Christmas Breaker!

« The Transformers (UK) #41 »
Ho! Ho! Ho!
"Christmas Breaker!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	21st December, 1985
Cover date	28th December, 1985
Writer	James Hill
Art	Will Simpson
Colour	Gina Hart
Letters	Richard Starkings
Editor	Ian Rimmer
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity (Marvel UK)
Chronology	Xmas 1985

Circuit Breaker gains some Christmas Spirit.

Synopsis

In the small town of St. Petersburg, Circuit Breaker fumes as she reads about the recent Decepticon takeover of Blackrock Aerospace Assembly Plant Number One in the Portland Chronicle. Recalling her own origin, she vows once more to kill all robots.

We know she's tough not because she just one-shotted Jazz, but because she's wearing that outfit in a blizzard.

Meanwhile, in the Ark, the Autobots are arranging a makeshift Christmas celebration for Buster Witwicky. A metal Christmas tree has been constructed, Optimus Prime is wearing a Santa Claus costume, and decorations and banners are hung from the ceiling. Prowl finds the whole charade a waste of time, especially while the Decepticons are without a leader, and Jazz doubts that humans are capable of the "charity" the holiday is supposed to represent due to his recent brush with the worst the species has to offer in Circuit Breaker. Realizing it's getting late, Buster has Jazz drive him to St. Petersburg, a suburb of Portland, to finish delivering his dad's Christmas presents. Jazz's preference for high speeds gets the better of him, however, and he spins out on the frozen road, with Buster being hurled out of him.

Concurrently, elsewhere in town, children are skating on an icy pond when a young girl falls through the ice. Fortunately, Circuit Breaker is nearby and is able to blast the ice away and restart the girl's heart with an electric jolt. However, her appearance causes her to be attacked as a freak by other bystanders. Enraged, she flies off, and moments later, stumbles upon Jazz and Buster just after their accident. Mistakenly believing Jazz has deliberately harmed Buster, she attacks the Autobot—but Buster's pleas for mercy, and the chiming of church bells marking the arrival of midnight and the start of Christmas Day, convince her to grant him a temporary reprieve. Circuit Breaker leaves, and Jazz finally understands the meaning of Christmas and its effect on humans.

Featured Characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Brawn (8) Huffer (10) Optimus Prime (11) Prowl (12) Bluestreak (13) Jazz (14) Wheeljack (17)	Soundwave (4) Laserbeak (5) Shockwave (6) Starscream (15) Frenzy (16)	Ferdy and Gabe (1-2) Circuit Breaker (3) G.B. Blackrock (7) Buster Witwicky (9)

Quotes

Prowl: I can't believe Prime is willingly taking place in this charade! That outfit...!"
Bluestreak: Shhh...

—Prowl and Bluestreak discuss Optimus Prime's fashion sense directly behind his back

Notes

Production notes

• Ian Rimmer's brief was that this strip should tie in to the US reprints and have a bunch of flashbacks to keep readers clued up into where they were in the story. It was also his idea that the flashbacks should be from Circuit-Breaker's biased POV.
• James Hill and Mike Collins planned for this to be part of an arc with "Crisis of Command!", which is why Optimus is shown as being despondent and Prowl is disgruntled: to foreshadow what was coming in the next issue.

Continuity notes

"Someone's aft is gonna burn for this."

