The Divine Source of Liberty

	; Masked crusaders working overtime, committing war crimes!
	Revolution Chapter 2:; "The Divine Source of Liberty"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	October 5, 2016; October 26 (2nd printing)
Written by	John Barber and Cullen Bunn
Art by	Fico Ossio
Colors by	Sebastian Cheng
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Hedgecock
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era

While Optimus Prime's unit confronts Rom, Kup and Aileron come under attack from the forces of M.A.S.K.

Synopsis

In the wake of the battle in Portland, Mainframe and Agent Helix mull over the peculiar events of the fight, noting certain inconsistencies in the actions of Rom—who they mistakenly believe to be a Cybertronian—such as his refusal to open fire on anyone other than the four specific Joes he slew. But Scarlett doesn't want to hear it—she's determined to take the Cybertronians down, and prepares to deploy G.I. Joe's newest asset to do it.

Rom touches down in the Umpqua National Forest, where he is immediately engaged by the pursuing Optimus Prime. Prime demands an explanation for Rom's actions, but the Space Knight does not take kindly to his aggressive attitude and fights back, even managing to body-slam the Autobot leader. As he does so, Rom explains that he is on Earth to hunt his enemies, the evil alien black magicians known as the Dire Wraiths, who have used their shape-shifting powers to infiltrate human governments and military. Rom turns to leave, but his way is barred by Soundwave, Arcee, Jazz, and Windblade, who together get the better of him. Prime ends the fight by barreling right into Rom in truck mode, and the prone Space Knight soon finds himself staring down the barrel of Prime's blaster as the Autobot "encourages" him to tell them more about his mission.

At G.I. Joe headquarters on Governor's Island, Scarlett is frustrated to find that Joe medic Doc also shares some of Mainframe and Helix's misgivings, and doesn't appreciate her gallows humor, ordering her to get back to work. Scarlett heads down into the depths of the complex to meet with Miles Manheim, who is continuing to vivisect the captive Blitzwing without a care in the world. Manheim takes her to meet the forces of his new Mobile Armored Strike Kommand unit, who pilot transforming vehicles perfected using technology obtained through study of Blitzwing—though the actual M.A.S.K. recruits, including the idealistic Matt Trakker, are unaware of this. Believing the Transformers are likely to "return to the scene of the crime," M.A.S.K. prepares to deploy to Greece, but before they go, Scarlett notes something: their vehicles' advanced capabilities may be undetectable by Cybertronian sensors, but they will still only have the element of surprise for their first engagement, since the Autobots will know what the vehicles can do after that. Manheim calmly points out that that is only a concern if they leave any survivors.

At Mount Olympus in Greece, Kup and Aileron scan what remains of the Ore-13 left on the mountain after the cataclysmic explosion that occurred there. Kup is left puzzled by readings that indicate the missing Ore-13 did not merely explode, but was in fact teleported away inter-dimensionally, which is what triggered the chain reaction that caused the detonation. Coming down from the mountain, the pair assume vehicle mode and go on their way through the city streets, only to suddenly find themselves surrounded by M.A.S.K.'s vehicles. Though caught off-guard by the vehicles' abilities to convert into battle modes, and unable to call for help from Autobot City thanks to scrambling communications, the two Autobots fight back—but things go from bad to worse when Manheim himself arrives in his own vehicle and takes Kup out. A terrified Aileron manages to escape—though left unable to contact anyone thanks to Trakker frying her long-range communications with his "Spectrum" mask—while Kup is taken prisoner... though Trakker finds himself perturbed by Manheim's extreme measures, along with the now-obvious fact that the Transformers are living beings, and not the unfeeling machines Manheim led them to believe.

Elsewhere, across time and space, in the dimension of Microspace, the tyrant Baron Karza receives an update: his teleportion of the Ore-13 from Mount Olympus into his subatomic realm has been accomplished with only 60% efficiency. To save Microspace, Karza will need much, much more...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	G.I. Joe	M.A.S.K.	Others
Optimus Prime (7) Windblade (8) Arcee (10) Jazz (11) Kup (19) Aileron (20)	Soundwave (9) Blitzwing (13)	Mainframe (1) Scarlett (2) Agent Helix (3) Rock 'n Roll (4) Roadblock (5) Doc (12)	Miles Mayhem (14) Brad Turner (15) Gloria Baker (16) Matt Trakker (17) Julio Lopez (18) Sly Rax (21) Bruno Sheppard (22) Vanessa Warfield (23)	Rom (6) Action Man (on monitor, 24) Dire Wraith (on monitor, 25) Baron Karza (26)

Quotes

"The robot—is it in pain?"
"My dear. Is your toaster in pain when you burn bread? Your clock radio wounded when you slap it on Monday morning? Tell me you've not developed moral compunctions since last we spoke."

