Transformers Comic issue 2.18
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 FREE!! Decapitation! | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Titan Comics | ||||||||||||
| First published | 7 October 2010 | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Steve White | ||||||||||||
| Deputy editor | Den Patrick | ||||||||||||
| Publishing manager | Darryl Curtis | ||||||||||||
| Price | £2.50 | ||||||||||||
Hunt for the Decepticons!
Shadow War
[edit]- Script: Simon Furman
- Art: Jon Davis-Hunt
- Colours: Hi-Fi Design
- Lettering: Den Patrick
- Continuity: Revenge of the Fallen (sequel)
Salt Lake City, Utah: new Decepticon arrivals Crankstart, Brimstone, and Trenchmouth are having a whale of a time destroying the city for no reason! With the Autobots now hated, now's the time for them to parrrr-TAY! Meanwhile, Bumblebee and his men Hubcap and Slap Dash are watching the carnage; the others want to take action now, with Slap Dash feeling like they're running scared otherwise, but Bumblebee (much to his irritation) continues to hang back...
Sixteen hours earlier, in Autobase, Optimus Prime had gathered them to form a new stealth unit... one operating below NEST's radar. Public fights with the Decepticons were running the risk of alienating humans further, so Prime wanted them to simply monitor the Decepticons and only engage them when they were away from the public and could be contained safely. Bumblebee agrees that he can handle this unit...
The Decepticons tear through the roads, though Brimstone is grousing that he'd like a punch-up too. That's when the human police turn up... and Crankstart blasts them off the road, to the delight of his comrades! Slap Dash and Hubcap are horrified and believe this is getting out of control: how long before someone's killed?! Bumblebee continues to keep them quiet though, simply following the Decepticons. Luckily, Crankstart decides to lead his acolytes across the state border to Nevada. Now, the stealth unit can engage!
The unit gets in front of the enemy, and Bumblebee uses his headlights to blind them; the others follow this up with a barrage of fire that takes out Brimstone. Crankstart takes robot form and has time to taunt the Autobots for holding back before Bumblebee drives through him. Hubcap follows this up by blasting Trenchmouth off the road, and calls in a request to Springer for extraction.
Back at Autobase, Ironhide views this as a success. But Prime is left morose that they're using tactics of deceit, just like the Decepticons: they're walking a fine line. And elsewhere, Bludgeon decides it's time to go to war...
Featured characters
[edit](Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
Quotes
[edit]"What? Those 'Cons are running riot! We can't just sit back and..."
"<As hard as it may seem... our time will come!>
"I hope you're right, Bumblebee..."
"Yeah. Because right now, it feels like we're running scared!"
- —Hubcap, Bumblebee, and Slap Dash
"Big casino over the border in Nevada. I'm feelin lucky!"
"Show me the money!"
"HAHAHAHA!"
- —Crankstart and Brimstone are a fun bunch!
"That's it? Pathetic! Trouble with you Autobots... you always hold back!"
"<And I say give it all you got... no holding back!>"
KACHAM
- —Crankstart shouldn't have taunted Bumblebee...
"The downside is that we are forced to employ ambush and deceit in battle. Tactics that make us no better than the Decepticons themselves."
- —Optimus Prime
Errors
[edit]- Slap Dash's name is spelled as "Slapdash".
- The police cars are generic black-and-white cars with "Police" on the door; the real life Salt Lake City PD cars don't look like that.
Notes
[edit]- Autobase seems to be either underground or in a cave. The fact there is an Autobase, when the Autobots have always worked out of NEST bases, shows how far Optimus is going to keep NEST in the dark about the whole thing.
- Nobody dies at all in Salt Lake City?! That's bloody lucky, Crankstart shot those two cars at pointblank range!
- Concerns about Autobot/Decepticon battles turning humans against the Autobots last came up in #16, when Blazemaster trashed Cairo.
- Springer goes unnamed, but his alt mode is shown and how many green Ospreys do you know of? Context supports it's meant to be him too, as Ironhide remarks "no one" knows what they've done (ruling out NEST).
- The new Autobots and the Decepticons Trenchmouth and Brimstone were not chosen at random: their toys' bios specifically list them as being rivals, and Trenchmouth and Slap Dash even came packaged together.
Contents
[edit]Articles and Features
[edit]- The Secret World of NEST: Wordsearch
- Megatron's Mind Maulers: and you can also help Megatron find five Wheelie's so he can "have a word" with the turncoat!
- Megatron Talks: An interview with Megatron! (All his answers are ALL CAPS rants about victory and killing Autobots and end with MWAHAHAHAHAA!)
- Megatron - Tank Mode: A profile on Meg's tank form.
- Prime-ary Colours!!!: Colouring page version of the cover.
- Bumblebee's Guide: The Solar System. Various facts about Saturn by Bumblebee, and a wordsearch.
- Race For Cybertron!: A DIY board game, to reach the planet first.
- Competitions.
- Poster of the cover.
Free gifts
[edit]- "FREE Disk Shooter & Stickers!"
Law and Disorder
[edit]"Aw, poor human children having to go back to school. How terribly boring, bwahahahaha!"
- —Barricade
"Barricade's body isn't dropped in the sea at the end of TRANSFORMERS - he just kinda disappears from the final fight. Clearly, he wanted to do this letters column so much, he deserted his fellow Decepticons!"
- —Ironhide
"Hmmm, let me think why I 'let' Jazz die. Could it have been that Brawl and Bonecrusher were rampaging through Mission City, endangering the lives of hundreds of humans?"
- —Ironhide
"I've no idea [why I wasn't in the second film]. Last time I spoke to Mr. Michael Bay he told me the contract was in the post, and not to worry about learning my lines, 'the dialogue isn't that important'. That's the last I heard. Meh."
- —Barricade
Notes
[edit]- Ironhide explains the All Spark fragments weren't used to bring Jazz back as madness would have been a likely side effect, and the Autobots didn't want him to be brought back like that. (They made the right choice...)
- The NEST wordsearch contains characters (including ones only shown in Titan), weaponry, and places to do with NEST. Two of those places are Rome and Zambia, from The Veiled Threat prequel novel.
DOOM!
[edit]The Next Issue page says the next issue is out in December, making the comic bimonthly... and that's not a very good sign for a comic's future!
