Fallen Angel

	; Galvatron auditions for the role of The Fallen.
	"Fallen Angel"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	Part 1: 14th February 1987; Part 2: 21st February 1987
Cover date	Part 1: 21st February 1987; Part 2: 28th February 1987
Script	Simon Furman
Art	Part 1: Geoff Senior; Part 2: Jeff Anderson
Colour	Steve White
Letters	Annie Halfacree
Editor	Ian Rimmer
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

The name or term "Fallen Angel" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Fallen Angel (disambiguation).

Galvatron returns!

Synopsis

Part 1

The Autobots recently freed by Circuit Breaker make their way toward the Ark, led by Skids, but the journey comes to an abrupt end when Skids suddenly cries out and vanishes in a burst of light. At the same time, not far away, something falls from the sky, and attracts the attention of the mechanoid Centurion—remotely piloted by human Professor Morris—who leaves his unseen companions to investigate the impact site. Unfortunately, the "object" turns out to be Galvatron, the future Decepticon leader of the year 2006, who, left deranged by the crash, mistakes Centurion for Rodimus Prime and rips him to pieces. His opponent dispatched, Galvatron's sanity returns, and he recalls the circumstances that have brought him back to the 1980s again. Defeated by Rodimus Prime at the end of their battle within Unicron in 2006, he was sent hurtling through space, and saved himself by activating the time-jump trigger device he had used to travel through time before, transporting himself back to the past. Galvatron immediately begins planning for the future, and sets out to locate the Decepticons on this era, intending to take command of them... but he is so focused on his new objective, he doesn't spot a figure picking up the shattered wreck of Centurion's head...

Lost without Skids to guide them to the Ark, Blaster's group heads toward the nearest set of Transformer life signals they can detect. This causes them to run smack into Galvatron, and a battle begins. The sounds of the fight reach the nearby Decepticon base, prompting Shockwave—who believes that the ruckus may be the work of Megatron, returned to claim revenge for Shockwave's recent betrayal—to rally the Decepticons to head out and investigate.

But it looks like the fighting may be all over before they can ever get there, as Galvatron is making very short work of the Autobots, incapaticating them one after the other. Soon, Blaster is the only one left standing, and when he tries hitting Galvatron with a blast of high-frequency sonics, the result is that Decepticon's fragile sanity is shattered once again. Luckily for Blaster, before Galvatron can turn his full unhinged wrath on him, some new challengers enter the fray: Centurion's allies, the Dinobots, come to claim revenge for their fallen friend!

Part 2: A Kind of Madness!

While Galvatron is occupied fighting the Dinobots, Blaster unleashes an even more powerful sonic attack on him. The attack weakens Galvatron, and seems like it might be enough to finish him off, until the Decepticon summons enough strength to seize Grimlock's sword and hurl it at Blaster. Swoop airlifts Blaster to safety at the last minute, and the pair watch from the sky as the Dinobots press the advantage, ganging up on the weakened Galvatron. The clash is observed from nearby by the Decepticons, and forces Shockwave to concludes that, given the obvious threat Galvatron poses to his leadership, they may need to help the Dinobots take him down.

His rage and his insanity building, Galvatron regains his strength, pushes through the Dinobots' attacks, and take the group down one by one. Swoop is blasted and left on the brink of unconsciousness, but before passing out, he hears Professor Morris, exploiting the mental link he and Swoop once shared to speak directly into the Dinobot's mind, asking for his permission to take over Swoop's body again. Swoop consents, and Morris pilots his body in a renewed attack on Galvatron. The gesture seems destined to be a futile one... until the Decepticons come charging into action, and Galvatron, not wanting to destroy the warriors he hopes to soon command, opts to retreat. Content with this outcome, having bought himself time to plan for the future, Shockwave allows Galvatron to leave, and further concludes it would be illogical to waste resources attacking the Dinobots at this point. The two parties go their separate ways... but both are aware that it will not be long before Galvatron returns again!

