Movie Prequel issue 2

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Publisher	IDW Publishing}}
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First published	March 21, 2007}}
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Cover date	March 2007}}
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Written by	Simon Furman and Chris Ryall}}
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Art by	Don Figueroa}}
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Colors by	Josh Burcham}}
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Edits by	Dan Taylor}}
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{{#switch:{{#sub:xx|2|14}}|dark cybertron=}}

Our world.

Synopsis

Streaking through space, Megatron reflects on his relentless pursuit of the AllSpark cube. Time and again, the efforts of Optimus Prime and his Autobots saw the artifact kept forever out of reach, until, in a final, desperate act, they ejected it from Cybertron entirely, leaving it lost to the stars. Megatron cares not that this has doomed his homeworld to a slow death—all that matters is locating the AllSpark, and now, after countless years of searching, it is almost within his grasp. He has tracked the object of his desires to an unassuming rocky planet, but as he barrels through its upper atmosphere, he hits a radiation blind spot. The Decepticon's sensors go offline, breaking his connection to the AllSpark's signal, and the emergency shielding needed to survive the fiery atmospheric entry leaves his energon reserves perilously low. With the cube so near, Megatron pushes aside these concerns, and touches down on a frozen landscape.

But his single-minded recklessness now proves to be his undoing: the Decepticon's heavy, superheated body immediately fragments the ice beneath his feet, sending him plunging into dark ocean below. With his energon drained and his body going into shock from the sudden temperature shift, Megatron is left helpless, and soon enters shutdown, sealed beneath the ice. His frozen tomb lies undisturbed for millennia, until in 1897, the National Arctic Circle Expedition finds their ship stuck in the icy waters nearby. A crewman spots the large mass stuck below and, despite the expedition's recent bad luck, Captain Archibald Witwicky cannot be dissuaded from digging down into the ice...

One year later, Witwicky is a resident of Boston Secure Hospital, restrained for his own safety as he raves about an encounter with the devil. Two smartly-dressed visitors quiz the former ship's captain about his experience in the Arctic, seeking to discover the meaning of the strange patterns and symbols which he compulsively drew for three months after the incident. Witwicky, who has subsequently turned blind, is of little help, insisting only that his body and mind were possessed by the entity he discovered.

Back at their base of operations, the two suited men discuss their next steps. Witwicky and any crewmates corroborating his claims will be discredited by false cover stories, while the blind captain's personal effects, seemingly inconsequential, will be returned to his family. Now their mission can begin in earnest: the United States government has approved limitless funds for a new Arctic expedition, in order to find and recover Witwicky's "devil".

Another year passes, and a makeshift facility has been constructed around the dormant body of Megatron, now partially excavated from the ice. To the concern of his teammates, one of the original investigators has grown ever more obsessed with their discovery, which he has dubbed the "Mega-Man". By 1902, the frozen machine has been brought to the surface, held in a refrigerated environment dome at what has now become a permanent research base. Via radio, the facility receives surprising news: colleagues at home have discovered a huge, cube-shaped artifact buried at the bottom of the Colorado River, generating vast quantities of power, and inscribed with the same patterns drawn by Archibald Witwicky!

Over a century later, in 2003, the organization's modern-day incarnation remotely downloads imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been aimed at Mars. High-ranking personnel convene to discuss the now-classified images, which unmistakably depict a being of the same species as "Mega-Man" crashing down on the red planet and converting into a bipedal form. The agents make immediate plans to secure the extraterrestrial who, unbeknown to them, is Bumblebee!

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.
{{#if: ||(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)}}

{{#if:* Bumblebee (2)

Optimus Prime (5)|

{{#if:* Bumblebee (2)

Optimus Prime (5)|| style="background:#ffdddd;" valign="top" |
Bumblebee (2)
Optimus Prime (5) }}{{#if:* Megatron (1)
Class Alpha drone units (3)
"Longarm-type" drone units (4)|

