Transformers '84 issue 0

Transformers '84 #0 »
The closest thing we'll ever get to Legacy of Rust
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	August 21, 2019
Cover date	June 2019
Written by	Simon Furman
Art by	Guido Guidi
Colors by	John-Paul Bove
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Mariotte and Tom Waltz
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

Privy to the terrible secret behind the doomed voyage of the Ark, an Autobot spy learns that war can tarnish even the most heroic figure....

Synopsis

This story is told in nonlinear form. This synopsis presents it in chronological order for ease of reading.

Punch remembers...

Millions of years ago, war rages on Cybertron between the Autobots and Decepticons: torn loose from its orbit, the planet hurtles through interstellar space, on a course that will take it directly towards the dangerous region of the galaxy known as the Stellae Cimeterium. Regardless of the danger, Optimus Prime and his Autobots continue their work on the Ark. The Autobot leader maintains that the real threat to their war-torn world is Megatron, whose Decepticon armies continue to gain ground—but Councillor Traachon disagrees, arguing that their planet must be saved. Optimus points out that a sufficiently powerful detonation on Cybertron's surface will nudge the planet towards Ursa Major as it passes that star, but his words fail to have the desired effect—Traachon demands to know why Optimus's forces are still pouring their resources into the construction of the Ark instead of saving their planet, but Prime says nothing...

As launch day draws near, Prime's handpicked crew of Autobots—his most elite and trusted warriors—prepare for departure on the Ark's first flight, to shoot down the oncoming field of meteors that threatens their world. Bumblebee is awestruck by the size of the ship, Sunstreaker and Jazz are excited at the prospect of a journey into the unknown, the impulsive Windcharger signed up at the first opportunity, Bluestreak wants a chance to get away from his homeworld, and Prowl is motivated by his sense of duty. Ultra Magnus will be staying behind, however, and Optimus informs the stalwart Autobot that, if something happens to him or his shipmates, then he trusts Magnus to assume control of the Autobots. Taken aback by Prime's apparent fatalism, Magnus wonders if the Autobot leader even intends to return... and, once again, Prime falls silent.

The Autobots are unaware that their plans have been intercepted by the Decepticon spy Ravage, who immediately reports his findings to the Decepticon headquarters. A jubilant Megatron congratulates his deep cover agent Counterpunch, whose report has just been corroborated by Ravage's spying. Megatron lays out his plan: once the Autobots have exhausted themselves clearing a safe path through the asteroid field, the Decepticons will strike!

His deception complete, Punch retreats to the wartorn Badlands, where he's met by Optimus Prime, and reports that Megatron has taken the bait. As the other Autobots board the Ark for its inaugural flight, and wonder what's taking their leader so long, Prime tells his double-agent that he's done well... but he has one last deep-cover job for his faithful spy. Prime lays out the full, terrible scope of his plan for the confused Punch: the Ark is a distraction: a juicy target of opportunity designed to lure Megatron and his most powerful underlings offworld. When they're inevitably boarded, Prime will deliberately crash the ship on a distant world, stranding them all—but leaving their homeworld free from Megatron's evil. But this plan hinges on no-one finding them, wherever they are in the universe; Punch's job is to make sure that no-one ever does.

When the Ark launches not long afterwards, Megatron and his Decepticon cadre attack, just as predicted. Optimus Prime pulls off his master plan without a hitch... and Punch's long game begins.

From whom we get the term "canoodle"

In the year 1017, a smaller but no less ferocious war plays out on Earth: The Viking Canute, king of England, is under siege in Stansham Castle by Godwin and his Vikings from northern France, who are intent on seizing the throne. Early one morning, their attention is drawn to a mysterious shooting star... a shooting star that's really the Autobot scout ship Mantlo, which makes an undignified crash-landing in the woods beyond. Occupants Cloudraker and Fastlane are unhurt, and, more importantly, undeterred from their mission: to find the Ark. The pair transform and race off... unaware that they're being watched by Punch; in his Decepticon persona, he's worked his way into a Decepticon cell that's been covertly following the two Autobots on their mission.

