The Last Days of Optimus Prime

"The Last Days of Optimus Prime" is an unofficial two-page comic strip written by Simon Furman and illustrated by Jeff Anderson for Transforce 2000. Much like Furman's later Transforce work, "Alignment", the strip was produced without the approval of Hasbro and as such is considered non-canon, but is included here on Teletraan I for the pseudocanonical insights it offers into other pieces of work by Furman from around the same time period.

Plot
On a post-Great Upgrade Cybertron, a weary Optimus Prime feels adrift and alone in a world so greatly changed from the one he once knew. As the being known as "the Veteran", an old ally of Prime's, flies by overhead, Prime realizes how some have been able to grow and change in this new world, but how he can find no place for himself. In the final days of his life, desiring only to join his old friends in the world beyond, Prime seeks out the mysterious J'nwan. Reflecting on the triumphs and tragedies of his long life as he goes, Prime suddenly finds himself in the J'nwan, where he is warmly greeted by Megatron. Inquiring if this is truly the end, Prime is met only with laughter, a handshake, and the assurance that... it never ends.

Relation to other works
The J'nwan was introduced the previous year, in BotCon 1999's chapter of "Reaching the Omega Point". While BotCon 2000's "Terminus" featured Optimus Prime and Megatron as inhabitants of this realm, it was "Last Days" which first established this fact, released as it was three months before BotCon's story. The story takes something of a more intruiging, metaphysical approach to the J'nwan - where the BotCon story regards it as simply a physical, scientifically-defined place that one travels to, "Last Days" has Prime search for it, only to arrive without even realizing it, almost making it seems as if he quietly slips away into death before he finds himself there.

More significantly (and less metaphorically), "Last Days" was the only piece of fiction to explicitly establish that "the Veteran," introduced in the BotCon 1999 story, was an evolved Swoop.