Drift - Empire of Stone issue 1
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| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | November 26, 2014 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | November 2014 | ||||||||||||
| Written by | Shane McCarthy | ||||||||||||
| Art by | Guido Guidi | ||||||||||||
| Inks by | Stephen Baskerville | ||||||||||||
| Colors by | John-Paul Bove | ||||||||||||
| Letters by | Tom B. Long | ||||||||||||
| Editor | John Barber | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | IDW continuity | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | Current era (2014) | ||||||||||||
After capturing a trio of troublemaking Decepticons, the wandering Drift is joined by Ratchet to investigate the larger threat they warn of.
Synopsis
Ever since leaving the Lost Light, Drift has been bouncing around the outer rim of the galaxy, taking out rogue Decepticons who have been causing trouble on alien worlds. It is on one such world that we now join the ex-Autobot, as he saves a young alien boy and his father from Decepticon fire, before diving for cover in the cerise waters of the ocean. At the orders of their commander, Grit, the two Decepticon gunmen fire into the water, but Drift is too good for them, bursting out of the ocean, and taking them both down with a series of well-aimed kicks, punches, and sword-swipes. Grit draws a gun on him, and the pair size each other up for a moment before making their moves; Drift outpaces Grit's blasts and quickly subdues him.
The defeated Decepticons are paraded before the aliens they tried to oppress, then loaded onto Drift's shuttle. Grit assumes Drift is taking them back to Cybertron, but is horrified to discover he plans to hand them over to the Galactic Council, which hates Transformers. When the shuttle arrives at council outpost WHZ-745, Drift gets a surprise of his own: Ratchet has tracked him down, and has come to bring him back to the Lost Light. Drift refuses, content with his current path, causing Grit to scoff audibly; there are more Decepticons out there than Drift realizes, he claims, but will say no more than that. Ratchet tries to get the details out of him by offering to take him back to Cybertron, rather than leave him with the council, but even that is not enough to sway Grit... but it is enough to convince his two flunkies to cough up the details instead. After a brief argument, Drift relents and allows Ratchet to accompany him as they scout out the location provided, and the pair set off.
As Drift's battered little shuttle arrives at the designated world, a scan of the planet reveals only faint readings, suggesting nothing big is down there. Alas, this is quickly proven untrue when a huge energy blast shoots up from the planet and nails the shuttle, bringing it crashing down to the surface in flames. Ratchet, Drift, and Grit emerge from the shuttle just seconds before it is blown up by a missile attack from a small squad of Decepticons. Hurled clear by the blast, Ratchet and Drift watch as Grit is surrounded by the Decepticons, who suspect him of being a traitor simply because he was on a ship with Autobots. Refusing to let the Decepticon be executed, Drift springs into action, and when he starts to struggle against his foes, Ratchet comes to his aid. The fight is soon brought to an abrupt conclusion, however, when another, larger squad of Decepticons arrives, and Drift, Ratchet, and Grit are taken into custody. They are marched back to the Decepticons' base, a large stone castle that Drift appears to recognize, and presented to the Decepticons' leader, who welcomes "Deadlock" back into the fold, and expects him to join them in tearing the star system apart!
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Others |
|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Cybertronians handle our own in house. 'Cons and 'Bots. We don't involve outsiders. That's the rule."
"Here's a rule. Be shoosh. How's that for a rule? Is that a fun rule?"
- —Grit and Drift
"I'm a Decepticon. I am strong and I am powerful. Torture me, lock me up... I don't care. You can make me stew in a Galactic Council prison for a million years and I ain't ever gonna rat."
"I'll rat! Can I rat?"
"Me too! I'll rat as well please."
- —Grit and his flunkies
"Not getting much of a readout from the planet."
"That's because half your sensors aren't working. What happened to all of this?"
"Adventures happened, okay? Amazing adventures happened to it."
- —Drift and Ratchet
"'Light readings.' 'Not much in the way of tech.'"
"You know, you shouldn't live in the past. There is only the true moment in which we're currently living."
"You talk like that to deliberately annoy me, don't you?"
"Pretty much."
- —Ratchet and Drift
"There's no point in living if you sacrifice everything you are to do it."
- —Drift
Notes
Continuity notes
- Empire of Stone catches up with Drift following his departure from the Lost Light around a year and a half prior to the publication of this story, in More than Meets the Eye #16. Meanwhile, Ratchet's departure from the Lost Light to bring Drift back would not be portrayed until nearly half a year later in More than Meets the Eye #40.
- The Galactic Council has been an occasional presence in More than Meets the Eye, first showing up in the 2012 annual. The hatred of Transformers by other races, though, dates back to Drift's own original Spotlight issue.
- Vanquish previously appeared in a vision experienced by Windblade in issue #4 of her self-titled mini-series. However, see Errors.
Transformers references
- The twin Decepticons working under Grit are a pair of desperadoes from the first episode of the Victory anime.
- The team of Decepticons who Ratchet and Drift battle are also from the Victory anime; they appear among a crowd of generics in the episode "Rescue! Guyhawk" (pictured).
- Continuing the Victory theme is an appearance by Hellbat, one of the main Victory Decepticons, making his first appearance in Western fiction, outside of BotCon comics.
- The leader of this team of Decepticons is a Generation 1 incarnation of Robots in Disguise Megatron, with the only real difference being the presence of Decepticon symbols on his shoulders. He is unnamed this issue; issue #2 would reveal his name to be "Gigatron", which is the Robots in Disguise character's Japanese name.
Errors
- While it is not unusual to see a character who is traditionally a Micromaster appearing as a full-size Transformer—the same having happened with Fixit over in Robots in Disguise—it is a little odd to see Grit and Vanquish chosen to be treated this way over the many other possible Micromasters who could have taken their roles. This is because they are normally Micromaster Combiners, and Windblade #4 just got through establishing that the IDW version of Micromaster Combiners hail from a colony world of their own, separate from the war, with no Autobots or Decepticons. It's not really an error in the case of Grit (just a very odd choice), but Vanquish actually appeared in the aforementioned Windblade issue. We could perhaps rationalize, however, that the colonist Vanquish in Windblade vol. 1 #4 is his Autobot Return of Convoy counterpart.
- Ratchet says that Drift was "just following orders" when he took the fall for Rodimus after the Overlord fiasco; in actuality, Drift volunteered to do so.
Covers (3)
- Regular cover: Drift, by Alex Milne and Josh Perez
- Subscription cover: A blank cover for sketches
- 30th Anniversary cover: A pencil drawing of Drift and Ratchet in "another fine mess", by Guido Guidi, designed to look like one of IDW's Artist's Edition books, including visible page border.
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