Of Masters and Mayhem

If you didn't like what Regeneration One did with the Marvelverse humans, maybe you'll like this take on them.

Of Masters and Mayhem is the twelfth and final six-part story arc published through the official fan club, by license-holder Fun Publications. The story appeared in 2016 in the club's bi-monthly magazine, in issues #67 to #72. The magazine comic arc is also accompanied by five online prose stories.

Overview

Following the "finale" of Another Light, Of Masters and Mayhem is something of an "epilogue" to Fun Publications' comics, wrapping up the dangling mystery of what happened to humankind during the previous story, and also bringing back Ramjet, from the very first club comic back in 2005, as a kind of bookending of the company's tenure. The story is largely promotion for the fourth and fifth series of the Collectors' Club's Transformers Figure Subscription Service (as well as Ramjet, the club's 2016 promotional membership figure), and draws upon some concepts from Super-God Masterforce, with human-sized Pretenders hiding and working amongst mankind.

Synopsis

In this pocket universe, the Great War concluded...with Thunder Mayhem the victor. The combined form of the Mayhem Attack Squad, magnum opus of Decepticon science, scoured Cybertron of life, killing Autobot and Decepticon alike and driving the Cybertronian species to near-extinction. Impactor, leader and sole survivor of the Wreckers, now seeks out fellow survivors in order to get revenge on Thunder Mayhem.

Meanwhile, the humans (and four Autobot Pretenders) of the Classicsverse landed on the local Earth after being sent there by Gaea. Keeping a low profile due to anti-Cybertronian sentiment, Spike and his associates investigate their new home, which was mysteriously unpopulated by any native humans when they arrived. After five years of no results, they encounter a mysterious man.

Herald of Unicron Ramjet is finally free. Though his dimensional travel capabilities are now severely restricted by the Shroud, he aims to carry on his master's legacy—destruction! And Ramjet links up with the Mayhem Attack Squad...

Creative team

The story arc was written by Jesse Wittenrich and Pete Sinclair. The art was pencilled by Dan Khanna, inked by Jake Isenberg and colored by Evan Gauntt with letters by Jesse Wittenrich. Pete Sinclair served as managing editor for the arc.

Notes

• The title of this continuity is obviously derived from the 1937 novella Of Mice and Men, by American author John Steinbeck.
• This continuity takes many influences from the Marvel Comics continuity, with all the classic G1 characters in "The Toxic Transformer" having their coloration from the Marvel G1 comic. There are some differences, though—notably, female Transformers seem to be much more common in this universe than in other Marvel-derived continuities. In addition, all small Targetmaster partners are Cybertronians rather than Nebulans, the Maximals and Predacons have already emerged in the modern day as a subset of the Decepticons, and Unicron does not exist.