—Scarlett and Miles Mayhem

"I faced tougher than this! Why, one time on Rigel IV, there was a dune-buggy that turned into a boat. Now that was somethin'."

—Kup is unimpressed by M.A.S.K.'s vehicles

Notes

IDW continuity notes

Rom's clearly got some measure of distaste for Cybertronians, which is no surprise, since everyone in the galactic community hates Cybertronians in IDW continuity. This sentiment was first evinced way back in Spotlight: Drift, and has found more frequent, recent expression through the Galactic Council and the Black Block Consortia over in More than Meets the Eye.
- The Solstar Order's history with Cybertronians would later be explored in further depth in Rom vs. Transformers: Shining Armor.
Blitzwing was captured in The Transformers #57 and turned over to Miles Mayhem in the Revolution prelude story.
Mayhem refers to the EDC's "crude simulacrum" based on "expired mechanicals"; he's talking about the Seeker clones created by Garrison Blackrock, which were based on Thrust (who died in Spotlight: Prowl) and Ramjet (who ate it in his self-titled Spotlight).
The debut of M.A.S.K. in this issue is presumably supposed to flow directly out of the conclusion of their Revolution one-shot, which ended with the team arriving at G.I. Joe headquarters and being introduced to Scarlett, even though the dialogue and setup of the scene isn't quite the same. That story presented the M.A.S.K. project as something that has been in the works for a year, indicating that Mayhem's acquisition of Blitzwing was only a recent boost to it, rather than the instigating event it might logically have been otherwise interpreted as. John Barber has confirmed this to be the case.^[1]
Kup remarks that "he and trans-dimensional travel have a long history", alluding to his time spent in the Dead Universe between Infestation and Dark Cybertron.
Kup also makes reference to the planet Rigel IV, previously name-dropped in More than Meets the Eye #7.
The Ore-13 from Mount Olympus is revealed to have been stolen by Baron Karza, villain of the Micronauts franchise. Karza seeks to save his dimension, Microspace, which the first story arc of IDW's Micronauts comic book has explained is being destroyed by an Entropy Cloud that is spreading across it. The Micronauts: Revolution one-shot revealed that Microspace was created by Micronus Prime, one of the original Thirteen Primes of Cybertron, whose apparently-lifeless body is at the center of the cloud, and out of which Karza is now operating.

Transformers references

Optimus Prime paraphrases some mercifully little-referenced dialogue from The Transformers: The Movie when he tells Rom: "That's a question you should ask yourself, murderer." As he delivers this line, he bears down on Rom in truck mode, the Space Knight's face reflected in his grill a moment before impact in what must surely been a reference to the famous scene from the movie in which he did the same to Thrust.

G.I. Joe references

G.I. Joe's Doc is usually a guy, so you might be surprised to see a woman in the role here. Carla Greer was originally created for Devil's Due Press's "alternate reality" G.I. Joe: Reloaded series, in which she was a reimagined version of the traditional male Doc character, Carl Greer. DDP would later import her into their "mainstream" continuity as Carl's niece, who took his place on the G.I. Joe team (after he died in the original Marvel Joe series). IDW decided to do the same in its third G.I. Joe series, with the small change that their version of Carla was Carl's daughter, rather than his niece.
Colton's profile (see "Other trivia", below) notes that his inspiration was Sgt. Savage, a World War II soldier from the short-lived 1990s attempts to rebrand the G.I. Joe franchise, Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles and G.I. Joe Extreme. Sgt. Savage would go on to feature in IDW continuity in Revolutionaries.
Scarlett's profile mentions her father and three brothers. These members of her family originate with the character write-up on the file card that came with her very first toy, and they appeared in the original G.I. Joe cartoon episode, "Captives of Cobra".

