Plight of the Bumblebee!

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The most evil of Decepticons, Buzzsaw, aims for the crotch.
"Plight of the Bumblebee!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	January 1986
Cover date	May 1986
Story	Len Kaminski
Pencils	Graham Nolan
Inks	Tom Morgan
Colors	Nel Yomtov
Letters	Bill Oakley
Special Thanks To	Eliot Brown, for splash page design and art
Editor	Mike Carlin
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

Bumblebee is isolated and pursued by a group of Decepticons.

Synopsis

Shockwave intends to capture the Autobot Bumblebee and install a device that will make Bumblebee his slave, allowing him to conquer the Autobots.

At the Ark, Bumblebee is feeling useless after their last battle. He decides to abandon the Autobots, feeling that they would be better off without him.

Flying through the city, Laserbeak soon locates Bumblebee; a whole squad of Decepticons attacks him out of the blue. Damaged, Bumblebee evades them by hiding out in an impound lot and shutting down his systems. The ruse works, and the Decepticons withdraw, waiting for him to reactivate. Meanwhile, the Autobots have observed news footage of the attack, and mobilize to search for their missing comrade.

Later that night, a couple of joyride-seeking teens, Waldo Dobbs and Ernest, decide that a Volkswagen will make a nice, inconspicuous choice of vehicle to steal. Bumblebee goes along with the theft, actually enjoying the ability to show off his better-than-average driving abilities when the pair is challenged by a hot rod driver. When his damages cause him to sputter out, one of the teens makes some repairs, restoring him to full power, but this soon alerts the Decepticons, who attack again, to the humans' shock.

Bumblebee prepares to make a last stand to defend himself and his new friends. The timely arrival of Jetfire buys him some time, but Jetfire is quickly shot down; Bumblebee cannot help him, as he must save the humans from a collapsing overpass. Surrounded, Bumblebee is saved at the last moment by the arrival of Optimus Prime and a convoy of Autobots, and realizes his true place is with the Autobot team.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Bumblebee (1) Optimus Prime (6) Ratchet (7) Wheeljack (8) Jetfire (9) Bluestreak (10)	Starscream (2) Shockwave (3) Thundercracker (4) Skywarp (5) Laserbeak (11) Buzzsaw (12)	Waldo Dobbs (13) Ernest (14)

Quotes

"Cheese, Waldo -- I never seen a VW that could do 200 before."

—Ernie is impressed by Bumblebee's speed.

"Oh, no! Oh, man! Oh, momma!"

—Waldo is impressed by Bumblebee's driving.

"Lessee, the doohickey is connected to the framistat, which is plugged into the thingamabob... which goes to the whatchamacallit!"

—Waldo works some repair magic.

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

• Laserbeak is consistently colored like Buzzsaw.
• Page 3: Bluestreak is drawn and colored as Prowl; Jetfire is shown as the same height as the others when he should tower over them.

Continuity errors

As a fill-in story (see Other Notes, below), this issue features slightly wonky continuity with those around it.

• Mount St. Hilary is apparently in or very near to Wisconsin in this issue instead of Oregon.
• Ratchet's admonishment to Wheeljack, as well as Bumblebee's musings, don't fit at all with the battle seen in issue #15. (One may deduce instead that there's been at least one more run-in with the Decepticons that we haven't seen.)
• It's not real clear where the Decepticon base is or came from.
• On the first page, the schematics of Bumblebee that Shockwave examines are based on his toy, not his comic book design.
• "Laserbeak" is consistently misspelled as "Lazerbeak".
• "Volkswagen" is repeatedly misspelled as "Volkswagon".
• As Bumblebee leaves the Autobots, he passes a sign on which Mount St. Hilary is misspelled "Hillary".
• In typically hyperbolic Marvel fashion, the cover bears the blurb, "Bumblebee's last stand!" Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bumblebee would go on to have lots more stands after this one.

