Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog in three parts here, here, and here.

...Perchance to Dream
The last (by titling convention, anyway) multi-part story of the UK comic strip begins the transition into what would be known as Earthforce. Many pixels have been spilled on this topic, but basically Simon Furman decided to stop having the UK strip tie into the US one at all, not even the sense of the UK one having small side stories to the bigger US stories like he'd been doing since issue #240 or so. Instead, he would split the characters up: since the US strip was focused on Optimus Prime and company in space, the UK strip would follow a set of different characters back on Earth.

This story sets that up by reviving five classic off-line characters so that they can star in the new strip. Galvatron is infesting their dreams, so we get five parts of flashback adventures, and then in part six they all wake up and defeat him. It's a fine enough set of vignettes, but Galvatron is defeated absurdly easily for someone who had once been a powerhouse of the strip.

The Big Shutdown! / A Small War!
These two stories are united in being about Thunderwing, who is rising to power as Decepticon leader on Cybertron. (I think there is a power vacuum because of the events of Two Megatrons!, which was actually published later!) The Big Shutdown! is a delightful hardboiled pastiche, as the Autobot detective Nightbeat must stop Thunderwing from committing a series of murders on Earth as part of a test being administered by the Decepticon leadership back on Cybertron. The end confused me, but I greatly enjoyed the rest of it, and I hope we get more Nightbeat in this series.

A Small War! jumps ahead to when Thunderwing does lead the Cybertronian Decepticon forces, and it introduces the Micromasters, a group of Autobots who are tiny (i.e., human-sized). The Micromasters get captured, but escape anyhow—only the Decepticons, led by Thunderwing, now also have the secret of their construction. This is fine; it mostly seems to exist to set up the Micromasters' first US appearance in a story I haven't read yet. (It appears in Classics, Vol. 5, but I've only read up through vol. 4.)

"Rage! / "Assault on the Ark!"
These two tales jump back a bit to explain more of how Thunderwing ascended to power, following up on The Big Shutdown! They're fine but I kind of didn't really care.

"Inside Story!" / "Front Line!" / "End of the Road!"
And here it all comes to an end, with honestly a pretty mediocre set of stories about a journalist trying to write a story about the Transformers. You'd think the giant robots tearing up the Earth would be bigger news than this story implies.

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