The Man with the Golden Car

	; "No, I'm not going to his funeral. Everybody knows you sting someone, you die."
	Chapter One:; "The Man with the Golden Car"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	July 4, 2018
Cover date	June 2018
Written by	John Barber
Pencils by	Andrew Griffith
Colors by	Priscilla Tramontano
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Edits by	David Mariotte
Continuity	Movie continuity

The name's 'Bee... Bumblebee!

Synopsis

It's 1964 and, following his adventures in World War II, Bumblebee is now working with British intelligence agency P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E. under the codename "Goldwheels," partnered with Agent Omega Zero, David Reeve. Reeve and Bumblebee are sent to East Berlin to track down Konrad Gotell, head of the crime syndicate E.I.D.O.L.O.N., with Reeve infiltrating the organization's facility and Bumblebee poised for exfiltration once the job is complete. Reeve disguises himself as an E.I.D.O.L.O.N. goon, but his ruse is seen through when he knocks out one of the other henchmen who bars his way. Nevertheless, the resourceful Reeve is able to use a variety of concealed gadgets and gizmos—along with fully-licensed lethal force—to take out the enemy agents, navigate the traps separating him from Gottel's office, and pick the lock on the office door... but it turns out that someone has gotten to Gottel before him. Reeve finds the villain quite dead, dagger still sticking out of the stab wound in his chest, with explosives strapped to his body. Reeve leaps out the window as the explosives go off, and as he falls, radios Bumblebee for pick-up... but the car that comes speeding towards him, transforms to robot mode, and snatches him out of the air is not Bumblebee... but the Decepticon Wildrider! Bumblebee, it turns out, has been delayed by an encounter with the German State Security Service, who are chasing him through the streets of Berlin—but he is able to outpace them, and arrives on the scene just before Wildrider can crush Reeve. Bumblebee tackles Wildrider through the Berlin Wall, and them crushes him to death with a piece of rubble.

Bumblebee and Reeve return to England to meet with P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E. director Pelham at Maundy Gregory Studio, one of the organization's bases hidden in plain sight as a recording studio. It turns out Pelham is running late, but agent Diana Lux begins the briefing anyway, filling Reeve in on intel provided by the American Sector Seven: Wildrider has been working with two other Decepticons familiar to Reeve, Runabout and Diabla, and stranger still, all available evidence indicates that the Decepticons are in cahoots with an unknown human enemy.

Outside the studio, Bumblebee is grumbling to himself about being left out in the rain when Director Pelahm's car pulls up. Just as Bumblebee is thinking about telling the old man off, Pelham falls from the car onto the pavement... dead from a dagger wound to the chest, with explosives strapped to him, just like Gotell! Bee has barely a second to warn Reeve before the blast takes out the studio; Reeve and Lux survive, but Agent Parson is killed. Pelham's car takes off, and Bumblebee gives chase, only to be rammed from the side by another car: the new arrival is Diabla, and Pelham's car is Runabout! Reeve and Lux emerge from the wreckage of the studio as Bumblebee engages the two Decepticons in battle; Diabla opens fire on the two humans, but Bumblebee blocks her shots with his body. 'Bee believes this behavior does not represent who Diabla truly is; he claims she was once an Autobot who switched sides, but Diabla explains that she was always a Decepticon, who merely served as a spy within the Autobots' ranks for Megatron. At Lux's suggestion, in order to protect civilians, Reeve orders Bumblebee to fall back, and the Autobot does so, scooping up the two agents, transforming to vehicle mode, and beating retreat, leaving an oil slick in his wake to slip up the Decepticons and prevent them from giving chase.

From a phone booth on Victoria Embankment, Reeve contacts P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E.'s senior organization B.A.S.E.S.T.A.T.I.O.N. on a secure line, delivering his report. The team's tactical specialists, the E.G.G.H.E.A.D.s, take the destruction of Maundy Gregory Studio has proof of a hypothesis they have been working on: an agent operating out of the studio is working with the Decepticons. With Pelham and Parson dead, only Reeve, Lux, and Bumblebee remain, and Reeve is informed that they are hereby sanctioned: they will receive no contact or aid from the intelligence services until the compromised agent is confirmed eliminated. Knowing what he has to do, Reeve hangs up, unholsters his pistol, and leaves the booth...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Bumblebee (4)	Wildrider (3) Runabout (7) Diabla (8)	David Reeve (1) Konrad Gotell (2) Diana Lux (5) Parson (6) Pelham (9)

Quotes

"What kind of a codename is Goldwheels? That probably tells the enemy more about me than my real name..."

—Bumblebee

"Sorry, Wildrider, but you forgot one thing... I have a driving license... to kill!"

—Reeve

"No one drives faster, leaving the others in the dust
Always changing modes, two steps ahead of the rust
I never wanted this, but Earth needed you
I tried to dodge your headlights, but no one escapes your golden hue
You put it on the line to keep the world free
No one strikes as hard...
...as Bumblebee!"

—The theme song

Notes

Production notes

Outside of promotional one-shots, Bumblebee Movie Prequel is the first original comic book story from IDW Publishing set in the live-action movie universe since Dark of the Moon seven years prior. It reunites writer John Barber and artist Andrew Griffith, who first collaborated on the Dark of the Moon prequel series Foundation, back in the days before Barber became editor of the Transformers books, and the pair would really go on to make their names working together on Robots in Disguise.

