The Man of Steel
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| "The Man of Steel" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | October 14, 2009 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | October 2009 | ||||||||||||
| Written by | Mike Costa | ||||||||||||
| Art by | Guido Guidi | ||||||||||||
| Colors by | Josh Burcham | ||||||||||||
| Letters by | Chris Mowry | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Andy Schmidt | ||||||||||||
| Assistant editor | Carlos Guzman | ||||||||||||
| Associate editor | Denton J. Tipton | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | 2005 IDW continuity | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | All Hail Megatron | ||||||||||||
Spike Witwicky gets a proposal.
Synopsis
[edit]Spike Witwicky lies in a hospital, cared for by a number of nurses who seemingly forgot some part of their clothing... He is visited by a colonel and two United Nations officials, who have an offer for him, but first want to know how he got into the miserable state he is in. Spike tells them that after the main Decepticon force was driven off, he became part of a team whose mission was to find any remaining robots, hidden or (partially) incapacitated and deactivate them. After a while, they stumbled across Ravage, who very nearly ended his life, but Spike finally made it, though badly hurt.
The visitors reveal that Skywatch shall become an international organization with the purpose of protecting earth from alien (read: Transformer) danger, and they want Spike to be the head of its strike force. He agrees, but is none too happy when he thereafter gets to know that his father is overall chief of Skywatch.
Featured characters
[edit](Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|
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Quotes
[edit]"Major Witwicky. A pleasure to meet you."
"Yeah, hi guys. It's gonna be a few weeks before I can do autographs. Sorry."
- —Peter Dille and Spike Witwicky, who's getting a wee bit full of himself.
Notes
[edit]Continuity notes
[edit]- Thrust was apparently among the Decepticon forces on Earth, despite not appearing in the main All Hail Megatron storyline. What happened to him after he is left wounded here is revealed in "Ride-Along".
- The rifles carried by Spike and his team appear to be modeled after Starscream's null-ray guns.
- Spike is referred to by the rank of "major" after his promotion, despite having previously been referred to as "commander", a rank which 1) outranks a major and 2) isn't even from the same branch of the military. Presumably, this is a retcon intended to massage the fact that "commander" isn't an army rank, and would make him a captain during the events of the Decepticon invasion (though see Errors, below)... except that a couple of years later, Costa would establish that Spike attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Oh well.
Errors
[edit]- Nurses don't exactly wear that kind of uniform this century. Perhaps these were... call girls? Maybe?
- The colonel seems to imply that the former head of Skywatch was not American. American government agencies are, of course, notorious for being run by foreigners. A possible (though far fetched) interpretation might be that Spike, being informed Skywatch is now under the U.N. umbrella and its head has been changed, the colonel want to "reassure" him it is still at least under the command of a US citizen.
- Having retconned Spike's rank into a real Army rank, the art screws it up by depicting everyone in this issue — including Spike, his entire unit, and the colonel — as wearing Navy dress blues. Argh!
Trivia
[edit]- The names of Frank Shin and Peter Dille are references to several individuals well known for their involvement in the original Transformers cartoon: Megatron voice actor Frank Welker, animation director Nelson Shin, Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen and writer/story editor Flint Dille.
Reprints
[edit]Other than full or partial collections of All Hail Megatron.
- N/A
