How Optimus Prime Got Started

[arbre_rieur]

Here's some more TRANSFORMERS: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. Sort of, if you squint. Before doing MTMTE, its creative team, writer James Robert and artist Alex Milne, did two issues of the previous Transformers ongoing series. Issues 22 and 23, to be precise. They're the first appearance of some of the ideas that would be used in MTMTE (already in the planning stages then), such as Whirl's aggression issues. So you can kind of view them as a MTMTE prequel.

Here are seven pages from TRANSFORMERS (previous series) #23. Who was Optimus Prime before the War?

The setting is Cybertron in the pre-War days, and Optimus, or Orion Pax as he was still known then, is a police officer. He's recently arrested one of his own men, Whirl, for beating up a suspect.

One day, three strangers arrive with something to say about that.





In the evening Optimus/Orion returns to the precinct house to find the place torn apart and his men dead (decapitated). He discovers the three enforcer-types from earlier. They're in the middle of busting Whirl loose.









Over at the Grand Imperium, seat of the Senate:









One of the non-corrupt Senators takes care of Optimus's repairs.