Transformers: Last Bot Standing

When the last stars flicker and fade, who will be the only Cybertronian left?

In 2022, after seventeen years, IDW Publishing announced that they had lost the license to Transformers comics. Deciding to go out with a bang, Transformers: Last Bot Standing is both the Grand Finale to IDW's tenure and a hypothetical end to the Transformers brand.

Set millions of years in the future, long after the Great War has ended and energon has dried up, an aged Rodimus is living on the planet Donnokt. Though content to fade away, the last Autobot is called to arms one last time to save the universe. For other Cybertronians have done whatever they need to survive and Donnokt holds a secret, one that the invaders would love to acquire.

Tropes used in Transformers: Last Bot Standing include:

• A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away: The series takes place eons into the future, long after the end of the Great War, long enough for the death of the stars to affect the night sky and after Earth has been destroyed and humanity rendered extinct.
• Adaptation Species Change: In Beast Wars II, Moon was a human-built android. Here he's a Cybertronian.
• Adaptational Badass: Steeljaw has his toy's Wolverine-esque claws in addition to built-in energy weapons compared to his unarmed television self. He's also the undisputed master of Treadshock, Riotgear and Cyberwarp rather than being their flunky.
  • Going by Rodimus' memory of the Great War, Red Alert fought on the frontlines of the conflict rather than staying back at base as he did in Transformers Armada.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Steeljaw is considerably viler than he was in Robots in Disguise. His televised counterpart wanted Earth to remain a living planet but here he has no issue leaving empty husks of worlds in his wake.
• Adaptational Villainy: Steeljaw's pack features new incarnations of Wedge, Override, Wheelie and Cyberwarp. In previous stories, the former three were Autobots and the latter was a Noble Demon who didn't like aliens being caught in the crossfire of the Cybertronian war. Here all three have no issue eating organics to survive in a post-energon universe. Cyberwarp even notes that she loves watching organics run.
• After the End: On a galactic scale. The Great War has left the galaxy an empty husk with most of its stars destroyed and most species rendered extinct. The few that survived were eaten by Steeljaw's pack to survive.
• And Then What?: Rodimus keeps asking this to everyone who wants to "rebuild" the Cybertronian race. None of them can offer him a clear answer on what that will actually entail or what a new generation of Cybertronians would be like.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: There are so few Cybertronians left that the visitors live by this code.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Sharplaw, after one cameo in the 2019 comic, is the Dragon to Steeljaw.
  • Riotgear had no dialogue in RiD 2015, simply being a mook to Cyclonus. Here he's a Mauve Shirt and is one of the more heavily focused on visitors.
• Bait and Switch: The audience is led to think that the Transformer who lands on Donnokt is Rodimus but it turns out to be Nitro and Rodimus is already on the planet.
• Become Their Own Antithesis: As Rodimus lampshades, Wheelie was once an Autobot and has now signed onto the very Decepticon-like mindset of hunting and oppressing organics.
• Big Bad: Steeljaw.
• Bigger Bad: Galvatron is, presumably, long dead but the legacy of his war is still keenly felt.
• Bittersweet Ending: Rodimus saved Donnokt and ensured it has a future but the Cybertronian race is over. Rodimus' last days will be in an orbiting capsule, standing watch over his prisoners until he runs out of fuel and dies.
• Book Ends: In a meta-sense. E.J. Su penned the very first IDW Transformers comic, Infiltration, and now pens the very last.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Rodimus is not wrong that the Cybertronian race has destroyed everything it touched but Steeljaw is also right to say that Rodimus has no right to elect himself as the sole arbiter of their species' survival.
• Broad Strokes: Per Word of God, the story is not meant to be set in any one continuity and could be slotted into any that the reader wishes.
• C-List Fodder: Among the Decepticons who initially chased Rodimus' group to Donnokt, the last two to die are Fangry and Talon. While the former is at least something of an Ensemble Darkhorse, this is the latter's first major role.
• Canon Immigrant: Barring Wheelie, all the Visitors are from incarnations of the brand that succeed the initial run of Transformers Generation 1. Per Word of God, this is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek reason why Rodimus has never met an of them.
• Child Soldiers: Rodimus mentions that he started out as one. And that this somehow didn't make the war seem normal to him. Though having never seen Cybertron at peace, this leads him to think that all his species can do is fight.
  • The Visitors may be this as Wheelie calls them the "late forged", suggesting that they're even younger than Rodimus. At the very least, Moon blames the generations of Cybertronians that preceded him for the sorry state of their species.
• Curb Stomp Battle:
  • Reduced to just a head, all Wheelie can do is bite Rodimus. Unamused, Rodimus punt-kicks him into orbit.
  • Even in their fuel-starved state, the visitors are entirely Immune to Bullets and anything else Fembrance can throw at them.
