Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?

	; Shouldn't this be "Guess Whom the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?"?
	"Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	January 1989
Cover date	May 1989
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Penciler	José Delbo
Inker	Dave Hunt
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Manny Manos
Editor	Don Daley
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

In a mission to secure parts for their comrades, a couple of Autobot Pretenders bite off more than they can chew.

Synopsis

Remember, kids: Rust-sucking causes tetanus.

In the wake of the Underbase incident, dozens of Autobots are inoperative with severe microchip damage. Optimus Prime sends Pretenders Landmine and Cloudburst on a mission to secure microchips from the black market on Grand Central Space Station, where robots are not welcome (as demonstrated when the crowd at a local bar shoves a Chromite out an airlock). The Pretenders soon find chip dealers, not realizing that the dealers are actually Nebulan Powermasters Hi-Test and Throttle. They also meet Berko and discover that a fellow Autobot, Sky Lynx, has recently been to the station, but went missing soon after Berko attempted to make a deal with the same shady pair.

Landmine attempts to recover Sky Lynx by insisting that the dealers take them to the suppliers directly. The Pretenders soon find themselves face to face with the Mecannibals, robot-eating mechanical lifeforms. They are safe from the Mecannibals' appetite only thanks to their human-appearing outer shells. The Mecannibals agree to do business over dinner: Sky Lynx.

Landmine's inner robot form, which had stayed outside at the beginning of the "deal", arrives to free Sky Lynx. He gratefully escapes, and Landmine's inner robot recombines with his outer shell in the confusion, unseen by the Mecannibals. They soon complete the deal for the microchips and return to the space station.

All would be well, except the Pretenders decide to reveal their robotic nature to Berko afterward. This is witnessed by Hi-Test and Throttle, who notify a local bartender, J'oh. When the Pretenders go to the bar to settle Berko's tab, they are quickly overwhelmed by the station's robot-hating populace and are shoved out of an airlock. Before Landmine and Cloudburst can re-orient themselves, they are knocked out by Dreadwing and transported back to the Mecannibals' ship. It seems that the Mecannibals are eager to replace the meal they just lost, and two Autobots in synthetic flesh shells will do just fine!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Nebulans	Others
Landmine (4) Cloudburst (5) Optimus Prime (8) Grimlock (9) Blaster (10) Gears (11) Goldbug (12) Groundbreaker (13) Sky High (14) Sky Lynx (15)	Dreadwing (16)	Berko (14)	Throttle (6) Hi-Test (7)	J'oh (1) Chromite (2) Urtuskian (3) Master Mouth (17)

Quotes

"Better watch where you poke that finger, smiley... if you want it to stay on your hand!"

— Landmine starts a space-bar brawl

"Landmine, we have a mission -- !"
"I got a more important mission -- staying alive!"
"You can make my job so complicated sometimes."

—Cloudburst tries and fails to keep Landmine on task

Hi-Test: "The deal's set. You got the payment?"
Cloudburst: "Right here."
Landmine: "But we're not giving it to middlemen. We've decided only to deal with your boss directly!"
Cloudburst: "We have?! ...URK! Oh yes. We have."

Landmine: "Thank you, your mouthful. Um... you sure there're 500 million in here?"
Master Mouth: "WHAT?! Get out!!"
Cloudburst: "Looks like the right number to me, Landmine."
Landmine: "No argument here, Cloudburst. So long, guys. Keep smiling."

"Y'see, Cloudy? That wasn't so hard."
"If by that you mean we barely escaped with our lives, then I agree."

—Landmine and Cloudburst, buddy cops

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

Not so much Blue Danube as Cum on Feel the Noize.

Though the residents appear to dislike humans as "rust-sucking robot lovers", Grand Central Space Station's docking ports are nevertheless labeled with Arabic numbers.
Cloudburst and Landmine's Pretender shell helmets enclose their open portions in glass while in space, but apparently Hi-Test and Throttle can hop the unprotected distance between the airlock and Dreadwing's open cockpit while just wearing hoods over their equally-unprotected faces. (They only put their masks on after getting inside.) Let's hope "breathing in space" is one of the perks of binary bonding! Furthermore, Bob Budiansky usually makes sure his characters only speak with "radio-tailed" word balloons while in space, because Science, yet Hi-Test and Throttle are just yapping it up with normal word balloons while in their open-ended airlock. Perhaps José Delbo was supposed to draw a more secure connection between the airlock and the cockpit.
Cloudburst's red parts of his Pretender shell are colored brown on page 7.

Continuity errors

Hi-Test and Throttle refer to the combined form of Dreadwind and Darkwing as Darkwind rather than Dreadwing. This was corrected in the UK reprint.
When Optimus Prime sends the Pretenders on their mission, he only gives them one vial. They destroy a vial to distract the Mecannibals, but they later give another vial over as payment. Perhaps Optimus gave them a spare?

