Scavengers (Part 2): Who's Afraid of the DJD?
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 Grimlock is the king of hide and seek! | |||||||||||||
| "Scavengers (Part 2): Who's Afraid of the DJD?" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | August 22, 2012 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | August 2012 | ||||||||||||
| Story by | James Roberts | ||||||||||||
| Art by | Alex Milne | ||||||||||||
| Colors by | Josh Burcham | ||||||||||||
| Letters by | Shawn Lee | ||||||||||||
| Editor | John Barber | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | 2005 IDW continuity | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | Current era (2012) | ||||||||||||
The Scavengers use Grimlock to fight back against the D.J.D.
Synopsis
[edit]Years ago, above the planet Clemency, a regiment of K-Class Decepticons prepare to drop into the battle raging below. The perky Torque introduces himself to a somber Fulcrum, who says nothing. And then, the order is given to disembark and enter the conflict...
On Clemency today, within the crashed D-Class Worldsweeper they found there, the rag-tag team of Decepticon "Scavengers" desperately try to figure out what to do about the approach of the Decepticon Justice Division. With none of their number willing to own up to being the unfortunate soul the D.J.D. are looking for, Krok proposes that they stand and fight, and although Fulcrum laughs in his face, the other Decepticons get behind the idea and begin a plot to use the comatose Grimlock to their advantage.
Across space, on the Lost Light, Skids—his tune changed about his amnesia following a recent conversation with Chromedome—requests that the mnemosurgeon use his mind-reading abilities to see if he can unlock his lost memories. Chromedome discovers that Skids's memories of the last year have not just been suppressed: they have been erased, replaced with an imperative to "escape". However, all the memories from before that point that Skids has lost are indeed still locked inside his head, buried away by the trauma of the erasure of the others... but upon getting a glimpse of them, Chromedome is so horrified that he pulls out, assuring Skids that he's better off not remembering them. Skids grimly accepts this, but reveals to Chromedome that he always hears a piece of music playing inside his mind. Having heard it as well, Chromedome identifies it as "The Empyrean Suite", and hopes that Skids never understands its significance...
Back on Clemency, the Scavengers lug the capsule containing Grimlock out into the open, transmitting to the D.J.D.'s ship the Peaceful Tyranny that they have killed their target and left him for them to collect, learning in the process that the Division is looking for Fulcrum. Presently, the D.J.D. arrive and approach the capsule, at which point Krok triggers the circuit speeders he laced it with, jolting Grimlock awake and into a berserker rage. The Scavengers delay leaving until they see which way the battle is going, but Grimlock quickly tires to their shock, and their subsequent attempt at escape goes nowhere as Helex appears, mocking Misfire's timing and blocking their path. The battle that follows is a gruesome one as Flywheels is killed by Tesarus's chest grinder, and Vos removes his face, laden with spikes, and jams it over Krok's own. Misfire accidentally shoots Krok when he tries to help him, and is then mauled by Kaon's pet Sparkeater. Tarn, meanwhile, turns his "weaponized conversation" on Grimlock, but before he can end his life, Crankcase comes to the rescue in the most unexpected way: he has recovered a cybernought battle-mech from the Worldsweeper, and begins raining destruction down on the D.J.D. Unfortunately, an electric shock from Kaon cripples both mech and pilot, and the giant robot is quickly taken down by Tarn. In answer to Tarn's bellowed challenge, Fulcrum then appears atop the Worldsweeper and delivers a speech decrying the D.J.D. as symbolic of everything that went wrong with the Decepticon movement. He leaps from the ship, and transforms... into a bomb! He lands with the least dramatic impact possible, barely causing a cloud of dust, at which point Kaon alerts Tarn to his detection of Overlord's energy signature. Considering Fulcrum dead, the D.J.D. pull out to pursue this new target, warning the Scavengers that they are all on the List now.
