten thousand years, ceremonially, on Cybertron, a high ranking Autobot- one of the leaders- is chosen to have the Matrix programme encoded into their circuitry.

Fascinatingly, this does not in any way imply exclusivity. Indeed, "Heavy Traffic" makes it very clear when Megatron copies the programme through Soundwave, that Optimus now "shares his greatest treasure with his greatest enemy". So, where are we?

The Matrix as a programme gets ceremonially added to an Autobot aristocrat once every ten thousand years. There's no reason to suppose that this makes them the only person on Cybertron to hold it, or that it's taken away from anyone else who also has it in their programming at the time.

Notably, "Oh no, Optimus Prime has disappeared along with his spaceship... well, f@#%, that's our race extinct, because we've just lost our only means of procreation down the back of a volcano," is a sentiment expressed by nobody. Even if they are naturally immortal, they can- and do- die in their thousands in the war- stories like "City of Fear" frankly suggest that a non-negligable amount of the ruined and twisted landscape of modern Cybertron is the wreckage of the dead- so if the Ark's crash really had robbed them of the ability to procreate, then it would have been mentioned, in stories like "Ring of Hate" and "The Smelting Pool", which comment on Optimus' disappearance before his survival is known.

"The Middle Years" suggests that the Matrix Flame has life-giving properties- there's no reason to assume that there's only one Matrix Flame, and it's only when it goes out- when the Matrix is removed from range of Cybertron by being shunted into a parallel dimension ("Target :2006") that Xaaron worries- and when he does, he's very worried. The removal of the Matrix is a big enough deal to warrant him ruining Operation: Volcano and sending Ultra Magnus to Earth to investigate. Rightly so, since losing access to the Matrix would condemn the Cybertronian race to extinction, but this makes it fundamentally clear in retrospect that prior to this, the Matrix was not inaccessible, or considered so.

Of course, although "Target:2006" still refers to the Matrix only as software, the Movie it heralds will end up explaining why Optimus is so big a deal- because he holds the physical manifestation of the Creation Matrix, something which Shockwave clearly did not even suspect existed- something which Prime's Autobots didn't know existed, leading to the Ark crew and the Cybertron Seven screwing over the entire population of Cybertron with their stupid funeral barge.
In retrospect, this makes that scene of Blaster and Perceptor sulking about Prime's Earth-style funeral in "Resurrection" extremely funny. They clearly lobbied to have their own way about it the next time Prime died, despite Prime having apparently already indicated to the Earthbound Autobots that he'd prefer to be buried Earth-style - "According to them, this is what he would have wanted."

Well... of course he would. There's a very good, very sound, blue-crystalline reason why Optimus might very well have dropped a hint to his troops "Oh, by the way, if I do happen to kick the bucket, you might want to just put my body underground somewhere you can find it again if you needed to for any reason or anything."

One would imagine that Xaaron was in on the secret, which must have made for an interesting transdimensional telephone call sometime after "Funeral for a Friend".

BLASTER: Yo, Emirate dude!
XAARON: Good morning Blaster. How I do enjoy your friendly informality. Remind me to recommend you for Operation : Certain Death when that comes up in a few weeks.
BLASTER: Um, yeah, talkin' of death, got a bit of bad news for you, Xaa-man. Optimus Prime's dead. Again.
XAARON: Oh, that's very sad. I'll send someone I trust along by space bridge in a few days to take care of a few bits of unimportant paperwork and so on. Oh, by the way, apropos of nothing in particular... I remember Optimus mentioning to me last time he was on Cybertron that he'd talked it over with his troops on Earth, and they'd said if he ever did die in service there, they were planning to bury his body in a shallow hole in the ground quite near the Ark and mark it with a big stone or something...? I don't suppose you... have the co-ordinates to hand or anything...
BLASTER: Oh, hey, no sweat dude, don't worry about that. Me and the boys set them right on that weird kinky Earth stuff. We did a proper Cybertronian funeral rite for old Op, loaded his body in a funeral barge and blasted him off right out into outer space, all nice and respectable.
XAARON: ... ... ...
BLASTER: Hey, Emirate, dude, what's with the headbutting the screen thing? That's not cool?
XAARON: WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS!

