Megatron: Origin # 1
Written by Eric Holmes
Penciled by Alex Milne
Colors by Josh Perez

Summary:

The setting is peacetime Cybertron; long, long ago.  A shuttle is headed from Cybertron to a mining colony situated on one of the moons.  Aboard is one Senator Decimus, who is headed to the colony to deliver some bad news to the workers stationed there.  The senator’s aide is apprehensive about appearing there personally; he knows the miners won’t take this bit of news well.  But Decimus calms his aide and reminds him that it doesn’t matter what these “degenerate” laborers think.  Besides, they have security forces with them for a reason.  An order goes out to the miners as the senator’s shuttle arrives, telling them to assemble to hear his words.  Soon, the workers have gathered before Senator Decimus as he stands up at a podium, flanked by a battalion of guards, including a heavily-armored, imposing-looking Autobot.  Decimus informs the miners that the Senate is trying to streamline operations and thus all of them have been relieved of their duties.  One miner speaks up from the crowd and asks if the Senate knows that this mine still has Energon left in it.  Decimus stumbles briefly and acknowledges this, making the miner infuriated.  The agitator begins yelling that they are being removed from their jobs and homes just so the Senate can squeeze every drop of fuel for themselves.  The crowd begins rumbling in agreement with this, and Decimus orders his Autobot bodyguard to silence the rabble-rouser.  The large Autobot and some others of the security force move in and begin violently beating the outspoken miner, as the crowd swells in fury.  The Autobot turns to the crowd and flashes his badge, telling them that it’s for their own protection and they need to step back.  Up at the podium, Decimus tries to dampen the mounting aggressions, but a particular worker in the crowd takes insult to the senator’s hollow promises and hurls his mining axe at the podium.  It imbeds in the senator’s shoulder, causing Decimus to cry out and drop to the ground in pain as his aide rushes to his side.  Seeing that things have gotten out of hand, the Autobot bodyguard begins to issue an order to his security force when a large miner broadsides him from behind, knocking him to the floor.  The attacker, MEGATRON, flashes a cocky grin at the downed Autobot as the bodyguard reaches for something.  The Autobot brings a blaster to bear right up at Megatron, but the large miner displays excellent reflexes and knocks the gun away.  Enraged, the Autobot reaches up and grabs Megatron’s head, seeking to crush it.  Filled with a sudden, inescapable fury, Megatron balls his fists over his head, then brings them down with astounding force at the Autobot.  We do not see the result; only a spray of fluid that splashes over Megatron’s infuriated visage.  Meanwhile, the remainder of the security force desperately holds the revolting miners, now out for blood (or oil), at bay.  The aide of Senator Decimus watches as the crowd surges against the security forces’ shields.  Nearby, Megatron is in a daze…he isn’t totally sure what just happened until he spies the fluid spattering his hands and is horrified by what he done.  At the same time, the panicked senator’s aide orders the security forces to open fire on the crowd of miners.  They do, cutting several miners down and blasting Megatron in the back.  The rest of the crowd disperses in fear, as Megatron collapses into stasis lock.  Some time later, many survivors of the incident have been shackled and placed in the prison shuttle “Longshot” to be transported back to Cybertron, alongside Senator Decimus‘s shuttle.  Megatron comes back online and finds two smaller Transformers watching him; Rumble and Frenzy.  Unwilling to be put in jail, the duo asks Megatron to help them out; they saw what he did back at the mining colony riot.  Megatron rather half-heartedly tells them that he didn’t mean to do it, and he shouldn’t be here.  Rumble and Frenzy laugh that off and instead focus on their own assets; the guards didn’t disable their mining tools.  Frenzy distracts a guard while Rumble activates his pile-drivers and knocks the guard on his back with them.  Angry, the guard tries to get a hold of the two smaller Transformers when Frenzy warns to look behind him.  The guard sneers and says he’s not going to fall for that trick, not realizing that Megatron and the other prisoners are now standing and headed towards him.  Over in Decimus’s shuttle, the senator is having his wound tended to when one of the bridge crew reports that the Longshot is deviating from its flight path.  When they radio to ask what is wrong, the prison shuttle opens fire on them, crippling the Senator’s shuttle and leaving them floating dead in space.  The miners have taken the Longshot over and fly it towards Cybertron’s surface.  Some time later, the prison shuttle arrives at the city of Kaon, the “worst place on Cybertron”.   Someone asks why they didn’t finish the senator’s shuttle off, and the answer is that it will take more time for the Senate to rescue Decimus.  Time that the renegade miners can now use to disappear into Kaon’s seedy underbelly.  The shuttle flies low and descends into the lowest level of the city.  Meanwhile at the main Autobot security force HQ, also situated in Kaon, Prowl informs his commander, Sentinel Prime, of the attack on Senator Decimus’s shuttle and the hijacking of the Longshot.  Sentinel Prime is largely uninterested in this report and instead focuses on a nearby firing range, shooting targets while Prowl reads off a data pad.  Prowl mentions that Senator Decimus’s life was threatened in the attack, which slightly piques Prime’s interest.  Prowl goes on to read off some scant details about the miner revolt that occurred on the lunar colony.  Sentinel Prime isn’t that interested in going about the Senate’s minor business, and tells Prowl to handle the problem.  The Autobot security commander clearly isn’t enamored with the Senate’s way of doing things and makes that perfectly clear to Prowl.  Sentinel Prime feels that this disturbance is nothing compared to what they go through “down here” in Kaon.  At the same time, we see a darkened landing bay in Kaon’s lower levels, and many, many large dirty footprints in the ground coming from the docked Longshot and leading into the city…TO BE CONTINUED!    


Slagged!:

-The worker who first speaks up at the mining colony assembly gets brutally bludgeoned, possibly to death, by the Autobot security force.  This riles the crowd up quite a bit.

