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===Hasbro franchise references===
===Hasbro franchise references===
*Mike's dog Smarts is "[http://poundpuppies2010.wikia.com/wiki/Lucky Lucky Smarts]", the lead charater from the {{w|Pound Puppies (2010 TV series)|2010 ''Pound Puppies'' series}}. In a nod to this, it's noted that when Mike becomes consumed with the study of the Iron Trooper, Smarts runs away.
*Mike's dog Smarts is "[http://poundpuppies2010.wikia.com/wiki/Lucky Lucky Smarts]", the lead character from the {{w|Pound Puppies (2010 TV series)|2010 ''Pound Puppies'' series}}. In a nod to this, it's noted that when Mike becomes consumed with the study of the Iron Trooper, Smarts runs away.
*Doctor Emil Burkhart is an original character, and his daughter is not named on panel, but if you know your ''Joe'', you'll realize the girl will grow up to be Doctor Adele Burkhart, occasional ''G.I. Joe'' supporting character and aggressive peacenik most famous for being at the center of the plot of the very first issue of the original Marvel ''Joe'' comic book.
*Doctor Emil Burkhart is an original character, and his daughter is not named on panel, but if you know your ''Joe'', you'll realize the girl will grow up to be Doctor Adele Burkhart, occasional ''G.I. Joe'' supporting character and aggressive peacenik most famous for being at the center of the plot of the very first issue of the original Marvel ''Joe'' comic book.


Revision as of 01:21, 27 July 2017

This article is about the Revolutionaries issue. For the Generation 2 issue, see The Power and the Glory.
« Revolutionaries #6
"Power and Glory"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published July 26, 2017
Cover date May 2017
Written by John Barber
Art by Agnes Garbowska (pg. 2, 6, 9), Ron Joseph (pg. 1, 12, 19, 22), Fico Ossio (pg. 3-4, 7-8, 10-11, 14-15, 17-18, 20-21, 23-24)
Colors by Sebastian Cheng
Letters by Tom B. Long
Editor David Hedgecock
Assistant editor David Mariotte
Continuity IDW continuity
Chronology Current era

When the legacy of Mike Power, the Atomic Man, poses danger to the Revolutionaries, they call on the forces of M.A.S.K. for help.

Synopsis

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

Mike Power was born without a right arm or left leg as a result of amniotic band syndrome, but he doesn't let it get him down. With his faithful dog Smarts at his side, the young Mike acts as an amateur detective, solving mysteries around his neighborhood—like the theft of a girl's bicycle by bullies Finney and Pidge. One day, the bullies themselves get in trouble when Finney goes missing inside a "haunted house," and Pidge calls on Mike to help. Investigating, Mike discovers that the "ghosts" in the house are just holograms being projected by a strange device—a piece of technology being smuggled by the crooks who are using the house as a hideout, who have captured the snooping Finney. British super-agent Action Man arrives on the scene and saves Mike from the crooks, who he has tracked from his home country, and while he rounds them up, Mike frees Finney and takes the hologram projector for himself.

Having been made to feel truly helpless by his condition for the first time, Mike becomes obsessed with finding a way to improve his body using the unearthly technology of the "hologram projector"—which he has no way of knowing is, in fact, the head of one of the Iron Troopers created by the Talisman. After years of study, Mike reverse-engineers the trooper's tech to create super-humanly powerful "atomic" prosthetic limbs, and uses the incredible strength and speed they give him to become part of Joe Colton's Adventure Team. A mission to Egypt with the Adventure Team brings Mike into contact with Garrison Kreiger and the Talisman itself, at which point the connection between it and his atomic limbs becomes apparent. On a later mission, even Mike's super-powers prove insufficient to save the life of scientist Emil Burkhart, who dies while his daughter watches, and in an effort to improve himself even further, Mike reaches out to Kreiger to help use the Talisman to upgrade him. Under unknown circumstances, the Adventure Team are left to believe Mike perished at Kreiger's hands, and the team is shut down and replaced with G.I. Joe...

