Last Stand of the Wreckers issue 4
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| File:Last Stand of the Wreckers4 Cover A.jpg Straight Outta Iacon | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | April 21, 2010 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | April 2010 | ||||||||||||
| Writers | James Roberts & Nick Roche | ||||||||||||
| Pencils | Nick Roche (pp. 1, 10-22) & Guido Guidi (pp. 2-9) | ||||||||||||
| Inks | Andrew Griffith (pp. 1, 10-22) & Guido Guidi (pp. 2-9) | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Josh Burcham | ||||||||||||
| Letters | Chris Mowry | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Andy Schmidt | ||||||||||||
| Associate editor | Denton J. Tipton | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | IDW continuity | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | Current era (2010) | ||||||||||||
The Wreckers find out that sometimes the truth really doesn't set you free.
Synopsis
Kimia Weapons Facility, eight months ago. Ironfist is in his lab, doing stuff and talking to Prowl via video. Prowl praises Ironfist for his datalog works on the Wreckers, jokingly calling him by his web alias, Fisitron. He informs Ironfist that a new team of Wreckers is being put together. He offers Ironfist a job, but then asks him how badly he wants it...
Back in the present, on Garrus-9, Guzzle and Kup are sneaking up on some Decepticons. Kup asks Guzzle to hold his cy-gar and proceeds to kill all four 'Cons single-handedly. Retrieving his cy-gar, he opens the cell door they were guarding, expecting to see Grimlock (whom they came to rescue so he could help) but he isn't there. Snare, the Decepticon who freed Impactor, comes up behind them and informs them that Grimlock is long gone—made to watch footage of G-9 being overrun, powerless to intervene, he was driven mad. Guzzle thinks Snare is full of it, but Snare pleads for them to listen.
Meanwhile, a few floors away, Pyro, Perceptor, Topspin, Ironfist and Verity look at Aequitas, revealed to be a gargantuan supercomputer. The Wreckers are there to download the contents of its hard drive. Topspin is furious at this, thinking the mission a fool's errand, and Ironfist abruptly agrees with him that they should leave it. Verity asks Perceptor why Aequitas is so big, to which he replies that it's a culpability drive that calculates guilt. Suddenly, Topspin goes into spasms, clawing at his face and saying, "Get out of his mouth..." Perceptor and Pyro go to boot up Aequitas, while Verity and Ironfist watch over Topspin, whose "vicarious perception" will apparently last only a couple of minutes. Verity asks Ironfist to tell her a story.
In the Spark Extinction Chamber, Springer wakes from unconsciousness. Impactor, inexplicably still online, informs him that Stalker, their torturer, went away to get something called an endoscopic claw. Changing the subject, Springer says he thought that Impactor would have been sent to a rehab institute or one of the open prisons for his unknown crime. Impactor contemptuously replies that after Springer's testimony, when he was plugged into Aequitas, it tore the Wreckers apart. Springer hates himself for reporting Impactor to command. He wants to forgive Impactor—and himself—but he says he can't until Impactor accepts that he violated every tenet of the Autobot code. Twin Twist comes online, now horribly disfigured, and asks how the two can argue at a time like this. Returning with the evil-looking "endoscopic claw" in hand, Stalker agrees. He then announces it is time for one of them to die.
Back in the Aequitas chamber, Ironfist begins his story. He tells of Squadron X, a twisted Decepticon Wreckers equivalent comprising Crosscut, Earthquake, Fang, Ferak, Tornado, Triton, and leader Macabre. Impactor was obsessed with tracking them down. Their battles came to a head on Pova, where Springer was left trapped under rubble and in the firing line, while Squadron X advanced ever closer. Impactor reluctantly agreed to Springer's idea of blasting at them through Springer's midsection. It worked, and the Wreckers were able to defeat Squadron X. With their foes in custody, the Wreckers cleaned up. Impactor fixed Springer up and called Prowl for a pick-up. Then Sandstorm staggered out of the cell, missing an arm—Squadron X was loose. Impactor left Springer and led the others into battle, where they killed the entire squadron.
Back in the present, Ironfist finishes his story, which he says epitomises everything he admires and loves about the Wreckers. Meanwhile, Topspin comes out of his spasms and gets up, and Perceptor calls everyone over. There's a problem: Aequitas is password-protected, and the only other way to activate it is by spark donation, so someone has to die to switch it on. Topspin suggests force-feeding it a Con, but Perceptor says the donor must die willingly, or it won't work. It can't be Perceptor, since only he knows how to work the supercomputer. Nor Topspin—no sense in he and Twin Twist dying needlessly. Ironfist resignedly says that it'll have to be either him or Pyro. At this, Pyro freaks out, self-righteously claiming that he shouldn't have to die to switch on a computer; he's supposed to go out all guns blazing, saving a planet of innocents or something. As he spouts his dream death, Topspin sees through Twin Twist's eyes, a vision of Stalker leaning over him. Verity punctures Pyro's tirade, saying Ironfist is better than him and that Pyro is barely an Autobot. Ironfist gets angry at the two talking as if he's not there, so Verity asks him to speak.
Stumbling for words, Ironfist flashes back to his unpublished autobiography—how he killed his first Decepticon, his brief meeting with Optimus Prime, his many weapon inventions that killed thousands, his closest friends dying, and how he'd do anything to live his life again. Rather than speak, however, he prepares to die, saying he thought he wasn't ready but he's accepted it now. But Topspin, seeing the pain Twin Twist is enduring, says enough is enough, and plugs himself in. Aequitas thanks him for his donation, then drains his spark. In the Spark Extinction Chamber, Twin Twist blows up. Stalker is disappointed, but shrugs it off and starts on the others. Perceptor plugs a headphone-like jack into Ironfist's head, transfers the contents of Aequitas's hard drive to Ironfist's head, and then wipes the drive.
