Frozen

« Transformers: Sector 7 #5 » »
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.
"Frozen"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	January 19, 2011
Cover date	January 2011
Writer	John Barber
Art	Jon Davis-Hunt
Letters	Chris Mowry
Editor	Andy Schmidt
Cover	Brian Rood Joe Suitor
Continuity	Live-action film series

1954 — What you fear most... is among you.

Synopsis

On February 9, 1954, disaster strikes the Sector Seven command post in the Arctic: an act of sabotage has sent the furnace heating the base into overdrive, driving up the temperature in the base and threatening to defrost the Mega-Man. The rising temperature triggers an unbreakable lockdown, trapping the skeleton crew manning the base—Bill Simmons, Anne Fischer, Philip Nolan, Joe Danco and Fontaine—inside, and leaving Walter Simmons with no alternative but to have the complex struck with liquid nitrogen bombs in order to ensure that the Mega-Man does not thaw.

Inside the base, tensions run high as Bill (now sporting a robotic prosthetic fist) is forced to subdue and lock up the unstable Nolan, who believes that an N.B.E. is among them in human form. With the group unable to communicate with anyone outside thanks to a destroyed radio, Danco explains that the furnace is trapped in a loop that is pulling in the warm air that heats the crew's living quarters above, heating it further, and cycling it into the Mega-Man chamber. With only four hours before the alien defrosts, Anne, Fontaine and Danco concoct a plan to link an air duct that leads outside to the chamber, restoring the freezing Arctic air that will keep the Mega-Man immobile. Being the smallest, Fontaine has the unenviable job of climbing up into the ducts to make the link.

Anne visits the imprisoned Nolan, who denies responsibility for the sabotage and grudgingly admits that his hostile actions were born purely out of his hatred for Bill; a hatred that is the result of Bill accusing respected Sector Seven scientist Robert Oppenheimer of being a Communist and disgracing him. He is unsurprised when Anne tries to defend Bill's actions, knowing that there is something going on between them, but more important matters suddenly come to the fore when blood splashes on Nolan from above, and Fontaine's corpse slumps out of a duct in the ceiling. No sooner has Bill rushed to respond to Anne's scream at this sight than an explosion draws the trio back to the Mega-Man chamber, where the control panel Danco was working on has exploded, driving the generators even further and giving the team only an hour until the robot awakens.

Having seen their transforming abilities in action during World War II, Bill is forced to accept the possibility posited by Nolan, that an N.B.E. could have taken human form. Taking blood samples from sick bay and comparing them with fresh samples drawn from each of the crew, Bill proves that he, Nolan and Danco are human beings, but Anne's sample does not match. Thankfully, this is quickly proven to be because she is pregnant, leading to the revelation that she and Bill were secretly married the previous year, but that they couldn't say anything because of regulations. Unwilling to trust either of them now that he knows they are together, Nolan draws a gun on Bill and demands that he show them where he was when Fontaine was killed. Bill reveals that he was investigating the mysterious cave system that links the Arctic base to Colorado, and which stretches all over the world—that this has been his job at the Arctic base ever since the war ended. With the caves now offering an escape route, the saboteur, and Fontaine's murderer, reveals himself: it is Danco, who has defected to the Communist side and plans to escape to Russia with Sector Seven's secrets. Before Danco can kill the others, however, the defrosted Mega-Man comes crashing through the wall, bringing the base down around him as he claws his way to the surface.

Aboveground, reflecting on the family tragedies his obsession has caused, Walter Simmons gives the command to drop the liquid nitrogen bombs on the base. One of the spy planes circling overhead suddenly dives to intercept, revealing itself to be Jetfire, who transforms and shields Nolan and Anne from the freezing blast as it consumes Bill, Danco and Megatron. Walter approaches Jetfire, recognizing him from their encounters in 1898 and 1913, asking for his grandson, who Jetfire regretfully tells him is dead. When Walter asks why Jetfire has done this, the ancient Seeker relates how Bill saved him from the Nazis during the war, and how it made him realize the extent of the contradictions that exist within humanity, and within himself. Jetfire seeks to atone for past sins, and as he departs, tells Walter he is no longer the creature he met in those caves... and that Walter does not have to be either. As Jetfire disappears into the sky, Walter begs Anne for one thing: to keep her baby away from him, away from Sector Seven, away from the self-destructive Simmons legacy.

In his journal, Simmons writes of how Bill and Danco's bodies were never recovered... but that five months later, the Soviets activated a nuclear power plant, suggesting Danco made it behind the Iron Curtain with his stolen secrets, and giving Walter hope that Bill could have survived. Anne took the Simmons name, and followed Walter's wishes, returning to a normal life and opening a delicatessen. She named her child Seymour... a child who, for both their sakes, Walter hopes he will never meet.

