Wings of Honor
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 The origin of Two-Face! ...wait, no. | |||||||||||||
| "Wings of Honor" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Fun Publications | ||||||||||||
| First published | May 28, 2009 | ||||||||||||
| Story | Rik Alvarez | ||||||||||||
| Writers | Forest Lee and Rik Alvarez | ||||||||||||
| Pencils | Guido Guidi (flashback) and Dan Khanna (shuttle attack) | ||||||||||||
| Inks | Guido Guidi (flashback) and Josh Warner (shuttle attack) | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Thomas Deer (flashback) and Josh Perez (shuttle attack) | ||||||||||||
| Letters | Jesse Wittenrich | ||||||||||||
| Managing editor | Pete Sinclair | ||||||||||||
| Editor in chief | |||||||||||||
| Continuity | Wings of Honor | ||||||||||||
| Price | $4.95 US | ||||||||||||
Kup tells a story about one of his earliest missions at the beginning of the war.
Synopsis
As Kup, Hot Rod, and the Dinobots suffer a surprise attack by Cyclonus, Scourge, and the Sweeps, Hot Rod tries to lose their attackers by flying their shuttle towards a nearby nebula. Kup muses that their current situation reminds him of a story, prompting the Dinobots to beg to hear it, though Kup tells them to wait after seeing just how many Decepticons are after them.
Hot Rod is eventually able to hide their ship in the nebula. The Dinobots demand once again for a story, with Grimlock managing to intimidate Hot Rod into saying that repairing the ship can wait until after story time. Kup then launches into a story about the battle of Beta-Nine, when he was a young "protie" on the Autobot Guard ship the Eight Track...
Thunderclash and his crew are finishing up a long recon mission on the outer ring, with no sign of Decepticons detected, much to Landshark and Kup's disappointment. Then the ship receives a transmission from Autobot High Command. Magnum reports that the Decepticons have gone from a ragtag group to a full-fledged army with a new leader. The Autobots are now officially preparing for war, due to an attack on the Van De Graaff, which was carrying a vitally important piece of cargo. Since the Eight Track is closest to where the Van De Graaff crashed, Magnum tells Thunderclash and his crew to go there, find the cargo, and return it safely at all costs.
Things go bad the moment they reach Beta-Nine, however, as their ship is suddenly shot down out of nowhere by a Decepticon ship. Landshark manages to crash-land the ship with no casualties except the ship and his morale. When he expresses his misgivings with their new situation, Thunderclash gives him a chewing out and everyone else a pep talk. They then start heading towards the Van De Graaff's crash site, only to be strafed by the Decepticons as they too arrive on the planet, causing Kup to become separated from the others.
As the others deal with getting into cover away from Hooligan, Leozack, and Skyquake, Kup finds himself dealing with Banzai-Tron, Gaihawk, and Hellbat. He manages to trip up Banzai-Tron, but ends up being cornered by the other two and hypnotized by Hellbat. Before Banzai-Tron can take advantage, however, Hellbat is suddenly snatched up by a giant lake monster that thought he looked like a nice snack, enabling Kup to escape.
Meanwhile, the other three Decepticons try to track down the rest of Kup's teammates. Thunderclash decides to try to draw some of the Decepticons away so he can then meet Kup at the Van De Graaff, and he successfully baits Skyquake into chasing him. Kup, for his part, has already arrived at the ship, and he goes in to look for the cargo. He finds lots of dead Autobots full of holes and covered in creepy tentacles, and retrieves the mysterious cargo.
Elsewhere, Flak and Landshark deal with the two Decepticons left still looking for them. Flak catches Leozack and Hooligan's attention as a distraction, then engages them. The fight goes poorly for Flak, but it's enough to get Landshark in position to take the two down with some surprise punches.
Back outside the Van De Graaff, Kup finds himself under heavy fire from the Decepticons who have caught up with him, until Thunderclash barrels in just in time with a foe-tossing charge. Unfortunately, it proves to be only a temporary reprieve, until Kup gets an idea. As Banzai-Tron recovers and closes in, he threatens Kup into handing over the crate. Kup agrees, but Skyquake warns that he can sense Kup is up to something. Banzai-Tron doesn't listen, but it turns out he should have, as what Kup hands over is actually a container with a gun set to overload that blows the remaining Decepticons into submission.
