Shattered Glass issue 3

« Transformers: Shattered Glass #3 »
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	October 27, 2021
Cover date	October 2021
Written by	Danny Lore
Art by	Guido Guidi
Colors	John-Paul Bove
Letters by	Neil Uyetake
Editor	David Mariotte and Riley Farmer

Starscream remembers his greatest failure as he and Megatron search for allies in the underbelly of Gold City.

Synopsis

Gold City might be the capital of Goldbug's breakaway Autobot nation, but it is far from an impenetrable fortress—amidst the rusted infrastructure and decaying slums, Starscream and Megatron meet with Starscream's contacts Ravage and Laserbeak. The two cassettes lead them into a disused underground maintenance corridor to meet with Soundwave, who's established a pirate "Decepticon Radio" station right under Goldbug's nose. Plenty of Decepticons have evaded Autobot patrols and bloodthirsty bodyscrappers, and Soundwave uses his secure frequencies to constantly check in on former Decepticons and let them know that they're not alone. Though Starscream points out that Soundwave's worked himself to exhaustion, the Decepticon morale officer explains that he's already called in the remaining Seekers; Starscream's recent misadventure out by Metroplex has caught the attention of every major player on Cybertron, and Soundwave figures that they could use some extra friends to defend Starscream, who's encoded the secret of awakening the Titans in his spark.

Before the war, Starscream and his research partner Jetfire came to Iacon to meet with the Senate and stumbled into Megatron's latest civil rights protest. But while the sight of a simple miner taking a stand against a corrupt system inspired Starscream, Jetfire bluntly reminds his friend that they're here to discuss funding their efforts to excavate and communicate with a sleeping Titan. When they approach the ambitious Orion Pax to discuss funding, Orion makes them an appealing offer: he can get them all the funding they need, so long as they get him results... and keep their research strictly confidential. Jetfire is intrigued by this proposition, but Starscream, remembering Megatron's words, refuses to compromise his principles and leaves the room in disgust.

Having relocated to an out-of-the-way watering hole to await their reinforcements, Starscream lays out his plan: if they want to take the fight back to the Autobots, then they'll need a new generation of Decepticons on their side after they take control of Metroplex. While the corrupt and oppressive Autobot warlords have made no shortage of possible enemies, the hard part will be building up their army in secret... but Megatron warns Starscream to keep his voice down. Somebody's watching them—and when Megatron flips their table, he dislodges Eject, a hidden Autobot spy!

Having secured their funding, Starscream and Jetfire can turn their attention back to their archeological work. As Cybertronians work to unearth Metroplex's colossal head, Starscream exults at the possibility of one day finding a way to communicate with the giant, but Jetfire remains concerned—their research grants won't last forever. Starscream makes him promise that they're not going back to Orion Pax, who clearly wants to control the Titan and its history for his own ends, and Jetfire reluctantly agrees.

Where there's Eject, Blaster and his minions aren't far behind—eager to collect a double bounty, the Autobots attack; admist the barroom brawl, Megatron and Starscream keep Eject at bay, then fatally tag-team Playback before Blaster immobilizes Starscream with a paralyzing frequency. Realizing that Starscream's secret must be kept out of Autobot hands, Megatron sacrifices himself by tackling Blaster to the ground, then shouts for Starscream to run before the Autobots can catch up. Starscream's unfailing loyalty means that he obeys the order without even thinking about it, cursing his own stupidity for not defying orders to assist his leader...

With funding running low, Jetfire makes the dramatic decision to go behind Starscream's back to meet with Orion Pax, who's already begun amassing a cabal of like-minded Autobots. Jetfire explains their plan to use Starscream as a conduit to speak with the dormant Titan, but Bumblebee doesn't trust known Decepticon sympathizer Starscream. At that moment, Orion hears the sound of a wing scraping on the wall outside—Starscream has followed Jetfire to the meeting! Hauled before the Autobots, Jetfire insists that Starscream's not a Decepticon and begs Starscream to back him up. Starscream defiantly tells the group that he's not a Decepticon... only because the Decepticons are fighters looking to overthrow a broken system, and Jetfire betrayed his trust. As Jetfire punches Starscream in the face and crosses the floor to stand with Orion, Starscream fled the Senate building, travelled to Metroplex, and set about destroying everything they'd worked on to keep it out of Orion's hands. By the time that the Autobots arrived to stop him, Starscream had destroyed everything except the necessary technology to make the mental merge, and impulsively plugged himself into Metroplex's mind without thinking in the hopes that the Titan's data archives would provide him with the answers he sought: without the proper safety procedures, however, his attempts to bind Metroplex's archives to his spark left his systems damaged and corrupted. Kilocycles later, after Megatron's defeat on Earth, Starscream returned to Metroplex; while the Autobots had previously attempted to bridge the gap between Titans and Cybertronians, only Starscream's spark proved strong enough to truly make the connection. With the secrets of the Titans now bound to his spark, the Autobots will stop at nothing to find him...