Continuity notes

• The Decepticon base is said to be at a "makeshift fortress". This might be the fortress built out of a nuclear power plant, although in the US series, that fortress has not been featured for quite some time and was apparently abandoned. In the UK the Decepticons have been using it during this period.
• Bumblebee's weight is given as 2,200 pounds, while his height in robot mode is 15 feet.
• Laserbeak and Buzzsaw's presence in this issue raises interesting questions, explored further in the notes for "The Bridge to Nowhere!".
• It's nearly impossible to tell whether the non-Starscream jet is Thundercracker or Skywarp. He is never named, and both their Marvel Color models were solid dark blue, though the lack of red stripes on his wings tips the odds towards Skywarp.
• The exact nature of Shockwave's plan is never revealed, beyond "control Bumblebee".
• The flying Decepticons all leave huge clouds of smoke behind them, and in one case their launch sets a tree on fire in their wake.

Real-life references

• The issue's title is a pun on the famous piece of music, Flight of the Bumblebee.
• An ad for a Jimmy Buffet concert is visible on page 8.
• The US Air Force lauches F-16s in response to the Decepticons' antics (though most of them look like swept-wing Cold War era fighters.)

UK printing

Issue #57:

• Backup strips: Rocket Raccoon "Animal Crackers" Part 3, Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat

Issue #58:

• Backup strips: Rocket Raccoon "Masque of the Red Breath" Part 1, Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat

Other trivia

• This is the first issue not written by Bob Budiansky since Budiansky started writing the US Marvel series with issue #5.
• Comic book writer Peter David stated in an interview that he originally turned in a draft for this fill-in-story entitled "The Love Bug" and featuring Bumblebee, but artist took so long to draw it that it ended up being out of date with the toy releases—plus the script was further somehow lost—so Marvel commissioned this issue to take its place instead.
• Eliot Brown, credited for the splash page design and the exploded-view art of Bumblebee, performed similar duties for most of the technical drawings in the Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe.

Changes in the IDW Transformers Classics reprint

• The original issue makes extensive use of Ben-Day dots to create secondary tones, these are removed throughout nearly all the issue and replaced with color tones instead.
• On page 6, panel 5 a relatively failed attempt was made to correct the orange on Starscream and Thundercracker's cockpit canopies, instead of having too little orange, now they have too much.

Covers (5)

• 
  US issue #16 - Woe, woe is me
• 
  UK issue #57 - Shockwave sets his sights high...
• 
  UK issue #58 - Don't shoot the kid-friendly character!
• 
  German Transformers Comic-Magazin #4 No seriously, there is nothing else in this issue, this cover is supposed to illustrate this story!
• 
  Titan TPB cover
• 
  Titan HC cover

• US cover: Bumblebee attacked by the Decepticons, by Herb Trimpe.
• UK issue #57 cover: Shockwave examining Bumblebee's schematics, by John Stokes.
• UK issue #58 cover: reuse of art from US cover with some judicious editing.
• Transformers Comic-Magazin issue #4 cover: Drunken amalgamation of images, coloured by a blind man. Artist unknown.
• Titan TPB cover: Blaster, Ramhorn, Bombshell, Shrapnel, Kickback and half of the Space bridge by Andrew Wildman.
• Titan hardback cover: Blaster in the smelting pool by Don Figueroa, Gary Erskine & Chris Blythe.
• Generations cover: Reimaging of US cover, by Nick Roche.

Advertisements

• Olympic Sales Club offering "100 Super Prizes" including a Voltron Robot Watch (Sell 10 Items), Voltron Calculator Robot (Sell 16 Items), and Tyco Transformers Race Set (Sell 35 Items) - between pages 4 & 5

Reprints

• 1988 — The Transformers Comics Magazine #8
• 1989 — Transformers Comic-Magazin #4
• 2003 — Transformers: Cybertron Redux
• 2006 — The Transformers: Generations #4
• 2007 — The Transformers: Generations
• 2008 — Classic Transformers Volume 1
• 2012 — The Transformers Classics, Vol. 2