Earthfall Part 4: Full Fathom Five

This article is about the Robots in Disguise issue. For the ROM issue, see Earthfall, Part 4. For a list of other meanings, see Earthfall (disambiguation).

« The Transformers: Robots in Disguise #31 »
"Earthfall Part 4: Full Fathom Five"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	July 30, 2014
Cover date	July 2014
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Andrew Griffith (present day) Guido Guidi (Jazz flashback) Brendan Cahill (Decepticon flashback)
Colors by	Josh Perez (present day) Joana Lafuente (flashbacks)
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	Carlos Guzman
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era (2014)

Jazz infiltrates the EDC's secret base in advance of an all-out Autobot attack, but the presence of the Decepticons is not the only unexpected surprise waiting within its walls.

Synopsis

Jazz reflects on his recent history, recalling his killing of police officer John Powell, and how that human's death proved to be the tipping point that turned him from black-ops killer into a 'bot tired of warfare and the destruction it brought to other worlds. After eliminating as much Cybertronian tech on Earth as he could, he returned to Cybertron and began a musical partnership with Sky-Byte until fighting broke out again, and his old life found him once more. Jazz remembers how, after the dust settled, he was approached by Optimus Prime with an invitation to join him on a mission back to Earth. Even after everything that had happened, Prime didn't think twice about asking Jazz, and so Jazz agreed.

It is on that mission that Jazz now finds himself—coated in stealth paint and swimming through the Pacific Ocean, on course for the Earth Defense Command's secret base below the Marshall Islands. After receiving Jazz's status report, Prowl and the other Autobots aboard Sky Lynx, resting on the seabed several miles away, briefly turn their attention to the examination of recent events—thanks to images beamed in by a disgruntled, orbiting Cosmos, five light-hours away from Earth, they are able to view the Decepticons' sudden arrival outside Thundercracker's home prior to their battle that night, and verify that they are teleporting via a method other than orbital jump. Kup takes some pleasure in needling the highly-strung Cosmos, but Prime is more concerned with Prowl's presumptive attitude, and angrily reminds his strategist that he is the one in charge. Jazz chooses that moment to deliver a report that only confirms all of Prowl's suppositions about the base; he has managed to gain entrance, and has discovered Alpha Trion's battered shuttle in the base's dock. Satisfied that no civilians will be at risk because of the region's history of atomic testing—though less than happy about how Prowl phrases that fact—Prime instructs the police-bot to remain with Sky Lynx while he leads the rest of the team in a frontal assault. As everyone prepares, Arcee takes Prowl aside and confides in him that she has observed some suspicious activity from Scavenger and believes he is a Decepticon spy; Prowl, however, seems unfazed by this "revelation", and merely asks if Arcee plans to tell Optimus, or if she is still loyal to Prowl. Arcee says she is loyal only to "the Autobot cause", to which Prowl responds with a sharp laugh, and a request that Arcee watch out for Prime on the battlefield.

Inside the EDC base, General Witwicky and Sanjay Bharwaney confer with Marissa Faireborn—stuck in Poverty Flat on clean-up duty and communicating remotely—on their use of the "mind bomb" and potential repercussions. Faireborn's concern that the Decepticons could have tracked the signal of the device soon proves well-founded, as Soundwave and Galvatron teleport directly into the base, smashing the comm-link so they can speak to Witwicky and Bharwaney alone. Witwicky defends the EDC's actions based on the precedent set by the Decepticons when they devastated Earth, and Soundwave proves sympathetic to his position, but Galvatron refuses to be placated—though he accepts their rationale, and is impressed by the effectiveness of the weapon, he promises to kill everyone in Bharwaney's home state if it is ever turned on the Decepticons again. The matter tersely settled, Galvatron raises the subject of the secret base, but Witwicky explains that in addition to weapons testing, they have also been using the facility to fulfil their end of the agreement they had made with the Decepticons—construction of a huge satellite that will serve as the Decepticons' new home.