Autobots }}{{#if:* Megatron (1) Class Alpha drone units (3) "Longarm-type" drone units (4)\|	Decepticons }}{{#if:* Reginald Danco (6) Archibald Witwicky (7) Wiencke (8) Theodore Joseph Wells (9) Walter Simmons (10) Assorted Sector Seven personnel (11)\|	Humans }}{{#if:\|	Others }}{{#if:\|	Misc }}{{#if:\|	Misc }}
Megatron (1) Class Alpha drone units (3) "Longarm-type" drone units (4) }}{{#if:* Reginald Danco (6) Archibald Witwicky (7) Wiencke (8) Theodore Joseph Wells (9) Walter Simmons (10) Assorted Sector Seven personnel (11)\|	Reginald Danco (6) Archibald Witwicky (7) Wiencke (8) Theodore Joseph Wells (9) Walter Simmons (10) Assorted Sector Seven personnel (11) }}{{#if:\|	}}{{#if:\|	}}{{#if:\|	}}

Notes

Continuity notes

Megatron's flashback to the war features a Decepticon force made up of Dreadwing drones and Longarm drones. While the former go on to become a common sight, this is the only occasion in which Longarm drones appear in IDW movie continuity—subsequent fiction will portray Longarm as a singular, Earth-born Autobot.
The two investigators who visit Witwicky go unnamed in this issue, but years later, issue #1 of the Sector 7 mini-series would dub the bespectacled one Theodore Wells and the mustachioed one Walter Simmons (a character who made his named debut in the Ghosts of Yesterday prequel novel, released a week after this issue). Notably, however, Sector 7 would swap the pair's "character models", making moustachioed Simmons the one with a family and the growing obsession with "Mega-Man". This choice is perhaps related to next issue's depiction of "the obsessive" with spectacles and a moustache in 1935.
At the time of release, this issue appeared to portray Sector Seven—or some version of it—as active in 1898, in contrast to the film's claim that the organisation was convened some time between 1929 and 1933, during Herbert Hoover's time as President. The film's alternate reality game tie-in similarly described the group as having been formed over a century before 2007, perhaps suggesting an earlier script gave a different date. Sector 7 #1 would later smooth things over by gently retconning Simmons and Wells into independent "gentleman adventurers", drafted by the government to investigate Witwicky's claims, with the "headquarters" seen in this issue instead becoming just their personal trophy collection.
Similarly, this issue's 1902 discovery date for the AllSpark is at odds with the 1913 date given on-screen. Once again, Sector 7 would rectify the contradiction, by stating in issue #2 that 1913 was the date the cube was excavated, once the river was eventually diverted around it.

Transformers references

The Longarm drones are based on the character's toy, which has a noticeably different robot mode to their video game appearances.
Simmons and Wells' collection includes a diagram of an [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}George Adamski#Ufology|{{#if:Adamski-style|Adamski-style|George Adamski#Ufology}}]] flying saucer, like that which Cosmos traditionally transforms into.
Also on display is a fragment of a golden disk, based on the segment of the Voyager disk possessed by Megatron in the Beast Wars episode "The Agenda (Part 2)".

Real-life references

Simmons and Wells' collection also includes a map based on Skull Island as depicted in 2005's King Kong film.
The "reclamation act" used to covertly locate the underwater AllSpark is the real-life [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Newlands Reclamation Act|{{#if:||Newlands Reclamation Act}}]], which saw rivers dammed to aid in the irrigation of arid land.

Errors

Megatron's opening narration features some questionable astronomy, seemingly treating "solar spans" and "systems" as different things.
The discovery of Megatron seems to play out differently to what is seen on-screen in the film: here, Witwicky chooses to actively dig down towards the mystery object, rather than simply having the ice give way beneath him. Witwicky also lacks the full beard he sports in live-action.
Witwicky is presumably supposed to look emaciated during the scenes at the hospital, but ends up looking pretty shredded instead.

Covers (3)

Cover A: Megatron in ice, by Don Figueroa
Cover B: Decepticon symbol
Cover RI: Uncolored inks for cover A

Cover A
Decepticons rule!
Cover RI

Reprints

2007 — The Transformers: The Best of Don Figueroa
2010 — Transformers Movie Collection Volume 1

Movie Prequel issue 2

Contents

Synopsis

Featured characters

Notes

Continuity notes

Transformers references

Real-life references

Errors

Covers (3)

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Movie Prequel issue 2

Synopsis

Featured characters

Notes

Continuity notes

Transformers references

Real-life references

Errors

Covers (3)

Advertisements

Reprints

Navigation menu

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