-Megatron hurls his Energo-pickaxe into Senator Decimus’s shoulder, kicking-off a full-scale riot.

-Megatron also turns the large Autobot bodyguard’s head into paste with a single, forceful blow, demonstrating the raw power he had even in his youth.

-The Autobot security force has had enough of the miners revolt and opens fire into the crowd, killing a few and knocking Megatron off-line.

-Little Rumble knocks a prison ship guard on his aft with a pile-driver blow, which provides the opportunity for the rest of the prisoners to rise up and take over the ship.

-Now in control of the Longshot prison shuttle, the miners blast Senator Decimus’s shuttle and leave it dead in space to await rescue.


Sightings:

-All the miners wear helmets that are similar to the helmet design that Gen 1 Megatron will become famous for.

-It’s hard to identify who is who in the crowd scene, especially since all the workers wear the same aforementioned Megatron-esque helmets.  Rumble and Frenzy are there, as we later see, and one of the miners bares a resemblance to Razorclaw, but I can’t especially pinpoint anyone.

-The large Autobot bodyguard is a slight homage to Victory Leo from the Japanese series Victory.  Senator Decimus bears resemblance to some of the members of the Autobot high council in the Dreamwave Transformers Energon comic, which Alex Milne also drew.

-Rumble’s pile-driver arms have been with him for a long time, according to this comic.  Although how much sense it makes for him to use them in a mine…where a cave-in could occur, I don’t know.

-As the Longshot flies through Kaon, you can see a neon sign that appears to have Kremzeek’s likeness on it.

-We get possibly our first, certainly our most impressive, look at Optimus Prime’s predecessor Sentinel Prime in this issue.  He even has an optional faceplate that slides into place when he’s using a weapon.  And Prowl is at his side, pretty much fulfilling the role he’ll play for Optimus Prime in the future.  Some bots never change.


Hearings:

-The agitator in the crowd mentions that the Senate wants to send Sentinels in to do the mining work.  He could be referring to Omega Sentinels, the line of giant Guardian robots that Omega Supreme originates from.  Of course, in peacetime, they might be used for physical labor, not combat.

-The city of Kaon was established in Dreamwave’s War Within series as the main Decepticon-held territory.  Here it is something of a slum, probably ready to be transformed into the staging ground for an armed rebellion by the end of this series.


Wreck and RULE!:

-There’s a welcome feeling of “we haven’t seen this before” that comes with this issue.  Eric Holmes manages to capture the sense of a different Cybertron than we’re used to, which goes well with IDW’s general “everything old is new again” feel.  Of course, some things apparently will never change; like Rumble and Frenzy’s punk-attitudes and Prowl’s stiffness.  But the younger Megatron we meet here is very different from the Megatron(s) we’re used to.  Intriguing stuff.

-The Autobots as a security force in peacetime is an interesting concept.  Most of them, like Decimus’s bodyguard and Sentinel Prime seem a bit restless and wound-up.  The bodyguard is certainly willing to dish out some brutal violence.  And the apparent arrogance of the Cybertronian Senate seems to be quite the spur for both the miners’ revolt and the Autobots’ restlessness.

-Megatron’s first murder is a powerful moment, when he succumbs to a rage he didn’t even know was in him and almost instantly mortified when he realizes what he has done.  It really shows the whole “bad guys weren’t always bad” thing that Holmes was pushing in some of the initial interviews he did for this series.  And his brazen attacking of Decimus’s at the assembly, as well as standing up for Rumble and Frenzy in the prison shuttle, shows the hints of the Decepticon leader-to-be that we all know.

-Sentinel Prime makes a instant impression here, with only two pages.  He’s clearly bored out of his mind, stifled by the Senate’s mandates and meddling, and hoping for a fight.  And his physical design is pretty cool-looking too!  As we already know how his story ends (in most Transformers fictions, anyway), it’s interesting to see his attitude here.


Wreck and ROT!:

-Alex Milne’s art succeeds on some pages and spectacularly fails on others.  One thing he does that annoys the crap out of me is over-detail everything.  It simply is distracting and makes it hard to determine depth in some cases.  For an example of this, just look at the pencils-only Milne cover on the back-inside cover of this issue.  While he manages to keep his proportions right most of the time, his staging of certain panels is incredibly cramped and it is impossible to tell what is going on without several looks over.  I’m still not entirely sure what is happening on page 16 in the panel that has the word bubble “attention!”.  I THINK it is Rumble forming his pile-drivers over his hands, but I’m not completely sure.  That whole sequence of Rumble and Frenzy fighting the guard is too cramped and difficult to tell what action is taking place.  The Sentinel Prime shooting-range scene is a bit hard to follow as well…especially since the targets he’s hitting are just dark, indistinct shapes.  The coloring and inking does not especially help in making the pencils clearer either…I’m too reminded of Dreamwave’s murk looking over some of these scenes.

-Although the previous spelling has been “Sentinel Prime”, it is spelled here as “SentinAl Prime”.  I think this is a typo, but it did appear in a future solicitation for this series as well, so maybe Holmes is simply calling him “Sentinal Prime”.


Final Judgment:

It might have been me, but this seemed like a really fast read.  I hope that doesn’t mean the pacing will go out the window in future installments.  I kind of wanted to see Megatron’s growing resentment towards the Senate/Autobots, but here he apparently already does resent them and it takes one incident to ignite full-on anarchy.  But all in all a decent read.  Eric Holmes knows his Transformers and the script wasn’t half-bad.  The art seemed to be the major stumbling block, as mentioned above.  I had heard that Alex Milne was ill while he was working on this issue, so his performance might have been a bit off.  I hope next issue is a bit clearer in terms of art.  A decent start, with room for improvement.  Peace.

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