As Starscream tries to flee, a shot from behind nails him in the head and knocks him unconscious. When the Decepticon flier comes to, he's horrified to see that he's been captured by Goldbug and the 'bot responsible for everything—Jetfire!

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Decepticons	Autobots	Others
Starscream (1) Megatron (2) Laserbeak (3) Ravage (4) Soundwave (5) Scavenger (12)	Prowl (6) Jetfire (7) Orion Pax (8) Steeljaw (9) Eject (10) Blaster (13) Playback (14) Ramhorn (15) Jazz (16) Ironhide (17) Bumblebee/Goldbug (18) Chromedome (19)	Metroplex (11)

Quotes

"As long as a single Decepticon is out there, someone's gotta watch out for them. That's what I'm here for. Welcome to the Decepticon radio."

—Soundwave

"We've turned into nothing but a bunch of barbarians masquerading as civilized! We want to excavate a Titan, Jetfire, can you not see how that relates to how we treat miners?"

—Starscream

"Imagine the headlines: Jetfire and Starscream Break the Communication Barrier with Titans! We will be lauded for changing how our planet functions! There is so much history and knowledge in this magnificently forged dome. On second thought—the headline should read Starscream and Jetfire. It's more euphonious."
"If you don't back up, Starscream, I'll "euphonious" you back to your original hot spot, I swear."

—Starscream and Jetfire

"Y'all tryna have a party without me? Ain't there an old story about what happens when you don't invite the biggest and baddest to the event?"
"Blaster. You've got it all wrong. There's no party here."
"Ain't that a shame. Fortunately, I always bring the party with me."

—Blaster versus Megatron

"Megatron warned me about grandiose fantasies about the future. But the present is just as dangerous."

—Starscream

Notes

Continuity notes

• Metroplex made a brief appearance in issue #1. While this comic only shows his head above ground, issue #1 showed both his head and upper torso, so perhaps the Autobots tried digging him out further at some point?
• The first flashback in this comic dovetails into the first two flashbacks from the previous issue, by showing Megatron's anti-empurata protest and a little bit of the subsequent fallout from Starscream's point of view.

Transformers references

• Ravage and Soundwave were two of the most popular characters from the original Shattered Glass run, so it should be no surprise that they've returned here after making nonspeaking cameos in the previous issue. Although Soundwave still sports his totally radical bandanna, they've been drastically reimagined: Ravage eschews his LOLcats speak and traditional love of late-2000s Internet culture in favor of an inexplicable Brooklyn accent, while Soundwave drops his laid-back surfer dude characterization entirely. In a similar vein, Blaster's depiction as a rough-and-tumble brawler is a far cry from how the original Shattered Glass prose stories characterized him as a German-accented lover of classical music and a general tightass.
• While discussing their impending scientific breakthrough, Jetfire playfully threatens to boot Starscream all the way back to his hot spot, one of several mechanisms responsible for generating new sparks in IDW's original Transformers continuity.
• Characters speak of "cycles", "kilocycles" and "megacycles", adopting author Brian Ruckley's timekeeping system from the rebooted IDW universe. In his internal narration, Starscream notes that the Decepticons lost the war almost a megacycle ago—assuming that these terms refer to the same increments of time as they do over in Transformers, this would set the current timeframe of the comic nearly three thousand Earth years after the end of the war.
• In addition to Blaster's usual helpers Eject, Steeljaw, and Ramhorn, he's also teamed up with an evil version of Playback from the Generation 1 cartoon episode "Fight or Flee". Although neither version of the character has ever actually transformed, Shattered Glass Playback sports what's unmistakably cassette kibble, because the "Ask Vector Prime" Facebook feature described one iteration of the character as an Autobot Mini-Cassette, retconning him into the original Playback from the Marvel UK The Transformers comic.
• Starscream and Jetfire's attempts to communicate with the dormant Metroplex are reminiscent of cityspeaking. Perhaps this has something to do with normal-universe Starscream's rivalry with accomplished cityspeaker Windblade in the Windblade and Till All Are One comics; given that this is a mirror universe, it makes a sort of shaky mirror-universe sense that Shattered Glass Starscream would be a cityspeaker, or... something?

Errors

• On page two, Ravage's speech bubble says "we was tryna ta find out", which essentially reads as "trying to to find out".
• On page three, Soundwave's Decepticon insignia is purple instead of red.

Covers (4)

• Cover A: Starscream versus the Autobots in homage to Herb Trimpe's cover to Marvel US #25, by Alex Milne
• Cover B: Starscream, by Fico Ossio
• Retailer incentive cover: Starscream, by Sara Pitre-Durocher
• Hasbro Pulse exclusive cover: Starscream takes flight, by Casey Coller

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