Spacehikers!

This article is about the comic issue. For the group of kids that appear in this issue, see Spacehikers.

« The Transformers (US) #36 » « The Transformers (UK) #143–144 »
I'll feed ye to the Sharkticons, argh!
"Spacehikers!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Shipping date	September 22, 1987
On-sale date	October 13, 1987
Cover date	January 1988
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Penciler	José Delbo
Inkers	Ian Akin & Brian Garvey
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Diana Albers
Editor	Don Daley
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

A group of children are caught in the cross-fire of inter-Autobot politics.

Synopsis

Sky Lynx arrives in the Solar System, answering a plea from old friend Wheeljack for help in overthrowing the current Autobot leader Grimlock, obsessed with locating and imprisoning Blaster, to the exclusion of fighting the Decepticons. When Blaster is located giving four Earth children a joy ride in the incapacitated form of Blast Off, the Ark immediately opens fire. To save the kids, Blaster orders Blast Off to stop and be picked up by the Ark, but one of the children tosses Blaster out an airlock to ensure that Blaster is not captured.

With Blast Off safely incarcerated on board the Ark, the children are discovered, and Wheeljack sees to their needs. Grimlock holds a trial, accusing the children of aiding a traitor, and sentences them to execution. This is a ploy to bring Blaster out into the open, but as the children are made to "walk the plank" into deep space, Sky Lynx rescues them instead.

When Sky Lynx enters a meteor shower too dangerous for the Ark to navigate safely, Grimlock leads the Dinobots outside to pursue the rogue Autobot. Meanwhile, Blaster successfully makes it inside the Ark, where the other Autobots practically beg him to take command of the Autobots from Grimlock. However, when the Dinobots surround Sky Lynx, Blaster surrenders to the Dinobots in order to ensure the children's safety.

Featured characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Others
Sky Lynx (1) Wheeljack (5) Slag (4) Sludge (7) Snarl (8) Grimlock (9) Blaster (11) Skids (17) Grapple (18) Cosmos (19) Tracks (20) Swoop (21) Beachcomber (22) Twin Twist (23) Skydive (24) Hot Spot (25) First Aid (26) Fireflight (27) Seaspray (28) Smokescreen (29) Silverbolt (30) Hoist (31) Warpath (32) Groove (33) Powerglide (34) Blades (35) Prowl (36) Omega Supreme (37) Perceptor (38) Ratchet (39) Sandstorm (40) Gears (41) Sideswipe (42) Jetfire (43)	Bombshell (2) Razorclaw (3) Breakdown (4) Blast Off (10)	Robin Lindley (12) Jed Lindley (14) Sammy Wainwright (15) Allan Silver (16)	Daisy (13)

Quotes

"Don't shoot!"
"I surrender!"
"The same goes for me!"
"We give up, too!"
"Hold your fire, Autobots. I don't think they present, er... any danger..."

— the Spacehikers meet Wheeljack

"I assure you, you are not eaten. I have better taste than to dine on humans."

— Sky Lynx welcomes his passengers aboard

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

Does Sandstorm actually have dialogue? Or is that speech balloon supposed to come from Cosmos?

• Amongst the Autobots seen aboard the Ark are several one panel cameos by characters not previously seen in the US comic, including Twin Twist and Sandstorm. Neither of them appeared elsewhere in the US Generation 1 comic (not counting a single panel in issue #41, which is specifically a flashback to that very panel from this issue which depicts Sandstorm). Gears and Sideswipe also appear, having not been seen (and presumed deactivated) since the battle in #12.
• The main body of Sky Lynx's shuttle component is consistently drawn without any of its detailing - panel lines, passenger windows, and Autobot symbols. It's especially prominent in the opening splash page.
  • His combined dino-bird form is drawn with only its front legs extended.
• Blast Off is missing his Decepticon symbols throughout the issue.
• Page 2: In a flashback, Breakdown is seen shooting at Sky Lynx on Cybertron, even though Breakdown was just recently created on Earth.
• Page 3: Earth is colored purple as Sky Lynx approaches it.
• Pages 4–6 retread the end of last issue, with the kids and Blaster riding in Blast Off. The events are portrayed differently, however; last issue, the kids went pretty much directly from unbuckling their safety belts to noticing the Ark following them. Here, they get a whole page's worth of free-fall shenanigans before discovering the Ark's pursuit.
  • The concluding panel, with the kids gathered to look out the window, is redrawn with the kids in different places.
  • Page 6: Some of the kids' dialog from last issue is omitted, presumably for brevity.
• Page 5: Jed's exposition about how Blaster controls Blast Off due to Allan putting the mode lock on him is in a Transformer style word balloon.
• Page 7: Blaster emerges from Sky Lynx's airlock, not Blast Off's. (It's apparently pretty easy to get all those transforming space shuttles confused.)
• Page 9: after Blaster transforms into robot mode, his pose is copied from issue #27 (redrawn but still very similar.) No problem there, except in the original art he was running on solid ground; here he's floating in space! Also, Blast Off - already aboard the Ark - is shown in the background behind him; presumably this should have been Sky Lynx.

