Sunrise

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"Sunrise" サンライズ
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	January 7, 2016
Written by	Andrew Hall
Illustrations by	Hayato Sakamoto
Continuity	Shattered Glass, GoBots
Chronology	2015
Page count	28pp (14 for each translation)

A team of GoBots continue on their mission to save their home universe on Earth, strangers in a strange land that's been made all the more stranger by recent disasters...

Synopsis

On the "Shatteredverse" Earth, heroic Decepticons Soundwave and Blitzwing cool off after recent battles by having energon drinks in the VIP lounge of the Dancitron, the most elite leisure club in New York City. Soundwave excitedly tells his friend of his recent battle with his Autobot arch-nemesis, Blaster, and his encounter with the strange, solar-powered robot known only as Solarbot, much to Blitzwing's bemused interest. The Decepticon communications officer explains how after Blaster and his cohorts retreated, Solarbot asked to interface with Soundwave, looking for data on six cyborgs with organic brains instead of embers. Blitzwing muses on how, after recent troubles with dimensional travelers and superhuman foes, he and Soundwave hardly seem so out of the ordinary anymore. His thoughts are interrupted when Soundwave continues his story, however, explaining that he initially thought that the strange robot meant the Seacons, Decepticons with organic parts in their beast modes. Blitzwing points out that the Seacons have embers, and wonders if the six that Solarbot is looking for has anything to do with the new Earth from the destroyed "Classicsverse" that now orbits Cybertron, something that Soundwave finds very possible. Soundwave mentions that Slugfest believes that Solarbot is looking for dimensional traveling cyborgs, and the Decepticons have a good laugh over that, as they enjoy themselves for the rest of the night...

Across the multiverse, the citizens of GoBotron gather in a dying universe, as Guardian military commander Leader-1, Guardian politician Zeemon, and Renegade commander Cy-Kill deliver grave news to the population. Leader-1 explains that though the mysterious extra-dimensional visitor known only as "the Beast Sage" was able to slow down the effects of the Cataclysm by providing the GoBots with a mysterious piece of machinery called the "crest," the power of the machine has begun to dim, and the Cataclysm has begun affecting the universe once more. With contact lost with those sent through the Dimensional Interfacer, and the breakdown of their dimension increased by some unknown multiversal event, they may have only a few days left before they're wiped from existence. Zeemon steps in to advise against using the Interfacer for an evacuation attempt, as rushing into an unknown dimension without scouting it out first will surely result in disaster. Cy-Kill objects, unwilling to stand by and let his soldiers perish, but Leader-1 steps into tell his former rival that any lines there used to be between Guardian and Renegade, civilian and soldiers, and otherwise are now gone; all they can do is hope their teams succeed in their goals. The gathered populace give subdued applause to Leader-1's speech, but Cy-Kill knows that in three days, there will be no one left to hope.