• Circuit Breaker returns following her previous appearance in US issue #9, the events of which she flashes back to, along with scenes from her origin story as told through US issues #6-8. "Christmas Breaker!" marks the character's only appearance in a UK-exclusive story (outside of a cameo in "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" and "The Wrath of Grimlock!").
• The two workers shown on the cover of the Portland Chronicle newspaper are presumably meant to be Ferdy and Gabe, the two audience-surrogate characters from whose perspective we watched the Decepticons take over the Blackrock Aerospace Plant, as seen in US issue #7, a scene Circuit Breaker is shown imagining a more "monstrous"-looking version of.
• This story is set in the small town of St. Petersburg, which was the setting for the earlier UK-exclusive story, "The Enemy Within!"
• In the US story immediately preceding the publication of "Christmas Breaker!", US issue #12, a sizeable chunk of the Autobot cast was badly injured and would be revealed in US issue #14 to be offline, to be left inactive for several years. Presumably because this wasn't immediately obvious from the end of issue #12, "Christmas Breaker" depicts several characters who should be offline (Prowl, Huffer, Brawn, all seen at right, and Jazz) as being up and about. Though probably not done on purpose at first, subsequent UK stories will roll with this and continue to present many of the characters offlined in the US version of events as still being active, marking the UK title's first serious, deliberate divergence from the US material.
• Prowl refers to the Decepticons as "leaderless," following the disappearance of Megatron in US issue #8, and Shockwave being hurled into a swamp in US issue #12. Though the US series will not treat Shockwave's absence as a prolonged one (he will quickly return in US issue #14), the UK comic tells multiple stories during this time gap that lengthen Shockwave's disappearance and play it up as a much more disruptive event for the Decepticons.
• Jazz exclaims "By the Primal Program!" when he skids off the road. This expression—a reference to the Creation Matrix—was first used by Optimus Prime in US issue #12, but he was using it as an honorable vow ("By the Primal Program itself, I pray...") while Jazz is using it as a "swear." This will be the form in which the phrase is most often heard as it passes into wider, continued use in the UK-exclusive stories.

Real-life references

• As indicated by the fonts used for the title (with the "-er" at the end in a different one to the rest of it), this story's name is a riff on the phrase "Christmas break," an affably British way of referring to "Christmas vacation."

Continuity and plotting errors

• It was not truly an error at the time of the story's publication, as her introductory issue did not set enough of a precedent, but the fact that Circuit Breaker acknowledges that there are two factions of Transformers at war on Earth stands in contradiction to how future US stories will present the character, who is so blinded by her hatred for robots that she refuses to see a distinction between Autobot and Decepticon and believes they are all conspiring against humanity together.
• Circuit Breaker spends much of the time in the freezing rain and snow in only her itty-bitty metallic body suit. Unless it somehow generates warmth, that's gonna be chilly!
• Bluestreak tells someone else to "Shhh"?!

Artwork and technical errors

"The Transformers" as imagined by David Lynch.

• The UK comic's ongoing tenuous relationship with character models continues with this story, with the Autobots all being drawn largely based on their toys' package art, with some embellishments, like proper arms and hands for Brawn and Huffer. This means that Bluestreak appears through the story in his Diaclone blue-and-silver colour scheme, instead of the character's correct silver-and-black.
• Jazz, meanwhile, is drawn in the same peculiar way as in US issue #10, with his visor being rendered as if it is a "cap peak" attached to his helmet, with two yellow eyes constantly peeping out from underneath.
• Page 2: Soundwave's Decepticon symbol is red, and while this probably wasn't on purpose, we can sort of wave it off on the fact the whole scene is Circuit Breaker's imagination, already full of deliberate embellishments like a terrifying mouth and finger-drills for Soundwave (right).
• Page 5: Frenzy is off-model and off-colour in the flashback to the events of US issue #9, and Wheeljack is still coloured in the early, off-model colour scheme used in that issue, with an all-white chest, red shoulder-fins, and a purple shoulder cannon.
• Page 8, panel 2: Circuit Breaker hallucinates Shockwave, but he's coloured like Soundwave, chest-window and all.

Other trivia

• "Christmas Breaker!" is the first of the UK comic's Christmas-themed stories, which will become an annual tradition as the comic continues, with a new one published every year through 1990.

Back-up material

• Back-up strips: Robo-Capers , Machine Man ("Victory" part 3 ), and Matt and the Cat 
• Editorial material makes it clear that Soundwave was too hung over from the office Christmas party to host the letters page, leaving Ratchet in charge for this issue only. It is referred to as Rat-Chat instead of Soundwaves.

Cover

• Issue #41: Santamus Prime, by Mike Collins.

• 

Reprints

• 
  Collected Comics #11; cover by Robin Smith (Marvel UK, 1988)
• 
  The Transformers Classics UK Volume 1 (IDW Publishing, 2011)
• 
  Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection, Vol. 3: Dinobot Hunt (Hachette Partworks Ltd, 2018)

IDW edits

• In the Classics UK reprint, the first panel on Page 5 is missing its first two word bubbles (Jazz: "It's a fine construction, Buster... What does it do?" Buster: "It doesn't do anything, Jazz, it's a symbol of charity.") The space where these first two word bubbles are supposed to be is instead left blank white, making the rest of Jazz's and Buster's conversation read awkwardly without its beginning.