The Bridge to Nowhere!

	; "May I axe you a question?"
	"The Bridge to Nowhere!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	March 1986
Cover date	July 1986
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Penciler	Don Perlin
Inkers	Keith Williams & Vince Colletta
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Janice Chiang
Editor	Michael Carlin
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

While the Cybertronian Decepticons build a device that will allow travel between Cybertron and Earth, the Autobots make a desperate attempt to stop them.

Synopsis

While out for a drive through the Columbia River Gorge, a young couple is surprised to find a huge suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere. Attempting to cross, they are further shocked to discover that the bridge only goes halfway across the gorge, and as they screech to a halt before going over the edge, a giant metal creature materializes in front of them and promptly explodes. Not wanting to stick around to see what else comes over the bridge, the pair flee, casting a backward glance as they go to see the bridge itself vanish into thin air.

The bridge rematerializes at its origin point: Cybertron. It is a "space bridge," created on the orders of Straxus and designed by the kidnapped neutral scientist Spanner, designed to teleport troops to join the Decepticons on Earth. Straxus is furious over the bridge's failure to work, but is somewhat less concerned about the fact that one of his own troopers just blew up; he sends another hapless soldier to investigate, and the poor Decepticon meets a similarly explosive fate. Before any more troops can be sacrificed, Shrapnel contacts Spanner and identifies the fatal flaw, nothing more than a fuel line malfunction. The space bridge is shut down for repairs, but observing from a nearby clifftop, Blaster, sent to hunt for Spanner, notes the info with interest. Presently, Blaster is collected by Powerglide and taken back to Autobase, where he delivers his report on the operational space bridge. Unable to spare further time and resources hunting for Spanner, Perceptor draws up a plan to attack Darkmount and destroy the bridge; Blaster, determined to save Spanner as penance for failing to save Scrounge, objects at first, but reluctantly accepts that Perceptor is correct.

At the Decepticon-held coal mine in Wyoming, Donny Finkleberg is still making broadcasts in his "Robot-Master" role, with a new communication tower built by Soundwave expanding the reach of his transmissions to span the continent. Finkleberg complains about his working conditions, as all Ravage brings him for food is a snack machine full of candy, wearing Megatron's patience down to his last nerve. Fortunately for Finkleberg, Megatron's attention is drawn away by the return of Laserbeak and Buzzsaw from the mission he recently dispatched them on. The condors have found and returned with Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp... but Megatron's rival for leadership, Shockwave, is also with them! The two would-be commanders square up for another duel, but are suddenly interrupted by a transmission from Straxus, picked up by Soundwave's communications tower. Straxus informs them he is about to open the space bridge, and Megatron and Shockwave agree that, given this development, they will set their rivalry aside and agree to a joint leadership of the Decepticons for the time being.

While Blaster stands by, Perceptor and the other Autobots tunnel below Darkmount and plant explosives in its primary fuel chamber. The resultant blast brings the fortress tumbling down, and most of the Decepticons are drawn away from the bridge to attack the Autobots, Straxus included. Blasting his way through the remaining guards, Blaster bounds onto the space bridge and begins placing fission bombs in order to destroy it. As he works, a voice emanates from the bridge itself, urging him to hurry—and to his horror, Blaster realizes that Spanner didn't just design the bridge... he is the bridge, forcibly reconfigured by the Decepticons to become part of it! In pain, Spanner pleads with him to destroy his mutilated form; Blaster is naturally reluctant, but before he can decide what to do, Shrapnel spots him and alerts Straxus and the other Decepticons.

At Straxus's command, the bridge is successfully activated and the Decepticons begin their march on Earth. Perceptor's Autobots move in, engaging them in battle on the bridge, the two sides battling between two worlds, warriors on both sides toppling over the edge and perishing in the interdimensional void below. As the Autobots find themselves pushed back to the Earth side of the bridge, Straxus himself swoops in and engages Blaster in battle, but Blaster, exploiting the knowledge of the bridge's systems he acquired earlier, strategically ducks and causes Straxus's axe-swing to rupture the key fuel line. As the bridge destabilizes, Blaster kicks the Decepticon back through to the Cybertron side, his body exploding like his unfortunate warriors before him. Unable to cross back over without meeting the same fate and with the unstable space bridge fading away around them, Blaster and his surviving Autobot teammates are forced to disembark the bridge on its Earth side, leaving them stranded on a strange new world...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Others
Blaster (9) Powerglide (10) Perceptor (11) Cosmos (12) Seaspray (13) Warpath (14) Beachcomber (15) Corkscrew (26) Borebit (27)	Crosscut (3) Straxus (4) Crosscut's successor (5) Shrapnel (6) Bombshell (7) Kickback (8) Ravage (16) Soundwave (18) Megatron (19) Shockwave (20) Starscream (21) Thundercracker (22) Skywarp (23) Laserbeak (24) Buzzsaw (25)	Rita (1) Charlie (2) Donny Finkleberg (17)	Spanner (28)

Quotes

"Spare me the details, Shrapnel - just do it!"

