Last Stand of the Wreckers issue 5
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| File:Last Stand of the Wreckers5 Cover A.jpg This is the end, my former friend. | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | May 19, 2010 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | May 2010 | ||||||||||||
| Story | Nick Roche & James Roberts | ||||||||||||
| Script | Nick Roche & James Roberts | ||||||||||||
| Art | Nick Roche | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Josh Burcham | ||||||||||||
| Letters | Chris Mowry | ||||||||||||
| Editor | Andy Schmidt | ||||||||||||
| Associate editor | Denton J. Tipton | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | IDW continuity | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | Current era (2010) | ||||||||||||
Where everything FINALLY hits the fan.
Synopsis
In the future, "Fisitron" will write up the story and what it means in the 332nd Wreckers: Declassified datalog. But now, in Garrus-9, Overlord tears Guzzle in half, bashes Kup into unconsciousness, and smirks when his right eye is destroyed by Impactor. And in down in the Aequitas chamber, Verity Carlo continues to argue against detonating the deterrence chips: it won't just kill Impactor, it'll kill the Wreckers as a concept. She puts her case to Ironfist, arguing that he's made the Wreckers stand for something, turned a bunch of thugs with a death wish into a symbol of hope and heroism for the other robots, and his Wreckers would never kill one of their own.
Perceptor decides she's right, while Pyro decides to abandon his egotistical visions of a glorious death and tells the others to run, that he'll cover them: dying for people he cares about, he tells Ironfist, is the most he can do, and he tells Verity that the Autobots need the humans to look after them. The Wreckers withdraw, Ironfist working out a plan to deal with Overlord, while Pyro is ingloriously torn to pieces behind them. As they withdraw, at Verity's urging, Ironfist reveals the truth he's learnt about Impactor and Pova...
Twenty years ago, in battle, Impactor decided the best way to get a shot at Squadron X would be to fire through Springer's midsection. Despite Springer's protest that he didn't have the circuit dampeners Impactor wanted him to engage and his pleas, Impactor fired. After the battle, he reported in to Prowl to reveal all of the enemy had been caught. Prowl reported back that under the Neutrality Agreement with the Povians, the Autobots aren't allowed to be there: to prevent the Decepticons using this to turn Pova against them, the Wreckers had to release Squadron X immediately. Instead, Impactor took Roadbuster's gun and locked himself in the room with the prisoners. Springer attempted to stop him but he murdered every single Decepticon as they lay in chains on their knees, while the other Wreckers simply stood in silence...
Back outside, Overlord has won and Springer is about to be killed. He tells Overlord that his men will have freed every Autobot prisoner by now and will be leading them this way... except Overlord, the instant he learnt the Wreckers had arrived, ordered every single prisoner to be murdered in their cells. But luckily, the other Wreckers have arrived! Perceptor uses his sniper laser to blow the monster's hand off and free Springer! Ironfist chucks a massive chaingun of doom to his leader! Overlord is repeatedly shot!
And then he shrugs off the fire, rips off Springer's face, blasts Perceptor offline, and only Ironfist is left standing, trying futilely to warn Overlord to back off. And that is when said nerd reveals the gun was loaded with deterrence chips, all of them laying roots in the monster's endoskeleton, and then he uses Aequitas to detonate them!
And then Ironfist falls down inactive, his head wracked by pain, and Verity is left alone as Overlord rises as a fire-consumed, skeletal horror, intent on ripping her to pieces, snarling in hate that "you and your dead friends" have left him unable to best Megatron when he arrives. Verity, however, notes a weak spot, and informs him Megatron is long dead; she begins to laugh at him, pointing out he's spent all this time believing Megatron is coming after him and the tyrant died not remembering Overlord at all. The monster falls to his knees, his world shattered, and then Impactor rises from the mat to finish him off. Overlord won't fight back against the beating, but Impactor refuses to kill him: he's doing this for Springer, the one who told him he didn't have the right to murder Squadron X, and that Springer would want the Decepticon to stand trial for what he did.
The villain is beaten, the Decepticons have all fled now Overlord can't hold them, help is coming, and Ironfist wakes up! All is well...
Except four of the Wreckers are still dead; Springer and Fortress Maximus are on emergency life support, their chances of recovery unclear; Impactor and a repaired Guzzle abruptly left once Overlord was arrested; and Ironfist died en route to Earth from an aneurysm, caused by a lab accident with his cerebro-centric bullets eighteen months ago that had one inching towards his brain all along.
On Earth, Prowl takes this report and the single data slug Ironfist was able to make of the Aequitas data. He admits to Ultra Magnus that he knew about Ironfist's approaching death and had arranged for him to be placed on the Wreckers, his dream job, in exchange for bypassing the suicide lock on Aequitas. ("Yes, of course I regret it.") Prowl reveals the reason behind this whole mission: they couldn't allow the Decepticons to get their hands on Aequitas' transcripts of the Autobot trials, as it would be too great a propaganda weapon. Magnus notes those transcripts are the only evidence left for most of the accused, while Prowl remembers the utter horror of the trials, of hearing all the atrocities that Autobots had undertaken. Magnus believes a public trial is the only way, as Chief Justice Tyrest intends; Prowl agrees justice must be publicly done but not now, believing the Autobots will be shattered if they learn about the monsters in their midst now.
He says he'll make sure the slug gets to Bumblebee, while Magnus remarks he knows Prowl hopes the data is corrupted so everyone can move on, and that he likes to think better of the 'bot than to believe he'll destroy the evidence. On his own, contemplating the slug, Prowl starts to apply some pressure to it...