As the sun rises, Canute's men, led by Hakon, ride out to investigate the mysterious celestial omen. They're not the only ones interested, however: the two Autobots have been trailed by a Decepticon unit led by Wingspan, just as intent on locating the lost starship. While the lunkheaded Duocons race off to scout out the terrain around their reconnaissance post, Counterpunch takes the opportunity to fade into the background. As he does so, Wingspan crunches data and discovers the truth: the Ark exists here, buried on another continent... but before he can share the truth with his teammates, he finds Counterpunch pointing his rifle against the back of his head, and the Clone is swiftly executed.

Scared straight, the warriors turned their lives to designing inexpensive furniture and awarding prizes for achievements in science and diplomacy.

Cloudraker and Fastlane watch as the two human armies clash outside of their ship, and despite their initial decision not to interfere, the sight of Hakon's grievously outnumbered forces up against the savage Vikings compels the two Autobots into action, and their intervention quickly turns the tide of the fight.

Back at their makeshift base, the Decepticons gather around Wingspan's dead body, and the two Duocons immediately suspect the two Autobots. The Autobot Clones are, of course, completely unaware of all this... which is why they're shocked when, after helping to trounce the primitive Vikings, they're taken by complete surprise by the Decepticon attack! Though Cloudraker is able to crush Battletrap with his gravity-rod rifle, he's badly wounded by a fusillade from Flywheels' jet half. Fastlane's sonic boom rifle temporarily takes out both Flywheels and Counterpunch, and he carries the unconscious Cloudraker back to their vessel for CR treatment.

Always a good idea to use a flight as an opportunity to get some rest

The ship takes to the air again, but below it Counterpunch rises from the ground, gun in hand. With a muttered request for forgiveness, he fires a crippling blast at the ship. Aboardship, Cloudraker is still out cold on a medical table while Fastlane urgently radios for help. They plummet directly into Stansham Castle, demolishing a portion of it.

From Cybertron to Earth, Punch remembers it all: his own betrayals and Prime's own guilt at having abused the trust of his men in the service of the greater good. The business of war is a dirty one, he admits... a business that ensures that even the most heroic 'bots of all have dark secrets to hide.

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Punch/Counterpunch (1) Windcharger (2) Ironhide (3) Jazz (7) Prowl (8) Quickmix (9) Wheeljack (10) Erector (11) Perceptor (12) Crumble (13) Optimus Prime (14) Traachon (15) Fastlane (20) Cloudraker (21) Sunstreaker (22) Bumblebee (23) Mirage (24) Bluestreak (25) Ultra Magnus (26) Gears (33) Hound (34) Brawn (35) Huffer (39) Ratchet (40)	Reflector (4) Acid Storm (5) Astrotrain (6) Megatron (16) Soundwave (17) Starscream (18) Ravage (27) Shockwave (28) Battletrap (30) Wingspan (31) Flywheels (32) Buzzsaw (36) Laserbeak (37) Rumble (38)	Canute (19) Hakon (29)

Quotes

"Wow! It's really something. There's never been a ship this big since... well, the era of the Titans!"
"Everything's big to you, Bumblebee."

—Bumblebee and Prowl

"Counterpunch, Flywheels... let's get medieval on their afts!"

—Battletrap goes Pulp Fiction

"Abominations?"
"Ehh, been called far worse."

—Cloudraker and Fastlane

Notes

Production notes

• This issue was released to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the franchise, and in particular the original Transformers comic that started it all. Editor David Mariotte said IDW felt Furman, who wrote the vast majority of the old Marvel comics, was the "obvious" person to write such a comic. Furman, unable to see how a prequel (as he was asked to do) had space to fit, decided on a story that 'looped' in.
• Furman told SyFy that when plotting the prequel, he'd thought that Marvel's first issue "covers such a big span of time in its opening few pages" that he could easily slot in. The story then brought in "Man of Iron", the first original story produced for the expanded UK version of the comic (reprinted in the US series in 1987), in order to homage the way the UK comic used to tie into the American one. (Ironically, neither of these are stories he himself wrote!)