Continuity notes

Among the Autobots shown needing repairs are Grimlock, Blaster, Gears, and Goldbug. Most of them are {gulp} decapitated.
Cloudburst's inner robot transforms into a spacecraft large enough to transport both his own outer shell and Landmine easily. This is a classic example of implicit size changing.
The Nebulans, Berko, and many of the aliens on the station seem to be completely fooled into thinking the Pretenders are humans (not just organic, but specifically human), despite the fact that they're Transformer-sized, and thus somewhere over 15' (5m) tall. However, the inhabitants of the nearby planet of Femax are specifically called "human" (by Landmine, in the next story, "Recipe for Disaster!"), and are Transformer-sized, so this makes a certain kind of sense.

Real-life references

The title is presumably an homage to the classic movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Courtesy of my...

Landmine uses his laser saber to free Sky Lynx.
He also fires on the Mecannibals with his astro blaster.

UK Printing

This was the first story was split across four UK issues instead of the usual two so that it could accommodate two Transformers stories per issue (plus back-up strip).

Issue #213

Additional Transformers story: "The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire."
Back-up strips: Visionaries - "The End..." and Combat Colin
AtoZ: Mirage and Mixmaster
With this issue, the cover subtitle went from Action Force to Visionaries again, while the interior pages were redesigned and the price rose to 38p. Previous issues had hyped this as "the event of the century".
In the redesigned Dread Tidings, Dreadwind confirmed that the issue of Skids being left in Limbo would be addressed in a future story and that Galvatron was indeed dead (which although technically true, wouldn't stop the character from returning to the comic). Conversely, in response to a reader lamenting Starscream's demise at the end of "Dark Star", he said he didn't believe that the treacherous Seeker was dead at all.^[1]

Issue #214

Additional Transformers story: "The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire."
Back-up strips: Visionaries - "The End..." and Combat Colin
In Dread Tidings, Dreadwind addressed more readers' letters regarding "Time Wars", including the colouring error in issue #201.^[2]

Issue #215

Additional Transformers story: "Race with the Devil"
Back-up strips: Visionaries - "The End..." and Combat Colin
AtoZ: Motormaster and Octane
With this issue, the additional Transformers strip switched from colour to black-and-white.

Issue #216

Additional Transformers story: "Race with the Devil"
Back-up strips: Visionaries - "The End..." and Combat Colin
Classic Covers Calendar: The fifth(?) in a series of monthly calendars that showcased inks from covers of yesteryear with new colours. This edition used Dave Gibbons's inks from issue 133... and was actually the calendar for June, erroneously published way too early and in place of May (which would eventually surface in issue 220).
As both of this issue's Transformers stories feature Dreadwind and Darkwing, the Transformation page helpfully points out that "Race with the Devil" is chronologically set after "Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?".

Covers (5)

US issue #52 - The Mecannibals had an excellent dental plan.
UK issue #213 - It's even better if you mix up all the taglines.
UK issue #214 - ...but are they hungry for Quake's gigantic crotch?
UK issue #215 - Move along, nothing to see here...
UK issue #216 - Death looks like a red ball with teeth, apparently.

US issue #52 cover: Mecannibals about to have a Transformer lunch, by José Delbo and Danny Bulanadi.
UK issue #213 cover: Landmine and Cloudburst / Megatron / Visionaries, by John Stokes.
UK issue #214 cover: Mecannibals / Megatron vs Quake, by John Stokes.
UK issue #215 cover: Triggerbots vs Dreadwing, by Jeff Anderson.
UK issue #216 cover: variation of US cover / Backstreet and Susan, by Art Wetherell.

Reprints

Transformers: Last Stand TPB cover: Swindler, Rippersnapper, Snarler, Astrotrain and half a Mecannibal, by Andrew Wildman.
Transformers: Last Stand Hardback cover: A damaged Fortress Maximus battling Snarler and Carnivac, by Frank Quitely.
Classic Transformers Volume 4 cover: Panels from US issues #59 and #60, pencils by José Delbo, inks by Dave Hunt and colours by Nel Yomtov.
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 5 cover: Prowl by Guido Guidi.
Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection:Volume 15: Time Wars: Highbrow profile pic over Galvatron blasting the Wreckers from issue #204; art by Lee Sullivan (pencils #204), Stephen Baskerville (inks, #204) and Don Figueroa? (Highbrow).

Transformers: Last Stand TPB (Titan Books, 2005)
Transformers: Last Stand HC (Titan Books, 2005)
Classic Transformers Volume 4 (IDW Publishing, 2009)
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 5
(IDW Publishing, 2012)
The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 15: Time Wars
(Hachette Partworks, 2019)