Continuity errors

• Although Grimlock says he doesn't intend to kill the children, he doesn't seem to do anything that would prevent them from getting killed, should his suspicion that Blaster will come to save them prove wrong.
• On page 5 Blaster warns Sammy not to mess with an airlock hatch or he might get sucked into space. On page 7, Sammy opens it without an explosive decompression. It is an airlock though, so it probably could be opened without catastrophe, but that doesn't explain why Sammy ignored Blaster's advice.
• On page 18, Wheeljack reports that Sky Lynx has entered a meteor shower. Since the rocks are not within Earth's atmosphere, this is an inaccurate term. The rocks should ideally be referred to as "meteoroids" or, even better (given their size), "asteroids."
• If Sky Lynx is "too fast for [the Dinobots] to attack", then how'd they catch up with and surround him?
• Blaster surrenders largely because the Spacehikers' vacuum suits only had two hours worth of air, and it's about to run out. However, the kids are inside Sky Lynx, and later issues show the kids riding around inside him with no need for suits. This inconsistency is not explained.

Continuity notes

• This issue starts several hours before the end of the previous story, "Child's Play".
• Sky Lynx mentions travelling "a few hundred light years", after "shifting into warp speed", not only indicating that Sky Lynx can travel interstellar distances, but that Cybertron has moved a considerable distance from the Alpha Centauri star system.
• Apparently Blast Off's vehicle disguise goes so far as to incorporate an airlock accessible from inside himself.
• This issue establishes Sky Lynx as a Triple Changer of sorts, changing from space shuttle to dino-bird to lynx without ever splitting into two components as his toy does. The dino-bird mode still retains the four-legged undercarriage; this would not be the case later.
• Grimlock gives the order to "Roll out!" to... the Dinobots. The phrase will show up many times in future issues, apparently having achieved a sort of iconic status.
• The Dinobots seem to be able to maneuver in space in both robot and dinosaur modes.
• This is the last time any of the Protectobots turn up in the Marvel US stories. Apart from Streetwise showing up in the UK story "Stargazing", the whole team appearing in the slightly continuity questionable text story "Prime Bomb!" and the off-line First Aid getting a mention in UK story "The Greatest Gift of All!", none of them turn up until 1993's "Final Transformations", not even to get wiped out in the Underbase stories! Considering they were left behind on Earth last issue, and just disobeyed an order from Grimlock, and are missing from the big group shot in issue #41, and art errors have Sandstorm and Twin Twist showing up out of nowhere on the Ark—it's not 100% clear that the Protectobots should have been in this issue.
• Prowl, Gears and Sideswipe all make appearances; barring temporary resuscitation of Prowl in issue #26, they've been in repair bay since issue #12. Though it might seem like another random-background art error, issue #41 will confirm these and many other 'bots as active once again.

Real-life references

• The show on the TV set in panel 7, page 9 is Sledge Hammer!, which also had a brief (two-issue) tie-in comic book published by Marvel.
• Said TV show is being watched by a family in Parsippany, New Jersey.