Fulcrum, however, is anything but dead, much to his own surprise: it turns out that the very first thing the Scavengers did upon finding him the previous day was remove his explosive charge—apparently Spinister was capable of the difficult surgical task despite his lack of intelligence. Fulcrum tries to explain his story to them—how he was convicted of desertion of duty and, after initially being sentenced to death by Traitor's wheel, was conscripted into a K-Squad and reconfigured to auto-transform into a bomb upon deployment, only for his systems to become paralyzed with terror—but they lose interest very quickly and check up on Grimlock instead. However, the former Dynobot leader soon reveals what's wrong with him, when he can barely struggle out a "Me Grimlock" and inspects his hands as if he doesn't know what they're for. Assuming he was left behind because "he's practically brain-dead", Misfire suggests the Scavengers take him back to Cybertron figuring they can use him as a bargaining chip regardless of whether the Autobots or Decepticons are in charge of the planet. The others agree, but before they depart, Misfire delivers a eulogy for the fallen Flywheels, mocking his search for the Necrobot,[1] and the team then descend upon his body to Fulcrum's shock, doing what they do best: scavenging.
Eighteen months later... a shadow falls over Flywheels's skeletal remains. The all-too-real Necrobot has come to mark his passing, and adds his name to a list of the recently deceased: right after Hound, Chromedome, Dipstick, Drift, and Ultra Magnus...
Featured characters
[edit](Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Others | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
[edit]"Fifteen minutes before the D.J.D. kick the door down and start killing us in a variety of bold and innovative ways!"
"Misfire—please. We can handle this."
"Oh yeah—right—I forgot about the army of Phase Sixers you keep hidden in your chest compartment!"
- —Misfire and Krok
"'Fighting the D.J.D.' is just ''certain death' with more letters! It's—it's suicide with delusions of survival!"
- —Fulcrum
"Anyway, I thought you liked having amnesia."
"Who told you that?"
"You told Swerve, right? So assume everyone on board knows. In fact, assume everyone on Cybertron knows. In fact, assume that distant alien races, otherwise untouched by civilization—"
"Okay, okay, point taken."
- —Chromedome and Skids
"I was lucky. I was forged when the Decepticon Empire was at its peak. We'd overthrown our oppressors, we'd torn down a system that served only those at the top, and we'd turned outwards—refining the galaxy by cleansing it of organic races too backward to reconfigure their inferior nature. And you know what went wrong? People like you. The thugs and the sadists and the psychos—people for whom the war was a convenient excuse to inflict pain. Yesterday, my faith in the Decepticon was restored. I met six scavengers—and they were average and normal and brilliant, and they fought on my behalf when I really, really didn't deserve it. And I know you look down on them, but each one of them is worth ten of you. So what I'm about to do, I do for them—and for everyone else the D.J.D. has murdered. This is for everyone who's ever turned and fled in protest at what the Decepticons have become!"
- —Fulcrum
Misfire: "A senseless waste. His ludicrous search for the Necrobot ends unfulfilled. A terrible, terrible tragedy. Boo hoo."
Fulcrum: "'Boo hoo'? I though Flywheels was your friend! You're just going to leave him here?"
Misfire: "You're right. What were we thinking?"
Crankcase: "I'm having his rotor system—"
Misfire: "There's probably enough for a sip of innermost energon each..."
Spinister: "Leave the knees for me."
Notes
[edit]Continuity notes
[edit]- Flywheels' psychosomatic hyperreflexia flares up again on page 3 indicating that he is lying about believing that Primus cares about them. Also, take note that he's the only member of the group who doesn't proclaim innocence during the argument at the start of the issue; it will later be revealed that he is on the List too and very much knows it, meaning he keeps quiet because his tell would give him away.
- Rewind screens a public information film named "Proteus's Promise" for his crewmates; the title character is Senator Proteus from "Chaos Theory", and the titular promise itself would be expanded upon in "Shadowplay", the next arc.
- Skids and Chromedome's conversation is footnoted to have occurred in the More than Meets the Eye 2012 annual, which was released a few weeks after publication of this issue. This tactic seems to deliberately hearken back to the Marvel UK days, when important story beats would appear in the Annual stories.
- Chromedome explains that mnemosurgery marks only show up under Ultraviolet light, which is useful to keep in mind for later issues.
- Chromedome knows Skids from a "heist" pulled back on Cybertron before the war. This heist is also dealt with in the upcoming "Shadowplay" storyline.
