Dinobot Hunt!

This article is about the Marvel UK story. For the trade paperback from Titan Books, see Transformers: Dinobot Hunt. For a list of other meanings, see Dinobot Hunt (disambiguation).

« The Transformers (UK) #47–50 » »
Where's Mothra when you need her?
"Dinobot Hunt!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Cover date	8th February—1st March 1986
Writer	Simon Furman
Art	Will Simpson (47 & 49), Barry Kitson (48 & 50)
Art assistant	Tim Perkins (50)
Pencils	Barry Kitson (48)
Inks	Marc Griffiths (48)
Colours	Stuart Place (47, 49-50), Jeff Anderson (48)
Lettering	Annie Halfacree (47-48, 50), Mike Scott (49)
Editor	Ian Rimmer
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity (Marvel UK)
Chronology	1986

The Autobots attempt to round up those crazy Dinobots but the Decepticons interfere....

Synopsis

Part 1

After finding out that the Dinobots have probably lost control due to their primary cybo-dendrons having burnt out, Optimus Prime assigns the Autobots into teams to capture Snarl, Slag, Sludge, and Grimlock before they can harm any humans.

The B-Team (consisting of Mirage, Brawn, and Trailbreaker) are assigned to Black Rock Desert in Nevada to capture Snarl, which they do (thanks to the help of a prototype molecular disintegration bomb being developed at a secret army base that Snarl destroys). Unfortunately, Laserbeak has been watching, giving the Decepticons knowledge of the Autobots' mission and they make plans to disrupt it as much as possible.

Part 2: "Swamp-Thing!"

In the waterways of Littlewood, California, Sludge is contentedly being filmed by Joy Meadows while the A-Team (cue music—Windcharger, Gears, and Cliffjumper) look for him. Unfortunately, a Decepticon group consisting of Soundwave, Skywarp, and Scavenger manage to find and knock out Sludge first. Stumbling upon the unconscious Sludge, the A-Team gets taken out by the Decepticons, pleasing Soundwave greatly.

Part 3: "Robot Rustlers!"

The Decepticon plan suffers a setback when they are too late to capture Slag in Old River Valley, Idaho. A fried Laserbeak tells them of how Jetfire, Jazz, and Ironhide (of D-Team) managed to capture Slag (mainly by blocking Slag's flamethrower with Laserbeak in an attempt to make Idaho Fried Decepticon). However, Soundwave is unconcerned by this setback.

Part 4: "The Final Rage!"

The reason for Soundwave's lack of concern is revealed—the Decepticons have found Grimlock before the Autobots and have set Sludge on him. The town of Doonstown is reduced to a war zone as the two Dinobots fight, plunging into a frozen lake as they do. Bluestreak, Huffer, and Sideswipe are early casualties as they try to stop the fight. Summoned by an urgent S.O.S., Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, and Prowl speed to the scene. The first three arrive and Prime attempts to keep the Dinobots in the lake while Ratchet goes to tend the members of C-Team and Bumblebee finds a hidden energy source.

The energy source turns out to be a cloaked Autobot shuttle with Windcharger, Gears, Cliffjumper (as prisoners) and a sonic lance on board. Bumblebee rescues the captured Autobots as Prowl transfers his shuttle's electrical systems to the hull and bails out. The shock knocks out Grimlock, but Sludge, still controlled by the sonic lance, lunges for Optimus Prime. Bumblebee realizes that the sonic lance is probably booby-trapped so he blows the shuttle up, causing Sludge to pass out before he can attack Prime.

Nearby, the Decepticons (having found an oil rig to steal energy from) hear the explosion and an elated Soundwave shouts that the Decepticons have emerged triumphant. Optimus Prime hears Soundwave but realizes he can do nothing until his injured Autobots are repaired.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Snarl (1) Mirage (2) Trailbreaker (3) Brawn (4) Optimus Prime (5) Swoop (6) Prowl (7) Huffer (8) Bluestreak (9) Grimlock (10) Slag (11) Sludge (12) Ironhide (15) Jazz (16) Bumblebee (17) Windcharger (18) Wheeljack (19) Ratchet (20) Gears (21) Cliffjumper (22) Jetfire (30) Sideswipe (31)	Laserbeak (14) Skywarp (25) Scavenger (26) Soundwave (27)	Carl Thompson (13) Joy Meadows (23) Rick (24) Tony (28) Greg (29)