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Others
Powerglide (1) Beachcomber (2) Cosmos (3) Warpath (4) Seaspray (5) Blaster (6) Skids (7) Perceptor (8) Rodimus Prime (12) Swoop (14) Grimlock (18) Slag (19) Sludge (20) Snarl (21)	Galvatron (11) Shockwave (15) Soundwave (16) Razorclaw (17) Dirge (24) Shrapnel (25) Thrust or Ramjet (26) Rampage (27)	Peter Anthony Morris (10) Circuit Breaker (22) Walter Barnett (23)	Centurion (9) Unicron (13)

Quotes

"You have dared to attack Galvatron and failed! Now pay the ultimate price...Die, Rodimus Prime...DIE!"

—Galvatron really needs his optical sensors checked.

"I suppose things are bound to calm down soon! I mean I used to think life on our home planet Cybertron was hectic, but compared to Earth it was a peaceful picnic!"

—Blaster

"No subtlety! No finesse! Just mindless brute force...brute force which I can match...and better!"

—Galvatron is not impressed by the Dinobots.

Notes

Continuity notes

Skids and the "Cybertron Seven" were released from RAAT custody in issue #95 (US issue #23). Flashbacks fill us in on the details of their capture, as seen in issues #91-92 (US issue #22).
The story doesn't actually explain in dialogue, but Skids vanishes with the same flaming effect and "AAAAAAA CHOOM" sound that the characters displaced into limbo did previously in issues #78 and #84 (pictured at right), indicating that he has been shunted out of this dimension by Galvatron's return to the past.
Centurion met the Dinobots in issues #74-77, and has been palling around with them since they seceeded from the Autobot ranks in issue #78. It is apparent that they are unaware of his true nature, as it is only in Part 2 of this story that Swoop learns he is a non-living mechanoid controlled by Professor Morris, whose previous possession of Swoop in issues #44-45 factors into the plot.
Galvatron returns following his original trip to 1986, as told in issues #78-88. Since returning to 2006 at that end of that story, he has gone through the remaining events of The Transformers: The Movie, and this story picks up from his final moments in the film, after he was thrown into space by Rodimus Prime at the climax of their battle inside Unicron.
Shockwave fears Megatron has returned to claim revenge for his betrayal of him, as chronicled across issues #96-98.

Transformers references

According to Galvatron's flashback, the battle between him and Rodimus Prime that occurs at the end of the movie took place in Unicron's left leg. The movie actually supports this notion, as shortly after Rodimus unleashes the Matrix, Unicron pulls his left leg off, presumably to try and remove the source of what's destroying him.
This issue marks the beginning of Galvatron's steady descent into insanity, which also happened to the character in the animated series after the events of the film, albeit under different circumstances. The idea of "Galvatron going insane" wasn't part of the character's profile or other independent biographical material, so either Furman was drawing on the cartoon for inspiration here, or it was just a weird coincidence that both comic and cartoon wound up taking the character in this direction.
Also in reference to the movie, Perceptor's doing the "confuse other characters with his overdeveloped vocabulary" gag that so vexes Ultra Magnus in the film. Though historically quite a famous attribute of Perceptor's, the trait is a creation of the movie's and not present in the rest of the animated series; likewise, he hasn't done it in any of Marvel US appearances before now, and while he will adopt it in issues #111-112 (US issue #27), it won't persist past that point in either the American or British stories.

Continuity and plotting errors

Members of Blaster's team are depicted with Earth alternate modes (right) but how and when did they acquire them? Unlike modern media, Transformers in these classics stories do not possess the ability to scan and adopt new modes on their own, requiring external mechanisms and resources to do so. They hadn't adopted Earth modes prior to their departure from Cybertron, and were captured by RAAT immediately after their arrival on Earth, so the only time it could have been accomplished was when Circuit Breaker had their bodies reassembled at the end of issue #95, but it seems highly unlikely she would have rebuilt them with new disguises.
At the end of Part 1, Blaster is meant to be blasting Galvatron with "high-frequency sonics," an ability that's built into his body, but the art shows him zapping the Decepticon with his electro-scrambler gun instead. It's not clear if script or art was in error here, but Part 2 rectifies the mistake by depicting Blaster's renewed sonic attack as being generated by his alt-mode speakers.

