Hoist the Flag
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| "Hoist the Flag" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Fun Publications | ||||||||||||
| First published | June 19, 2014 (BotCon 2014) | ||||||||||||
| Story by | Marty Isenberg | ||||||||||||
| Writer | Jesse Wittenrich | ||||||||||||
| Art by | Hayato Sakamoto | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Josh Burcham | ||||||||||||
| Letters | Jesse Wittenrich | ||||||||||||
| Creative Director | Lanny Lathem | ||||||||||||
| Managing editor | Pete Sinclair | ||||||||||||
| Editor in chief | |||||||||||||
| Continuity | Wings Universe | ||||||||||||
| Price | $4.95 | ||||||||||||
Journeying across space and time to carry out the greatest heist in history, Cannonball and the Star Seekers clash with the Cybertronian Knights in the far future of Cybertron.
Synopsis
Somewhere in the depths of outer space, the Tidal Wave, dread pirate ship of the Star Seekers, materializes out of transwarp, off-course and with its warp engines in ruins as a result of overload. An impatient captain Cannonball demands to know when and where they have emerged in space and time, but his navigator assures him that they have arrived "quite close" to the co-ordinates the captain provided. While Olin Zarak and Brimstone talk between themselves about Cannonball's mysterious, unrevealed plan, the captain himself heads below decks to consult with ship's weaponsmaster Ferak, pausing briefly along the way to keep the savage Hunter from eating organic crewmember Squirm. Ferak is busy trying to repair his Targetmaster partner Tornado's weapon mode, but Cannonball pulls the distracted inventor away from his task with a request for a weapon that will facilitate the next step in his scheme: the theft of a space bridge.
A short time later, the Tidal Wave arrives in the sky over the Autobot outpost Galadria in the Delta Prysmos sector. The ship drops Ferak's Intramoment Instabilizer into the throng of Autobot troops gathering below, creating a brief, localized time-scrambling effect that incapacitates all opposition to the Star Seekers. The crew touches down and storms the outpost control room, only to find that all within have already been taken out by an unexpected third party: the female Decepticon Flamewar. After a grandiose introductory speech, Cannonball is a little disappointed to find that Flamewar has never heard of him or his crew, but nevertheless, decides to hire her on for the heist he is planning. Flamewar initially scoffs, but a handful of a cash up-front quickly changes her tune.
Meanwhile, on Cyberion, fourth moon of Cybertron, Autobot knight Flareup is showing off her homemade explosives to fellow knight Apelinq when they are summoned back to base by a communication from their commander Ginrai regarding sudden radio silence from Galadria. Although the Knights' founder and spiritual leader Alpha Trizer advocates calmness, the hot-blooded Ginrai angrily insists that they take action, particularly since the last message to come through from Galadria before communications ceased was a scrambled missive from the Autobot bounty hunter Devcon, who had tracked Flamewar there. Trizer insists that they wait for further contact from Devcon, doubtful that Cybertron is being threatened after being at peace for so long.
The Star Seekers use Galadria's space bridge to transport themselves inside the key component of Cannonball's plan: the disembodied head of Unicron, still floating in Cybertron's orbit! Cannonball intends to use Unicron to drain the energon out of the planet below, having come to the future to do because Cybertron is at peace in this era, and will have high levels of energy. The rest of the crew are suitably impressed; less so Devcon, who has heard the plan by disguising himself as one of the pirates to sneak through the space bridge with the rest of the crew. He attempts to send a warning to Ginrai, but is caught in the act by Hunter, only for the monstrous pirate to become distracted by... something... and wander off. Zarak and Scorponok are more than happy to take up the torture of Devcon, but before they can start, the rest of the Autobot knights appear through the space bridge, arriving in response to Devcon's message. Brimstone assumes his spacecraft form, which Scorponok wields as a handgun to fire on the Autobots, but Ginrai blocks the blast with his shield; as Flareup and Apelinq ready themselves, Flamewar springs into action, blowing Apelinq's hoverboard/cannon to bits, but leaving Flareup free to take down Scorponok with her Delfurite bombs. Devcon tackles Flamewar, intent on claiming the bounty on her head, while Alpha Trizer finally loses his cool and transforms to beast mode to deal with the Dread Pirate Crewmen piling on top of him. Cannonball engages Trizer to buy Ferak time to activate Unicron's energy-draining systems, but the ancient knight easily overpowers the pirate captain and offers him a crushing revelation: his plan has been doomed to failure from the beginning, because the Cybertron he is attempting to drain energon from is techno-organic, and no longer runs on energon. Aghast at the very concept, Cannonball realizes that the Star Seekers have come much further into the future than he intended, while Trizer just grins at the pirate's frustration, and Ginrai grouses about being left out of the loop. As the Star Seekers are being led away, however, nobody notices Ferak slip a small trinket from around his neck into Flamewar's hand...