• Combining Mecha: Unstoppimus. Rodimus lampshades the stupid name.
• Death by Adaptation: Gripper, Moon, Steeljaw, Strongarm, Treadshock and Wildwheel. Even Earth and humanity are among the death toll of the Great War.
• Death Is Cheap: Rodimus mentions that at the height of the Great War, deceased combatants were normally brought back without any trouble to keep the fight going.
• Death Seeker: While he's not actively trying to kill himself, Rodimus is just waiting for him to finally burn through all his internal energon supplies and die.
• Deconstructed Trope: Deconstructs the stalemated Forever War that defines Transformers. If properly fuelled, a Cybertronian is biologically immortal and even if they die, Death Is Cheap. Over millions of years, this results in the Great War consuming everything that the combatants need for it to continue. And without sufficient resources, the Cybertronians finally start dying for real. By the time the war is considered over, the few Cybertronians left don't want to fight, instead looking for any fuel that can keep their species going. Any fuel.
• Disappointed in You: Rodimus' general reaction to the news that Wheelie is leading a pack composed largely of Decepticons to eat whole sentient species to extinction.
• Domestic Abuser: Rodimus' relationship with Strongarm had a few shades of this, him overriding and refusing to consider her opinions, even gaslighting her when she began to disagree with him.
• Dragon-in-Chief: While Wheelie/the Veteran is technically in charge, Steeljaw makes all the big decisions of the pack and is the one who keeps them in line.
• Dying Race: Without sufficient energon, the Cybertronians have been reduced to this. Before the story started, Rodimus thought himself the Last of His Kind.
• The End - or Is It?: Rodimus assumes an orbital watch on Donnokt. Just in case any other Cybertronians might still be out there.
• Earth-That-Was: Rodimus mentions that Earth "blew up" as collateral damage in the Great War. He's one of two people to remember that Earth even existed.
• End of an Age: It may be the Dawn of an Era for Donnokt, but the age of Cybertron is over.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Visitors see Rodimus' defence of an innocent race as his infamous It's All About Me tendencies as work so he can keep all the energon to himself.
• Exact Words: Rodimus is the "last 'Bot standing". Not the last Cybertronian, the last Autobot.
• Extremely Short Timespan: While the How We Got Here flashbacks take place over millions of years, the bulk of the action takes place over a day and a half. Shib lampshades it at the end.
• Face Death with Dignity: After being informed that Rodimus has destroyed the biofuel refinery, Steeljaw, after one bout of blind rage, calmly accepts that the Cybertronian race is over and, rather than scavenge the refinery for usable parts, decides to blow up Donnokt's energon. Choosing to die with honor like a Cybertronian, nay a Decepticon.
• Failed a Spot Check: As Steeljaw and Sharpclaw furiously call out, Riotgear and Override failed to notice Nitro's remains less than twenty feet from them. Riotgear defends that their sensors were dead but Sharpclaw retorts that he still basic optics.
• Fallen Hero: Rodimus views himself and Wheelie as this. Him because he's become a Hunter of His Own Kind and Wheelie because he's now hunting organic life.
• Faux Horrific: Rodimus treats meeting Wheelie as akin to the second coming of Unicron.
• The Fog of Ages: Without access to sufficient fuel, Steeljaw's pack have started overwriting their memories to conserve power. They can't even remember how long they've been running on biofuel, let alone the specific details of the Great War. Steeljaw lampshades this in the final issue though he makes clear that he remembers the rush that comes from crushing Human Aliens between his fingers.
• For the Evulz: There's no real reason for Steeljaw to personally kill Shib aside from wanting to relive the feeling of personally killing something.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Donnokt being the last source of energon is hinted at a few times in the first three issues. Shib mentions that the locals are mining a volatile resource from the nearby mountains to power their steam cars, something which catches Nitro's attention, though he can't quite pin down what it is. When he first meets Steeljaw, Rodimus keeps bringing up energon unprompted and later notes to Shib that the visitors likely wouldn't recognize energon. Rodimus arrives only minutes too late to keep it a secret from Steeljaw.
  • Eagle-eyed fans will note that, barring Override, every 'bot that accompanies Steeljaw to Fembrance has been a combiner component at one point in the franchise's history. And Rodimus ends up throwing down with the last combiner in the universe.
  • Steeljaw, despite claiming his group to be a family, is very much a Token Evil Teammate, setting himself up as the commander above the rest and putting down other members whom he doesn't think are useful. Sure enough when he gets an energon boost, he identifies as a Decepticon before anything else.
• Forever War: The Great War. Deconstructed as it kept going for so long that not only did both sides forget why they were fighting but every resource that the war needed to continue was ultimately eaten up.