In the present day, with her team having determined that the Brasnyan "Project: Iceman" facility controlled by Krieger and the rest of the villains in his evil alliance is their next target, Mayday approaches fellow Joe Stalker for help. As a former member of the Adventure Team, Stalker is aware of the Iceman facility as the apparent "final resting place" of Mike Power; impressed by Mayday's idealism, he calls in Matt Trakker and Gloria Baker of M.A.S.K. to bolster the forces of her team for their impending raid on the facility.

In Brasnya, Kup, Blackrock, and Action Man receive word of Matt and Gloria's addition to the team, and roll out for the Iceman facility, hidden beneath the crater left by the crash of the Axalon thousands of years ago. Using an access code provided by Tomax, they are able to easily get inside, but Kup is concerned over the possibility of a trap—a possibility that becomes a certainty when, as the trio work their way through the base's underground corridors, Kup and Blackrock both suddenly shut down when struck by a beam of red light. Worse still, Action Man then finds himself under attack from robots that appear to be Optimus Prime and Shockwave (in truth, the Eukarian crew of the Axalon, reanimated by the Talisman). After taking a bad shot to the leg that seems to leave any chance of escape impossible, Action Man makes the last play open to him, blasting a hole in the roof of the corridor, letting the sea outside come flooding in. Kreiger, observing via monitors, is nonplussed; he leaves Action Man to drown and turns to Mike Power—strung up behind him, wired into the base systems, the nerve center of its operations—and instructs him to vent the water so he can recover the Cybertronians.

Outside, Mayday, Matt, and Gloria arrive just in time to see the huge jet of vented water blast up into the sky from underground. While Matt and Mayday watch from Matt's Thunderhawk, Gloria's Shark converts to submersible mode and dives down through the geyser to enter the base. As she rescues Action Man, pulling him inside her vehicle, Matt steers his Thunderhawk inside the base as well, and uses its in-built Cybertronian tech to locate Kreiger's command center by following the scent of Ore-13. As the Shark and Thunderhawk smash into the control room with the Eukarians hot on their heels, Kreiger fights back by infusing Mike Power with Ore-13, super-charging him and allowing him to achieve true symbiosis with the Talisman and all its power touches. While Mayday and the M.A.S.K. agents fight the Eukarians, the wounded Action Man appeals to Power's better nature. He has read about him, and knows hard he strove to be better, only for "better" to never be good enough—and that's a feeling Action Man knows all to well from his own struggles to live up to the legacy of the former bearers of the his title. But every improvement Mike Power ever made to himself was for the betterment of the world... not for the destruction that Kreiger is now having him wreak. Action Man's words reach Power, and he comes back to himself; sadly reflecting on the youth lost to his obsession, he apologizes to his departed dog Smarts, and deactivates his atomic body, allowing himself to die. The Eukarians collapse, and Kreiger is defeated; it is a bittersweet victory, but a victory still, and everything seems to be over... until one more unexpected wrinkle is thrown into the mix. In a flare of Talisman energy, Sgt. Savage—who disappeared with the Axalon decades ago—suddenly reappears... spouting totally phat 90s slang?!

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

Autobots Eukarians Humans Others

Quotes

"You okay? That water must be freezing."
"It's colder than you think. It's salt walter, so it stays liquid below zero."
"You learn that for fun?"
"You'd be surprised how much that kind of thing comes up."

—Gloria Baker and Action Man


"It's not easy to invent yourself. I'm... sure I'll get it right... next time."

—Atomic Man's dying words


"Look alive, soldiers! The name's Sgt. Savage—and I don't know how long I've been out, but boo-ya, I'm back! I'd usually be all like whatever! But if there was ever a time to have a cow... this is it!"

—Sgt. Savage makes his awesomely bodacious return, dudes! Do the Bartman!