Elsewhere within Unicron's head, Hunter hears a voice calling to him, luring him through a transwarp portal that whisks him away across space and time to a cave, where he finds the Matrix of Conquest. At the voice's urging, Hunter seizes the Matrix and is transformed into Shokaract, filled with power and knowledge of the destiny that awaits him at the Omega Point...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Star Seekers | Autobots | Others | ||
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Quotes
"Found one, inside the Sulfurizer."
"Ah, perfect! Never cared for that design. I lost twelve fingers trying to build it."
- —Tornado updates Ferak on his search for a microsponder coil
"What are you doing, Squirm?"
"There's no atmosphere. He's suffocating."
"Well when you're done with your suffocating, come and join us."
- —Cannonball needs to be brought up to speed on organic vulnerabilities by Zarak
"Should I do an evil laugh now? Seems like after a monologue like that I should do an evil laugh."
- —Cannonball on the finer points of villainy
"Devcon and Flamewar would make a cute couple: feed them each enough credits and they'll do anything you want."
- —Flareup, matchmaker
"Why did you come along if you knew you didn't have to do anything?"
"Are you kidding me? I couldn't miss that look on his face."
- —Devcon and Alpha Trizer
Notes
Continuity notes
- This story takes place in the Wings Universe, Fun Publications's version of the Generation 1 cartoon. The Star Seekers apparently intend to only travel forward to the pre-Beast Wars era of peace on Cybertron, but instead wind up overshooting it and arrive instead in the post-Beast Machines time period, after the planet has been rendered technorganic.
- This setting is, of course, in commemoration of BotCon's 20th anniversary, as it was in and around this time period that the BotCon comics The Wreckers and Transformers: Universe took place. Going back even further, the story also loops around to the beginning stages of the original BotCon storyline, "Reaching the Omega Point", by concluding with the birth of Shokaract. Just as the Wings Universe is only a near-identical version of the Generation 1 cartoon, however, only a near-identical version of the "Omega Point" storyline exists in the Wings Universe continuity; while the events of the story probably took place pretty much exactly as we saw them in those original BotCon comics, there are some continuity points that don't quite line up (most notably, the Hunter was a Predacon from a Megatron-ruled Cybertron evading Maximal rebels on a desolate future Earth, rather than a monstrous pirate who was transwarped there), though other bios and blurbs published as part of the convention fiction take pains to reconcile as many points as possible (such as Tap-Out's status). The distinction is further cemented by Tornado's Personal Journal, which includes some log entries by this story's Apelinq describing the events of the 3H stories as occurring in "another place" and "another time", and happening to "another me".
- Tornado's Personal Journal—a series of Facebook posts that provided backstory on the Star Seekers and their escapades prior to the publication of the comic—had one final update after the issue's release, which revealed that the object Ferak had given Flamewar was a Warp Star Warhead, which they were plotting to use to escape the incarceration.