On the "Classicsverse" Earth, the original GoBots team of Path Finder, Small Foot, Road Ranger, and Bad Boy—Bug Bite has ran off on his own once more—wait at the rendezvous point for their three new teammates in the middle of a field in Utah. Wary after their experiences in Axiom Nexus, they are initially on guard when they see three vehicles approaching, but quickly stand down after realizing that back-up has arrived: arrogant Guardian Admiral Man-O-War, kindly Guardian medic Rest-Q, and the twisted Renegade scientist known as the Buggyman. Man-O-War quickly greets Path Finder, the only one there who he believes earns a modicum of his respect, explaining that they were sent here on a search-and-rescue mission when contact was initially lost with the six. Rest-Q notices that Bug Bite has gone missing, and Treds, the security officer, is forced to explain that he slipped away while they were offline for auto-repairs. Man-O-War begins insulting Treds for his apparent failure, and Treds is forced to take the abuse—he remembers how, long ago at the start of the war, he served under Man-O-War, and while he did more fighting than the arrogant Guardian, Man-O-War kept getting promoted, allowing him to reign his superiority over Treds. Path Finder steps in and explains that they've had problems they hadn't anticipated. Having spent far too much time stuck in Axiom Nexus, their original infiltration mission is no longer viable; instead, Path Finder suggests that they approach the Autobots directly. Man-O-War scoffs at this, but Small Foot, fed up with the Admiral's bad attitude, actually manages to briefly shut him up, explaining that the Autobots are much like them; heroes willing to help those in need. The Buggyman takes this moment to step in and introduce himself, acting as the navigator of Man-O-War's unit. Pulling out a small insectoid drone known as R-Navi, the Renegade scientist has R-Navi pull up holographic maps it made of the area upon arrival. Finding the Autobot base in Oregon, Path Finder decides to split the two teams up: she and Bad Boy will take to the air (and Man-O-War is quick to join her, supposedly so he can supervise first contact, but mainly so he doesn't have to walk or drive), while Treds takes the rest by land. Man-O-War takes one more stab at Treds, but the Guardian promises to get everyone there safely. As the two teams head out, Path Finder hopes she made the right choice by splitting the teams up...unaware that they were being watched the whole time...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Heroic Decepticons	Guardians	Renegades
Soundwave (1) Blitzwing (2)	Leader-1 (3) Zeemon (4) Small Foot (6) Path Finder (7) Treds (8) Road Ranger (9) Man-O-War (11) Rest-Q (12)	Cy-Kill (5) Bad Boy (10) The Buggyman (13) R-Navi (14)

Quotes

"Earth, again? Honestly, human names... why not go for something patriotic, like 'Peopletron,' or something?"

—Treds finds Earth names to be stupid.

"The Buggyman is master of not just insects... I have metal maggots, turbo-worms, and botspiders, too... You will love them!"

—Buggyman

"That means you’ll be the one in charge of the ground team’s safety, Treds. You sure the perilous wilds of Potato won’t be too much for you?"
"I’ll get them to the Autobot base safely, or I’ll turn in my Guardian badge."
"I’ll hold you to that, soldier."

—Man-O-War and Treds

Notes

• Characters mentioned but not seen include: Solarbot, Blaster, President Colton, Ravage, Optimus Prime, the Seacons, the Terrorcons, Cold Slither, the Vehicons, Slugfest, the Recordicons, the Beast Sage, Doctor Go, Bug Bite, and the Last Engineer.

Continuity notes

• After nearly eight years, the G1 GoBots storyline set up in the TransTech story "Withered Hope" is finally followed up, with the Guardians and Renegades still racing against time to save their home universe, which was falling apart thanks to the overlapping frequencies between it and the "Classicsverse". Specific notes include:
  • This story takes place after the end of "Withered Hope", which ended with Path Finder, Small Foot, Road Ranger, Treds, and Bad Boy transported to the "Classicverse" Earth and meeting up with Bug Bite, who informed them of the arrival of another team of GoBots. However, see "errors" below.
• Soundwave and Blitzwing were shown to be good friends back in "Blitzwing Bop".
• Soundwave fills in Blitzwing on the events of "Solar Requiem" while at the Dancitron, this story taking place shortly after it; Soundwave is depicted in the art with his new e-HOBBY toy body, and specifically mentions how Solarbot defeated Blaster by melting his way out of the Autobot communications officer's chest.
• President Colton is noted to have visited the Dancitron before; he was first seen back in "Eye in the Sky", a mirror-universe version of Joe Colton, the original Joe from G.I. Joe.
• While his official function is as the Decepticons' communications officer, Soundwave's BotCon 2012 toy's tech specs noted he had also taken up the unofficial function of morale officer, something which Blitzwing lightly ribs him for in this story.
• Soundwave refers to himself as "Sir Soundwave"; he was knighted by the United Kingdom in "Blitzwing Bop".
• What happened between Soundwave and Solarbot after the events of "Solar Requiem" was first told in Soundwave's history record in issue #65 of the Collectors' Club magazine, serving as set-up for this story. Specifically, it noted that Soundwave mistook the bots with organic implants instead of embers that Solarbot was looking for as the Seacons, which is again reiterated here.

