Hail and Farewell
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{{#ifeq: | Image | }} "Hail and Farewell" is a Transformers: Mosaic strip written by Simon Furman (with art by Steve Buccellato and Don Hudson, and letters by Richard Starkings) published on Furman's blog.<ref>"Hail and Farewell" at Furman's blog</ref> It is set some two years after the general time of Infiltration and Escalation in the 2005 IDW continuity, foreshadowing a number of events to come. Unfortunately, not all of Furman's plans ended up coming to fruition, so as time has gone on, more and more of this story has been contradicted.
It is unclear just how canonical this story ever was. Furman declared it "emphatically" canon in his blog post, but IDW editor-in-chief Chris Ryall later claimed that it was never approved by Hasbro and thus was never in continuity.<ref>Ryall comments on "Hail and Farewell" canonicity (and Mosaic canonicity in general) on the IDW forums (defunct)</ref> So take this with as many grains of salt as you deem appropriate...
Synopsis
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Hunter O'Nion touches some family photographs on a dresser, musing to himself about how he's saying goodbye to what little of a life he'd had. He stands in a bedroom, dressed in a trenchcoat and trucker cap, and thinks about his lost family: His father died when he was eight, and his mother descended into alcoholism. He and his sister had put on a good face, but she split as soon as she could. Hunter, on the other hand, had stayed right to the end, his only source of sanity being his dream of finding something bigger. Then, two years ago, he did.
As Hunter heads to the front door, he loosens his trenchcoat to reveal his metallic chest. He ponders how everything had changed back then—how he had changed. Stepping outside, he drops his jacket and hat and leaps into the air, transforming into Sunstreaker's head. As the Autobot catches and attaches him, he thinks about how "Hunter" had ceased to be, as an individual, his memories overlapping with Sunstreaker's. Since the fusion, the merged Autobot/human had traveled to other worlds (even another dimension), battled Scorponok, allied with the Dinobots, and faced a Decepticon invasion. This house had become so very small, and truly he couldn't go home again.
Featured characters
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Notes
[edit]- The foreshadowing that did come true was the Scorponok-facing and the Dinobot-allying, both in the Maximum Dinobots miniseries.
- As nothing has yet contradicted Hunter's childhood history, TFWiki.net is counting at least THAT bit as applicable to the 2005 IDW continuity. The rest, if we consider it canon at all, is relegated to a splinter timeline (an idea suggested by Ryall's comments<ref>Followup comment from Ryall (defunct)</ref> and confirmed by Ask Vector Prime.) Or perhaps the line about Hunter preserving his sanity via mental escape is a hint that this is actually his dream world while Bombshell experiments on him during All Hail Megatron. The whole thing is very much open to reader interpretation, and all bets are off.
- All we know is, considering how horrible Hunter's mainstream fate turned out to be in the hands of Furman's successor, this story has only grown more painfully bittersweet over time.
Contradictions with subsequently established canon
[edit]- Several events referenced in this story have been made impossible (or at least severely unlikely) in the time since this was published:
- Hunter and Sunstreaker are shown still being partnered two years after Hunter met the Autobots and became a Headmaster. Yet All Hail Megatron, set only one year after that general timeframe, begins with their bond having already been fully severed and ends with Hunter dead and Sunstreaker scrapped but functional on Cybertron, thought dead by the Autobots.
- The "other dimension" that Hunter said they'd gone to was probably going to be the Dead Universe. However, that storyline was heavily truncated in the rushed Revelation miniseries, and neither Hunter nor Sunstreaker ended up going there.
- The only "full scale Decepticon invasion" to happen yet is the one in All Hail, which, as previously stated, is the series that makes this Mosaic strip so impossible.
- Hunter hasn't even been seen on another planet at this point, though he has been on a spaceship, so there's still a chance for some as-yet-untold tale of interplanetary travel to surface.
- Hunter turns into the same type of head as the Machination's Headmasters, but in Devastation he turns into a replica of Sunstreaker's original head. This mistake occurred because "Hail and Farewell" was drawn before the relevant issue depicting Sunstreaker's Headmaster head had been released.