Continuity notes

The timeline of the movie universe has been shaken up pretty severely in the seven years since John Barber put it all in order, and this comic just kinda has to roll with it. Though the original 2007 movie prequel showed Bumblebee arriving on Earth in the 2000s, the 2017 film The Last Knight would reveal that he had been on the planet since at least the 1940s and had fought alongside the Allies in World War II. The series refrains from addressing the discontinuity, and simply runs with the Last Knight setup; the story is set at the midpoint between his 1940s WWII adventure and the 1980s setting of the upcoming Bumblebee movie to which it is a prequel, the 1960s, and 'Bee is still working for the British government.

Transformers references

"Runabout" and "Wildrider" are, of course, names that have seen multiple uses in Transformers history. What you may not know is that "Diabla" has also been used before, by a female Decepticon from the now-defunct Transformers Universe MMORPG.

Real-life references

The whole story is, of course, designed to be a sexy 1960s spy adventure in the mold of James Bond and other films and TV shows of the era, and is chock full of appropriate references.

The title "The Man with the Golden Car" is a reference to the Bond movie, The Man with the Golden Gun.
It seems pretty plausible that David Reeve is named after actor David Niven, who was Bond creator Ian Fleming's personal choice to play the superspy, but only ever performed the role for the 1967 Bond parody, Casino Royale.
There are no less than four bodies with overly-complex acronyms for names in the story (E.I.D.O.L.O.N., P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E., B.A.S.E.S.T.A.T.I.O.N., and the E.G.G.H.E.A.D.S. ), designed to evoke similarly-named organizations like Bond's SPECTRE, and U.N.C.L.E., and THRUSH from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
When questioned by an E.I.D.O.L.O.N. goon about his "operative number" while undercover, Reeve says it is "eighty-six"—the agent number of Maxwell Smart in TV spy spoof Get Smart.
- To "eighty-six" something is also to reject or get rid of it (which is probably why it was Maxwell Smart's agent number as well).
After knocking out that same goon, Reeve tries to maintain his cover by suggesting to fellow goons that come to investigate that the man passed out because "his skin couldn't breathe." This is a reference to the death of Bond girl Jill Masterson in the movie Goldfinger, who perishes through "skin suffocation" when painted entirely gold by the film's villain. This isn't a real thing, and one of the goons highlights this fact by not understanding Reeve's remark.
Reeve wields a Walther PPK handgun, Bond's signature firearm.
E.I.D.O.L.O.N. head Gotell is based on Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, complete with facial scar. He is initially hidden by a high-backed chair, as Blofeld was in the Bond movie You Only Live Twice.
Bumblebee's alternate mode in this story is a car in the style of an Aston Martin, a brand of car famously driven by Bond in numerous films.
On Page 6, as Bumblebee flees the Stasi through the streets of Berlin, a sign in the background identifies the street as: "Walther P.Strasse.38." This is an allusion to the Walther P38 pistol, which many Transformers fans will recognize as the alternate mode of the original Generation 1 Megatron—but its inclusion here is more specifically a nod to the fact that it was the signature weapon of Napoleon Solo from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In fact, the original Megatron toy was specifically based on the special modified appearance of the "U.N.C.L.E. gun", with its silencer, stock, and scope! Diana Lux wields a regular P38 later in the issue.
Reeve's quip (quoted above) about a "driving license to kill" refers to Bond's famous "license to kill" (the permission granted him by his superiors to take lives when necessary), used as the title of his 1989 film.
When Bumblebee and Wildrider crash through the Berlin Wall, broken fragments of a sign happen to fall in such a way that they spell out "ACHTUNG ßE BE," an allusion to the U2 album Achtung Baby, written and recorded in Berlin. That, in turn, is likely a reference to the fact that U2 frontmen Bono and The Edge wrote the theme song for the Bond movie GoldenEye.
After the opening action sequence, the comic has a splashy two-page "title sequence" with a Bond movie-style dramatic power ballad theme song that seems particularly evocative of the themes to You Only Live Twice and Thunderball. Its six panels show "clips" of Reeve and Bumblebee in action in various locales with various beautiful, deadly, ethnically-diverse women, referencing several classic Bond scenes, like the ski chase and Union Jack parachute scene from The Spy Who Loved Me (only here, it's Bumblebee with an Autobot symbol parachute) and the time he wore a fake duck on his head to disguise himself while swimming in Goldfinger (Reeve does the same, while Bumblebee uses a fake walrus!).
Maundy Gregory Studio is named after John Arthur Maundy Gregory, a British theatre producer who alleged he had been spy for British intelligence in his youth.
Director Pelham is likely named after the character played by iconic Bond actor Roger Moore in the movie The Man Who Haunted Himself, widely considered one of Moore's best non-Bond films.
Diana Lux is named after (and seems largely based upon) actress Diana Rigg, who played Emma Peel in British spy series The Avengers (which is not related to these guys at all) and also James Bond's wife Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Maundy Gregory Studio keeps up outward appearances by projecting a fake image of a four-man band recording a song. Each man wears a differently-coloured jacket, one orange, one green, one blue, and one pink; the colours of the famous oufits worn by iconic 60s band The Beatles for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The oil slick Bumblebee dispenses to stymie the Decepticons' pursuit is a classic maneuver made famous by Bond's Aston Martin in Goldfinger.

Other trivia

Originally solicited for release in June, this issue arrives a little late, in the first week of July.

Covers (4)

Cover A: "The Man with the Golden Car" by Andrew Griffith and Priscilla Tramontano
Cover B: Another movie poster pastiche, evoking the traditional Bond "gunbarrel" opening shot, by Fico Ossio
Retailer incentive cover A: Griffith's black-and-white lineart from Cover A
Retailer incentive cover B: Bumblebee and Agent Lux by Sara Pitre-Durocher