Notes

Continuity notes

• The four Dinobots were last seen leaving the Ark to "pursue their own destiny" in issue #32. The unfortunate circumstances that have befallen them since, we are reminded by a footnote in part 1, were established in the previous issue.
• Jetfire was last seen in US issue #12, at which point he was still a non-living robot. Off-panel between that story and this one, Optimus Prime has brought him to life using the Creation Matrix. This is another case of a UK comic story being written with foreknowledge of an upcoming US issue—when Jetfire is next seen in the US series, in US issue #14, he will already have been given life between issues. That issue begins with his receiving an Autobot symbol in the Rite of the Autobrand, a development set up in this story by having Jetfire lose his Decepticon symbol beforehand.
• Ironhide and Jazz pursue Slag aboard a M.A.R.B., one of which was previously used by Ratchet in US issue #8.

Real-life references

• In Part 1 (page 6, panel 2), Optimus Prime looks straight into the "camera" and points, declaring "The humans need you!"—a riff on the famous Uncle Sam "I WANT YOU" U.S. Army recruitment poster.
• The title for Part 2, "Swamp-Thing!" (as given by the "next issue" box at the end of Part 1), is a reference to the DC Comics character of the same name.
• The cover to issue #50 seems to be drawn in a style that evokes the brawling monster battles of a Godzilla series film poster.

Continuity and plotting errors

• It's not an error but... Part 3 is staged and paced in such a way as to try and make the audience believe that Windcharger, Gears, and Cliffjumper are the ones attacking humans in pursuit of information about Sludge, expecting us to be "surprised" when the Decepticons turn out to have been involved on the final page. We mean, Gears is a bit of an arsehole, but... who'd actually be taken in by that attempted storytelling trick? The scenes of human "interrogation" are so uncommonly brutal—with bodies lying limply in the water and clutched in Decepticons hands, and a child even being cradled in an adult's arms, all of them looking for all the world like they could well be dead—that the idea the Autobots could be behind it never seems credible.
• That said, the three Autobots come off as about as dumb as the story wants the readers to be, as they can't figure out what's going on either when they see blaster fire and find Sludge zapped into unconsciousness, standing around until they get blasted themselves.
• Cliffjumper uses his glass gas to actually turn one of the police boats into glass. That's not how that's supposed to work! It doesn't actually turn things into glass, it just makes them brittle like glass! The dialogue refers to the weapon as his "glass gun" (no "gas"), indicating the writer had missed that particular bit of info.
• Repeating an error seen before in US issue #4 and UK issue #18, Jazz uses his flamethrower, which is supposed to be the shoulder-mounted weapon included with his toy, only for the story to depict his hand-held photon rifle in its place.