Transformers references
- The Star Seekers' Tidal Wave is visually based on Armada Tidal Wave. The story gives no indication that the ship is anything more than just a ship, with nothing to suggest it can transform like its Armada progenitor, though a poster by Sakamoto sold at BotCon 2014 did feature a robot-mode Tidal Wave.
- Axer appears among the ranks of the Star Seekers, in reference to his Aligned counterpart, who joined the Aligned version of the Star Seekers in the Exiles novel. Brimstone, a new character created for BotCon, was similarly developed because the Aligned version of the pirates counted a crewman by that name among their number.
- In 2011, it was discovered that "Big Rescue Force", the half-formed combiner that could be partially built out of the Rescue Force, had actually been canonized in a 1993 European sticker album, and he makes his first in-story appearance here. In keeping with that, the same scene canonizes the other half-formed Autobot combiner from 1992: the unnamed, incomplete 'bot that can be formed from the Motorvators, who so lacks in combiner kibble that he is here rendered with swords instead of hands.
- Offering a hint of how far into the future the Star Seekers have jumped, a Maximal symbol is just about visible on a building on Galadria.
- Flamewar is paid in energon chips and Cyber Keys.
- Outpost Galadria incorporates a space bridge structure based on Decepticon Headquarters, as well as the Gasoline Base, fire station and Airport Base Micromaster Stations. The remaining station, the construction station, is on Cyberion, along with the Rocket Base.
- Alpha Trizer homages the unreleased Snarl redeco 3H Productions mocked up as a potential Alpha Trion toy; his name references the Autobot Master Warrior Toraizer. Add in the revelation at the story's climax that he's actually a future version of Cheetor, and it's three big cats rolled into one! Note that when his calm veneer falls away, his speech patterns are strongly evocative of Cheetor's old youthful self; his cry of "Ah, galloping gyroscopes!" evokes Cheetor's old catchphrase, "Jumpin' gyros!"
- Blackarachnia appears in Primal Prime's portrait in her Universe body.
- The power packs the Star Seekers use to reactivate Unicron's head resemble small AllSparks.
- Apelinq manifests two claw-weapons using his Transfer Interlink; their design is based on the energon weapons of the Energon toyline, specifically the boom-arm piece from Strongarm and the claw from the Duststorm/Wideload mold.
- The four blades Cannonball holds are the colors of the R.A.s needed to form the Rainbow Shield.
- At the story's end, Apelinq notes that it is 2984 Earth time, a solid millennium since the Autobots and Decepticons awoke on Earth. He also offers up a few alternative dating schemes, using the six-digit system that was employed on his War Journals waaay back in the day (those were dated to stellar cycle 316, this story takes place in cycle 473), referencing the new calendar Monacus adopted after the deposition of Lord Gyconi (in the Generation 1 cartoon episode "The Gambler"), and the calendar of the planet Skuxxos (homeworld of the Skuxxoid, named in The AllSpark Almanac II).
Real-life references
- The Delta Prysmos system refers to the planet Prysmos from Hasbro's Visionaries franchise, with Apelinq even referring to it as a "tempest of solar radiation", a key plot point in the Visionaries mythos. In a further reference, the Autobots' outpost, Galadria, is named after the lone female member of the heroic Spectral Knights from the series.
- Among the Autobots on Galadria is a 'bot based on Bonaparte Tulcas, the third "Deluxe Vehicle" from the Dorvack toyline who, unlike Whirl and Roadbuster, didn't make the jump to the Transformers line.
Errors
- When Alpha Trizer takes Ginrai's burning hand in his, Ginrai's index finger is colored purple as if it were one of Trizer's.
Other trivia
- This is labelled Timelines #10, but the last issue was labelled #8. There have been ten issues published, but we got two #1s, the second being labelled the first of a second volume that has continued its numbering until now.
- The gap was "fixed" three months later with the belated, digital-only release of an "issue 9".
Covers
- BotCon Edition: Photography of the Ape-Linq, Alpha Trizer, Flareup, Hunter and Flamewar toys in a space battle, composited by Lanny Lathem.