—Straxus spouts his favorite catchphrase

"Fleshling, you try my patience... turn off your vocal apparatus or I will turn it off for you -- permanently!"

—As Soundwave tried to explain, Megatron's circuitry has no tolerance for dissent.

"Those responsible for this will pay -- with their lives! And I will collect the fee... personally!"

— while tumbling off the collapsing Darkmount and transforming, Straxus still finds time for a witty one-liner.

"War is careless... in the victims it chooses... it is... too late... for me. ...Doing nothing... allowing me to live... another moment... in this obscene form... is the worst thing... you can do to me! Please... grant me this one last favor... kill me!"

— Spanner, who does not get his wish.

Notes

Continuity notes

Soundwave has evidently managed to miniaturize the Decepticons' "interspace" communications technology somewhat; the new transmitter tower he builds this issue to expand the range of the Robot-Master broadcasts proves able to make contact with Cybertron despite being notably smaller than the gigantic array he used back in issue #10.
As a footnote reminds us, Donny Finkleberg has been the Decepticons' prisoner since issue #15.
When Shockwave appears with Laserbeak and Buzzsaw to confront Megatron, Megatron comments that he had sent the two condors to retrieve the three Decepticon jets, not Shockwave. This is new information, most likely an attempt to explain an earlier continuity hiccup: Laserbeak and Buzzsaw (along with Soundwave and Ravage) had rescued Megatron from his immobility in issue #15, but in the very next issue (a fill-in story written by a different author), the two bird-cassettes were working for Shockwave. This issue's revelation that they had been sent out on a mission provides a retroactive explanation: they had succeeded in finding the jets, but since the jets were serving under Shockwave at the time, the condors simply fell into his band.
Shockwave notes he can build a converter to turn the coal in the Wyoming mine into energon cubes; he previously constructed one of these devices in issue #14.

Transformers references

Created for the animated series eighteen months prior, the Decepticons' space bridge makes its debut in comic continuity with this story (right). It is significantly different from the cartoon bridge, which requires installations at both the Cybertron and Earth ends to function and sends travelers via a beam of light; the comic bridge does not require a receiver at the Earth end to operate, and takes the form of a literal bridge.

Real-life references

The space bridge test happens in the real-life Columbia River Gorge of northern Oregon.

Artwork and technical errors

Slab Bulkhead! Gristle McThornbody! Big McLargeHuge!

As with last issue, Blaster continues to spend this story drawn to the specifications of an early (or made-up-on-the-fly) character model rather than the finalized one used for the animated series. The finalized model is again used on the cover of the issue, but noticeably miscolored with red legs and hands.
Straxus's colors have changed significantly from last issue; most of his red parts are gone, replaced with either silver or blue-black, and he's gained a large yellow-orange stripe down his chest (see right).
Page 6, panels 7-8: Blaster's hips are red instead of tan.
Blaster's eyes are colored blue on page 7, as they were last issue, but from page 11 onward, they change to yellow (right). Blaster will have yellow eyes pretty much consistently for the rest of the series.
Page 8:
- Panel 1: Earth is rather oddly drawn with a giant ring of smoke around it.
- Panel 5: Megatron's abdominals are magenta instead of red, and the rear of his fusion cannon is missing.
Page 10:
- Panel 4: Soundwave's forehead-crest is colored pale blue instead of pale purple like the rest of his helmet.
- Panel 6: Skywarp and Thundercracker are indistinguishable from one another, as they've both been colored the same shade of blue-black; Skywarp is normally a slightly greener shade. One has an entirely orange chest, and the other an entirely red one; they should both be orange, and the color should be confined only to the cockpit canopies on their chests, not to the whole thing.
Page 11, panel 1: Now it's Soundwave's shoulder cannon that's pale blue, instead of solid blue like usual.
Page 15, panel 1: A yellow smudge runs down Blaster's torso.
Page 19, panel 3: Blaster's face is left uncolored white.
Page 22, panel 1: Powerglide is miscolored blue and white.

UK printing

Issue #68:

Published: 28th June, 1986
Cover date: 5th July, 1986
Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, Rocket Raccoon ("The Age of Enlightenment," Part 3), and Matt and the Cat
Fact File Interface: Long Haul
Free Gift: Defensor collector card for the Special Teams Special Collection Wallchart
In US continuity, this issue marks the first meeting of Megatron and Shockwave since the Decepticons became splintered into two groups, but in UK continuity, the pair had their first encounter in the earlier story "Second Generation!" (issues #63-65), in which they agreed to a joint leadership of the Decepticons before coming to that decision in this US issue. Accordingly, Megatron and Shockwave's dialogue on pages 9–10 is edited for the UK reprint to reflect that they are already co-leaders, and becomes merely about Megatron objecting to Shockwave's tone (see right). You can even see the outlines of the pasted-on pieces of paper the new text was written on!

