Rage of the Dinobots Issue 4 is the final issue in the Transformers Prime: Rage of the Dinobots miniseries before it continues into the Beast Hunters Comics.
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Summary[]
The Dinobots and Ultra Magnus meet Shockwave in battle, but the cyclopean scientist proves to be surrounded by a forcefield that deflects their every attack. Knocked out by an E.M.P triggered by the Decepticon, the team is taken to Shockwave's laboratory, where Grimlock is strapped to an operating table and the others and jailed. As Grimlock struggles to escape, Shockwave explains that he created the Dinobots based on the hypothesis that a combination of intelligence and brute savagery was necessary to create the perfect soldier. Having observed the Dinobots in action since their escape from his clutches, however, he now postulates that sentience is not necessary, and fully unleashing the beast within Grimlock will transform him into the ideal warrior. As Shockwave sets about his wicked work, Grimlock recalls the last time he was trapped in this position, his previous escape and battle with Shockwave, and his being injured in the space bridge explosion that followed, left for dead until his fellow Dinobots came to his aid...
Elsewhere in the complex, Snarl tests the durability of their cell with his blaster while Ultra Magnus puts his mind to work thinking up an escape plan. He and Slug engage in a fake argument, during which Magnus threatens to blast the Dinobot, prompting the guards to come rushing in to prevent the untimely death of Shockwave's experiments. Slug and Magnus immediately turn on the guards and take them down, then quickly locate Shockwave's lab; Slug smashes into the wall, weakening it enough that a combined charge from all four Dinobots breaks it open, just before Shockwave makes the fateful incision into Grimlock's cranium. Caught by surprise, Shockwave is seized by his four former experiments and Magnus, and rather spectacularly torn limb from limb with one almighty pull. Grimlock is soon released from the table, but just as he is coming back to his senses, a hologram of Shockwave appears in the room and reveals that they have not killed him, but rather, slain only one of many avatars working on one of many labs all across the planet.
A little later, the Dinobots and Magnus gather at a spacecraft, ready to take off and join Optimus Prime's fleet. Grimlock informs Magnus that the Dinobots will not be going, instead remaining on their homeworld to save the few 'bots still there, as well as to hunt down Shockwave and finish him once and for all. Magnus bids them farewell, affirming them as his fellow Autobots, and takes off as the Dinobots head out for further adventures.
Notes[]
- During Grimlock's flashback to events of the Fall of Cybertron video game, what's seen of Shockwave and Starscream are their War for Cybertron bodies. This issue also patches up a gap in continuity between the end of the game and the start of this mini-series, showing us what happened to Grimlock after the space bridge explosion that ended his role in the game (one of the elevated platforms that level was set on crumbled beneath him and he fell and wound up buried in rubble until the other Dinobots found him).
- Continuing the approach taken by IDW's Fall of Cybertron comic, Earth's dinosaurs are specifically referred to as "ancient", again affirming that Shockwave looked into Earth's past, and that the game is not set—as High Moon Studios promotional material often claimed—contemporaneously with the era of living dinosaurs.