Showdown!
| The name or term "Showdown" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Showdown (disambiguation). |
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 Brokeback Cybertron | |||||||||||||
| "Showdown!" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | ||||||||||||
| First published | May 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | September 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Writer | Bob Budiansky | ||||||||||||
| Penciler | Herb Trimpe | ||||||||||||
| Inkers | Ian Akin and Brian Garvey | ||||||||||||
| Colorist | Nel Yomtov | ||||||||||||
| Letterer | Janice Chiang | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Michael Carlin | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Marvel Comics continuity | ||||||||||||
Donny Finkleberg tries to escape from Ravage, and gets some help from Skids and a new friend.
Synopsis
Donny Finkleberg is on the run from the Decepticons, and Ravage is hot on his trail. Stumbling across a temporarily vacant camp site, Donny steals some clothes and buries his old costume. Realizing that he needs to find the Autobots, Donny unwittingly passes the injured Skids by. Not far behind him, Ravage destroys the campsite, momentarily fooled by the abandoned Robot-Master uniform.
Elsewhere, in a small town several miles away, register girl Charlene is given a lift by her co-worker Wendell, as her car has recently broken down. On the drive she discusses with him how she wants some adventure in her life, and persuades him to pull over so they can explore an old trail. There, they find Skids with his radio playing, and arrange to have him taken to Bob's Service. Bob gets the van up and running, and Charlene drives off, leaving Wendell with the bill.
As she pulls out, the van catches the eye of Jake Dalrymple, who recognizes it from an earlier encounter and tries to run it off the road. Skids takes over the driving, outmaneuvering Jake and leaving him with a windscreen of green paint. On the outskirts of town, Skids reveals himself as a Transformer, explaining to Charlene that he had been trying to find peace as her car. He goes on to reveal he was a scientist, and had no desire to fight or die, that all he wants to continue his scientific studies with her. Meanwhile Jake is ranting about the crazy van and its driver, which gives Donny a clue...
The next day, Skids asks Charlene about her old west memorabilia. She tells him of how it was a great time of adventure, and even though she didn't live then, she can still dream of it. Skids laments that all his dreams are memories of war so the pair go out to make him some new ones. The pair grow closer, with Charlene brushing off Wendell's invitation to see a new movie to give Skids a wash (which they both enjoy waaaay too much). Before Charlene can give Skids his wax and buff job they are (thankfully) interrupted by Donny, who had been listening in on her talking to her 'ordinary van'.
Skids's attempt to stay hidden is finally undone by Ravage who pounces at Donny, firing. Charlene and Donny dive into Skids who speeds off at top speed. The two humans argue—Donny patting himself on the back for finding an Autobot, and Charlene pointing out that he only found Skids because Ravage is trying to kill them. Rushing through the town (and past Jake), the trio head to an abandoned mining town to battle their pursuer away from civilization.
Arriving in the town, the Autobot tells the humans to hide, but just after they leave, Jake arrives and smashes his windscreen with a tire iron. Rendered unconscious, Skids has a dream that he has to face Megatron in a showdown to save Charlene. He realizes even though he doesn't want to fight, he has to protect her... unfortunately, it doesn't go so well for him, but it was only a dream. Back in reality, Charlene and Donny argue with Jake, but a renewed attack by Ravage scatters them. Before Ravage can finish Skids, he is rammed by Jake in his Lamborghini, giving the others enough time to bring the Autobot around. His resolve to fight strengthened by his need to protect Charlene, Skids fights a desperate battle with Ravage, eventually tricking the Decepticon into falling down an abandoned mine shaft.
With Ravage gone, Charlene tries to convince Skids to come back with her but he says he is going with Donny back to the Autobots. He cannot avoid his responsibility, and he would be living in a dream if he stayed, no matter how much he wants to. Charlene tells him she'll miss him, but he did better than the last car she loved—its transmission went and she junked it.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
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Quotes
Notes
Continuity notes
- Observing an ordinary Earth car undergoing the same treatment, Skids observed last issue that he being washed and polished looked like "a pleasant way to pass the day," foreshadowing the events of this issue.
- Bot Roster:
- Autobots: 11 active after Skids is repaired; 5 rogue Dinobots; 7 wayward arrivals from Cybertron; 14 in repair bay. (37 total)
- Decepticons: 10 active after Ravage is taken out; 7 offline. (17 total)
Real-life references
- Charlene shows Skids the real-life 1952 western, High Noon.
Artwork and technical errors
- Skids' torso is colored red on the cover.