Other franchise references

It goes without saying, all the M.A.S.K. characters, their masks, and their vehicles originate and differ minimally from the original M.A.S.K. toyline and media. The characters use what were in classic media the names of their masks as personal codenames, though a handful of these names are changed; Vanessa Warfield is "Ice Queen" where originally she wore "Whip", while Bruno Sheppard is "Thunderflame" instead of "Magna Beam". Brad Turner's "Hocus Pocus" has become "Eclipse", borrowing the name of one of his other classic masks. Julio Lopez's "Streamer" is renamed "Gulliver", which was the mask of Calhoun Burns, and he and Sheppard co-pilot the iconic "Rhino" truck rather than the individual vehicles they originally drove. Anyone familiar with the franchise will realize that Warfield, Sheppard, and Sly Rax will not remain on the side of good for long, as they and Miles Mayhem are destined to break away and form the evil V.E.N.O.M.
Additionally, Kup's story from Rigel IV may have been an in-joke reference to M.A.S.K.'s Dusty Hayes and his vehicle "Gator", an off-road vehicle that turned into a boat from the original toyline.
Trakker gives the M.A.S.K. team the go with the command of "Neutralize!". He's quoting the M.A.S.K. cartoon theme song—"Secret raiders who will neutralize..."

Real-life references

Like all chapters of Revolution, this issue takes its title from a poem: in this case, "The Divine Source of Liberty" by Samuel Adams.

Errors

When listing the characters in the opening page of the book, pictures of Gloria Baker and Sly Rax are labeled "Vanessa Warfield" and "Bruno Sheppard", respectively.
Mayhem uses the singular "simulacrum" when he wants to be using the plural "simulacra".
Scarlett's profile in the back of the issue lists her rank as Master Sergeant, but in the story, Miles Mayhem introduces Scarlett as "Colonel O'Hara" to Matt Trakker, consistent with The Transformers #56 and Revolution #0.
Joe Colton's profile misspells Sgt. Savage's middle name as "Stephan". Revolutionaries #3 would go on to present his middle name the original way as "Steven".

Other trivia

Originally solicited for September, this issue arrived a little late, on the first week of October.
Backmatter for this issue consists of full-page character profiles for Rom (written by Chris Ryall with art by Paolo Villanelli and David Messina), Joe Colton (written by Aubrey Sitterson, art by Steve Kurth and Simon Gough), Scarlett (written by Sitterson, art by Robert Atkins and Gough), Blitzwing (written by John Barber with art by Guido Guidi), and Action Man (written by Barber, art by Villanelli and John-Paul Bove). Rom and Action Man's profile are essentially summaries of their IDW series so far; Scarlett and Colton's are general character overviews; and Blitzwing's provides a history of the character in IDW continuity, including lesser-referenced nuggets like his position in the Triorian Guard (as seen in More than Meets the Eye #11) and his membership in the earliest version of the Titan Hunters (from Spotlight: Thundercracker). The format of the profiles homages the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, using a mostly identical set of section headers and vital statistics.

Covers (9)

Regular cover: Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Kup, and M.A.S.K. by Tradd Moore and Felipe Sobreiro. M.A.S.K. characters Buddy Hawks and Bruce Sato, and vehicle Hurricane all appear, though they are not part of IDW continuity yet.
Subscription cover A: Optimus Prime versus Rom by Brandon Peterson
Subscription cover B: Wraparound cover of Aileron, Laserbeak, Rodimus, Soundwave, Rom, Biotron, Pauline Bestley (?), Julio Lopez, Gung-Ho, the Baroness, Microtron, Joe Colton, and Flash charging into action, by John Byrne and Len O'Grady; part of a series of interlinking covers that homage Byrne's original covers to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Deluxe Edition from the late 1980s.
Subscription cover C: Propaganda poster of Soundwave by James Biggie

Subscription cover D: Rom and Joe Colton action figures (with bonus Dire Wraith head for Colton!), by Adam Riches; part of a series of "action figure" variant covers by Riches.
Retailer incentive cover A: Optimus Prime, Rom, Soundwave, Kup, Aileron, and M.A.S.K. by Ken Christiansen
Retailer incentive cover B: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Ratchet are confronted by Matt Trakker, by Guido Guidi; part of a series of "retro" covers by Guidi.
Retailer incentive cover C: Jazz, Agent Helix, Scarlett, Rock 'n Roll, and Snake Eyes by Art Baltazar; part of a series of interlinking covers. Jazz's appearance is based on that of his Robots in Disguise counterpart.