A Brush With Infamy–Prologue
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| "A Brush With Infamy" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive) | ||||||||||||
| First published | November 17, 2016 | ||||||||||||
| By | Jim Sorenson and David Bishop | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars: Uprising | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | late 24th century | ||||||||||||
Nucleon remembers...
Synopsis
The verdict is in and despite all of Swindle's legal efforts, the Quintesson judge sentences Galvatron and Scourge to death and their binary-bonded partners to indefinite detention. That's where it ended, but where did it start?
For Nucleon, it technically starts when his ancestors fled war-torn Cybertron and founded the colony Rebirth. More specifically, he tells us, it started when the Decepticons ran an infiltration protocol on Nebulos and the Human Confederacy got in the middle of it. Things escalated, and the mad scientists Zarak and Fausto Borx created the war-altering binary bonding technology. First it was the Headmasters, then the Autobots invented Targetmaster tech, then the titanic double-Headmasters... By the time the Autobots had won, Nebulos was utterly lifeless. Horrified by the Scouring of Nebulos, Earth (which Nucleon disparages as ignoring humanity's own involvement) contained the Transformer war within a blockade.
Galvatron had tasted the power of binary-bonding and thought of turning people into living batteries now, and fell upon Rebirth in the hope of using its small, non-transforming Cyberdroids as "Powermasters". Terrible, right? Not for Nucleon! He felt the planet was a decaying oligarchy under the Optimus and joined up with the Malignus to fight them after his own conjunx Kari was arrested. When Galvatron arrived, Nucleon happily signed up and even invented the Powermaster process in the hope of stopping the Optimus.
Malignus's founders Doomshot and Clench joined him in making Galvatron a "Triple-Threat Master" (that power was a kick!) but as soon as they'd nobbled the Optimus and renamed the planet "Master", the Autobots showed up and yet another planet was being torn apart in a war by proxy factions and binary-bonded 'masters. The Autobot leader, taking three partners, became Triple-Threat Prime, and eventually Fortress Maximus was dusted off and thrown at Zarak's new beast, MegaZarak.
In the end, the Decepticons won and Master was, er, 'saved'. Unfortunately that meant Galvatron turned to the human blockade. And with the 'masters tempering his madness and giving him greater smarts, he came up with the Grendel Gambit...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | World Watcher Nebulans | Decepticons | Hive Nebulans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"It’s ironic, isn’t it? Ours is a history of oppressor and oppressed, changing places on a never-ending dance stretching back to time immemorial."
- —Nucleon
Notes
- Characters mentioned but not seen include: Swindle, Cyclonus, and Shockwave.
- This "story" was released within "Not All Megatrons", translated into Cybertronix and sprinkled into that story between page breaks.
- Beast Wars Uprising continues to cover up just who was the Autobot leader at the time the Great War ended, with Triple-Threat Prime vaguely described as the Autobot's leader and nothing more. Note that Nucleon refers to the Optimus as being named after the "once-and-future" Optimus Prime, suggesting he did indeed die and come back at some point. The fact that this Triple-Threat is called a Prime in the first place, and that his partners are those who've bonded with him in other continuities is a pretty good indicator it probably is Optimus himself. "Derailment" would address this subject further.
Errors
- We're told Galvatron had both tasted the power of binary-bonding and that he'd never done it before out of disgust.
Continuity notes
- This story fills the readers in on the details of the previously mentioned Scouring of Nebulos, the proverbial last straw for humanity and their tolerance of the Autobot / Decepticon war, and the seeds of the Great Push, Galvatron's big breakout plan.
- Nucleon had thought about his backstory during "Not All Megatrons", which introduced him, Doomshot, and Clench.
- Shockwave and Overlord had brief periods of Decepticon leadership, the latter after Galvatron was executed.
- Dante and Caliburn were previously mentioned in the Cybertronix of "Broken Windshields" as civilians on Cybertron in the present day.
- Llyra was mentioned in "Head Games" as a "wife" and "mother" in the Witwicky family. This story indicates that in this continuity, she was the wife of Daniel Witwicky and therefore mother of Galen Witwicky and Olin Witwicky.
- In addition to several other events the audience has already learnt of, Nucleon mentions in passing a new one called "The Rending".
Transformers references
- The biggie is that this story brings in elements from the Marvel, Sunbow, and anime takes on Headmasters! The World Watchers of the comics go up against the Hive from the cartoon, with various 'master partners coming from both sources, while the planet Master with its teeny Transformers is from the anime. In a sneaky gag, the planet is originally called Rebirth (after the cartoon's Headmaster story) and then supplanted by Master (as in the anime ignoring "The Rebirth").
- Artfire had a partner named Nightstick who was basically Fracas in a new package. Regular Fracas replaces him and then defects as a playful way to explain why they look identical.[1]
- Being released contemporaneously with the Titans Return toyline, this story makes use of many new Titans Return toys, sometimes repurposing them into separate characters from the portrayals in the Titans Return toy bio continuity. Skytread, for example, is the revamped Titan Master form of Flywheels in Titans Return, but in this story, Skytread is a separate character and the Nebulan Headmaster partner of Flywheels.
- Infiltration protocol is taken from the IDW continuity.
- Going by the way Nucleon says Shockwave was in charge for "a few epochs", it seems the set-up with him followed that of the G1 cartoon, where Shockwave remained in charge on Cybertron, rather than going to Earth.
- Llyra is still the daughter of a Decepticon Headmaster but here it's Borx rather than Zarak.
- The planets Paradron, Gigantion, Omnitron, and Opulus get name-dropped by Nucleon as colony worlds.
- Hunter is a Cyberdroid version of Hunter O'Nion from IDW while Daburu Leo merges Daburu from Titans Return with Daburu's physical basis White Leo.[2]
- Optimus and Malignus were the factions in Estrela's Brazilian version of G1. The Malignus as "revolutionaries" comes from "Gone Too Far".
- Rebirth's political setup is akin to the Aligned and IDW backstories, where Cybertron is a corrupt oligarchy.
- Another Megazarak is also a planet-killing baddie!
Real world references
- "Grendel Gambit" is presumably named for the Scandinavian mythical monster.
- Fausto Borx gets his first name from the legend of Faust, where a very smart man sells his soul for material gain and it goes badly for him. Hmmm.
References
External links
- "A Brush With Infamy" translated (PDF)