Continuity notes

Transformers '84 is the first comic to return to the Marvel Comics continuity since 2014's Regeneration One. While that series served as a straight sequel to the original 80-issue US comic, this issue is a prequel that ties into both the American and British stories. In some ways, the story hews quite closely to specific details of the original comics, and in other ways it clearly deviates.

• The coloring for this issue faithfully replicates many of the idiosyncrasies of the original Marvel comics, including Megatron's helmet being black, the Ark being silver rather than gold, Optimus Prime missing the distinctive silver stripe around his torso, and Soundwave being purple rather than blue.
• Several panels are recreations of ones from the first Marvel issue:
  • Page 10, panel 2 recreates the scene of Ravage spying on Optimus's meeting with the elders seen on page 5, panel 5 of the original issue (including dialogue from the preceding panel 4)
  • Page 20, panel 2 recreates the Autobots blasting asteroids from page 6, panel 5 of the original (complete with an out-of-place Onebox component appearing as a piece of artillery mounted on the Ark's hull)
  • Page 20, panel 3 recreates the Decepticons storming the Ark from page 8, panel 2 of the original. Optimus Prime's dialogue as he sets the Ark on its crash course is cribbed from page 8, panel 6 of the original.
• Optimus calls Ultra Magnus "Cybertron's greatest warrior," an appellation frequently used in the UK series. Prime goes on to say that he trusts Magnus to continue the fight in his potential absence, alluding to Magnus's leadership of the Autobot resistance on Cybertron alongside Emirate Xaaron in the UK series.
• The Council of Autobot Elders appears, led by the Marvel-original character Traachon. The block-colored generic councillors don't really match up to any of their prior appearances, however, so it's not clear if Xaaron or Tomaandi are among them.
• The countdown to the Ark's launch is measured in "breems," a semi-regular unit of timekeeping in the Marvel comics.
• The medieval portion of the story is set shortly before the flashback sequence in "Man of Iron." It takes place in the year 1017, around the time of Godwin the Strongarm's siege of Stansham Castle, and details how the Autobot ship seen in the story came to be buried beneath the castle. Though not without problems (see "Continuity discrepancies" below), Transformers '84 implicitly states that the ship was the Mantlo, and the two Autobots featured in the original story—the eponymous "Man of Iron" (as he was called by the humans who encountered him) and Navigator—are Fastlane and Cloudraker, respectively. Points of continuity include:
  • The clones came to Earth in search of the Ark, which is also said to be the mission of the Man of Iron and Navigator.
  • Though the two clones' don't look anything like the Man of Iron and Navigator, when Cloudraker is wounded, portions of his armor are broken off to reveal white plates underneath that match the look of the character in the original story, indicating that the damage the pair sustain in the crash alters their appearance.
  • When the Mantlo crashes a second time, it hits Stansham Castle, destroying a portion of it that was seen to be crumbled in the modern day in "Man of Iron".
  • During the same scene, Fastlane starts sending out a distress call. In "Man of Iron", the Earthbound Transformers are tipped off to the buried ship's existence by receiving a signal from it that's being continuously broadcast.
• Prime isn't to know it, but future events seen in the Marvel series will show that his plan to lure Megatron off Cybertron in the hope that they'll take the war with them was always doomed to fail. As described in UK issue #83, Megatron's absence will lead to a power vacuum that numerous other Decepticon warlords will scramble to fill, culminating in the horrifically brutal reign of Straxus, under whose leadership Cybertron will re-establish contact with Megatron on Earth, as seen in US issue #17 and #18.

