A Flash Forward, Part 2
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| "A Flash Forward, Part 2" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Fun Publications | ||||||||||||
| Published in | Hasbro Transformers Collectors' Club #44 | ||||||||||||
| Writers | Jesse Wittenrich & Pete Sinclair | ||||||||||||
| Pencils | Matt Frank | ||||||||||||
| Inks | Matt Frank | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Thomas Deer | ||||||||||||
| Letters | Jesse Wittenrich | ||||||||||||
| Managing editor | Pete Sinclair | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Wings Universe | ||||||||||||
Cliffjumper puts some Autobots to the test while the forces of darkness plot.
Synopsis
It's 2012, and a number of alien ambassadors are visiting Autobot City. Some distance away, Cliffjumper is having some of the Autobots recently augmented by forestonite give a demonstration of the new powers they've picked up. Despite Ultra Magnus reminding him by radio that they're still Autobots, Cliffjumper doesn't trust these crazy new powers until he's seen them firsthand. He has them destroy mock Decepticon targets with their various powers while he takes notes.
Back in the city, Magnus briefs Rapido, Sizzle and Pyro on a recent break in at Quantum Laboratories, including the theft of some schematics. He assigns them the task of finding the perpetrator and retrieving the information, something which Sizzle is already working on, using his power to send his consciousness into the future and track enemies.
On Cybertron, Jhiaxus receives a report from Clench about the theft. Jhiaxus thanks him for the information, but Clench is cagey on the Firecons he's provided to Jhiaxus. Jhiaxus, however, has found out all he needs to know about them from Sky-Byte. He decides it's time to leave, and the "other two" will needs to be recalled.
Meanwhile Runabout and Runamuck are exploring Cybertron's innards, and have found the personality components Jhiaxus was after. They're interrupted by a stasis hibernation pod, which opens to reveal Side Burn!
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Magnus. What is it?"
"They're Autobots."
"I know that."
"You occasionally need a reminder."
- —Cliffjumper and Ultra Magnus
"Did you find what the boss is looking for? The glowing pink cubes with robots' thoughts in them?"
"I think so, but we have so many glowing pink cubes on this planet! Can't they glow different colo-"
- —Runabout and Runamuck
Notes
- The ambassadors visiting the city include familiar faces from The Transformers: Bosch from "The Gambler", Alana from "Sea Change", Dirk Manus from "Money Is Everything" and Astoria Carlton-Ritz from "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide". Given three of those stories were set in the 80s, the characters have aged extremely well.
- Autobot City includes memorial statues to Windcharger, Huffer, Red Alert and Wheeljack.
- The incident with the forestonite occurred in "Generation 2: Redux", the BotCon 2010 exclusive comic.
- Quantum Laboratories first appeared in "Day of the Machines".
- Jhiaxus has computer screens in his lab displaying Soundwave, Frenzy and...NightBIRD?! Pete Sinclair and Jesse Wittenrich would later explain that the presumptive image of Nightbird was indeed sourced from a screencap of Nightbird... not to link the two, but to be merely used as a beginning point for edits to make the character model look more like an earlier body of Nightracer. Unfortunately, all the edited parts were obscured in the final version. [1] TL;DR: Nightbird is not intended to be the same character as Nightracer. They just looked similar.
- Side Burn, along with a number of other Autobots, went into hibernation in "Battle Lines, Part 6".
Errors
- Despite the fact that Generation 2: Redux and A Flash Forward explicitly take place in 2010 and 2012, the G2 Autobots' forestonite abilities are still considered "new" in the latter story. What, did Cliffjumper wait for two years before his paranoia got strong enough to make the new guys show him what they could do?