And on Earth, Verity writes under the guise of "Fisitron", musing whether this is the end of the road for the Wreckers or just a stop-off to reflect. "Because that's how we honor those we've lost: by looking forward, not back."
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
Quotes
"It's a story of sacrifice and betrayal, and of good people dying in stupid, pointless ways."
- —"Fisitron"
"Oh, don't look so surprised. You didn't expected this stunted little wretch to survive, did you?"
"You're a maniac!"
- —Overlord's opinion on Guzzle's chance of living and Kup pretty much summing up readers' thoughts of Overlord.
"Ironfist! You should know better than anyone what the Wreckers are really about! They give the other Autobots something to believe in!"
- —Verity trying to motivate Ironfist.
"I figure that dying to save people you care about is the most that anyone can do."
"I think you have your motto."
"No... my last words."
- —Pyro and Ironfist
"Sweet."
- —Springer gets thrown a giant gun to shoot Overlord with.
"Sweet."
- —Overlord holds Springer's face-skin in his palm.
"Oh, man, this is PERFECT! You can't accept that he never gave chase! You lived your life thinking about him every day, and he died forgetting all about you!"
"But... But he owes me! He owes me."
- —Verity giving Overlord the wonderful news about Megatron.
"You see, this is one of those stories with a moral. And the moral is simply this: life persists."
- —Verity
Errors
- In the first scene in the Aequitas Chamber, Topspin's body is initially colored gray and black (deactivated), but on the next page, it is colored normally.
- In the panel where Verity is on her knees mourning Ironfist's death, the part of the shirt below her ribcage is colored like skin.
Items of note
- Either Springer, Perceptor or Kup were going to die in the final issue during planning, but in the end Roche and Roberts weren't allowed to do it. [1] Also dropped was a Guzzle/Kup confrontation, as there simply wasn't room in the condensed beast for it.
- Autopedia profiles include Pyro, Guzzle, and Impactor. Huzzah!
- Part of "Fisitron's" narration on the first page is based upon Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. At the end of the issue, with Verity finishing the entry as "Fisitron", a book of Tennyson's poetry is on the table.
- The visuals of the battle on Pova in this issue contrasts sharply with how it was depicted in the previous issue. In issue 4, the battle was depicted with a sense of non-reality (befitting a falsified story), taking place on a sunny day, with the participants having little damage upon their bodies, even in death. However, in issue 5, the reality shows a depressing, rainy landscape with the participants all showing the signs of battle injuries. When Impactor is shown standing above the corpses of Squadron X, he is splattered with their fluids.
- On Pova, Prowl admonished Impactor through a communications device in his palm which projected an image that resembles a communicube. The text story "Bullets" would later confirm these as communicubes.
- Ironfist's little head scar had been around since #1, so we'd all been visually forewarned what his accident had been...
- The scenes of the dead prisoners is a deliberate copy of #3's scene of the imprisoned prisoners hearing the Wreckers have come to save them...
- The final scene takes place in Mister O's.
- The police car parked outside is not Prowl or Streetwise.[2]
- Impactor's Autopedia profile mentions that Impactor got the idea for his harpoon arm after meeting an unnamed dimension-hopping "freelance peacekeeping agent" who had been "ricocheting from universe to universe after leaping through an exploding time portal." Death's Head, yes? Their meeting is chronicled in Wreckers: Declassified, Datalog 151, which refers to the Marvel UK issue number in which Death's Head leaps through a time portal with Cyclonus and Scourge and disappears from the story. The title of said datalog, "The Wreckers at the Crossroads of Time", refers to the short Doctor Who story, "The Crossroads of Time", which saw the titular Time Lord have a run-in with Death's Head following the time portal incident.
- Near the end of the issue we see Flame on trial.
- Autopedia tells us that Pyro suffers from Primus apotheosis.
- Pyro's profile reveals he was at the Simanzi Massacre, same as Rotorstorm in his profile. Both began to suffer their personality disorders following the Massacre...
- Speaking of Datalog numbers, the Datalog retelling of this series is numbered #332, which was the total number of issues of the Marvel UK Transformers comic had.
- Prowl starts to squeeze the chip a bit but it's left ambiguous as to whether he actually destroyed it. Even Roche and Roberts don't know whether Prowl did it! [3] So how dodgy do you think Prowl is?
- James Roberts has noted that Prowl never asks about the Autobot prisoners, the alleged reason the Wreckers were sent in the first place. Brr.
- Ultra Magnus is shown in this issue in the design that Don Figueroa gave him for the first arc of the ongoing series.
- At the end of this issue, Kup and Perceptor are the only active Wreckers, with the other eight either dead, AWOL (Impactor and Guzzle) or in critical condition (Springer).
Real World References
- One of the sites of Flame's atrocities, Babu Yar, is named very similarly to a famous historical massacre site on Earth.
- Amongst Flame's atrocities is listed the crime of "circuit-boarding", a reference to the torture technique controversially used by the CIA known as waterboarding — kind of appropriate for a rogue Autobot.
Covers (3)
- Cover A: A silhouette of Overlord looming over Impactor and Springer amidst flames with several Autobot grave markers in front of them, art by Nick Roche and colors by Josh Burcham.
- Cover B: A Transformer hand lying on the ground, art and colors by Trevor Hutchison.
- Cover RI: "Virgin" title-free edition of cover B.
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