Six months ago on Cybertron, Galvatron and the Decepticons observe as Metroplex transforms into a city to replace the damaged Iacon. Galvatron inquires about the history of the Decepticons, and Soundwave explains their origins as working-class 'bots who rose up to throw off the yoke of functionism. Reminded of how Alpha Trion had given him direction and purpose in millennia past, and craving a new purpose now, Galvatron decides to ally with the Decepticons and help them establish a community of their own. Soundwave proposes abandoning Cybertron to explore new possibilities on Earth, but when Galvatron assumes that he means to conquer the planet, Soundwave corrects him, and insists they will follow the true path of the Decepticons—peace.

As Bharwaney explains to Soundwave and Galvatron that the satellite is presently under construction around Jupiter, the Autobots make their move and storm the beach above. As Prime's team blast their way through automated defenses, Prowl disobeys orders and leaps from the departing Sky Lynx; the other 'bots fail to notice, however, thanks to the sudden appearance of the Decepticons' spaceship in the sky above!

Elsewhere in the base, Jazz hides from soldiers rushing to respond to the situation, and follows a pronounced scrape in the floor to a chamber in which he discovers the unconscious form of Alpha Trion. But before he can make any moves to free the ancient Autobot, the cold metal of a gun barrel is pressed against the back of his head... a gun belonging to Prowl, who declares that Alpha Trion isn't going anywhere!

Featured characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	NAILs	Humans	Others
Jazz (1) Hoist (3) Bumblebee (4) Gears (5) Bluestreak (6) Huffer (7) Optimus Prime (9) Sky Lynx (10) Jetfire (12) Arcee (13) Kup (14) Prowl (15) Cosmos (16) Metroplex (24) Sideswipe (35) Alpha Trion (36)	Soundwave (22) Galvatron (23) Laserbeak (25) Buzzsaw (26) Blitzwing (27) Rumble (29) Frenzy (30) Astrotrain (31) Skywarp (32) Needlenose (33)	Sky-Byte (8) Scoop (28)	John Powell (2) Daniel Witwicky (17) Sanjay Bharwaney (18) Marissa Faireborn (19) Ayana Jones (34)	D.0.C. (11) Thundercracker (20) Buster (21)

Quotes

Prowl: "There—Kup, Jazz and Prime going inside. Like we're seeing back in time. I don't know why we don't do this more often."
Cosmos: "Because I'm not just a camera!"
Prowl: "No—you're a really good camera."
Kup: (grinning) "I dunno. It's pretty blurry..."
Cosmos: "I'm five billion kilometers away and it was night! I will kill whoever said that!"

"[Radiation] levels have dropped enough that Earthlings can survive there, but the native population was relocated. Meaning—"
"Meaning there are no civilians."
"I was going to say, 'meaning none of you kill anybody—but if you do kill somebody... well, they knew what they were signing on for.' Your way was more diplomatic, Prime."

—Prowl and Optimus Prime

"You. You generated the signal, tiny one? It is ingeniously painful. Make no mistake, if you use it again I will kill you and—where are you from?"
"N-New Mexico."
"If you send that signal again, I will eradicate all who dwell in this New Mexico... and, for good measure, the old one as well."

—Galvatron and Bharwaney

"Kup, Jetfire—let's end this before anything else goes..."
(The shadow of the Decepticon spaceship falls over the Autobots.)
"...goes haywire."
"Now I get the idea behind that faceplate of yours... you need something to stop your foot from always goin' in your mouth."

—Optimus Prime and Kup

Notes

Continuity notes

• Jazz killed John Powell at the climax of issue #17 of the 2009-2011 ongoing series. Here we see for the first time the immediate aftermath of the event, as Bluestreak and Huffer lead a shellshocked Jazz away.
• Jazz went on to eliminate every piece of Cybertronian tech on Earth that he could in issue #29 of the series.
• The scene of Jazz performing with Sky-Byte was previously seen in issue #7.
• When fighting broke out again, Jazz grimly resigned himself to being "just a killer" in issue #15.
• Jazz was seen taking Starscream's side in issue #18.
• A rare mention is made of orbital jump technology, the method by which Transformers teleported themselves around back during Simon Furman's tenure. It's revealed that the Autobots have blockers in place preventing it, which is probably an out-of-universe explanation for why it's become such a non-thing since Furman's stories.
• Thundercracker references an Ardurian roc.
• Scoop puts in a surprising appearance among the Decepticons during their flashback scene, looking a little uncomfortable. He was last seen at their side amid the chaos of the "Dark Cybertron" finale, but it looks like that has gone beyond being just a battlefield alliance.
• Soundwave recalls Galvatron's sparse past visits to Earth, from Devastation and Infestation.

