From Cybertron with Love

	; "Are we going to be bees, or just Museum of Natural History keychains?"
	"From Cybertron with Love"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	October 3, 2018
Cover date	September 2018
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Andrew Griffith
Colors by	Priscilla Tramontano
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Edits by	David Mariotte
Continuity	Movie continuity

Alliances shift as Bumblebee, Reeve, and Lux try to stop Malignus's plan to turn the Cold War hot.

Synopsis

With Decepticons surrounding them and Sharkticons circling in a tank below their feet, Bumblebee, Reeve, and Lux are forced to listen as Malignus gloats about the success of his plan to slowly push Earth's superpowers into a nuclear war. After humankind destroys itself, the way will be clear for the Decepticons to collect the many ancient Cybertronian relics and treasures that litter the planet without interference! Bumblebee appeals to Diabla for aid one last time, but she remains unmoved. Fortunately, Lux has a trick up her sleeve—she previously covertly modified the homing device Bumblebee tagged Diabla with to turn it into a bomb, which she now remotely detonates. The resultant blast takes out a chunk of the wall, and in the confusion, Bumblebee dives into the Sharkticon tank, converting his alternate mode into a submersible form to carry Reeve and Lux and using his "oil slick" to darken the waters, blinding and disorienting the metal-eating monsters. It's not quite enough, however; as 'Bee surfaces, one of the Sharkticons appears in front of him and lunges... only to be blown to bits by a shot from Diabla!

Before 'Bee can learn why Diabla is suddenly helping him, Runabout alerts the other Decepticons to her betrayal. Exasperated with the whole ordeal, Malignus orders the cannibalistic Dead End to eliminate all the other Decepticons while he initiates the final phase of his plan. After slaughtering Runabout, Dead End aims to make Diabla and Bumblebee his next victims; 'Bee assumes Diabla will help him fight the monstrous Decepticon, but instead, she turns her weapons on 'Bee himself! Diabla isn't working with him or the Decepticons; it turns out our heroes' first guess was correct, and she's actually been secretly been working with human allies, specifically the Eastern Bloc crime syndicate E.I.D.O.L.O.N.. She merely saved Bumblebee from the Sharkticon so she could kill him herself as revenge for the death of Wildrider!

Malignus, meanwhile, hits a switch on a control panel, and a nuclear missile rises up out of a concealed silo beneath the Sharkticon tank, with one of the hapless creatures still clinging to its nosecone. Realizing that Malignus intends to fire the missile at her human allies in the Soviet Union, and that England will be blamed for the attack, thereby triggering the war Malignus desires, Diabla leaves Bumblebee to Dead End and attempts to stop the missile before it can launch. Her way is barred by Blitzwing and Astrotrain, but Astrotrain's heart isn't in it anymore; seeing Dead End sicced on his fellow Decepticons has given him reason enough to abandon Malignus, and he promptly transforms and flies off, leaving Blitzwing to fight Diabla alone.

With Transformers battling all around them, Reeve and Lux take on Malignus, whose spinning saw-blade hands make him a dangerous opponent. While Lux keeps the Decepticon mastermind busy, Reeve rushes to Bumblebee's side and calls on the Autobot to give him another of his modified explosive homing devices. Though distracted by his fight with Dead End, 'Bee complies, and Reeve takes the device, sneaks up behind Malignus, and jams it into the little Decepticon's neck. Lux detonates the device, and Malignus's is blown to pieces... but unfortunately, this does nothing to stop the missile from taking off. Diabla breaks off her brawl with Blitzwing and flies after the missile, watching as the Sharkticon holding onto it is shaken loose and sent plummeting back to Earth. Bumblebee positions Dead End so that the Sharkticon lands on top of him, freeing Bumblebee up to tackle Blitzwing, throwing off the Triple Changer's aim just as he opens fire on Diabla. Blitzwing's wild shot hits the missile's propulsion system, and it spirals out of control, falling back down towards the combatants below. Bumblebee is so focused on calling out to Diabla to get clear that he doesn't notice Blitzwing and Dead End coming at him from opposite sides; fortunately, a cry from Reeve prompts him to duck at just the right moment, causing Blitzwing's shot to miss him and kill Dead End instead. 'Bee grabs Reeve and Lux and beats a hasty retreat, leaping outside and into the safety of the ocean as the missile hits, blowing up the Decepticons' base.