Notes

Continuity notes

  • The technical drawings of the Talisman on the recap page draw attention to the Dire Wraith-like tentacles etched into the obelisk's surface. This is the first direct allusion to the Wraiths having any connection to the mysterious object, but it's not completely surprisingly; the Red Shadows were exhibiting bio-tech enhancements courtesy of Kreiger and his villainous alliance that looked a lot like Wraith biomatter back in issue #2.
  • Stalker was part of the Adventure Team when they encountered the Talisman in the flashback story told in issue #3. It was in the same issue that Atomic Man had his first contact with the Talisman, upgrading his atomic limbs; however, see "Errors" below.
  • Mayday refers back to the last time she saw the M.A.S.K. team, in Revolution #5. What happened to them afterward was chronicled a few months later in M.A.S.K. #6.
  • Exactly which Action Man saves lil' Mikey is left vague (we're estimating the scene is set in the 1960s). Ian refers (with uncertainty) to his "predecessor's predecessor," but that would make this Action Man—at least—the same Action Man who the adult Mike and the rest of the Adventure Team would encounter in the 1980s, twenty-plus years later, in Revolution #0, and that doesn't seem quite right. However, it was later confirmed to be the same Action Man by John Barber on Twitter.
  • Kreiger was previously shown to have built a synthetic Talisman in issue #4, and is here revealed to have actually built multiples of them over the decades. Huh, multiple magical irregular hexagons. Too bad IDW haven't announced any books that could lead int--hmn? What's that? Ohhh....

Hasbro franchise references

  • Mike's dog Smarts is "Lucky Smarts", the lead character from the 2010 Pound Puppies series. In a nod to this, it's noted that when Mike becomes consumed with the study of the Iron Trooper, Smarts runs away.
  • Doctor Emil Burkhart is an original character, and his daughter is not named on panel, but if you know your Joe, you'll realize the girl will grow up to be Doctor Adele Burkhart, occasional G.I. Joe supporting character and aggressive peacenik most famous for being at the center of the plot of the very first issue of the original Marvel Joe comic book.

Real-life references

  • The title of this issue is taken from the doxology that concludes the Lord's Prayer.

Errors

  • On page 19 (but not page 22), Mike Power is drawn with his original atomic limbs, rather than the spiky new designs they acquired after being renewed by the Talisman in issue #3.
  • The British Action Man uses the distinctly American phrase "roll up your window".

Other trivia

  • This issue is a bit of a multi-media grab-bag. The present day scenes are drawn by Fico Ossio, as normal; Mike Power's childhood detective adventures are drawn by Agnes Garbowska in the style of a cutesy comic strip (credited "in-story" to "Agnes Johns," a composite of Garbowska and Barber's names); and Power's other flashbacks are drawn by Ron Joseph. Joseph also draws illustrations of the talisman for a newly-written "dossier" page that replaces the comic's traditional "recap" page, and his first flashback page is done in the style of a full-page children's book illustration, which John Barber writes a single, un-illustrated page of storybook prose to accompany. Finally, the original 1975 comic strip print advert for the "Atomic Man" action figure is re-used in context to tell the story of how he joined the Adventure Team! The use of the dossier, storybook, and advert pages push the length of this issue's story up from the standard 20 pages to 23.
  • Originally solicited for release in May, this issue arrives significantly late, two months after the fact, at the end of July. Accordingly, it was supposed to have been released before issue #1 of the Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook, but the delay meant that it was not, and the details of Mike Power's backstory, and his death in his issue, were consequently spoiled by the sourcebook over a month in advance of this issue's release.
  • As with last issue, it seems like some of this issue's covers were intended for next issue. Subscription Cover A features Sergeant Savage, whose appearance in the issue is a last-page surprise. Meanwhile, Subscription Cover B shows Atomic Man being surrounded by G.I. Joe (including Skywarp), who don't appear in this issue at all, but are set to show up next time.

Covers (4)

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