Back in the chamber, Stalker is about to gouge out Impactor's eyes when he's blasted away by Guzzle, arriving with Kup and Snare. Calling Snare a traitor, Stalker blasts the 'Con's head. Springer gets released, grabs the discarded endoscopic claw and stabs Stalker through the head. Impactor watches over Snare as he slowly dies. He reiterates the "choice" Overlord gives you after 12 pit wins—the choice Kick-Off was given: either fight Overlord or commit suicide. He wonders what the difference is. Snare knows Overlord is coming, having heard Stalker radio for help before he died. He asks Impactor to kill him before Overlord gets there. Impactor obliges, crushing Snare's brain module. Springer is about to ask about Overlord, who promptly arrived by blowing a hole in the wall. As Overlord emerges, Springer acknowledges they're ready for him.
Back in the Aequitas Chamber, Ironfist says he now knows everything they've been told is a lie. With the Decepticons about to break through the doors, Perceptor suggests using Aequitas to detonate the deterrence chips inside their heads, since every ex-convict has one. Pyro doesn't want to, saying that it'll kill Impactor as well. Perceptor asks Ironfist for the deciding vote. Verity scoffs that Impactor's biggest fan will never kill him off, but knowing what he does now, Ironfist says to do it.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Well, unless it contains a fully sequenced cyber-genome, or the uncensored version of the Autobot code, or—let's think the unthinkable—a roadmap to peace, I'd respectfully suggest that High Command have sent us on a fool's errand!"
- —Topspin is not impressed by Aequitas.
"They plugged you into Aequitas, and the first thing you said was "I saw him do it." The Decepticons tried for hundreds of years to rip the Wreckers apart. You managed it in five words."
- —Impactor lets loose on Springer.
"It was never gonna be Perceptor, was it? Or Springer or Impactor or Kup, if they were here. No, it was always going to be one of us—the second-stringers".
"Yeah, just because we're not famous—not Ark-worthy—one of us has to bite the bullet.. well, I'm sorry, but this isn't how I'm supposed to die!"
- —Ironfist and Pyro are uncannily aware of Transformers literary convention.
"I'm supposed to go out in a blaze of glory. Sacrificing myself to save a... a planet's worth of innocents! Yeah! The grand finale to a life well lived. Guns blazing, jaw jutting, outpaced by a five—no!—by a 15-kiloton explosion. And Prime's there, and he's...he's awestruck. And then, too late, he gets it: Me and him—we're the same. We're the very same."
- —Pyro lets the mask slip.
"I fought my first campaign in the Manganese Mountains, where I spoke to Optimus for the first and last time. He mistook me for somebody else."
- —Ironfist
Errors
- The quadriplegic, comatose Fortress Maximus, who was recovered by Perceptor's team just outside the Aequitas chamber, is nowhere to be seen this issue.
Items of note
- In his weapons lab, Ironfist displays the sky-sled that Impactor used to rescue Xaaron, which he mentioned earlier as having purchased from a blind dealer. He also has the gun that he'll give to Guzzle in issue 2 on a table.
- Squadron X is composed of random hi-then-die non-toy Decepticons from the Marvel Generation 1 comics, both US and UK.
- Read #5 and the fate of Ironfist, and what deal he made. Then re-read that first page and every line and panel he has at Aequitas where he wants to leave it and the concerns about dying...
- Hey, look, it's Rack'n'Ruin!
- And holy crap, Nautilus!
- It took twenty-four years of waiting, but sweet, sweet revenge belongs to Impactor. Take that, Macabre!
- The Redan Nebula is named for Redan Place, the old mailing address for Marvel UK.
- According to Snare, Overlord told his Decepticons that "play makes you free." This is a twist on the real-life German political slogan "Work makes you free", which the Nazis co-opted by ironically displaying it at the entrances of many concentration camps.
- Impactor kills Snare by crushing his brain module, as Death's Head did to Shockwave in the Marvel UK story, "The Legacy of Unicron!".
- The Rung-penned personality profiles return (for this issue any way). This time, they feature the bottomless well of Wreckers trivia, Ironfist, of all bots.
- Last Stand's UK roots are on show again in Ironfist's profile: the two Wreckers datalogs mentioned, "The Wreckers' Lightning Strike" and "Wreckers at the Pole", are named for two of the Ladybird Books, "Autobots' Lightning Strike" and "Decepticons at the Pole".
- Just like last issue, you can definitely tell which pages were done by Nick Roche by the hand-drawn insignias, where Guido Guidi's pages use digitally-inserted templates. Roche does, however, forget to draw Topspin's chest insignia again, though this time Burcham noticed the omission and inserted digital ones.
- Aequitas' role as a prison computer that calculates guilt is very similar to the one present in the British sitcom Red Dwarf episode entitled "Justice". Both computers were said to have 'culpability drives'.
- Roberts and Roche liked doing Pyro's reaction to dying, deciding they wanted to invert the stereotype of the Autobots always being willing to make that sacrifice. [1]
Covers (3)
- Cover A: Bottom-up view of Springer, Sandstorm, Roadbuster, Whirl, and Broadside all staring down at something unseen, art by Nick Roche and colors by Josh Burcham.
- Cover B: Springer firing his weapons with a profile silhouette of Ironfist in the background, art and colors by Trevor Hutchison.
- Cover RI: "Virgin" title-free edition of cover B.
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References
- ↑ Moonbase 2 interview, 20:02 - 20:45