So, this seems to suggest that there are multiple layers to the secret.
Firstly, certain leaders of the race or aristocrats of significant standing are encoded with the life-giving programme of the Creation Matrix, enabling them to program new Transformers for life. This makes a sort of social sense of how Cybertron could have the aristocratic, feudal system it appears to have, in a species without apparent linear heredity. 'Prime' is a part of a formal name applied to those - or some of those- who possess this honour, and it confers a certain social status, which some respect, whereas others deride them for it, witness Megatron, in "State Games", saying in rage that he'll "brook no interference from the likes of you" to Optimus Prime, who at this point is only a chief athlete.

Given Megatron's metaphorical axe to grind, then, it's easy to fill in the gap that he would perceive the Chief Athlete of the rich, powerful, and privileged upper-class Iacon as being a pampered little princeling, on the team because of his social standing rather than his physical merit as an athlete, and despise him as such. Indeed, Megatron may well have a point. Had Optimus not been a bearer of the Matrix programme, and thus a suitably mythic, heroic figure for High Command to build a legend out of, perhaps he'd have been court-martialled and thrown in a cell for the appalling consequences of his idiocy and reckless avarice during "Flames of Boltax", rather than lauded as a hero for it.

However, beneath the first secret about the Matrix, there's another layer that only a very few, including Xaaron and Optimus himself know- namely that the Matrix programme depends upon a core piece of hardware, the Matrix as a physical object, and that this is secreted within the chassis of one of those encoded with the Matrix programme. If we assume this object is very resilient- after all, it does take a lot of punishment on-panel during the series, including being at ground zero for Prime's suicide- without apparent physical damage- then Optimus' plan to take himself and Megatron out of the war and entomb and kill them both doesn't seem so stupid- his death wouldn't stop the Matrix being functional, and accessible both to any surviving other Matrix-programmed leaders on Cybertron, and any Matrix flames- but his disappearance and death would keep the physical Matrix safe and out of the way.

So- returning to the nature of Prime himself- I don't think he's a paragon. He's essentially an upper-class officer, a Lieutenant George from "Blackadder Goes Forth", rather than a more working class Captain Blackadder made good- but, as it happens, he isn't an idiot, and he's also, as "Prey" makes clear, completely and cynically aware of the power of his own legend- and its importance to the Autobots. He makes stupid decisions sometimes, but he does so for the best of reasons usually, and he tries his best to live up to the reputation foisted upon him.

 

Never underestimate the influence of hasbro in relation to marvel optimus.

Around the time of the animated movie there were plans to remove prime and megatrin from the comics too. Prime dying in an unbelievable stupid way because of a computer game and megatron disappeared after a fight with the predacons.

When hasbro brought out power master prime he came back in the comics too. They go hand in hand. PM prime is many fans favorite version of marvel prime.

He does unusual things, he makes strange decisions. He's flawed but he's optimus prime the franchises most famous character. He will.always return.

 

She always seemed to target the autobots too.

 

Yes. But she did get her share of Decepticons as well.

 

I think my single biggest "I'd love to know the answer to that..." question about the whole franchise is this the one following up from this though, and kind of tied in - "Why was Bob Budiansky given carte blanche to ignore Magnus and Galvatron &co?"

I mean, I'm very glad he was- for two reasons, firstly that not having any toy-mandated "leaders" in the period between the Movie and Headmasters gave Budiansky far better creative freedom to tell his own story led by plot and characterisation, giving us some of the most memorable aspects of his run, and secondly and more importantly still, having the likes of Magnus, Galvatron, and the rest of the "future" cast free for Furman to tell his own stories with in the UK comic without needing to worry about that reset button to avoid conflicting with US reprint material gave us what were very probably the most memorable aspects of the G1 comic as a whole. So, creatively, it was a massive boon in both directions, but... with no offence meant, artistic integrity and elegance of narrative aren't exactly the qualities that would have been at the forefront of the minds of the Hasbro executives commissioning the comic to sell toys. After all, Hasbro UK very definitely mandated the inclusion of arcs featuring the Special Teams, the New Leaders, and the Headmasters, all at points where they didn't easily fit into the ongoing storyline, necessitating Furman going to a number of novel creative lengths in order to fit them in. This isn't knocking Hasbro- after all, if they hadn't requested the New Leaders despite neither of them existing yet in current continuity, Furman probably wouldn't have ever created "Target:2006".