• Fountain of Youth: When the story opens, lack of energon has rendered Rodimus a decrepit mechanoid. Shib giving him a boost of energon restores him to fighting shape before direct exposure to the energon crystals restores him to what he was back when energon was abdundant.
• Heel Face Door Slam: Both Moon and Sharpclaw come to understand that Rodimus is right. Moon goes out in a Heroic Sacrifice while Sharpclaw takes the shot that would have killed Donnokt.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: Rodimus considers the Cybertronian race to have devolved into this due to the Great War. In their endless quest for resources, they've moved from planet to the planet consuming everything to the point of outright destroying the planet for all the treasures therein. And once one planet has been used up, they move on to another one.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: The Cybertronian race was once the lords of the galaxy. Now they're reduced to a Dying Race, scavenging a meal from anywhere just to try and make the species last until tomorrow. They don't even have enough fuel to build a long-term spaceship.
• How We Got Here: Whenever he suffers a blow to the head, Rodimus flashes back to how he arrived on Donnokt. In brief, after the war was thought to be over, he, Strongarm and Gripper were found by a pack of Decepticons, taking them down to the Donnokt's surface. After defeating the Decepticons, the three Autobots swore to protect Donnokt's energon reserves from abuse. After being recharged, he fills in the rest for Shib. After eons on Donnokt, the three made contact with her ancestors, entrusting them with the energon keys and promising to help them if invaders came. As time passed, Gripper died in a reckless driving accident with his death causing Strongarm to try and flee the planet. Rodimus tried to ground the ship only to end up crashing it and killing her. He then locked himself in alt-mode and stayed with Shib's family.
• Human Aliens: Aside from some unusual skin tones; such as green, purple, red and red; and elfish ears, the people of Donnokt are pretty much human.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Rodimus' justification for becoming a Hunter of His Own Kind.
  • And the pack's own justification for why they've turned to biofuel. The Cybertronian race must survive.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: After Rodimus is partially restored by an energon key, he jokes that he's not quite back to his Rodimus Prime. He then notes that Shib wouldn't get that.
• It Is Beyond Saving: Rodimus' opinion on his race. The Cybertronians had too many chances to change and their mistakes were paid for in the blood of trillions of innocents.
• It Is Dehumanizing: The visitors refer to organics as "resources", clearly not seeing them as alive. While the rest do it by instinct, Steeljaw is the only one who has to consciously force himself to do it, a hint that he's enjoying killing them.
• Last of His Kind: Before they came to Donnokt, Rodimus, Strongarm and Gripper thought themselves the last Cybertronians in the universe before they ran into two Decepticon ships. After the Decepticons, Strongarm and Gripper died, Rodimus thought himself the very last Cybertronian before the visitors showed up. By the end of the story, he's sure that there are more Cybertronians out there, but he's the last of the Autobots.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After killing Nitro, Rodimus defends himself to the citizens of Fembrance that Nitro was dangerous. The sheriff shoots this down noting that Nitro was, essentially, a wandering drunk who was actually happy to see Rodimus with the only punch Nitro threw being one of self-defence when Rodimus made an unprovoked attack. It's later revealed that Nitro was the forward scout and checking out the buffet, meaning Rodimus 100% right.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Aside from Wheelie, the Visitors are all from toylines that succeed the original 1980s run of Transformers Generation 1, which is why Rodimus doesn't know them.
  • Rodimus mentions that he was originally called "Hot Rod" before he became "Rodimus Prime" before shortening his name to just "Rodimus", a meta commentary on how the character has been named across the franchise's history.
• Megaton Punch: Rodimus drop-kicks Wheelie's head into orbit.
• Motive Decay: As time passed and energon dried up, the Autobots and Decepticons became less concerned with victory and more interested in survival.
• Mythology Gag:
  • While this comic isn't meant to be the specific future of any pre-existing continuity, Rodimus' backstory has some shades of Transformers More Than Meets the Eye, such as his one-sided rivalry with Thunderclash and his familiarity with the phrase "lost light".
  • The energon keys seem based on Sari's key from Transformers Animated.
  • Unlike most G1 comics, energon crystals are depicted as bright blue as in Beast Wars and Transformers Prime.
• Never My Fault: Befitting a group composed largely of former Decepticons, the visitors don't take any responsibility for the Great War or the lives they've destroyed in their quest, acting as though they're Well-Intentioned Extremists who are forced into depravity due to the Autobots. Even when Steeljaw is on the brink of a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum and prepares to blow up the planet they're standing on, he says Rodimus was the one who doomed this world.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Wheelie, out of fondness for his and Rodimus' friendship, allows Shib and Rodimus to say a last goodbye. This allows Shib to heal Rodimus enough that he can destroy the visitors' biofuel plant.