- Skids had been asking other people if they knew much about music in the third and fifth issues; this is now revealed to be an attempt to identity the aria in his head.
- Torque has "Ultra Magnus" written on him while in bomb mode, indicating that he was targeting this specific Autobot—this would be expanded upon later.
- This issue is the closest that Tarn's supposed "transformation addiction", mentioned in issue #5, gets to appearing on panel, and only through vague implication; basically, he transforms a few times to drive a short distance that he could easily walk.
- Why the Necrobot has several Lost Lighters on his list of deceased would be revealed in issues #32 and #33.
Transformers references
[edit]- The return of Grimlock coincides with that of the rest of his team in Robots in Disguise #8 and another appearance by Big Grim himself in The Transformers: Regeneration One #82 for a micro-event called out on the August covers as "Dinobot Month!"
- Skids is revealed to be a master of Cybertronian martial art Metallikato, and in the same breath name-drops the Povians of Pova, from Last Stand of the Wreckers.
- Kaon calls Krok a Genericon, a pejorative intended to indicate a 'Con of little importance last used in reference to Sonic and Boom in issue #4.
- Fulcrum refers to his imprisonment in Styx, the Decepticon penal colony only previously seen in Spotlight: Hot Rod.
- Flywheels's death, being ripped in half, is an Easter egg in that his original toy had to split in half to transform into two separate vehicles.
Real-world references
[edit]- The title likely refers to the children's song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?".
- We're not told what the "K" in "K-Class" stands for, but given their suicidal job description, "kamikaze" seems almost certain. Alternatively, it could be a reference to the K-Class Submarine, which was regarded as a death sentence by British sailors during World War I.
- Fulcrum's crime of cowardice was performed on B'Lahr 39. Comedian Bert Lahr's most famous role was The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939.
Other trivia
[edit]- The D.J.D.'s turbofox, glimpsed last issue and referred to in the cast list at the end of this issue as "The Pet", is also a Sparkeater (well, more of a "sparkchewer"). Here it's specifically identified as Kaon's pet, but Helex was holding its chain last issue; Kaon was in alternate mode at the time, so perhaps he was just holding it for him.
- The normal cast list at the end of the issue is replaced with a new list showcasing the D.J.D. members, The Pet, the Scavengers, and Fulcrum.
- According to Roberts, Fulcrum being sentenced to death by Traitor's wheel (and the subsequent stay of execution) were originally part of a discarded pitch for Spotlight: Octane, drafted together with Nick Roche.[2]
Errors
[edit]- Perhaps not strictly an error, but while the in-story text consistently abbreviates "Decepticon Justice Division" as "D.J.D.", the title renders it "DJD" without the periods, perhaps to avoid a period followed by a question mark.
- Reference is repeatedly made to Fulcrum's impressive, distinctive chin... but it's not any bigger or more notable than many of the other characters, and certainly not more than Misfire's and Grimlock's in their profile-angled shots on page 21, which are positively Animated in their chintasticness. The only thing notable about it is its 'chin strap' styling.
- Issue #7 saw Helex given the task of scanning for Overlord's energy signature, but in this issue, it's Kaon who reports finding it. When these issues were collected in the second More than Meets the Eye trade paperback, issue #7's dialogue was edited so Kaon was given the task.
- Fulcrum says yesterday he met "six Scavengers"... but there were only five of them. This error was also fixed for the trade.
- In his monologue, Fulcrum mentions that he was "forged" when the Decepticon empire was at its peak; later issues would reveal that the hot spots responsible for the creation of "forged" over "constructed cold" Transformers had largely vanished well before the start of the war and the rise of the Decepticon Empire.
- This issue ends with Misfire lamenting over Flywheels's "ludicrous search" for the Necrobot... except last issue, it was Misfire himself who was searching for him! Roberts admitted the mistake and said it would be fixed for the trade.[1] Despite the idea of Flywheels being played as a born-again religious type, which belief in the Necrobot would sit alongside well, and the poetry of the final scene, with the Necrobot coming to record the death of one who has searched for him for so long, the eventual fix involved simply deleting the first line of Misfire's eulogy, removing the reference to Flywheels's belief. Roberts notes that this was the intention from the outset.[3]
Crew Manifest
[edit]- Fulcrum and Grimlock join the crew of the Weak Anthropic Principle.
