Personal tools

Revenge of the Decepticons Part 4: Burning Chrome

From Transformers Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search
« The Transformers #17 »
TFvol1 17cvrB.jpg
"Revenge of the Decepticons Part 4: Burning Chrome"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published March 9, 2011
Cover date March 2011
Written by Mike Costa
Art by Alex Milne
Colors by Andrew Dalhouse and Romulo Fajardo
Letters by Shawn Lee
Editor Andy Schmidt
Assistant editor Carlos Guzman
Continuity 2005 IDW continuity
Chronology Current era (2011)

Things continue to go downhill for the Autobots, as Megatron holds Ultra Magnus hostage.

Contents

Synopsis

Trapped underwater in Optimus Prime's trailer, Spike is unconvinced about the Autobot's supposed ability to manufacture oxygen to keep the men alive. Spike then begins lamenting about being unable to contact his sister to his equally trapped Skywatch compatriots. As he says this, ocean water comes pouring through the gaps in the trailer.

BurningChrome Prime shoots Soundwave.jpg

Presently, Spike awakens in a sweat in Prime's cab, no longer underwater. After Joe Henderson asks about the health of his commanding officer, Spike comments that it's going to take some time for his brain to stop reliving their recent aquatic plight. Composing himself, Spike orders Henderson to check for communications from the Skywatch base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Joe does so, and sees that in addition to the expected offline distress call, there is another message encoded underneath that Prime is going to want to see.

The message plays, and a projection of Megatron appears, greeting Optimus Prime, who the Decepticon tyrant knows will still be alive to receive this message. The same cannot be said of some of the Autobot troops, notably Ultra Magnus, and Skywatch personnel mustered against Megatron. Megatron ends the message by threatening not to kill Prime, but to destroy him, stating that the Autobots will know the difference. After Optimus verifies that the message came from near a population center, the Autobots and Skywatch personnel roll out, despite the ammo shortages, power depletion and fatigue affecting all of them.

Outside of Albuquerque, Brawn is forced to abandon his prisoner, Starscream, and take his wounded ally Thundercracker to get repairs from Ratchet. Not far away, Optimus Prime and his group of Autobots rendezvous with Megatron and Soundwave. Megatron tells Prime to lower his weapons as they can do no harm to the Decepticon leader's new form. Megatron then gloats that in the city, there are 46 people armed with weapons derived from his previous body, and hundreds more scattered across the planet. Optimus dismisses these people as renegades that mean nothing and claims the Cybertronians can learn much from the humans, an idea that Megatron scoffs at. Megatron claims that the only things the Autobots will learn is how they've brought ruin to themselves. Optimus Prime asks if this is how it's always going to be, a philosophical disagreement and then the punching starts. Megatron answers that this time, things have changed. Rather than kill Prime, he wants to destroy him. To this end, Megatron had dumped the wounded and incapacitated Autobots in the city fifteen minutes earlier.

Knowing that if his troops take on non-military humans in their own cities they'll never be accepted on Earth, Prime sends Spike and Campolongo to find his cohorts, ordering Jazz to transport them as he's the fastest of the group. Prime admits to Megatron that he doesn't trust all humans, but he does trust Spike.

Driving through the city, Spike hears via the radio that Megatron dumped the wounded Autobots on a school playground. At the playground, there are two men with Megatron-derived guns aiming at the Autobots. Several policemen with regular sidearms have the Megatron-gun wielders in their sights. Gears is trying to get the humans to stand down so that nobody on either side gets hurt, but the Autobot's message isn't getting through. Spike pulls up in Jazz, disembarks and tells the police that he's taking operational command and that the first priority is evacuating the area so that no people get hurt. An officer on the scene ignores Spike and orders the assembled police to hold their fire, despite protestations from a wounded elderly fellow officer.

Back outside the city, Megatron tells Optimus Prime that he can feel the renegade humans getting ready to fire on the Autobots. This leads Prime to conclude that the Decepticon hasn't left this to chance and must be communicating somehow through the Cybertronian weaponry. Prime charges up his ion blaster. Megatron reminds Optimus that it won't hurt him. Optimus knows and blasts Soundwave through the head, deactivating both the Decepticon communications officer and the signals broadcasting into the Megatron-guns. Megatron is predictably enraged, and threatens to destroy Optimus Prime's spark with his bare hands. Megatron stops himself, stating that while he may have lost one soldier, Prime is going to lose everything. With that statement, Megatron then scoops up Soundwave's body and leaves.

Back in the city, the gun wielders are a little disoriented now that the "voices" have stopped. They are subsequently disarmed and detained rather easily. However, the policeman who gave the order to hold fire earlier now has one of the Megatron-guns and says that while the renegades may have been insane, they were not wrong, and points the Megatron-gun at Bumblebee. Bumblebee tries to reason with the man, but an impatient Jazz disobeys Prime's order to stand down, transforms and creeps up on the situation. Right as the man goes to squeeze the trigger on the Megatron-gun, Jazz fires his photon rifle at the human, engulfing him in flames. A horrified Bumblebee asks a shaken Jazz what he just did...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Humans

Notes

Continuity notes

  • Spike mentions having a sister, a never-before-mentioned member of the Witwicky family of Generation 1. Interestingly, the idea of a younger sister was part of the early development of Sunbow Generation 1 cartoon.[1]
  • Red Alert is seen with Prime's team from Korea, while Wheeljack is nowhere to be found. It's possible the Korean unit reconnected with the other Autobots on Earth (besides those with Ultra Magnus) between this issue and the last, but this isn't clearly indicated from the context.
  • As Prime and Megatron trade insults, Ultra Magnus is conscious and up to something, take note, that may be important later...

Real-world references

Errors

  • Optimus is the only Autobot to have a faction symbol on page 4... and it is photoshopped at the wrong angle.
  • Everyone is missing their faction symbols on the subsequent page.
  • On page 10, "possess" is misspelled "posses".
  • The first panel of page 12 is missing a dialog balloon before Megatron says "Or you can..." This was corrected in the trade paperback collection with the missing balloon and dialogue added in as: "Of course, if you're so committed to "learning" from these humans I'm sure you'll sit back and attend to this lesson."
  • Blurr, Tracks, and Windcharger are mysteriously absent in the group that Megatron leaves on the school playground on page 14, even though they were seen last issue.
  • Also on page 14, third panel, Silverstreak's shoulder is mistakenly colored orange. This was fixed for the trade paperback collection.
  • And on the subject of colors, on the pages colored by Andrew Dalhouse at the beginning of the issue, Jazz's visor is Generation 1 blue, but on the pages colored by Romulo Fajardo at the end of the issue, it's colored silver like his movie counterpart's. Also, Red Alert's helmet is colored red (like in the cartoon), whereas the previous Earth-based story had him with a black helmet (like his toy).

Other trivia

  • Milne draws Smokescreen's alternate form as its Universe design, differing slightly from his previous depictions in the series.

Covers (3)

  • (thumbnail)

    "You will deal with me NOW, Magnus!"

  • (thumbnail)

    He's dead, Jazz.

  • (thumbnail)

    Soundwave's an iPod, amirite?

Advertisements

Reprints

References

  1. ↑ Human Characters in the G1 cartoon bible.
Retrieved from "https://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Revenge_of_the_Decepticons_Part_4:_Burning_Chrome&oldid=1690083"
Advertisement
TFsource.com - Your Source for Everything Transformers!