Artwork and technical errors

Beginning with this story, his first appearance in a UK-original story, Blaster's head is drawn to the specification of his finished character model, as used in the cartoon, lacking the more toy-based visored face used in the Marvel US series. He will continued to be depicted with this head in all future UK stories.

Did you get the Pastelformers variants?

Part 1:
- Page 1, panel 1: Perceptor is sporting a variation of the the two-tone facial colouration seen in issues #66-67 (US issue #17), inverted so that his upper portion of his face is white, and the lower is dark blue. His face appears white, as on his finished Marvel colour model, in the next two panels.
- Pages 4-5: These pages are misprinted, with the magneta and cyan plates of the CMYK printing process being switched (right). The error was corrected for reprints; see below.
- Page 9, panels 2 & 4: Perceptor's face is now solid dark blue, like his helmet, instead of white.
- Page 11, panel 7: Both here and throughout the next part, Slag's dino-head is yellow, instead of the greyish-purple of his finalized Marvel colour model, plus the Autobot symbol on its forehead is uncoloured.
Part 2:
- Page 1, panel 6: Blaster's electro-scrambler gun is looking quite off-model, noticeably lacking its stock.
- Page 6, panel 2: Soundwave is missing the buttons on his pelvis, and the red squares that should be on his knees.
- Page 7, panel 3: Galvatron's face is left uncoloured white, instead of grey.
- Page 10: Swoop's lower jaw is coloured orange instead of red.
- Page 10, panel 5: Two block-coloured coneheads appear among the charging Decepticons, but neither has any wings, meaning it's impossible to identify them, but one must be Dirge, as he appears in other shots of the group. Soundwave is still missing his buttons, along with all the details and shapes around his knees.
- Page 11, panel 5: The very bottom of Dirge's cockpit canopy is green.
- Page 11, panel 6: The protrustion on Swoop's forehead is white with pink shading, instead of blue like his surrounding helmet.

Other trivia

Logistically, you might expect the Aerialbots to be travelling with Skids's group, as they all escaped RAAT together, but it's apparent they must have all flown on ahead back to the Ark using their much-faster alternate modes, since Silverbolt appeared among the Ark-based Autobots in issue #97. It's not a continuity error, but it sure is rude!
Issue #101 was the first of several to be given away for free by British steakhouse chain Berni Inn, with a slightly altered cover (see below) but otherwise identical contents.

Back-up material

Issue #101:

Back-up strips: Action Force ("Improvisation on a Theme," Part 3) and Robo-Capers
AtoZ: Blaster and Blast Off

Issue #102:

Back-up strips: Action Force ("Improvisation on a Theme," Part 4) and Robo-Capers; Action Force concludes this issue, paving the way for the launch of their own comic next month.

The original American printing of this Action Force story features an error that sees Doctor Mindbender referred to by the prototypical name "Doctor Brainwave" for the first half of the issue, before switching to the correct name for the back half. Unaware that "Mindbender" was the correct name, the UK reprint of the story in both these issues changes it to "Brainwave" to maintain consistency with the first half of the story.

Foreign Localization

Swedish

Title: "Fallen ängel" ("Fallen Angel")

Covers (3)

Issue #101 regular cover: Galvatron makes his mental condition as clear as possible, by Lee Sullivan.
Issue #101 Berni Inn freebie: Same as the regular edition, with the corner box altered to replace the number, date, and price with "FREE," and a Berni Inn token added to the bottom right corner.
Issue #102: Galvatron is on fire, by Geoff Senior.

Issue #101
Issue #101 Berni Inn variant
Issue #102

Reprints

Transformers Comic-Magazin #9 (Condor Verlag, 1990)
Transformers Annual 1991 (Marvel Comics, 1991)
Fallen Angel TPB (Titan Books, 2003)
The Transformers Classics UK Volume 3 (IDW Publishing, 2012)
Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 7: The Harder They Die (Hachette Partworks, Ltd. 2017)
Transformers: I siktet 2006 (Ades Media, 2021)

Reprint notes

The 1991 annual corrects the colouring error on Part 1, page 4-5 by simply correcting the swapped plates. This version was scanned for IDW's Classics UK reprint. Titan's "Fallen Angel" reprint, however, recolours the pages from scratch.

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