Real-life references

• "Full fathom five" is a portion of the first line of "Ariel's Song" from Shakespeare's The Tempest ("Full fathom five thy father lies"), referring to the drowning of the character's father in water five fathoms deep. The line has been repeatedly used, homaged, and abridged in many other works.
• Jazz plays Aghartan electro-bass, a reference to the album Agharta by jazz (ho-ho!) musician Miles Davis.

Science errors

• "Five light hours" away from Earth would place Cosmos somewhere on the outer fringes of the Solar System; see below for how implausible his geostationary orbit is. Even if he was stationary rather than orbiting, the idea that he has a camera that has a sufficiently low diffraction limit as to resolve Transformer-scale figures with a 5.4 billion kilometer range is fairly questionable, too—the famous "Pale Blue Dot" picture of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 probe was taken from approximately six billion kilometers. The distortion of several kilometers of Earth's atmosphere (which causes stars to "twinkle" when seen from Earth) wouldn't help either.

Other trivia

• In order to intercept that five-hour old light, Cosmos must logically have faster-than-light drives or warp capabilities, in order to make it out to the vicinity of Pluto before the light itself got there.
• Having reached his monitoring position five light hours out, to remain above a fixed point on the rotating Earth, Cosmos is cruising at 1.3 times the speed of light.
• "You know how fast I have to constantly accelerate?" "I can do the math.": Not only must Cosmos be travelling at 1.3 c, he needs to be continually accelerating to curve around the Earth. Unlike a normal geostationary orbit, gravity is negligible — Cosmos must be using his own power to accelerate at 2900 g. This is plausible, given that his tech spec rates him "10" for speed.
• The 30th Anniversary cover by Phil Jimenez and Romulo Fajardo Jr. is based on the Generations Thrilling 30 Deluxe Class Arcee figure. The same artwork was also used for the "Hasbro exclusive cover" of the comic that was included with said Arcee toy.

Foreign Localization

Swedish

• Title: "Fritt fall Del 4: Fem famnars djup" ("Free Fall Part 4: Full Fathom Five")

Covers (3)

• Regular cover: Jetfire and D.0.C. by Andrew Griffith and Josh Perez
• Subscription cover: Jazz by Casey Coller and Joana Lafuente, in an homage to the album cover style of jazz record label Blue Note.
• 30th Anniversary cover: Arcee by Phil Jimenez and Romulo Fajardo Jr.

• 
• 
• 

Advertisements

• Robots in Disguise #32
• More than Meets the Eye #31
• Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark
• Transformers vs. G.I. Joe
• Machi Koro (back cover)

Reprints

• The Transformers: Robots in Disguise Volume 6 (November 19, 2014) ISBN 1631401645 / ISBN 978-1631401640
  • Collects Robots in Disguise issues #28–32.
  • Bonus material includes covers from each issue.
  • Trade paperback format.

• The Transformers: The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 7 (March 21, 2018) ISBN 1684051495 / ISBN 978-1684051496
  • Collects More than Meets the Eye issues #28–30, #31–33 & #34, and Robots in Disguise issues #28–32 & #33–34.
  • Hardcover format.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 62: Earthfall (August 8, 2018)
  • Collects Robots in Disguise issues #28–34.
  • Bonus material includes the lowdown on the (new) human cast and rare promotional posters for the Dawn of the Autobots event.
  • Hardcover format.

• Transformers: Optimus Prime - Tillbaka till jorden (February 15, 2023)
  • Collects Robots in Disguise issues #28–32 & #34–38, and Punishment issues #1–5.
  • Swedish reprint. Hardcover format.

• 
  Robots in Disguise Volume 6 – cover art by Casey Coller and Joana Lafuente
• 
  The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 7 – cover art by Marcelo Matere and Tom B. Long
• 
  The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 62: Earthfall – cover art by Don Figueroa (Galvatron) and Andrew Griffith (retro)
• 
  Tillbaka till jorden – cover art by Casey Coller and Joana Lafuente

External links

• Preview