Continuity additions

• Optimus Prime's secret intent for the Ark mission—to lure Megatron away from Cybertron and defeat him in a potentially suicidal action—is a new concept introduced in this story. His directive that any search parties be thwarted even at the cost of killing them seems aimed at explaining why "Man of Iron" had him ordering the destruction of the buried ship without checking it for occupants, thereby killing Navigator. As the narration in that story explained, Navigator knew the location of Cybertron – and as Transformers '84 establishes, Optimus is intent on keeping Megatron isolated from Cybertron even if that means sacrificing a whole shipful of Autobots.
• Who exactly occupied Stansham Castle at the time of Godwin's siege was not stated in "Man of Iron"; this issue reveals that it's Canute, king of England. [See "Real-world references" below.] Likewise, Godwin's army being Vikings from northern France is new information.
• The Transformers in the Earth-based portion of the story are all from the 1987 lineup and had been missing from the Marvel US comics at the time: Punch/Counterpunch, the Duocons, the Autobot clones Fastlane and Cloudraker, and Decepticon clone Wingspan. (Well, technically the aerial halves of the Duocons showed up in one panel that year, and the complete Battletrap was seen a few years later, but still.) Interestingly, the US reprint of "Man of Iron" came out in mid-1987, shortly after the rest of the lineup had appeared—so if this issue were inserted at that point, it would fit right in as a rounding-out of the obligatory introductions. This also means the death of Wingspan and the retconning of the Autobot clones as other characters (who also died) have no narrative repercussions for the original continuity. However, all three did appear alive and well in Regeneration One, set after the original series.
• The story also makes use of more modern Transformers terms and concepts like "Titan" and "CR chamber," which did not exist in the original Marvel continuity. See "Transformers references," below, for more on these.

Continuity discrepancies

• Micromasters Erector and Crumble appear as workers building the Ark, when per both UK issue #232 and US issue #54, Micromasters did not yet exist at this point in time.
• Ultra Magnus's profile in UK issue #81 states that he was built by the Autobot elders on Cybertron in the mid-'80s; thus he had never met Optimus Prime, and couldn't have been present for the Ark launch four million years prior.
• As indicated by statements from Optimus Prime and the narration in the original story, it was the intent of "Man of Iron" that the Autobot spacecraft beneath Stansham Castle had already been buried there for millions of years, and that the castle had simply been built over the top of it. The story describes how a "great shaking" preceded the coming of the Man of Iron each time he appeared throughout history, which was explained to be an earth tremor caused by an elevator mechanism transporting him from the buried ship to the surface. Transformers '84, on the other hand, claims that the Mantlo only arrived on Earth less than a thousand years ago, and acts as if the initial "great shaking" was the Mantlo crashing into the castle.
• The Mantlo is noticeably undersized compared to the ship in the original story, which was described as "the size of an ocean-going liner." It's pretty implausible that a ship that size could crash into the castle with enough force to bury itself, yet leave most of the castle intact.
• In the original story, Godwin's men were clad in armor typical of western Europe, but the ones in Transformers '84 are wearing Scandinavian garb. However, this could have a historical justification; see "Real-world references" below.
• The revelation of Optimus's willingness to sacrifice shiploads of unwitting Autobots to defeat or even just isolate Megatron is hard to reconcile with the events of US issue #24, in which he orders that he be killed instead of Megatron because he'd brought about the deaths of "innocent" video-game-character bystanders in the process of winning his deathmatch against the Decepticon leader. Maybe he picked the worst time to let his guilty conscience get the better of him?
• In "Man of Iron", the castle was called Stenshame during this time period, only being called Stansham in the modern era.

Transformers references

• Punch/Counterpunch's vehicle mode looks like a Watchdog from the Sunbow cartoon.
• Bumblebee says there hasn't been a ship as big as the Ark since "the era of the Titans". The term "Titan" was introduced by IDW Publishing's comics to refer to an ancient race of city-spaceship Transformers, which is clearly what's being referred to here, though Hasbro have subsequently adopted the term as a name to refer to all city-sized Transformers. The idea of there being any kind of "age" of Titans doesn't really square with existing Marvel continuity, in which the only city-Transformers are Metroplex and Trypticon, who are basically just regular dudes who happen to be really big.
• Counterpunch meets with Prime in the ruined wasteland known as the Badlands; this geographical feature didn't appear in the original Marvel run, though Furman did use it as a setting in his Regeneration One comics.
• As the Autobots wait for Prime to board the Ark, Hound tells the impatient Bumblebee that Optimus has "a lot of golden disks spinning". This is the real-world idiom "a lot of plates spinning", modified in reference to the MacGuffins from the Beast Wars cartoon that have also appeared in many other cartoons and comics, including Regeneration One.
• Fastlane notes that the wounded Cloudraker needs "some urgent C.R. time." CR chambers first appeared in the Beast Wars cartoon and have gone on to appear in a wide variety of other Transformers media.

