The Transformers #78
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Transformers #78, titled 'A Savage Circle,' is the antepenultimate chapter of Marvel's landmark 80-issue run — the longest-running and first original Transformers fiction ever published — and it delivers one of the series' most dramatically charged confrontations: Megatron coming face-to-face with his future self, Galvatron, in a psychologically fractured battle aboard the Ark. The issue is also the first present-day appearance of Autobot Inferno in the Marvel US title, filling in a character gap that had existed for years. Most critically, it is the issue during which writer Simon Furman learned the series had been cancelled, making the story's climax — Ratchet's self-sacrificial crash of the Ark back to Earth — an emotionally resonant pivot point that would haunt the Marvel continuity and directly shape IDW's Regeneration One continuation two decades later.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 17 grades ▾
This exact issue on ebay
CGC 9.6 ▾ $130–$180 3 listings
CGC 8 ▾ $75–$100 2 listings
Raw / ungraded ▾ $35–$70 2 listings
More listings for this title
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The creative team of writer Simon Furman, penciler Andrew Wildman, inker Stephen Baskerville, colorist Nelson Yomtov, and letterer Rick Parker — the same crew who would later be reassembled by IDW for Regeneration One — produced the issue under editor Rob Tokar and editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco. In a detail that became something of fan lore, the credits page wryly lists Tokar and DeFalco jointly as 'Drifting Aimlessly,' a dry editorial aside that, in hindsight, reflects the uncertain final months of a series already in commercial decline. Furman has confirmed that it was during the scripting of this very issue that he received word of the cancellation, which lent the Ratchet sacrifice sequence an unplanned gravity — the writer was, in effect, beginning to close a universe he hadn't originally expected to close.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: 'A Savage Circle.' Released March 26, 1991; cover-dated May 1991. Written by Simon Furman; pencils by Andrew Wildman; inks by Stephen Baskerville; colors by Nelson Yomtov; letters by Rick Parker; edited by Rob Tokar under EIC Tom DeFalco.
- The issue marks Autobot Inferno's first present-day appearance in the Marvel US comic series, as one of the Autobots evacuating Cybertron in the story's aftermath.
- The central dramatic engine is the psychic aftermath of Megatron's Nucleon-induced revival: still mentally entangled with Ratchet, Megatron perceives Galvatron as Ratchet, while Galvatron — tormented by millennia of suppressed madness — attacks his own past self in a bid to purge that madness. The two ultimately form a brief, uneasy truce against Shockwave.
- Ratchet's climactic sacrifice: realizing that a Megatron–Galvatron alliance is too dangerous to allow, Ratchet triggers an explosion in the Ark's Nucleon storage reactor — with Starscream's coerced assistance — sending the ship spiraling back into Earth just as it had crashed four million years prior, nominally removing four Decepticon leaders (Galvatron, Megatron, Shockwave, and Starscream) from the board in one stroke.
- Simon Furman has stated he learned of the series' cancellation while scripting this issue, making it the first chapter written with a definitive end in mind.
- The back-matter section features Transformers Universe character profiles for Pounce and Repugnus, a regular feature of the final run.
- The issue was reprinted in: Transformers: End of the Road TPB and HC (Titan Books, 2002–2003); Classic Transformers Volume 6 (IDW Publishing, 2010); and the Regeneration One 100-Page Spectacular (IDW, 2012), which collected issues #76–80 as a lead-in to the continuation series.
- The Marvel US #78 cover — a close-up of Galvatron by Andrew Wildman — was recolored and repurposed for Marvel UK issue #327, while a new Wildman cover featuring Galvatron and Megatron versus Shockwave was produced for Marvel UK issue #328.
Cast · 29 characters
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Transformers #6/1991 (1991), Transformers #[14] (2001), Transformers: Regeneration One 100-Page Spectacular #[nn] (2012), The Transformers Classics #7 (2014), Transformers Compendium #2 (2025)
Key issues in The Transformers
Variants (2)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.