War and Peace

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"War and Peace" is a six-partTransformers story arc published byDreamwave Productions in 2003, released as their secondTransformers: Generation 1 miniseries and set in the mainDreamwave Generation One continuity. Notionally following up on the success ofthe earlierGeneration 1 miniseries, the plot follows the Earth-bound Transformers as they return toCybertron, whereShockwave has united the Transformers.

«	"War and Peace" issues:	»
Preview #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6

Overview

An Autobot-Decepticon battle onEarth ends when Shockwave arrives and announces that the war is over. Most of the Earthly Transformers are eventually captured and returned to Cybertron, where both factions are united under Shockwave's ostensibly peaceful banner, but the Decepticon leader's machinations run deep, and soon open war emerges again.

The series seems to repudiate some of the perceived mistakes made by its economically successful but oft-criticized predecessor. An early sub-plot withOptimus Prime having some kind of visions appeared in previews, but was dropped.Wheeljack's somewhat perfunctory "death" is retconned as a near-miss, and the overall story veers in a completely different direction.

While not as economically successful as the first series, sales were still high enough to lead to anongoing series.

Items of note

The series was originally to be penned byChris Sarracini, who wrote theprevious volume. According to a Wizard's Edge article, Sarracini's plot would have featuredOmega Supreme andUnicron.^[1] When~~James McDonough~~ Brad Mick replaced Sarracini as the writer, he took the story in a different direction.
Apreview story (written by Sarracini) that was published in the trade paperback collection of thefirst volume, featuring a spaceship with a largeAutobot insignia crashed in the Arctic Ocean andOptimus Prime suffering some kind of seizure, was mostly ignored by the actual "War and Peace" story.Issue 1 only briefly references the events of the preview story in the prologue printed on the inside cover, noting that Prime's vision (the fit he had suffered in the preview story) has brought the Autobots to the Arctic, but the ship is never mentioned, essentially "replaced" with a stasis capsule containingScourge. The mystery of the ship would not be resolved until over a year later, inissue #5 of Dreamwave'songoingGeneration 1 series, wherein it was revealed to be the ship that had broughtJetfire and Omega Supreme to Earth, and the origin point for Scourge's capsule.
"War and Peace" contains many references to 1986'sThe Transformers: The Movie—Starscream throws an injuredMegatron out into space;Scourge,Ultra Magnus,Hot Rod,Springer,Kup,Blurr,Arcee,Wheelie and theSharkticons are featured; theMatrix andUnicron are seen; evenWreck-Gar makes an appearance in the epilogue.
The series also makes reference to the cartoon with Shockwave's capture ofAlpha Trion andVector Sigma.
The cast is pretty limited, being restricted entirely to characters released between 1984 and 1986, with absolutely no-one from after that involved, without even a vague word as to where they're meant to be. This does make proceedings such as the entire population of Cybertron being brainwashed save but a small few snicker-worthy, when the resistance is nine people, and the planet's population seems to consist of only twenty odd disaffected Autobots.