Devastation # 2
Written by Simon Furman
Penciled by EJ Su
Colors by Zac Atkinson

Summary:

Earlier in Ark-19, Hot Rod receives a transmission from Dealer, who requests a transfer to Earth.  Hot Rod says he no say in deployment matters, but Dealer somewhat overzealously tells him to make it happen; they’ve got history and it would be great to work together again.  Hot Rod is a little off-put by Dealer’s enthusiasm, but says he’ll see what he can do.  We flash-forward to the present, as Hot Rod and Wheeljack speed along a mostly deserted highway in Indiana, headed to retrieve Ironhide’s remains from a scrap yard.  Hot Rod urges Wheeljack to hurry, but the Autobot inventor simply tells Hot Rod that they have plenty of time and he should remain within the speed limit and engage his holo-matter driver.  Hot Rod does so and points out that no one’s on the road at this early hour.  No sooner does Hot Rod say this than the two Autobots suddenly are surrounded by five cars that look exactly like Sunstreaker!  Somewhere nearby in a Machination mobile command unit, Mr. Drake wants to see what these new units are capable of, and orders the operation to commence.  Back on the road, before the two Autobots can ascertain what exactly is happening, the Sunstreaker units all deploy weapons and fire on them.  Wheeljack and Hot Rod take evasive action, with the former suggesting they gain some distance from these identical enemies.  Hot Rod isn’t having that, and begins to retaliate when Wheeljack brings up the point that one of the enemies might actually be the REAL Sunstreaker.  Meanwhile, the Ark-19, having been blasted by Sixshot, heads towards a fiery crash-landing into a populated urban area.  On the bridge, Prowl asks for a status report and Jazz responds that they’ve lost the controls and engines.  Bumblebee reports that they’re visible now and a nearby Air Force base is already scrambling fighters to investigate.  Optimus takes charge and orders Ratchet to power-up their forward thrusters to get the Ark-19 to pull up.  He then asks Nightbeat to locate the nearest coastline and hopes that the ship can make it there.  The massive Autobot ship pulls up just in time, narrowly buzzing over a human neighborhood, causing minor collateral damage and spooking several humans who see it fly just overhead.  Now headed for a body of water, Optimus orders Ratchet to take Jimmy and Verity and abandon ship in an escape pod.  Nightbeat is to send all data in Ark-19 to Ark-32 in orbit, and Prowl is to make sure “nothing survives the crash”.  As local news stations break in with the news of the Ark-19 sighting, the escape pod is jettisoned from the side of the shuttle.  Sixshot, following along in flying pistol mode, takes note of the pod and plots its probable trajectory.  Meanwhile, Nightbeat confirms that the data has been sent to Ark-32 and Prime orders him to follow the others into the cargo hold.  Prowl confirms that the auto-destruct is set, and moments later the Ark-19 crashes into the ocean.  A massive explosion ripples through the water seconds later, as Sixshot observes.  He radios Megatron to notify him of the mission’s completion.  At the Decepticon command bunker, Megatron receives Sixshot’s report and orders him to find the escape pod and kill whomever was inside.  Astrotrain begins to ask Megatron a question, but the Decepticon commander just dismisses him and tells him to find him when Sixshot reports in again.  Astrotrain is less than pleased with being marginalized, but Blitzwing pokes his head in the room a moment later, to inform his fellow Triple-Changer that Starscream is awake!  Meanwhile in the Machination main facility in Florida, Mister Dante examines the newly-outfitted Hunter O’Nion, who is now wearing a robotic exo-skeleton of indeterminate design and staring blankly into space.  A doctor informs Dante that Hunter’s mind has been suppressed and he is a blank slate now, to be utilized any way the Machination wants.  Dante is pleased and asks to see his own exo-suit, as the two leave Hunter alone in the room.  Suddenly, Hunter’s eyes flash a sign of intelligence as the door closes.  Back in Indiana, Hot Rod and Wheeljack continue to spar with their new Sunstreaker look-alike opponents.  They can’t seem to outrun them and Hot Rod figures that they have to fight back, even if one IS the real Sunstreaker.  Wheeljack agrees and decides that they can probably out-maneuver their foes, zipping in front of an oncoming truck and forcing a Sunstreaker duplicate into its path.  Hot Rod is impressed with Wheeljack’s daring, even as he takes a particularly sharp turn and forces one of his pursuers through a barrier and off the road.  The two Autobots reconnoiter at an abandoned facility of some sort off the highway, but the remaining Sunstreaker duplicates follow them there.  Speculating that they are more that just remote-controlled drones, Wheeljack and Hot Rod decide to transform to robot mode and see what the response is.  Back at the Machination HQ, Hunter staggers out of the room he was in, in full grasp of his mental facilities.  He managed to beat the hypnosis and drugs the Machination doctors submitted him to by focusing on useless trivia he had accumulated over his years of being a conspiracy buff and general geek.  And now Hunter wants answers; he’s been altered, and he can feel the change goes internal too.  Hunter sneaks into a nearby room, where a group of Machination scientists watch something exciting happening on a view screen.  Hunter sneaks past them into another chamber with a large glass window into the first room, trying to see what they are watching.  Suddenly, a voice calls out to Hunter from behind, and he wheels around to face it.  Back in Indiana, Hot Rod and Wheeljack point their weapons at the Sunstreaker clones when suddenly one of them transforms to robot mode.  The almost-exact duplicate of Sunstreaker reaches up and removes his head, which then transforms into a human wearing the same exo-armor that Hunter was fitted with.  The human introduces them as “Headmasters”, claiming them as a step up in evolution, and deeming Hot Rod and Wheeljack as obsolete!  Back at the Machination HQ, Hunter is face to face with the decapitated, partially-disassembled head of the REAL Sunstreaker.  “Kill me”, the mutilated Autobot begs of the human.  TO BE CONTINUED!