- The stripe on the side of Skids's vehicle mode is consistently miscolored this issue: it should be a thick red stripe bordered by thin white stripes, but the area that should be red is always colored "unpainted" blue like the rest of him, while the lower bordering stripe is red instead of white (except in instances noted below). It's so consistent, it might well be an early color model or something.
- Page 2, panel 7: Donny is left uncolored white, the same as the sky behind him. A rare moment of Yomtov not block-coloring!
- Page 3, panel 4: Ravage's eye is the same blue-black as the rest of his body.
- Page 9, panel 6: Donny's hair is colored reddish-brown instead of its normal pale brown.
- Page 11:
- Panel 5: Wendell is drawn snooping on Charlene from around the corner of the grocery store, despite the previous panel showing him inside it, engaged in a conversation with Charlene as she leaves. Evidently, Wendell has mistakenly been drawn in place of Donny Finkleberg, who is snooping on Skids after hearing about the "living van" a few pages prior. He obviously follows Skids to Charlene's house after recognizing him; thanks to the art mistake obfuscating this plot point, how Donny tracks Skids to Charlene's isn't clear in the finished comic.
- Panel 6: Charlene's belt is left uncolored, remaining the same pale purple as her shorts, when it appears magenta on the next page.
- Page 12:
- Panel 1: Skids's red stripe is white.
- Panel 6: Ravage's eye is white instead of yellow.
- Page 13:
- From his reappearance on this page through to page 21, Ravage's eyes are colored white instead of yellow, with two exceptions on page 14, panel, and page 20, panel 2.
- Page 13, panel 2: Skids's red stripe is white again.
- Page 15, panel 4: Skids's front grille is colored a greyish-purple instead of the pale blue it should be.
- Page 16, panel 2: Once again, Skids's red stripe is white.
Page 17:
- Panel 1: Megatron is missing his shoulder-mounted gun barrel.
- Panel 2: Skids's red stripe is white yet again.
- Panel 2 & 4: Charlene's top is colored orange instead of pink.
- Page 20:
- Panel 1: The damaged to Skids's windscreen is missing.
- Panel 4: Skids's damaged windscreen is still missing, plus the white stripe on his door is yellow.
- Page 21, panel 6: Skids's entire windscreen/door kibble is missing.
UK printing
Issue #72:
- Published: 26th June, 1986
- Cover date: 2nd August, 1986
- Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, Hercules ("What Fools These Immortals Be!" Part 3) and Matt and the Cat
- The final page of this issue's strip is misprinted, with the magenta and yellow layers of ink transposed.
Issue #73:
- Published: 2nd August, 1986
- Cover date: 9th August, 1986
- Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, Hercules ("What Fools These Immortals Be!" Part 4) and Matt and the Cat
- Fact File Interface: Ravage
- Skids would return to the Ark with Finkleberg in the very next US issue, but in the UK, these two stories were separated by fifteen issues, the longest run of UK-original material yet. To compensate for the unavoidable delay this meant Skids's return would be subject to, a small dialogue edit is performed on the final page of this issue that has Skids state that, rather than leave right away, he will first wait for his wounds to heal (right).
Other trivia
- Ravage breathes fire now, apparently?
Covers (3)
- US issue #20: Megatron and Skids as cowboys, by Herb Trimpe.
- UK issue #72: Ravage with Robot-Master costume in his mouth, by Geoff Senior.
- UK issue #73: reuse of art from US cover.
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US issue #20 - Megatron is cheating again, he doesn't even own a holster -
UK issue #72 - Ravage doesn't brush after meals. -
UK issue #73 - The things you do for women...
Reprints
-
The Transformers Comics Magazine #10 (Marvel US, 1988) -
Transformers: Showdown paperback (Titan Books, 2003) -
Transformers: Showdown hardback (Titan Books, 2003) -
Classic Transformers Volume 2 (IDW Publishing, 2008) -
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 2 (IDW Publishing, 2012)
IDW Transformers Classics edits
- Page 3, panel 4: Ravage gets his eye correctly colored yellow.
- Page 11, panel 6: Charlene's belt is now correctly colored magenta.
- Instances of Ravage's eyes being white in the original version are haphazardly corrected to yellow; the errors on pages 13-15 remain, but are corrected on pages 17-20.
- Page 15, panel 4: Skids's front grille is corrected to pale blue. However, the individual responsible for the "remastering" misread the original art and thought that Skids's red stripe was in the wrong place; it wasn't, and the remaster incorrectly moves it further down, to below his door.
- Page 17: Charlene's miscolored top and Skids's miscolored stripe are corrected.
- Page 22, panel 2: Ravage's is supposed to be colored entirely pale blue to represent his being shrouded in the darkness of the mineshaft. The "remaster" ignores this and changes his fangs to white.
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