Nightmare Fuel / The Transformers (Marvel)

A little too close for comfort.

• Galvatron, the first one, especially after he goes completely insane. As his earliest appearance demonstrates, he can shrug off enough firepower to level a whole city.
• Just about everything Straxus does. From smelting bots for his fortress to attempting to revive himself through a Megatron clone made from a hapless trooper who probably had no idea who he was, Straxus brews his Nightmare Fuel and drinks it on the rocks.
  • The Smelting Pit is a place where Decepticons toss captured Autobots, and they melt and dissolve to death slowly over several days. Made worse as we see Scrounge, a character we'd gotten to know in the previous issue reduced to a torso, then melt to nothingness, while his friend Blaster tried to save him.
• The Demons, Primus' first failed creations, are all kinds of unsettling.
• What happens to Megatron and Ratchet after they get caught in a transporter explosion◊.
  • And they're on the front cover of Transformers US #70◊ which is drawn in such loving detail. The cover proudly declares, "The Ultimate Autobot/Decepticon Team Up!"
  • An alternative version is used on the front cover of Transformers UK # 309◊, which printed the first half of "The Price of Life!", and was later used as the inside cover of Volume 18 of the UK "Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection" bookazine series.
  • The issue in question reveals that they're aware of what happened to them, in agony but are unable to communicate beyond short, slurred cries, as the Megatron half causes them to rampage through the Autobot base, while the Ratchet half cries out in despair, to the point where it puts Optimus Prime's rifle to the Ratchet half of their conjoined head, after he hesitates to do it himself. They get better.
• At the end of issue #4, Shockwave shows up unexpectedly and takes out all the Autobots in one shot. In issue #5, we see what's become of them—their corpses have been hung from the ceiling of the Ark◊, with many showing damage like cracked armor and missing limbs and Ironhide reduced to his upper torso. Worse, Shockwave blows Sunstreaker's corpse apart◊ with a single blast from his arm cannon as a casual display of power and a threat to Megatron of the same treatment should he disobey Shockwave.
  Spike: [seeing the fallen Autobots] The Autobots...they're just hanging there like slabs of beef! They all look...dead!
• The corrupted Matrix. Especially once it starts taking over Thunderwing, growing into a large demonic shade...
  • Its reappearance in The Transformers: Regeneration One is so much worse, though.
• "Rhythms of Darkness". All of it. Unicron has won. Cybertron is gone. The Matrix is gone. The war is long over, and the Decepticons have won, and taken over America. The rest of the world is planning to nuke the Decepticons, unaware it'll just make them stronger... Thank goodness for Spike getting the American Flag up and Hook, Line and Sinker showing up to grab Galvatron II for Unicron. Ask Vector Prime would later reveal that this reality had a serious case of Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • The Bad Future shown in Rhythms of Darkness begins with an impressive shot of an utterly levelled New York City.
• Buzzsaw. True, he's a walking version of The Worf Effect, but his method of fighting is disturbing; slicing his enemies to pieces with his beak. And it takes fifty issues for him to go down for good.
• What's done to poor Spanner. He's not just part of the Space Bridge, he is the Space Bridge. Bob Budiansky later suggested that what was done to him was so painful it destroyed his mind.
• The battle with Unicron in issue 75, especially the part where he impales Brainstorm on his finger and eats him alive, on-panel.
• The ending of UK issue 272. Needlenose trudges back to his room lamenting that the other Decepticons just don't understand that Carnivac (who's out for revenge after the Mayhem Attack Squad killed Catilla) will find his way through their fancy defenses. When he returns, he finds the light doesn't work...as Carnivac is inside saying "The dark is better...for what I'm here to do!" and then "thanks" Needlenose for getting everyone out as that made it easier for him to get in. Needlenose calls for help but the other Decepticons just think he's trying to time them again and walk off and Carnivac kills Needlenose reminding him to "Never cry wolf!"

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