  • Steeljaw impaling Rodimus before throwing down an energon shaft. The holes allow the energon to leak in and heal Rodimus' wounds.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Justified. Given the scarcity of resources, the visitors don't have what they need to rebuild their biofuel rendering planet after Rodimus destroys it.
• No Name Given: What the natives of Donnokt call themselves is not said.
• Noodle Incident: If Rodimus is to be taken at his word, he was once Rodimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots. How he came to be leader and why he abdicated isn't delved into.
• Paper Tiger: Unstoppimus. Looks horrifying but without decent fuel, Rodimus quickly topples the combiner.
• People Farms: What Steeljaw ultimately intends to turn Donnokt into. As he says, being hunters isn't a sustainable life. Only farming can give one a consistent source of food.
• Post-Peak Oil: Essentially what biofuel is compared to energon. Steeljaw's pack needs much more biofuel to even be a passable substitute for energon and even then, biofuel never fully fills them up and isn't powerful enough to fuel a spacecraft.
• Reality Ensues: A plot point is that Steeljaw's pack can't use energon anymore. Having refitted themselves to ingest a new fuel, their intake system can't process it.
• Robo-Family: Steeljaw and Sharpclaw are siblings.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Averted. The galaxy is a huge place. Given how adaptable and long-lived the Cybertronians are, Strongarm, upon seeing that the three Autobots weren't the very last Cybertronians is sure that more of their kind scattered throughout space.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Rodimus ultimately seals the visitors in one, with him as their guard.
• Shout-Out:
  • The visitors' plan is very much inspired by the Martians' actions in The War of the Worlds.
  • During the fight, Steeljaw and Rodimus recreate the memetic "Think Mark!" pose from the animated version of Invincible.
  • Rodimus' powered up form calls to mind a Super Saiyan.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Rodimus' answer to any "We Can Rule Together" speech by the visitors. The Cybertronians have had way too many chances and wasted them all. If they get another, they'll just go right down to burning down the rest of the galaxy.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Lampshaded by Moon. The damage to the galaxy and the sorry state of Cybertronian race is down to those like Optimus Prime and Galvatron, not the Visitors' generation who have never known a Cybertron at peace, yet the kids are the ones who have to live with the mess.
• Spiritual Antithesis: In many ways, this story is similar to Beast Wars: Uprising, being a Deconstruction of Transformers. In many others, it goes in the opposite direction. While both stories agreed that the time of the Autobots and Decepticons is over, Uprising ultimately had a happy ending for the next generation of Cybertronians while Last Bot Standing makes clear that there is no happy ending and that the Cybertronian race is over. Both stories also starred an aged Rodimus but while Uprising had him fight for a voice and future for his generation, this Rodimus is a Hunter of His Own Kind who believes that his kind is too dangerous to live.
• The Stars Are Going Out: As a relativistic legacy of the Great War, stars are vanishing from the sky, nearly all of them having been gobbled up by the Autobots and Decepticons.
• Taking You with Me: After being informed that there's no more biofuel to fuel a conversion back to energon, Steeljaw decides to simply blow up Donnokt's energon, taking everyone with him.
• There Is Another: As Rodimus is shocked to discover, he's not the last Cybertronian. At the story's end, he keeps an orbital watch on the planet in case any other Cybertronians might have survived.
• Time Dissonance: Rodimus mentions the Cybertronian penchant for this as one of the reasons that they're so dangerous. Fangry treats waiting for the energon to catalyze, long enough for Shib's species to evolve, to be no more than a slightly longer than normal wait.
• Title Drop: Rodimus mentions to Shib that he once thought himself the "last 'bot standing".
• To Serve Man: In the absence of energon, Steeljaw's faction has converted to run on biofuel. A mush made from the churned remains of organic beings.
• Token Heroic Orc: Rodimus views himself as one.
• Tragic Villain: The visitors. All they want to do is survive.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Galvatron's war ended up snowballing into the extinction of the Cybertronian race.
• Vague Age: Thanks to The Fog of Ages, the Cybertronians only know that they're millions of years old but can't pin down an exact number. Given The Stars Are Going Out, the Cybertronians could conceivably be in the billions.
• Villain Protagonist: Rodimus views himself as such, outright saying he made the hard choice to not be a good guy anymore.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Override up and disappears from the story when the pack combines into Unstoppimus.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • When given the chance to revive his functionally dead species or protect innocents, Rodimus still chose to be an Autobot, refusing to kill the future to have a chance at reviving the past. Moon and Sharpclaw eventually realize that he's right.
  • When Steeljaw gets enough energon to put him back into fighting shape, he drops his Faux Affably Evil act and becomes a Decepticon once again. If he will not win, then he'll ensure no one else does and more open sadism drips into his tone. Rodimus even lampshades that the ease with which Steeljaw justifies his cruelty is proof that his Decepticon beliefs never left him.