Artwork and technical errors

• Throughout all four parts of this story, the Dinobots continue to be coloured with the early colour schemes seen in previous UK appearances; Snarl has a grey dino-mode head instead of a golden one (though the title page of Part 1 does colour his upper jaw gold), Slag has a golden dino-head instead of a grey/purple one, and Swoop has a blue dino-head instead of silver/white.
• Trailbreaker's shoulders are solid yellow throughout Part 1, instead of blue-black like the rest of him. That's a weird one.
• Part 1, Page 5:
  • Panel 2: Bluestreak's head is coloured solid red.
  • Panel 4: The words "California" and "Colorado" are misspelled on the Autobots' map of the United States, the states' partially-visible names appearing as "Calaf-" and "Colara-".
• Laserbeak has a yellow beak and feet throughout this story, when they should be blue-black. Additionally, on the final page of Part 1, his... well, uh, his butt is yellow too.
• Part 2, page 3, panel 3: Windcharger's grey parts are coloured blue.
• Part 2, page 8, panel 6: Skywarp is coloured like Scavenger. Colouring error notwithstanding, the fact that he (and Soundwave, in the background) appears so clearly in this panel must surely be an error in its own right, since at this point, the story has not yet "revealed" that the Decepticons are involved.
• Part 2, page 11:
  • Skywarp's colours are all over the place. He's got solid purple wings instead of black with purple stripes; black forearms instead of purple; black shoulder intakes instead of silver/white; a grey cockpit canopy instead of orange; and red vents on his knees instead of purple. Plus, he's missing his traditional arm guns, and is holding a small hand-held pistol instead.
  • From his introduction on this page onward, Scavenger's head is coloured green instead of blue-black throughout the story.
• Unsurprisingly, Jetfire remains coloured in the early colour scheme seen in his previous US appearances, which makes his jet mode largely red, and gives him red wings in robot mode.
• During Part 3, Slag's horn pierces Jetfire in the chest straight through the middle of his Decepticon insignia. Yet when Soundwave finds the torn-off insignia later, it is only "buckled," but otherwise in one piece.
• At the end of Part 3, Sideswipe's right arm is hanging limp, barely connected to his body by a few wire, but at the start of Part 4, it's in working condition, and he's using it to speak into the comm.
• Part 4, page 2: Grimlock's head is cartoonishly huge in proportion compared to both the rest of his body, and especially to Sludge.
• Part 4, page 3, panel 2: Grimlock's neck turns grey for this one panel, instead of gold.
• Part 4, page 4, panels 3-5: After being drawn and coloured correctly in Part 3, Skywarp's colours have gone wrong again; he's got the correct orange cockpit canopy, but his guns are once again absent and he's still got the black shoulder intakes, and now every bit of purple is missing from his body.
• Part 4, page 5, panel 4: The centre of Prowl's forehead crest is colored red instead of white. It remains coloured this way throughout Part 4.
• Part 4, page 8, panel 4: Prowl's bumper turns red.
• Part 4, page 10, panel 6: Bluestreak is drawn with his right leg severed at the knee, when it was intact on page 1.
• Part 4, page 11:
  • Panel 1: Skywarp's shoulder intakes are now the correct silver/white, but his cockpit canopy has become black, his thighs white, and his wings solid purple (with still no other purple accents visible anywhere else).
  • Panel 4: Prowl's got a red bumper again.

Other trivia

• Jazz is seen removing his "flamethrower" from a hollow inside his hip, revealing the weapon is stored in a shrunken form that then expands to full size in his hand (right). This is one of the earliest in a small number of visual "cheats" used in the comic and cartoon to explain where Transformers store their weapons while not in use, which would be rolled together by fans to create the idea of the subspace storage pocket that later crossed over into official canon.
• Bumblebee mentions that he has eight other senses besides sight. It's not clear what these are; towards the end of this year, The Transformers Universe would be published by Marvel, in which the profile for Streetwise would note that Transformers only have seven standard senses, rather than nine. Either Bumblebee's packing a little something extra, or we can call this one retconned.

Back-up material

Issue #47:

• Back-up strips: Iron Man ("From the Ashes," Part 1), Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat

Issue #48:

• Back-up strips: Iron Man ("From the Ashes," Part 2), Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat
• Who's Who: Decepticons

Issue #49:

• Back-up strips: Iron Man ("From the Ashes," Part 3), Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat

Issue #50:

• Back-up strips: Iron Man ("From the Ashes," Part 4), Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat

Covers (4)

• UK issue #47: Snarl, Slag, Sludge and Grimlock, by David Lloyd.
• UK issue #48: Sludge, by Jeff Anderson.
• UK Issue #49: Jetfire vs Slag, by Geoff Senior.
• UK issue #50: Grimlock vs Sludge, by John Higgins.

• 
  UK issue #47 - The Dinobot singing group was never a hit.
• 
  UK issue #48 - Not that Swamp Thing.
• 
  UK issue #49 - Someone get Jetfire a rope.
• 
  UK issue #50 - Me Grimlock say Sludge getting too close for comfort.

Reprints

• 
  Collected Comics #7 (Marvel UK, 1987)
• 
  Transformers: Dinobot Hunt (Titan Books, 2004)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #2 cover A; reprints Parts 1-2 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #2 cover B; reprints Parts 1-2 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #2 cover RI-A; reprints Parts 1-2 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #2 cover RI-B; reprints Parts 1-2 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #3 cover A; reprints Parts 3-4 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #3 cover B; reprints Parts 3-4 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #3 cover RI-A; reprints Parts 3-4 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots #3 cover RI-B; reprints Parts 3-4 (IDW Publishing, 2007)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK: Dinobots TPB (IDW Publishing, 2008)
• 
  The Transformers: Best of UK Omnibus (IDW Publishing, 2009)
• 
  The Transformers Classics UK Volume 2 (IDW Publishing, 2012)