Aerialbots over America!
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 Insert your own tasteless 9/11 joke here. | |||||||||||||
| Aerialbots over America! | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | ||||||||||||
| First published | June 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | October 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Writer | Bob Budiansky | ||||||||||||
| Penciler | Don Perlin | ||||||||||||
| Inkers | Ian Akin and Brian Garvey | ||||||||||||
| Colorist | Nel Yomtov | ||||||||||||
| Letterer | Janice Chiang | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Michael Carlin | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Marvel Comics continuity | ||||||||||||
Bombshell controls a human with a cerebro shell and is challenged by the Aerialbots.
Synopsis
Recent arrival Bombshell uses a cerebro-shell to force hydroelectric engineer Ricky Vasquez to bring Megatron into the plant at Hoover Dam, as part of a plan to steal the plant's energy and transport it to Cybertron. Meanwhile, Skids returns to the Ark with Donny Finkleberg to inform them that seven Autobots were accidentally transported to Earth. Optimus Prime sends Jetfire and Finkleberg to investigate. The Autobots then receive word of the invasion of the hydroelectric plant, and the Aerialbots, recently created by Wheeljack using the stolen combiner technology, are dispatched to deal with the situation.
Only the Aerialbot leader, Silverbolt, has been given a complete personality, and the other Aerialbots are not yet programmed to defend human life. When the Aerialbots combine into Superion, Silverbolt must fight to influence the combined form from within in order to keep Superion from killing Vasquez. Forced to disassemble rather than kill Vasquez, the mission seems doomed to failure.
But Vasquez, seeing his daughter break through the police line to call out to her daddy, breaks through the cerebro-shell's programming, and fires Megatron into the space bridge, causing it to return to Cybertron. As the Aerialbots fly away, Bombshell hitches a ride on Silverbolt's wing.
Meanwhile, at an airstrip in New Jersey, the newly arrived Autobots from Cybertron have been found by RAAT, led by Circuit Breaker!
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
|
Regulars
Guests
|
Quotes
"I'm pleased you are still functional, Skids. We thought you were dead."
- —Optimus Prime, showing very little concern.
"Pull my trigger, fleshling! Pull my trigger!"
- —Megatron says terrible things to a mind-controlled Ricky Vasquez
Errors
- The cover date is printed as October 1987.
- On page 12, Jetfire refers to a game they played on Cybertron. Yet, having been given life on Earth (immediately preceding issue #14), Jetfire has never been to Cybertron.
- Dirge's wings and cockpit are pink on pages 10 and 15.
- Ramjet is colored just red and black in 2 panels at the bottom of page 16.
- Blaster's head is blue on the last page.
- Megatron seems to need the fleshling to pull his trigger to be able to fire, yet in previous issues Megatron would fire in gun mode without anyone pulling the trigger.
- The Coneheads' conversation after initially driving off the Aerialbots is several flavors of screwed up:
- Thrust: "We showed them who's boss of the skies, right, Thrust?"
- Dirge: "Right, Ramjet!"
- Ramjet: "..."
Items of note
- The Insecticons and second year Decepticon jets first arrive on Earth in this issue.
- References to past issues:
- Prime is seen nursing an injury he received saving Skids' life in issue #19. This injury would play a big part in the next couple of issues.
- The cliffhanger features Circuit Breaker mounting the heads of the Cybertron Seven on the wall of her RAAT base. This also happened in issue #19.
UK printing
- Issue #89 featured the debut of a new feature called "The Transformers A–Z". This was merely reprinting (sometimes slightly truncated) profiles from the Transformers Universe limited series. #89 featured nearly unreadable (due to the background they were printed on) profiles on Air Raid and Astrotrain.
- The injury Prime is nursing in this issue is actually the source of a subtle continuity change between the US and UK comics. The cause of the injury is different depending on which version of the comic you're reading.
- In the US version, Prime was wounded fighting to save Skids during "Command Performances!", 2 issues previously. In the UK version, there was a 17-issue gap between this story and "Command Performances", so the hole in his side was repaired, and he was later re-injured in exactly the same spot.
- The exact origin of Prime's new injury remained a mystery until issue #100. All we knew at this point was that Prime was somehow damaged while he was displaced in limbo during "Target: 2006".
- In a similar vein, it is a little odd, in the UK print, to hear Optimus refer to the arrival of the Cybertron Seven over the Space Bridge as the most significant turn of events since the Transformers landed on Earth, when his Autobots have spent the last nine issues or so in the company of Ultra Magnus, an Autobot sent over the Space Bridge from Cybertron, and fighting Galvatron, a Decepticon from the future. Unless his troops just didn't tell Optimus about Magnus.
Covers (3)
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US issue #21 - Wait, wrong way! -
UK issue #89 - Actually, Slaves of the Insecticons is a different book altogether. -
UK issue #90 - UK Silverbolt seems to be a robo-racist.
- US cover: Aerialbots vs. Coneheads, by Herb Trimpe.
- UK issue #89 cover: Insecticons control Ricky Vasquez, by Robin Smith.
- UK issue #90 cover: reuse of art from US cover with new coloring by Robin Bouttell.
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