GoBots continuity note and references

• This delves into the long fallow GoBots plot of the Fun Pub stories. Noticeably:

• Lio Convoy was noted to have visited Gargent 984.08 Alpha in a 14/5/2015 Facebook entry of "Ask Vector Prime". Vector Prime also noted in another entry on the same day that the ultimate fate of Gargent 984.08 Alpha would be addressed soon.
• Leader-1 is aware of the Transcendent Technomorph term "Primax". Presumably he learned it from Lio Convoy, who traveled through Axiom Nexus.
  • These references were made possible by collaboration between Andrew Hall and Jim Sorenson.
• Small Foot refers to a previous fight with Buggyman from the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon episode "Gameworld".

Transformers references

• The Dancitron, the leisure club where Blitzwing and Soundwave are relaxing, is a Shattered Glass version of the original Danictron, a dance club secretly used by the Decepticons to hypnotize its patrons into becoming their slaves, seen in the Sunbow The Transformers episode "Auto-Bop".
• When Solarbot asked to interface with Soundwave, the Decepticon thought he would power him up into an all-gold "Super Seibertron" mold. The "all-gold" aspect refers to the Linkin Park Special Edition toy of The Transformers Soundwave colored almost entirely in gold. "Seibertron", meanwhile, was an old fan romanization of Cybertron's Japanese media, which as fallen by the wayside as materials from Japan indicate that it was always meant to be spelled as "Cybertron". See "real-world" references below for more.

Real world references

• While Soundwave and Blitzwing are getting their photos taken by onlookers, Ravage is outside tagging every photo they're in and commenting on them on Spacebog, the Shattered Glass version of Facebook.
• Aside from the Transformers-based references, the idea of a "Super Seibertron mode" references the concept of a Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball Z, a powered-up form used by members of the Saiyan race that causes them to glow and turns their hair gold, a concept that shares narrative DNA with "burning justice," a term used by Transformers fans to describe similar power-ups in the various Transformers animes.

Errors

• There's a fairly big chronology problem with this story. This story comes a bit after the end of "Solar Requiem", which took place after the events of "Invasion", which saw the "Classicsverse" destroyed and its Earth orbiting the "Shatteredverse" Cybertron. However, the end of "Withered Hope" took place directly after "Games of Deception", which happened quite some time before "Invasion". We know from "Dungeons & Dinobots" that the events of "Games of Deception" take place some time in 2009 (Cliffjumper mentions how he and the other Autobots and Decepticons woke up 25 years ago on the Ark), which makes a three-year time gap between the "Games of Deception" and "Invasion". Hall acknowledged that it requires some measure of disbelief, and the story itself justifies the delay by saying the natural disasters caused by the events of Invasion kept Man-O-War and the others delayed, but it is still quite noticeable.
• As with "Withered Hope", the words "GoBot" and "GoBotron" are consistently spelt without the camelcase that they should have, being rendered as "Gobot" and "Gobotron".
• On page one, Soundwave says "mano al mano", a misspelt version of a Spanish phrase that literally means "hand-to-hand" but has since come to mean any competition between two people. It should be rendered "mano a mano."
• The word "stream" in "Gargent universal stream" should be "cluster".
• While it's often difficult to tell how a cartoon character's name is supposed to be spelled, the Buggyman's name was spelled as "BuggyMan" on his original toy packaging and in the Renegade Rhetoric iteration of Ask Vector Prime, whose author consulted GoBots model sheets.

Other trivia

• After the story ends in English, a Japanese translation is provided for Japanese fans.
• This story's title image by Hayato Sakamoto was originally displayed at BotCon 2013, where it was said to be "coming soon". Ultimately, it took nearly three years for the story to arrive. The cover depicts 6 of the 8 GoBots seen in this story (Path Finder, Treds, Small Foot, Man-O-War, the Buggyman, and Rest-Q), GoBotron (two large shells surrounding a smaller inner planet), and the original energy form of Solarbot as seen in "Solar Requiem" (recognizable by the three-pronged "crown" structure" on his "head").

External links

• Spatiotemporal Challengers Part 1: "Sunrise" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club