Special Note:  A fan-created Transformers comic strip under the “Mosaic” project was printed at the end of this issue.  This is the first one “officially” printed in an IDW Transformers comic, and the practice will hopefully continue for a long while.


Slagged!:

-Hot Rod and Wheeljack have it out with the Sunstreaker clones, and manage to out-do them in vehicle mode for the most part.  Next issue, we’ll see how a robot mode battle goes.

-The Ark-19 blows up really good, thanks to a self-destruct code after it crashes into the ocean.

-The real Sunstreaker appears to be in dire straits, in a state of disassembly, with his head strung up and probably constantly prodded at by Machination scientists.  There’s gonna be HELL to pay when ‘Streak gets himself back together again.


Sightings:

-While Hot Rod’s new EJ Su-designed car mode seems to evoke RID Super Side Burn, his robot mode seems to share similarities with Alternators Rodimus, particularly the shoulders.

-Road signs that Hot Rod and Wheeljack pass read “Microman” and “Botcon”.

-We get a cameo by Dealer, last seen in Spotlight: Hot Rod.  He lays it on thick here, wanting to work alongside his “buddy” again.  We know, however, that Dealer’s friendship with Hot Rod is only a ploy to get the location of the Magnificence out of him, again seen in Spotlight: Hot Rod.

-As the Ark-19 passes over the human neighborhood, we see a newspaper being rustled up that reads “Project Iceman” as a headline.  One of the cars being overturned also appears to be a yellow-with-black racing stripes Camaro, which was Bumblebee’s alt mode in the recent live-action movie.

-We get properly introduced to the concept of Headmasters for the first time in IDW continuity here.  And it’s mostly the same deal as previous continuities; organic being surgically-altered and given exo-armor that transforms into the head of the Transformer.  We’ll see what advantages (or dis-) the process gives one in the next issue, probably.

-The cliffhanger to this issue is very similar to the cliffhanger from US Marvel # 5, where Buster Witwicky finds the decapitated head of Optimus Prime.  But whereas Prime asked Buster for his help, here Sunstreaker asks for something a bit more extreme from Hunter.


Hearings:

-Hot Rod hadn’t figured Wheeljack to be so adept at driving.  It’s been mentioned in Wheeljack’s various tech specs and profiles that he’s one of the best stunt drivers of all the Autobots.  I think this is actually one of the first times this has been brought up in the fiction, though.

-Hunter mentions that the Machination’s “boss” isn’t human.  He met the “boss” in Escalation # 6, and it is apparently a Transformer.


Wreck and RULE!:

-As always, EJ Su’s art is crisp, clean, and easy to follow.  And he does dynamic action scenes pretty well now too.  His designs for Hot Rod, the Headmasters suits, and the Machination Sunstreaker drone heads all stand out.  And he delivers on shocking moments, like the cliffhanger.

-Speaking of the cliffhanger, Furman delivers again, providing another advance of the numerous plot points running about and enlightens us further about the Machination’s operation.  And that ending was another genuinely stunning moment that leaves the reader wanting more.  The issue as a whole kind of read short, mostly because of the stretching out of the Ark-19 crash, but it was still a damned enjoyable issue.

-I didn’t think Hot Rod and Wheeljack would bounce off each other so well, and Furman proved me wrong.  I love how characters who haven’t historically interacted that much (or at all) are getting to do so in IDW-verse.  Much more interesting, I’d say, then keeping the ‘84, ‘85, ‘86, ‘87, etc., etc. casts rigidly together.  In the Ark-19 crew alone we cover that entire range of characters, one or two from each “year” of toy releases.

-Headmasters are generally thought of as a goofy concept by Hasbro by most of the fanbase, but Furman is trying his darndest to reinvent them for IDW, just as he did with Pretenders.  Let’s hope he succeeds in making the gimmick practical here- so far it seems so.


Wreck and ROT!:

-Kind of a funny error on EJ Su’s part, if I’m right.  On the second to last page, Hot Rod’s left leg appears to have been drawn wrong-side-out.  If you look at the Hot Rod/Wheeljack cover to Devastation # 3 (part of which is in the back of this issue), Hot Rod’s rear wheels end up on the outsides of his shins.  On the second to last page, that is the case for the right leg, but Hot Rod’s left leg seems to be, well, inside-out.  I think, at least.  It’s a minor nag in any case, but just funny that EJ might have drawn his own design wrong.


Final Judgment:

Another cracking installment, I was kinda initially annoyed that Furman copped-out on having the Ark crash right into a human settlement, but I guess the gratuitous violence of it all would be kind of gratuitous.  Maybe I’m just a sick puppy.  It read fine though, without seeming like a cop-out, although the whole pull-up sequence made the issue read faster than it should have.  In any case, an awesome installment, and I hope this pace is kept up throughout.  We have the first of two “guest artists” starting next issue, with Nick Roche taking over duties as EJ Su was spending time being a new daddy (Awwwww).  I think the book’s in safe hands, although I am worried about the potentially jarring difference in art styles.  We’ll see though, won’t we?  Peace.

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