UK printing

Issue #143

• Back-up Transformers story: "Brothers in Armour!"
• Other strips: Robo-Capers
• AtoZ: First Aid and Frenzy
• Unlike similar instances in previous (and subsequent) issues where Skids's one-panel cameos in the US title, which conflicted with established UK continuity (since he would be in limbo by this point), were edited for the UK reprint, either by removing him entirely or changing him into a generic, his presence in this issue is not altered in any way. One might argue that the this is because his face isn't shown and he's block-colored red, but the following issue provides a counter for this argument...
• In Grim Grams, Grimlock discusses plot points in the UK annuals while expressing his dislike for a Dinobot combiner, and shoots down a letter supposedly from Stylor to correct a typo which rendered Gort as Grot, saying he prefers the way Grot sounds.

Issue #144

• Back-up Transformers story: "Brothers in Armour!"
• Other strips: Robo-Capers
• Just like Skids's one-panel cameo in the previous issue wasn't edited for the UK reprint, the cameos of Twin Twist and Sandstorm in this issue aren't edited either, resulting in a continuity error, since in UK continuity, both are members of the Wreckers operating from Cybertron, and thus could not have been part of the Ark's crew. (On the plus side, Sideswipe's cameo is more excusable than in the US title, since he was shown to be active in UK continuity following the events of "Prime Time!", while Gears is a less of a clear-cut case.)
• In Grim Grams, Grimlock kindly corrects the spelling mistakes caused by some poor Mum's typewriter, attempts to explain some of the Stubbies' mistakes in the Headmasters back-up stories, and again expresses his extreme distaste for the idea of a Dinobot combiner.

Other trivia

• The plot threads of this issue are left hanging for some time. We don't find out what Grimlock does with Blaster until issue #41, and the fate of Sky Lynx and the Spacehikers isn't revealed until issue #44. This is at least partly due to the need to introduce new toylines; the issues in-between feature all the new characters from the Headmasters miniseries coming to Earth, and the introduction of the Pretenders and Powermasters. The time is also used to deal with Goldbug's faction of Autobots (shuffling most of them off to limbo for a good half-dozen issues themselves), and to give us the completely tangential story "The Big Broadcast of 2006"... with all these characters, is it any wonder Budiansky began to burn out?

Bot Roster

• Autobots: 34 active, 6 Throttlebots captured by RAAT, 11 in repair bay. (51 total) Sky Lynx also arrives but does not join the Earth crew.
• Decepticons: 33 active; 11 offline as Blast Off is taken captive on the Ark. (44 total)

Covers (3)

• US issue #36 cover: Sky Lynx comes to the children's rescue, by Frank Springer, Ian Akin, and Brian Garvey.
• UK issue #143 cover: a giant claw about to grab Blast Off, by Martin Griffiths.
• UK issue #144 cover: Grimlock leaping/falling feet first from the Ark, by Barry Kitson and Robin Bouttell.

• 
  US issue #36 - Luckily there's no gravity in space!
• 
  UK issue #143 - Half an hour later, the claw is still going for it
• 
  UK issue #144 - Look, seriously, NO GRAVITY

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US

• M&M's Quartz Watch - inside front cover
• Tang Soccer Team - between pages 4 & 5
• MPC Model Kits - between pages 5 & 6
• The Official Marvel Try-Out Book - between pages 9 & 10
• Konami NES video games - between pages 12 & 13 (2 pages)
• Direct Comics and Games - between pages 15 & 16
• Bullpen Bulletins and checklist - between pages 19 & 20
• Mile High Comics - between pages 19 & 20
• Marvel Super Mart - between pages 20 & 21
• Transmissions
• Marvel subscription service
• TSR Top Secret/S.I. RPG - inside back cover
• TSR Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms (back cover)

UK

????

Reprints

• Transformers: Treason TPB cover: Defensor, Sky Lynx, Wheeljack, Grimlock and half of Ratbat, by Andrew Wildman.
• Treason hardback cover: Bruticus, Blaster, and Robin Lindley, by Stewart Johnson, Andy Lanning & Chris Blythe.
• Classic Transformers Volume 3 cover: panels from this issue, "Spacehikers!" and "People Power!".
• The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3 cover: Bumblebee, by Guido Guidi.
• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 9: Toy Soldiers cover: Searchlight by "unknown"/Ratbat by Don Perlin & Jim Fern.

• 
  Treason TPB
• 
  Treason hardback
• 
  Classic Transformers Volume 3
• 
  The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3
• 
  Definitive G1 Collection: Vol. 9: Toy Soldiers