- Flywheels was killed by the D.J.D. on Clemency.
- 1 death, 2 new arrivals since their introduction last issue.
Soundtrack
[edit]Foreign localization
[edit]Japanese
- Title: "Scavengers (Part 2): DJD Nanka Kowakunai" (スカベンジャーズ (パート2): DJDなんか怖くない, "Scavengers (Part 2): The DJD Ain't Scary")
Swedish
- Title: "Skrotletarna, Del 2: Vem är rädd för S.R.S.?" ("The Scavengers, Part 2: Who's Afraid of the DJD?")
Covers (3)
[edit]- Cover A: Grimlock looms, art by Alex Milne and Joana Lafuente.
- Cover B: Grimlock in T-Rex mode, art by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham.
- Cover RI: Grimlock (notice a pattern?) breathing fire, art by Marcelo Matere and Priscilla Tramontano, the fourth quarter of a combined image formed with the RI cover to Robots in Disguise #7, #8, and More than Meets the Eye #7.
-
This scene does not occur in the issue... -
...and he doesn't transform to T-Rex mode... -
...and his T-Rex mode doesn't even look like this!
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[edit]- Robots in Disguise #8
- Regeneration One #82
- Autocracy
- More Than Meets the Eye Annual 2012
- Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom (back cover)
Reprints
[edit]- The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye Volume 2 (October 17, 2012) ISBN 1613774982 / ISBN 978-1613774984
- Collects More than Meets the Eye issues #4–8.
- Bonus material includes art from most covers, "Meet the Crew" and "Meet the 'Cons" pages.
- Trade paperback format.
- The Transformers: The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 2 (August 12, 2015) ISBN 1631403648 / ISBN 978-1631403644
- Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye Box Set (December 2, 2015) ISBN 1631404741 / ISBN 978-1631404740
- Collects More Than Meets the Eye volumes 1–5.
- Bonus material unknown at this time.
- Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 55: Shadowplay (January 9, 2019)
- Collects More than Meets the Eye issues #7–13 and Annual 2012.
- Bonus material includes the second of a new three-part interview with Roberts, early pages of scripts, design sketches from Alex Milne, a cover gallery and a forward by Simon Furman.
- Hardcover format.
- Transformers: Mer än ögat kan se (June 15, 2019)
- Collects More than Meets the Eye issues #1–8 & Annual 2012, Spotlight: Trailcutter & Hoist, and a special illustrated edition of "Bullets".
- Swedish reprint. Hardcover format.
-
More Than Meets the Eye Volume 2 – cover art by Alex Milne and Josh Perez -
The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 2 – cover art by Saren Stone -
More Than Meets the Eye Box Set – cover art by Marcelo Matere -
The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 55: Shadowplay – cover art by Don Figueroa (Whirl) and Alex Milne (retro) -
Mer än ögat kan se – cover art by Alex Milne and Joana Lafuente.
References
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 James Roberts: It seems that a line of dialogue on the last page of issue 8 is causing some confusion. Standing over Flywheels' remains, Misfire says, "His ludicrous search for the Necrobot remains unfulfilled." Yet in issue 7, it is clearly established that Misfire himself is the Scavenger with the Necrobot obsession. This is what is known - in comic book industry jargon - as a big, fat mistake. [...] P.S. We'll fix the dialogue for the trade - unless someone comes up with a truly amazing explanation.
- ↑ "@NickRoche Yes! With the torture wheel and the chance-to-avoid-execution."—James Roberts, Twitter, 2016/05/30
- ↑ Roberts on the correction at the IDW forums: With regards to the Necrobot error, how it reads now is how it was originally intended to read. It was always going to be Misfire who was looking for the Necrobot, and it was always going to be Flywheels who died. Yes, it would have been more poetic to have Flywheels as the believer, but bigger plot cogs, and the need to keep them turning, took precedence.
