Life Finds a Way
| |||||||||||||
 "I don't control the raptors. It's a relationship. It's based on mutual respect." | |||||||||||||
| "Life Finds a Way" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive) | ||||||||||||
| First published | May 13, 2016 | ||||||||||||
| By | Matt Frank | ||||||||||||
| Illustrations by | Matt Frank | ||||||||||||
| Colors by | Gonçalo Lopes | ||||||||||||
| Color assist by | Paul Hanley | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Of Masters and Mayhem | ||||||||||||
| Page count | 27pp | ||||||||||||
Marooned on a planet with hostile inhabitants, Fractyl falls in with a strange group of Transformers, who might be the only other Cybertronians left...
Synopsis
On a distant planet, Predacon geochemist Fractyl wakes up inside a stasis pod to the damaged capsule's computer screaming in his auditory circuits, warning him about the build-up of energon radiation. As he comes to, Fractyl remembers what happened: when something or someone named Thunder Mayhem attacked Cybertron, annihilating. Fractyl scrambled onboard one of the evacuating ships, sealing himself inside the stasis pod, but it must have been destroyed at some point, which jettisoned Fractyl's stasis pod and any others onboard. The Predacon reads out the information on the planet's surroundings given to him by the pod; with the presence of energon, he figures it must have had some contact with Cybertronians. Unfortunately, there readout doesn't give him much aside from warning him about the dangerous amounts of energon, and all his own scanners can tell him is that there's a massive presence of organic life. As energon radiation begins to seep through the damaged pod, Fractyl has the pod activate stasis lock so he can compensate his circuits for energon radiation. And as he goes under, he watches as dark, unfamiliar shapes gather around the pod...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons/Predacons | Raptoricons | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
Quotes
Notes
- Characters who are mentioned but not seen include: Thunder Mayhem, Primus, Vice Grip, the Covenant, Thrashclaw's mentor, a "purple lunatic", and Megatron.
Errors
- Gonçalo Lopes's surname is misspelled on the cover as Lopez, probably because of its phonetic similarity with the Spanish equivalent.
- On Page 12, a line reads as "Next thing he knew, all 5 of them we bursting out of the main hangar." The "we" should be "were".
- On Page 17, a line reads as "...as he broken down the..." which ought to read as "...as he broke down the..."
- On Page 18, Shred's line of "I had to convince Thrash and Shred to bring her on," should instead read as "Thrash and Slice".
- Likewise, on Page 18, Fractyl's line of "“I take it Thrash and Shred..." should instead read as "Thrash and Slice" since he's talking to Shred.
Continuity notes
- Fractyl is convinced Cybertron was destroyed by Thunder Mayhem.
Transformers references
- The usage of techno-organic beast modes to protect against energon radiation is taken directly from the first season of Beast Wars.
- Fractyl hopes Vice Grip made it to safety, the two being friends in the 3H BotCon stories.
- In this continuity, the Predacons have arisen as a subset of the Decepticons, though it is not specified what distinguishes a Predacon from any other Decepticon.
- Thrashclaw mentions a mentor, a brown and blue sort with a fondness for bravery who went off with some "purple lunatic". Now who could this mentor possibly be...?
- Fractyl briefly reformats himself into a pterosaur form, referencing his original Beast Wars toy.
- Impactor introduces himself with the universal greeting.
Real world references
- The story's title, is, of course, a reference to the Jurassic Park franchise. Fractyl compares the presence of dinosaurs on the planet, and the theory that the planet was once some kind of nature preserve, to "a zoo that got overrun".
- The fact the team consists of four female Velociraptors is a probable reference to the "Raptor Squad" of Jurassic World.
- On seeing the Raptoricons transform, Fractyl thinks the situation is "about to get wild", the tagline of the latest series of Power Rangers, Dino Charge.
- At the climax, Thrash tells Slice to "hold on to your butt". Samuel L. Jackson's character in the first Jurassic Park movie used that line as a catchphrase.
Errors
- On page 1, Fractyl's name is mispelt as "Fractyll" ("Fractyll struggled to recall what had happened before he went into stasis").
- On page 15, Shred is accidentally referred to as a "former Maximal" instead of a former Autobot, as she is consistently referred to throughout the rest of the story.
- On page 21, the third-person narration of Thrashclaw's thoughts mentions that the dinosaurs on the mysterious planet came from Earth; Earth doesn't have a name in this continuity, since it was never inhabited by humans, but evidently, Matt Frank didn't know that. Otherwise, the dinosaurs are noted to be non-native to the planet.
External links
- "Life Finds A Way" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club
