Plight of the Bumblebee!
Bumblebee is isolated and pursued by a group of Decepticons.
Marvel US issue #16
(Story also appears in: Marvel UK issues #57-58, IDW Transformers: Generations #4)
Script: Len Kaminski
Pencils: Graham Nolan
Inks: Tom Morgan
Lettering: Bill Oakley
Colors: Nelson Yomtov
Editor: Michael Carlin
Splash page design and art: Eliot Brown
- Major characters (in order of appearance): Starscream, Shockwave, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee
- Originally published: May, 1986
Synopsis
Shockwave intends to capture the Autobot Bumblebee and install a device that will make Bumblebee his slave. Shockwave's plans are made even simpler when Bumblebee decides to abandon the Autobots, feeling that they would be better off without him. Bumblebee is quickly located and attacked, and in his attempts to escape, is "picked up" by a couple of car thieves that think a Volkswagen Beetle is a better choice for car stealing than any of the other vehicles in the yard in which Bumblebee is hiding. Bumblebee goes along with the theft, actually enjoying the ability to show off his better-than-average driving abilities, but is soon rediscovered by the Decepticons. Prepared to sacrifice himself (and fellow Autobot Jetfire) to save his new human friends, Bumblebee is saved at the last moment by the arrival of Optimus Prime and a convoy of Autobots.
Errors
- "Laserbeak" is consistently misspelled as "Lazerbeak".
- "Volkswagen" is repeatedly misspelled as "Volkswagon".
- The cover bears the blurb, "Bumblebee's last stand!" Actually, he had lots more stands after this one.
Items of note
- This is the first issue not written by Bob Budiansky since Budiansky started writing the US Marvel series with Issue #5.
- Comic book writer Peter David has said in an interview that he originally turned in a draft for this fill-in-story featuring Bumblebee, but the script was somehow lost and so Marvel commissioned this issue to take its place instead.
- This issue was reprinted as issue 4 of IDW Publishing's Generations series.
- On the first page, the schematics of Bumblebee that Shockwave examines are based on his toy, not his comic book design.
- The issue's title is a pun on the famous piece of music, Flight of the Bumblebee
- It's nearly impossible to tell whether the non-Starscream jet is Thundercracker or Skywarp. He is never named, and both their Marvel Color models were solid dark blue, though the lack of red stripes on his wings tips the odds towards Skywarp.
- In the Transformers movie game (2007), one of the chapters playing as the Decepticons is called "Plight of the Bumblebee".