Issue #69:

Published: 5th July, 1986
Cover date: 12th July, 1986
Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, Rocket Raccoon ("The Age of Enlightenment," Part 4), and Matt and the Cat; Rocket Raccoon concludes this issue.
Fact File Interface: Swoop
Free Gift: Superion collector card for the Special Teams Special Collection Wallchart

Other trivia

The full title of the previous issue was given as "Return to Cybertron Part 1: The Smelting Pool!". Ostensibly, this would make "The Bridge To Nowhere!", "Return to Cybertron Part 2", but it isn't named as such in the issue itself.
Last issue rather made it seem like Perceptor's resistance cell consisted of only himself, Blaster, and the five Mini Vehicles, but this issue features many other generic Autobots as part of his ranks. Two are named: Corkscrew and Borebit, both with drill alternate modes. "Dozens" of Autobots and Decepticons are said to perish in the battle for the bridge.
The "Transmissions" letters page in the US edition of this issue includes a letter from John Kamatani, mentioning his cousin Shingo. Shingo would go on to become a recurring gag in the letters page.

Bot Roster

Autobots: 17 members of Optimus Prime's forces active; 7 new arrivals from Cybertron; 12 offline in repair bay. (36 total)
Decepticons: All 17 active, but Rumble, Frenzy, and the Constructicons' whereabouts are presently unaccounted for.

Courtesy of my...

Blaster gives two generic Decepticons "...a case of bad balance, courtesy of my electro-scrambler". He also plants fission bombs on the space bridge.

Covers (3)

US issue #18: Blaster vs. Straxus, by Herb Trimpe.
UK issue #68: A half Earth/half Cybertron with the respective leaders of each, by Phil Gascoine.
UK issue #69: reuse of art from US cover with a new background.

US issue #18 - "Maybe we should start seeing other people?"
UK issue #68 - A really bad space soap opera.
UK issue #69 - The US cover on acid.

Reprints

The Transformers Comics Magazine #9 (Marvel US, 1988)
Transformers Comic-Magazin #6 (Condor Verlag, 1989)
Transformers: Cybertron Redux paperback (Titan Books, 2003)
Transformers: Cybertron Redux hardback (Titan Books, 2003)
The Transformers: Generations #6 cover A (IDW Publishing, 2006)
The Transformers: Generations #6 cover B (IDW Publishing, 2006)
The Transformers: Generations #6 cover RI (IDW Publishing, 2006)
The Transformers: Generations TPB (IDW Publishing, 2007)
Classic Transformers Volume 2 (IDW Publishing, 2008)
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 2 (IDW Publishing, 2012)
The Definitive G1 Collection, Vol. 5: The Smelting Pool (Hachette Partworks, Ltd., 2019)

IDW Transformers Classics edits

For The Transformers Classics series of trade paperbacks, IDW Publishing "remastered" the coloring of the series with varying degrees of success. These changes were sometimes to fix errors, but often to alter characters' color schemes to make them resemble their toy and/or cartoon selves, and were rarely applied with consistency. IDW's recolored version was also used for Hachette's Definitive G1 Collection. (n.b. not all the changes made in IDW's The Transformers Classics are present in the Definitive G1 Collection in this instance. Where they differ, a note has been made below.)

Hope you don't like the Spacebridge landscape in the background of this issue's cover, because the reprint omits it completely (right). Blaster is also rendered in a strikingly darker red than normal, even for these reprints.
Page 7, panel 1: Powerglide's face is "corrected" to white from its original grey.
Page 8, panel 5: Megatron's miscolored abdominals are corrected to their proper red.
As usual, Soundwave is "corrected" from his Marvel purple colour scheme to blue in his appearances on pages 8, 9, and 10. This extends to miscoloring his mouthplate blue on page 9, panel 2, but not to correcting his miscolored crest on page 10, panel 4. He is not recolored at all on page 11 and remains purple. Sigh. (change not present in Hachette edition)
Page 10: The inconsistent remastering of the series makes Shockwave a drab, muddy purple instead of his usual violet, with especially pronounced contrast between his helmet and face in panel 7, which was not so bold in the original.
- Panel 5-6: Straxus's holographic transmission is now grey instead of red.
Page 13, panel 4: Only the top halves of the small rings at the front of Straxus's alternate mode were colored red in the original comic; here they are changed to be red all the way around.
Page 15, panel 1: The yellow smudge on Blaster is removed.
Page 19, panel 3: Blaster's uncolored face is changed to its correct yellow.
Page 20: In another example of the inconsistency of the remastering, the greyish-purple shading on Straxus's limbs in the original comic becomes bright pink.

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The Bridge to Nowhere!

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