The Special Teams Have Arrived
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| "The Special Teams Have Arrived" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | 29th March 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Writer | Simon Furman | ||||||||||||
| Art | John Stokes | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Marvel Comics continuity | ||||||||||||
Introducing 24 new characters in three pages!
Synopsis
A TV news channel announces that Pullen Power Plant is been evacuated due to risk of landslides. Optimus Prime is concerned that the Decepticons might take advantage of the distraction and leaves the Protectobots in charge of keeping the plant safe. His hunch appears to be correct—as he leaves he spots several suspicious military vehicles heading the way he just came. Meanwhile, Blades warns the other Protectobots about a truck and four cars arriving at the plant. The truck announces that they are the Stunticons and they combine into Menasor but are in turn surprised when the Protectobots respond by forming Defensor.
Optimus Prime contacts the Aerialbots to warn them about the military vehicles he saw earlier. Air Raid pursues a space shuttle with a Decepticon insignia to see it merge with the other Combaticons and form Bruticus. To even the odds, Silverbolt orders the Aerialbots to unite into Superion.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
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Notes
- Seriously, that's over 1.5 new characters per panel of story. That's got to be some kind of record.
- Marvel UK must really have been under pressure from Hasbro to advertise these guys. This preview came out nine issues before the Special Teams were showcased in "Second Generation!" (which itself was written as a vision of the future in order to get them into the comic more quickly[1]).
- Speaking of which, "The Special Teams Have Arrived" purports to be a preview of "Second Generation!" and is extremely similar in many ways. Several panels are nearly identical (see right) and some lines of dialogue also match up. Notably, Menasor says "Take him out, Dead End" in both versions of events, but in "Second Generation!" it is Drag Strip who is holding the gun.
- That aside, this just about fits into continuity with the events depicted in "Second Generation!", but since those events were revealed to be a Matrix-induced vision it's debatable whether they really happened in fiction; the vision may have been more of a guide than a prophecy.
- "The Special Teams Have Arrived" was also available separately from the Transformers comic as a freebie from toy shops who stocked the Transformers toys.
Covers (2)
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Original -
The Transformers Classics UK Volume 2
- Original cover: Superion and Menasor duke it out in the desert, by ???
- The Transformers Classics UK Volume 2 cover: Centurion, Professor Morris and his neural relay link, Soundwave, Shockwave, Megatron, Buster's battlesuit, the Overlord and Nightstalker, by Andrew Wildman.
Reprints
Footnotes
- ↑ Simon Furman: "There were odd occasions where Hasbro UK would actually get it together and coordinate a story with a toy release. The Special Teams (in UK #63-65) story was one such instance, and in that case (because we were some way off reprinting the corresponding US issues) we had to work them in somehow (chronologically ahead of time)." TransFans.net - Interviews: Simon Furman - Part 1 'The Past'.