Featured Characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

Continuity notes

• Bill Simmons appeared in the previous issue, in which he lost his hand. It is confirmed in this issue that he is the father of John Turturro's character Seymour Simmons from the live-action films, while this issue's new character Anne Fischer is his mother. However, this makes it apparent that in all the research author John Barber has done into the movie universe, some pieces of fiction he overlooked were the novels surrounding Revenge of the Fallen (The Veiled Threat and the novelization of the film itself), which named Seymour's parents Felix and Tova Simmons. Barber would return to this goof six months later in the prose story Convergence, implicitly explaining that Felix and Tova were assumed names the characters adopted later in life.
• Joe Danco is the grandson of Reginald Danco, previously seen in IDW's Movie Prequel and the first issue of this series. Issue #2 made clear that either Danco, Philippe Bowen or Theodore Grant was no longer with Sector Seven, but the presence of Danco's family in the organization in this issue suggests we can remove him from the list. Joe's first name is not mentioned in this issue, being revealed later in the second chapter of Convergence.
• Philip Nolan (whose first name is not given in this issue) previously appeared in the Ghosts of Yesterday novel. That novel was also the source of the alternate code-name for Megatron given in this issue, the "Ice-Man", where other material referred to him as the "Mega-Man". This issue explains that "Ice-Man" was a nickname later generations of Sector Seven coined for him, while Simmons continued to use the original "Mega-Man" nomenclature he had coined.
• The mysterious caves seen in issues #1, #2 and #4 of this series return once more, though we are no closer to finding out the story behind them, if indeed there is a story to tell. It is, at least, noted in this issue by Jetfire that while he was in them, he was searching for "the power" that kept the monstrous creatures that lived in the caves alive, which strongly suggests they were mutations created by the energy of the AllSpark.
• The subsequent series Transformers: Rising Storm, also penned by Barber, would reveal that Danco did indeed survive the events of this issue, and successfully delivered the stolen secrets to his Soviet masters. Rising Storm also revealed that the Russians were holding Shockwave captive at this time, too, indicating that Danco's information was used in concert with technology reverse-engineered from his body to create the nuclear power plant mentioned on the final page of this issue. Later still, Bill's own survival would be confirmed by Convergence.

Real-life references

• By Barber's own admission in the notes page, this whole story is based on John Carpenter's 1982 movie, The Thing, in which a group of scientists are stranded at an Antarctic research station while an alien that has taken the form of one of them stalks among them. The "blood testing" scene in this issue is, in particular, based on one of the most famous scenes in the movie.
• As in previous issues, Sector Seven is seen owning and using technology that the rest of the world wouldn't see in use until a few years later, including Lockheed U-2 spy planes and Sikorsky S-58 helicopters. The U-2, specifically, was the predecessor of the SR-71 Blackbird, which was Jetfire's alternate mode in Revenge of the Fallen, that being the (out-of-universe) reason that he is disguised as one in this issue.
• Bill says his robotic fist "takes a licking and keeps on ticking", a famous slogan for Timex watches which grew out of an ad campaign starring baseball player Mickey Mantle around the time this issue is set. Boxer Rocky Marciano, mentioned by Danco, also starred in a Timex ad at the time.
• Real-life scientist Robert Oppenheimer is referred to again as being involved with Sector Seven, as he was in issue #3 of this series, and much earlier, in IDW's Movie Prequel. This issue makes reference to the allegations of Communism that defamed Oppenheimer in real life, indicating that Bill Simmons was one of his accusers. Real life events have subsequently made it clear that Oppenheimer was not a Communist, however, and Danco makes that point in this issue, too.
• The power plant in question is the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first nuclear power station in the world. From the context of Simmons's narration, though (that is to say, the idea that it would take information stolen from Sector Seven to create one), it might be inferred that Sector Seven already had one or more running in secret.

Errors

• When Bill Simmons tells Nolan to wait for his court martial, martial is misspelled as "marshal".

Covers (2)

• Cover A: Art by Brian Rood depicting the frozen form of Megatron looming above Sector Seven's Arctic base
• Cover RI: Art by Joe Suitor, the fifth of a series of interconnecting exclusive covers depicting archival Sector Seven documents and photos that cover the events of this issue.

Advertisements

• Shockrockets
• G.I. Joe: Tales from the Cobra Wars
• G.I. Joe: Hearts and Minds
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Dark Sun
• Infestation