Real-world references

• Canute was indeed king of England at the time, and moreover he was overthrown at one point by forces including other Vikings. Immediately after Canute was crowned in 1014, a deposed English king who had been in exile in northern France invaded with the help of another Viking king, driving Canute back to his homeland of Denmark. This is the best match for the events of the comic, though the year is off. By 1017, Canute had returned with a vengeance, retaken the throne definitively, and ushered in a peaceful period of stable rule.
• The "Vikings from northern France" were an actual people, and the armor they wore is consistent with how Godwin's men were drawn in "Man of Iron". However, in this issue they're drawn in Scandinavian garb instead! This could still have a historical justification, though: As mentioned in the previous note, the real-world contemporary war against Canute involved the aid of the Norwegian King Olaf II, so his soldiers could've looked the way this issue's Vikings do.
• Canute's soldiers seem to be Christians, calling their enemies "heathens" and referring to the Autobots as "devilry". In contrast, Godwin's men are depicted as Norse pagans, invoking "the beard of Woden" and calling the Autobots "Niflheim-spawned". In the real-world contemporary battle for the English throne, the distinction wasn't as stark as this might imply; all the major players were in fact Christian. However, Viking culture was still in the process of Christianization, and smaller groups did indeed hold varieties of beliefs as seen here.
• The man sending the riders out on page 11 was confirmed by Furman to be Eadric Streona, who would one day betray Canute. "Is he deliberately sending the riders to their deaths? You decide, dear reader."
• Fastlane's assessment that "the natives definitely fall into the restless category" paraphrases the famous line from the movie Island of Lost Souls, "The natives are restless."
• An irate Battletrap threatens to "get medieval on their afts", a slight modification of a line from the movie Pulp Fiction.
• The starship Mantlo is named after Bill Mantlo, who wrote the first two issues of the original Marvel series.
• Punch's grim assessment of Prime's plan, "The needs of the many...", is of course a reference to Spock's famous line from The Wrath of Khan, though it was also spoken by Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy, in Dark of the Moon. Likewise, Prime's declaring that his plan will give Cybertron "a fighting chance" is taken from another quote spoken by Leonard McCoy in The Search for Spock, drawing further parallels between Optimus's plan to sacrifice the Ark with Megatron aboard it and James T. Kirk's similar decision to destroy the Klingon-boarded USS Enterprise.
• The line "All contemplating my fuel intake an' no mayhem makes Flywheels... a dull 'bot!" is a reference to the 1980 film The Shining where Jack Nicholson's character repeatedly types "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".

Errors

• Optimus Prime speaks of Ursa Major as a star; in real life, however, this is the name given to an entire constellation, a grouping of multiple stars. Perhaps Prime just means that they'll be able to send Cybertron to a star within the constellation?

Other trivia

• The line-art takes heavy inspiration from the styles of the Marvel artists who worked on the original series. This is backed up by the colors, which evoke the look of contemporary printing via a somewhat limited palette, block coloring, and liberal use of Ben Day dots.
• It's not a Marvel comic without a good old-fashioned introdump, and we get an abridged one on page 8, where all of the members of the Ark crew stand around and talk about why they decided to join the mission.
• Not an error, per se, but for a comic that namechecks pretty much all of the other original members of the Ark from issue #1 of the Marvel comic and then some, Trailbreaker is conspicuous by his absence.
• Originally solicited for early August, this issue arrived two weeks late, on August 21.

Covers (1)

• Cover A: Optimus and Megatron have it out, by Guido Guidi

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External links

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