So, it's an extremely happy turn of events, but still, I think, an odd one. When you consider that in general, of the two strands of the comic, the US generally seemed to be under more pressure to keep its cast 'up to date', killing off the old and phasing in the new- whereas Hasbro UK appear to usually have been satisfied with one 'hero' story arc for the new toys and then let Furman get back to whatever he was doing before, often involving the antics of toys at least a year out of date, it seems unlikely that, if asked "Can you feature our two new leaders, the centrepieces of our toy campaign for this year", Budiansky would have been able to get away with "No, 'cos my comic's set in 1986, and they don't exist yet; bog off."

Was it the Movie miniseries adaptation, perhaps? The "Winter Special", for those of us UK-side, as it got presented to us. Did Hasbro take those three issues as fulfilling Marvel's obligation to sell toys of Galvatron, Magnus, Hot Rod, Kup, Blurr, Springer, Cyclonus, Scourge etc, enough to not care that they simply didn't turn up in the main book, bar the "Big Broadcast" one off? It's the only real explanation I can see that would fit, but I'd be fascinated to learn if it were the truth.

 

Well the plan from Budiansky was to always bring Prime and Megatron back unlike Hasbro and their sudden damage control after the movie, PMOP just coincided with that. Prime dying in a stupid way was Budiansky's call that he even said back than was a bit much to show someone as "righteous".

With the Marvel comics I always saw it as them never having to take out characters, just that if a character's toy was discontinued that suddenly open that character up to being far more likely to be killed off than before inorder to not have has big group shots. Like how Megatron "disappeared", but Galvatron never appeared in the US comic, and Ratchet sticking around till near the very end, with then the UK comic using the 86 movie characters and Megatron ill Furman took over the writing for the US comic, which is also when Megatron came back.

 

What I remember is marvel us decided not to use the movie cast. They wanted to focus on the events of modern day 1986/1987. It allowed furman over in the UK to write stories based on the cast namely galvatron and his henchmen and rodimus and Co. In target 2006 optimus was conveniently removed from the story so over in UK and Ireland the story focused on the new leaders as hasbro advertised them...ultra magnus and galvatron.

The prey storyline set after target saw marvel optimus in the UK make some increasingly idiotic decisions which started with him going to the con base alone and ending with Bob having ethan Zachary push the button on his joystick.

Boom. Prime is gone for over a year in both marvel titles with the assumption that fans would pick up ultra magnus rodimus prime and galvatron over here and in the US too. Why magnus never featured in marvel us is a mystery to me. Even when furman took over writing it he still didn't appear. PM prime eventually helped destroy unicorn only to die and then come back....again at the end of the original 80 issue run.

 

As comprehensive a post that I have ever read about optimus prime.

Bravo sir

Edit there's an interesting point to make about the Marvel UK run with prime that uk and Irish readers will know. Marvel did everything they could to keep prime and galvatron away from each other. Prime was either in limbo (target 2006) or dead. It wasn't until the last issue of so of time wars that fans got the fight we always wanted. Prime v galvatron and that happened because prime used the Matrix to jump to the present reality to take him on as all else had fallen.

It was like galvatron could go no further after fighting optimus as opposed to his famous battles with magnus. Which in a way shows us just how important Marvel optimus was.

Despite the stupidity shown at times...

 

Without reading the thread yet, the best answer I have is...

Bob Budiansky was tired.

 

Love the avatar. Issue 101 of marvel UK. Galvatron mistakes centurion for rodimus. What a great issue.

 

I re-read a lot of the Marvel stuff recently and I still can't get my head around why Grimlock was made leader. His only character growth by that point was not being as much as a nutjob as he was the first time he was leader. Prowl, Jazz, Blaster, Ironhide, Bumblebee, even Kup. But no. Grimlock as a peace-time leader. WTF Optimus/Furman?

 

As furman is a big grimlock fan he was always getting the gig even if it made little sense in universe.