Kup is forced to put his storytelling on hold as their ship is finally spotted by the Decepticons. Cyclonus, Scourge, and the Sweeps blow an entry hole in the shuttle and board it... only to find themselves facing down five Dinobots who are very unhappy that their story was interrupted. The Autobots lay into the Decepticons with gusto.
As Scourge tries to crawl away from the resulting carnage, Kup levels his gun at the fleeing Decepticon, but it jams and Kup has to fiddle with it. Scourge recovers and snatches the malfunctioning gun away with a boast, only to find out that Kup has set the gun to overload and explode, taking Scourge out. The remaining Decepticons having also been soundly dealt with by the others, Kup goes back to his story...
A recovery team eventually finds Thunderclash's squad,and takes them, their cargo, the surrendered Decepticons, and the Decepticon ship back to Autobot High Command. There they are summoned to Magnum's office, where he praises them for their work on the mission and rewards them with a special honor—creating a special strike force under Thunderclash's command known as... the Elite Guard!
Kup never does find out personally what the special cargo was or what happened to it, but the contents within were successfully returned to their custodian, to be given to their new "owner"...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
Quotes
"There was a time, back in the day, when Landshark was recognized as one of the finest pilots in the Autobot Guard. No matter how damaged a ship was, he'd put it down as delicate as a filament.
"I'm not one hundred percent on where he got that reputation."
- —Kup has not-so-fond memories of Landshark's landing skills.
"Your plan sucks, Flak. We'll never pull this off."
"Shut up and get into position when you hear firing. And hurry up, unless you brought a box to carry home Flak pieces in."
- —Landshark and Flak discuss tactics.
"You boys call those missile launchers? These are missile launchers."
- —Flak is up on his pop culture references.
Errors
- TBD
Items of note
- According to Pete Sinclair, this continuity "is VERY similar to the original G1 toon, though it is different enough to allow us some leeway in the overall story telling. [...] Scourge will have always been in his BotCon 2009 body, Hot Rod in his Universe Legends body and so on. As time goes on there will be more subtle, and not so subtle, differences."[1]
- The wide-release version (released on December 9, 2009) of this comic book included profiles for Kup, Banzai-Tron, Flak, Leozack, and Dion.
- Kup's narration over the flashback tends to paint a decidedly different and more favorable (to Kup) picture than what we see actually happening.
Real-world references
- Leozack is portrayed with a slew of cheesy manga stereotypes, including a giant broadsword, punctuation marks over his head, sweatdropping, calling his attacks, and bold Asian-style fonts in his speech bubbles.
- Landshark is a nod to Chevy Chase and the SNL skit about the character of the same name... which in turn is spoofed during one of the panels in this comic.
- Flak's "missile launchers" line is likely a spoof on a famous Crocodile Dundee quote (or rather, the common misquote).
- The Eight Track is named after the old 8-track tape technology.
- The Van de Graaff, meanwhile, is named after Robert J. Van de Graaff and the generator he invented.
Transformers references
- Grimlock seems to be holding a stuffed petrorabbit.
- Cyclonus is in his Universe toy body, and Hot Rod in his Universe Legends body. Grimlock seems to be based on his Masterpiece figure, but that's based on his cartoon character model to begin with, so that's all kind of circular. The other Dinobots and (framing story) Kup are in their cartoon character models.
- The framing story is lifted almost wholesale from a similar scene in The Transformers: The Movie.
- All of the Decepticons in the flashback other than Banzai-Tron are "Skyraiders", recipients of Skyquake's flying body upgrades, and precursors to the Seekers.
Covers
- BotCon Edition: Battle scene of Kup facing off against Skyquake and Banzai-Tron; art by Alex Milne and colors by Josh Perez
- Diamond Edition: Battle scene featuring Kup; art by Guido Guidi and colors by Thomas Deer.
