Departure

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We've seen this cover layout somewhere...
"Departure"
Publisher 3H Productions
Cover date July 13, 2001 (BotCon 2001)
Story Glen Hallit
Script Glen Hallit
Art Dan Khanna
Lettering Richard Starkings and Comicraft
Editor Rob Gerbracht, Jon Hartman, Dan Khanna
Continuity Universe

The Oracle gathers a motley crew of Transformers and sends them on various missions.

Synopsis

In the near future, Daniel Witwicky (now grown to adulthood) and Wheelie are killed while engaged in a battle against a horde of Nightbirds. This sends Daniel's friend Arcee into a deep state of depression. Rodimus and Springer talk about undergoing the Maximal Upgrade.

Three hundred years later on Vehicon-controlled Cybertron, Optimus Primal and Nightscream are transporting the three Deployers while under attack from Vehicons. They are rescued by Ramulus and Primal Prime, who take them to meet the rest of the Wreckers team. Apelinq recounts for Optimus their mutual battle against Shokaract, which Optimus does not fully remember.

In the Oracle chamber, the Wreckers are joined by the Mutants and Dinobots. The Oracle, after propounding vaguely at length, sends the three teams on a series of missions. Optimus and Nightscream are deemed to "have witnessed too much", and their memories of these meetings are purged.

Meanwhile, Megatron has created two new Vehicon generals to hunt down these new wayward Cybertronians.

The Wreckers meet up with Rodimus, who has been trying to convince the morbid Arcee to join them. After she bids them leave, Fractyl gives it one last try, to which Arcee is more open... only for Fractyl to get blown away by the arriving Vehicon generals. Furious, Arcee blasts Quake and Blastcharge out of the way and attempts to heal Fractyl.

Apelinq remorselessly steals someone else's catchphrase. ("Choom")

Looking for a starship, the Wreckers arrive at Shuttle Complex Ohm in Dodecahex, only to find it overrun with Vehicons under Spy Streak's command. A battle ensues. The arrival of the Wreckers' air support (Cyclonus, Skywarp, and Rotorbolt), as well as Arcee and the newly-Transmetalized Fractyl, turns the tide against the Vehicons. Blastcharge gets sliced in half by Fractyl while Tigatron vaporizes Quake. The Wreckers escape on the shuttle, leaving Spy Streak trapped in the rubble as Cyclonus detonates explosives that destroy the entire complex. Megatron observes their escape and advises them to run while they can.

In space, the Wreckers have little time to relax, as a stowaway has showed up and started beating up passengers for no apparent reason. He says his name is Devcon...

(Characters in italic text appear only in the past or in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots/Maximals Decepticons/Predacons/Vehicons Others

Dinobots

Humans

Nebulans

Deployers

Mutants

Notes

Continuity notes

  • "Depature" and the following issue, "Betrayal", will make a number of references to plot points and events from the 1980s cartoon. This is in contrast to the previous Shokaract stories, which nodded more to the comics.
  • Doctor Fujiyama the Famous Scientist and the Nightbirds previous appeared in Enter the Nightbird. Apparently he learned zilch since then.
  • In 3H continuity, the Maximal Upgrade is coming in almost immediately after the Pax Cybertronia is signed.
  • Springer refers to Rodimus as "kid" and the guy protests he's Rodimus "now", implying this is Hot Rod changing his name and he isn't currently the Matrix-bearer. Whoever is running the Autobots (presumably a resurrected Optimus) goes unmentioned.
  • The majority of this story takes place in the second season of Beast Machines.
  • Amusingly, Optimus Primal realizes that Primal Prime uses his old body, the Primal Prime toy being a redeco of Optimal Optimus, but fails to note the same with Apelinq, who is a redeco of Transmetal Optimus Primal.
  • It's only here that we learn people did not die in a big explosion when Shokaract went up in "Departure". Instead, transwarp portals were opened to get everyone to safety between panels! It's not stated who opened them, though. The panel art implies Soundwave is opening at least one.
  • Many new characters are protoforms abandoned on Earth after the Beast Wars, explaining what happened to all those pods launched in the cartoon.
  • The Oracle's memory wipe of Primal and Nightscream is intended to make sure this issue doesn't conflict with the events of the television show. Within the story, however, it is so that Optimus continues on his path of the technorganic reformatting of Cybertron-which the Quintesssons believed would let them conquer it, as show in later issues.
  • Blastcharge is a Great War veteran.
  • Fractyl has lost a friend, which is almost certainly a reference to his fellow BotCon Pred Vice Grip. Nothing specific is said and this may have been intended for "Primeval Dawn".
  • Alpha Trion sacrificed himself to reactivate Vector Sigma, as shown in The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 2, and would later appear as a spirit in the Matrix in The Rebirth. His virtual body shown at the end of the series is based off Lio Convoy with Beast Machines Snarl's head, although the toy concept would eventually switch to a Snarl redeco before being cancelled. Eventually, he would return to a physical body in the Universe storyline, albeit his original Generation 1 form.

Errors

  • Cybertron is celebrating peace on page 7 but this is several months after the treaty. Is it a really long party?
  • When the Oracle is first addressing the crowd, all the text in the speech bubble ("It will soon be...") is repeated in the next bubble.
  • The Oracle keeps calling T-Wrecks "T-Rex".
  • Optimus and Nightscream have their memories wiped, but they'd travelled 100 kilometres in search of the Deployers, who are now with the Wreckers, so shouldn't this lengthy gap and lost equipment leave them with more questions than it prevents?
  • Becoming a Transmetal was unprecedented until the Beast Wars and was presented as something that required transwarp explosions or weird science, yet Arcee became one centuries ago!
  • Megatron has a scene devoted to his new generals but Spy Streak is completely absent, yet there he is suddenly showing up at the battle and sentient. Primal Prime even says "the two generals" in the page after Streak speaks, implying he apparently isn't one.
  • Rotorbolt's excessively loud in his alternate mode, but as we don't have the WHUPWHUPWHUP sound effects until "Betrayal" there's no actual sign of this beyond a line.

Transformers references

  • The shuttle that the Autobots, minus Daniel and Wheelie, use to escape the horde of Nightbirds is actually the Autobot Sky Garry from Return of Convoy. The transport it drops is a Micro Trailer, though here, there's nothing "micro" about it!
  • Of the views of the fireworks after the Pax Cybertronia, at least one of them is wearing the "Datsun" body type of Prowl and his moldmates.
  • As Arcee looks sullenly at the image of her and Daniel, the weapons seen mounted on the wall nearby are Hot Rod's photon pistols (drawn to toy-accurate specifications), and the laser-sword and shield he used during his duel with the auto-combatant in The Transformers: The Movie.
  • For Rodimus, undergoing the Maximal Upgrade means a change from his original cartoon character model, magenta coloration and all, to an accurate rendering of his original Generation 1 toy.
  • The Wreckers are a squad from the Marvel UK comics.

Real-world references

  • The Nightbirds are functionally identical to each other, but their accent colors vary between blue, orange, red, and purple. This is a reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whose bandanas were the same colors.

Production notes

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