Movie Prequel issue 2
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 Megatron's first, and last hockey lesson | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | March 21, 2007 | ||||||||||||
| Story | Chris Ryall | ||||||||||||
| Script by | Simon Furman and Chris Ryall | ||||||||||||
| Art by | Don Figueroa | ||||||||||||
| Colors by | Josh Burcham, Mark Bristow | ||||||||||||
| Letters by | Robbie Robbins | ||||||||||||
| Edits by | Dan Taylor | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Movie continuity | ||||||||||||
Our world.
Synopsis
Streaking through space, Megatron reflects on his relentless pursuit of the AllSpark cube. Time and again, the efforts of Optimus Prime and his Autobots saw the artifact kept forever out of reach, until, in a final, desperate act, they ejected it from Cybertron entirely, leaving it lost to the stars. Megatron cares not that this has doomed his homeworld to a slow death—all that matters is locating the AllSpark, and now, after countless years of searching, it is almost within his grasp. He has tracked the object of his desires to an unassuming rocky planet, but as he barrels through its upper atmosphere, he hits a radiation blind spot. The Decepticon's sensors go offline, breaking his connection to the AllSpark's signal, and the emergency shielding needed to survive the fiery atmospheric entry leaves his energon reserves perilously low. With the cube so near, Megatron pushes aside these concerns, and touches down on a frozen landscape.
But his single-minded recklessness now proves to be his undoing: the Decepticon's heavy, superheated body immediately fragments the ice beneath his feet, sending him plunging into dark ocean below. With his energon drained and his body going into shock from the sudden temperature shift, Megatron is left helpless, and soon enters shutdown, sealed beneath the ice. His frozen tomb lies undisturbed for millennia, until in 1897, the National Arctic Circle Expedition finds their ship stuck in the icy waters nearby. A crewman spots the large mass stuck below and, despite the expedition's recent bad luck, Captain Archibald Witwicky cannot be dissuaded from digging down into the ice...
One year later, Witwicky is a resident of Boston Secure Hospital, restrained for his own safety as he raves about an encounter with the devil. Two smartly-dressed visitors quiz the former ship's captain about his experience in the Arctic, seeking to discover the meaning of the strange patterns and symbols which he compulsively drew for three months after the incident. Witwicky, who has subsequently turned blind, is of little help, insisting only that his body and mind were possessed by the entity he discovered.
Back at their base of operations, the two suited men discuss their next steps. Witwicky and any crewmates corroborating his claims will be discredited by false cover stories, while the blind captain's personal effects, seemingly inconsequential, will be returned to his family. Now their mission can begin in earnest: the United States government has approved limitless funds for a new Arctic expedition, in order to find and recover Witwicky's "devil".
Another year passes, and a makeshift facility has been constructed around the dormant body of Megatron, now partially excavated from the ice. To the concern of his teammates, one of the original investigators has grown ever more obsessed with their discovery, which he has dubbed the "Mega-Man". By 1902, the frozen machine has been brought to the surface, held in a refrigerated environment dome at what has now become a permanent research base. Via radio, the facility receives surprising news: colleagues at home have discovered a huge, cube-shaped artifact buried at the bottom of the Colorado River, generating vast quantities of power, and inscribed with the same patterns drawn by Archibald Witwicky!
Over a century later, in 2003, the organization's modern-day incarnation remotely downloads imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been aimed at the Mars. High-ranking personnel convene to discuss the now-classified images, which unmistakably depict a being of the same species as "Mega-Man" crashing down on the red planet and converting into a bipedal form. The agents make immediate plans to secure the extraterrestrial who, unbeknown to them, is Bumblebee!
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
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Errors
- Yet another case of galaxy/solar system confusion, as Megatron claims he traveled across "countless solar spans, through myriad galaxies, nebulae and systems". That's a bit like saying "I've searched the whole city, through myriad planets, states and cities."
- This story appears to present Sector Seven as having existed since the 19th century, predating Megatron's discovery, while the film would state they were formed under President Hoover. Since the Alternate Reality Game states they were formed over a century before 2007, it's possible they were older in an early version of the script. Years later, IDW's Sector 7 comic book series would smooth this error over, by establishing that the two men in this issue are not from Sector 7, but are two independent adventurers named Walter Simmons and Theodore Wells, whose experiences with the otherworldly and fantastic saw them drafted by the president to deal with Witwicky's case. They would go on to found the actual organization of Sector 7 decades later, working with Hoover before he became president.
- Sector 7 would apparently swap the pair's "character models", however; this issue depicts the mutton-chopped, bespectacled character as having a family and developing an obsession over Megatron, but these are traits Sector 7 gives to Simmons, while depicting this character as Wells.
- In another continuity error, this issue has the AllSpark being found in 1902, while the movie itself states it was found in 1913. Again, Sector 7 would clarify this a few years later, stating that while the cube was found in 1902, it took eleven years to divert the Colorado River around it, and they didn't excavate it until 1913.
Items of note
- Sector Seven's headquarters as seen on page 15 features several interesting artifacts, among them what looks like blueprints of a Cosmos-like flying saucer, a map of Skull Island from the Peter Jackson King Kong movie and a fragment of a Golden Disk inside a trophy case.
- Sector 7 use President Theodore Roosevelt's Newlands Reclamation Act as cover for looking for the AllSpark.
- A bot matching Longarm's appearance is seen fighting in the flashback war scenes... only as a Decepticon. Then again, it may be a Decepticon Longarm drone unit, as there was another one exactly like it standing not far away. But how do we explain the lack of one eye...
Covers (3)
—all by Don Figueroa
- Cover A: Megatron in ice
- Cover B: Decepticon symbol
- Cover RI: Uncolored sketch of cover A
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Cover A -
Decepticons rule! -
Cover RI
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