Legends Comic: Bonus Edition Vol. 44

Hot Rod and Shaoshao uncover a Sweep plot to clone a Sharkticon army.

Synopsis

To Shaoshao Li's annoyance, Hot Rod shows no interest in working to afford a transtector nor searching for the lost Targetmasters, and he instead spends his time fishing and waiting for things to work themselves out. The catch of the day turns out to be a Sharkticon that immediately gobbles up Hot Rod, but he's alright as he finds that its inside are hollow and outfitted with controls. Given that Sharkticons are not native to the Legends World, he concludes that it's an artificial clone and a lead towards the Targetmasters, who they believe have mutated and developed new abilities.

Indeed, Scourge and the Sweeps have found that Blowpipe can now fire electro-clone beams and have been using him to clone Sharkticons from a tail taken from the creatures' current habitat, Beast. Their plan to create an army and conquer the world, but they're interrupted when Hot Rod and Shaoshao, piloting the runaway Sharkticon, smash through a window. Sweep No. 7 merges with his transtector and uses Blowpipe to take control of the Sharkticons, sending them to surround and execute the intruders, but Hot Rod's own Sharkticon refuses to fight back against his own people. Fortunately, Hot Rod has prepared reinforcements in the form of Grimlock, who has used his Headmaster form to take control of Trypticon and menace the Sharkticons into turning on the Sweeps. Scourge flees with Blowpipe, but Hot Rod and Shaoshao capture the remaining Sweeps and hand them over to the police, where they are offered jobs. Their first assignment is to capture the Sharkticons as well, so Hot Rod has to go straight back to fishing.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• Hot Rod has enjoyed fishing ever since his his first scene in The Transformers: The Movie, and was often depicted fishing throughout Kiss Players.
• The Grand Mal makes a cameo as a blimp.
• Following the defeat of their Quintesson masters, the Sharkticons are revealed to have settled on the planet Beast, the setting for Beastformers that was first featured in Transformers fiction in "Rebellion on Planet Beast". Presumably those are the Sharkticons mentioned in the Beastformers catalogs and also seen in the manga special "The Decisive Battle of Planet Beast!".

Errors

• Sweep No. 2 and Sweep No. 3 have had their numbers or defining features switched: No. 2 is consistently drawn with 3's sharp teeth while 3 sports the worried eyes of 2.