Ghost in the Machine (IDW)

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« Revolutionaries #8
"Ghost in the Machine:
Optimus Prime vs. Joe Colton"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published September 27, 2017
Cover date July 2017
Written by John Barber
Art by Ron Joseph (pg. 1-7), Fico Ossio (pg. 8-28)
Colors by David Garcia Cruz (Joseph pages), Sebastian Cheng (Ossio pages)
Letters by Tom B. Long
Editor David Hedgecock
Assistant editor David Mariotte
Continuity IDW continuity
Chronology Current era

With Baron Ironblood's identity revealed, Optimus Prime joins the fight, and the Revolutionaries make their last stand to protect the Talisman and save its mutated victims.

Synopsis

It is being brought.
It is being brought.
Oh, he's doin' somethin'...

Another editor is doing extensive changes to this article right now, and is requesting that all other editors hold off on any edits until their work is finished, in order to make sure nothing important gets lost.

Character in italic text appear only in flashbacks.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons G.I. Joe Ironblood's alliance Other humans

Quotes

Notes

Continuity notes

  • BNN, the news network reporting on the aftermath of All Hail Megatron was introduced in issue #14 of the 2009-2011 Transformers comic book, in which a similar report on the Decepticon invasion, also spotlighting Devastator, was shown. Maybe it's even supposed to be the same broadcast!
  • As part of the All Hail Megatron flashback, Colton and Scarlett walk past a young Marissa Faireborn, who was revealed to have been on the scene in Robots in Disguise #29.
  • Colton and Scarlett observe the damaged Statue of Liberty, which has a hole blasted through it, but is otherwise still standing. This rather specific bit of damage was done in All Hail Megatron #12, when Omega Supreme pinned Devastator against the statue and fired his blaster through him (and it) at point-blank range.
  • Colton losing his hand to the Dire Wraiths was first revealed in First Strike #0. That story came out in June, but was originally intended to be released in July as part of Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook #3, which was also the same month in which this issue was meant to come out (see "other trivia" below). Various delays did not do this any favors!
  • The young hoodlums watch Optimus Prime's speech from The Transformers #49. However, see Errors for issues with the timeline.
  • The Scheltevan bunker in which the Talisman was housed in Revolutionaries #1 is revealed to have been provided to the villains by the Iron Klaw. The facility was an I.R.O.N.-owned one (as hinted at by the presence of the corporation's logo on its walls in that issue), and as explained in Revolutionaries #3, the Klaw is the majority shareholder in the I.R.O.N. corporation.
  • Blackrock communes with Onyx Prime via Infraspace, the limbo between life and death that made its sole previous appearance waaaay back in 2007's Escalation #6.
  • Mike Power appeared to die in issue #6.
  • Optimus Prime compares the M.A.S.S. Device to orbital bounce technology, the teleportation technology used by the Autobots back during Simon Furman's tenure on IDW's titles from 2005-2008. It's called an "orbital bounce" because the traveler's signal leaves one location on Earth, zooms up into space, where it's "bounced" off an orbiting body back down to a second location on the planet. This is how the M.A.S.S. Device worked in IDW's first G.I. Joe series, relying on a "relay star" satellite to "bounce" the signal, but that satellite fell out of orbit in 2013's G.I. Joe: Special Missions #5. It remains to be seen if Destro launched a second satellite, or if the advancements that have implicitly been made to M.A.S.S. (such as the fact it no longer requires those teleported to wear "recall" tags in order for them to be teleported back) mean it no longer requires it to operate.
  • The woman looking for her boyfriend appeared on the first page of the first issue of the series, as did her dog and her departed lover.
  • Having not previously been shown to be part of Colton's evil cabal during Revolutionaries, Miles Mayhem appears among the amassed villains on the final page. How he came to work with the group is detailed in First Strike #3's back-up strip.

Transformers references

  • Mayday refers to Blackrock with the nickname "G.B."—short for "Garrison Blackrock in this continuity, but also a reference to the original version of the character from the Marvel comic, who was "G.B. Blackrock." This probably stood for "Gary Bennett," which was the name of the real-life friend who writer Bob Budiansky named Blackrock after.
  • When Centurion dies, the color fades from his armor in the now-traditional manner that began with Optimus Prime in The Transformers: The Movie.

Real-life references

  • Kreiger paraphrases Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias when he gloatingly calls upon Mayday to "look unto his works and despair!"
  • Blackrock calls himself "the best programmer since Ada Lovelace," history's first computer programmer.
  • Major Bludd bids the heroes "Ooroo" as he teleports out, an Australian slang term meaning "see you later."

Errors

  • This issue presents Colton as losing his hand to the Wraiths prior to Optimus Prime's annexation of Earth. That would mean that it was his Dire Wraith duplicate who was appointed head of the Earth Defense Command in The Transformers #56, and that the real Colton never had that role. This contradicts First Strike, which has consistently been written from the perspective that Colton was only replaced after being appointed to that role; issue #0 had Colton familiar with the Decepticon Blitzwing following his capture in The Transformers #57, but was unaware what had become of him after his Wraith doppelganger handed him over to Miles Mayhem, while issue #2 described how he attempted to go through official channels to sanction use of the Talisman against the Transformers after Prime annexed Earth, only to then discover that the Wraiths had infested the government.
  • For the single panel in which she appears, Ossio continues to draw Cover Girl as part of this Joe team, as he did last issue, when the script called for Lady Jaye. In contrast to last issue, however, here, Cover Girl is colored with her correct blonde hair. So who even knows who's supposed to be there?
  • A typo in the backmatter credits Robots in Disguise issue #19 with containing Marissa's appearance in All Hail-era New York, instead of #29.

Other trivia

  • Originally solicited for release in July, this issue arrives significantly late, two months after the fact, in the final week of September. It was intended for release before the the First Strike crossover began, but in practice, wound up released on the same week as the fourth issue of the series. Oof.
  • This oversized issue retails at $4.99, featuring 28 story pages instead of the standard 20, and an eight-page bonus section looking back over some of the many, many Easter eggs sprinkled into all eight issues of the series.

Covers (4)

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