In the aftermath of the blast, Bumblebee calls out for Diabla, but there is no sign of her. Blitzwing, however, has survived, having used Dead End's corpse to shield himself from the blast, and decides to flee rather than continue the fight. Reeve and Lux grab onto a tire bobbing in the ocean nearby to stay afloat; Bumblebee recognizes it as one of Diabla's, which Reeve assumes must mean she has perished, but Bumblebee draws the opposite conclusion, confident that she still lives. As he ferries his partners back to land, Bumblebee resolves to find Diabla... and if it turns out that he is wrong, and that she is dead... then he vows to get revenge.

Over the next twenty years, Bumblebee eventually parts ways with Reeve and Lux and travels the globe searching for Diabla. Ultimately, he is unable to find any trace of her, and switches to hunting Blitzwing, with the Decepticon repeatedly managing to slip through his fingers, over and over again down through the years. But finally, Bumblebee tracks Blitzwing down, and the two prepare to to do battle again...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Bumblebee (1)	Sharkticons (3) Diabla (5) Malignus (6) Astrotrain (7) Blitzwing (8) Dead End (9) Runabout (10)	David Reeve (2) Diana Lux (4)

Quotes

"Prepare, traitorsssss... to meet your dead end!"
"The humans were right... it is awful when he uses his name in a sentence."

—Dead End and Diabla

"And that's the last rule of spycraft: 'take everything personally.'"
"Reeve."
"Yeah?"
"That's terrible advice."
"If I was giving good advice, Lux, I'd tell us all to find different jobs."

—Reeve and Lux

Notes

Continuity notes

Malignus refers to "Earth's not-inconsiderable cache of Cybertronian treasures," alluding to the many, many Cybertronian artifacts that have turned on the planet over the course of the film series, including the AllSpark, the Matrix of Leadership, the Star Harvester, the Ark and its space bridge pillars, transformium, and the Staff of Merlin.
Bumblebee remembers fighting alongside Diabla in the smelting pools of Altihex. The famous pools were established to be located near Altihex in live-action movie continuity by—of all things—the friggin' Transformers version of the Risk board game.
Astrotrain flees mid-battle, leaving him alive to eventually reappear in IDW's Rising Storm series, set between Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon. As he goes, he comments that "even Shockwave never treated [him as] badly" as Malignus, referring to his time under Shockwave's command back on Cybertron, as seen in Rising Storm #2.
Bumblebee's pursuit of Blitzwing was evidently intended to lead into the beginning of the Bumblebee movie, which features a fight between the two early on. However—whether as the product of last-minute changes to the film, the comic being given an outdated script to work from, or some kind of active disinformation—the film does not flow out of what we see here; rather than Bumblebee tracking Blitzwing down, it's Blitzwing who hunts Bumblebee down, not after twenty years, but immediately after his arrival on Earth in 1987.

Transformers references

While fleeing, Astrotrain mutters to himself, "maybe the humans will offer me some power," which feels like a subtle allusion to the Generation 1 cartoon episode "The God Gambit," in which Astrotrain posed as a god and was worshiped by the aliens of Titan.

Real-life references

As with every other issue in the series, the title of this issue homages a James Bond film, in this case, 1963's From Russia with Love. The design of the title is again based on (one of the multiple versions of) the film's logo, with a drawing of Cybertron replacing the "o" in "Love" in the same way the Communist hammer and sickle stood in for the letter in Bond's version. The title is used as the overall title for the trade paperback collection of the series.
Bumblebee's ability to modify his vehicle mode into a submarine pays homage to the converting sports car submarine used by Bond in 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me.
Refusing to work with Bumblebee, Diabla quotes the famous Karl Marx slogan: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
The story ends with the message "Bumblebee will return!", a common sign-off seen at the end of the credits on James Bond movies trailing the next film in the series.

Errors

The title of this issue is missing the "Chapter (number)" prefix every other issue has had.

Other trivia

Originally solicited for released in September 2018, this issue arrives a little late, in the first week of October.

Covers (3)

Cover A: "From Cybertron with Love" by Andrew Griffith and Priscilla Tramontano
Cover B: Another movie poster pastiche, by Fico Ossio
Retailer incentive cover A: Griffith's black-and-white lineart from Cover A