Shooting Star!

	; I am the NRA.
	"Shooting Star!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	October 22, 1985 ("on sale" November 12, 1985)
Cover date	February 1986
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Penciler	Don Perlin
Inker	Al Gordon
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Janice Chiang
Editor	Michael Carlin
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

This article is about the Marvel comic issue. For the Autobot satellite, see Shooting Star.

A small-time crook's life changes when he finds a special gun.

Synopsis

Wherever you are
you're gonna see me fly
like a shooting star
across a midnight sky

A small-time loser named Joey Slick flees through the woods, attempting to escape from thugs trying to kill him. He stumbles across a gun in a stream, but it doesn't work... until the two laughing thugs tell it to blast them, which it does. Retreating to an empty barn, Joey soon discovers that the gun is Megatron. His cerebro-circuitry damaged by the fall he suffered during his battle with Ratchet, Megatron's higher brain functions have been disconnected, leaving him unable to think for himself and able only to respond without question to what he is told or asked.

Crime lord Jake Lomax, the gangster who sent the thugs after Slick because of an unpaid debt, is incensed that they failed. Crunching up his newspaper, he orders that Slick be killed immediately. Lomax's men hunt Slick to his run-down apartment in an immigrant neighborhood, but he is able to use Megatron to collapse a water tower on top of them, allowing him to escape. Needing money after being rejected by a crummy motel for being two dollars short, he holds up a convenience store... then uses Megatron's firepower to stop pursuing police cars. Realizing the possibilities, he soon uses Megatron to strike a one-man crime wave.

In short order, now redolent in riches, Joey finds himself surrounded by hangers-on and wannabes. Trying to reconnect with the things that matter, he returns to his old neighborhood, only to find himself feared by the adults he once called friends, and worshipped by the neighborhood's children for his "super gun." Realizing that his is not the life he wants, Joey blasts his way into Lomax's compound and confronts the gangster one on one. Despite his earlier bluster, Lomax is quick to surrender and plead for his life. No longer afraid of Lomax, Joey tosses the gun away and punches the mobster out, then tosses the money he owes him at his unconscious form. Joey turns to find Megatron looming over him—the impact with the ground after Joey threw him aside has reconnected his higher brain functions, and he is furious at Joey for attempting to command him. Megatron prepares to kill the impudent fleshling, but when Joey shows absolutely no fear before him, Megatron is impressed and spares him. Megatron leaves to rejoin the Decepticons, and Joey submits to arrest by the police, the baffled officers watching as the dark shape of Megatron disappears over the horizon.

Featured characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Ratchet (9)	Megatron (4) Frenzy (5) Soundwave (6) Ravage (7) Starscream (8)	Joey Slick (1) Whitey (2) Marko (3) Jake Lomax (10) Charlene (11) Mr. Kim (12) Clyde (13) Mrs. Perez (14) Ralston (15)

Quotes

"You are not dead. I am not a weird angel. I am a Transformer."

—Megatron

"Marko was right--Joey Slick is a loser! And I'm sick of lookin' at this loser's face!"

—Joey Slick monologues to the man in the mirror

"You made all this possible. But it ain't all I thought it would be -- I got everything that I could want. So how come I feel like I got nothin'? Heck, you're the only one I feel I can talk to -- and you're as brainless as a beer can! That ain't right, right?"

—Joey Slick, on the verge of insight, speaks to a mindless Megatron

"Y-you're not gonna kill me?"
THWOK
"...Heck no! I'm just gonna pay back what I owe you -- 600 dollars plus interest! Now we're even, slimeball! Spend some of it to fix up your house, okay?"

—Jake Lomax gets punched out by Joey Slick, after Slick has trashed his mansion

"But Megatron gives no thanks -- he only takes. And now I take your life, fleshling!"
"M-my life? ...Sure, why not, take it! Jake Lomax wanted my life. I thought he was the most terrifyin' thing I could imagine! Well, I just punched him out! Nothin' you can do to me now can take that away from me -- ever! Do what you want, Megatron!"
"You surprise me, fleshling. Such audacity in a member of your species is wholely unexpected. It is deserving of Megatron's respect -- not his wrath!"

—Megatron and Joey Slick have a little heart to heart

Notes

Continuity notes

Megatron has been missing in action since his defeat by Ratchet in issue #8.
The front-page headline of the motel clerk's newspaper reads "ROBOTS LEAVE PLANE PLANT," a reference to the Decepticons' defeat and the liberation of Blackrock Aerospace Assembly Plant Number One in issue #12.

Real-life references

As usual, the action is set in and around Portland, Oregon; specificailly, Joey lives in the real-life "Southwest section," though it's drawn looking a lot more like a New York neighborhood.
The kids on Joey's block mention the Seattle Seahawks football team, a local favorite since Portland doesn't have its own NFL team. Joey mentions the N.F.L. by name as well.
The Cascade Motor Court Joey tries to get a room at seems to be based on a real Cascade Motor Court motel Google tells us existed back in the 1950s... though it was in Bend, Oregon, a good three hours away, versus the "90 minutes out of Portland" this one is.
Joey robs a "6-12" convenience store, a reference to 7-Eleven.
Joey feels the kids are treating him "like Al Capone".

Artwork and technical errors

Megatron's pistol form spends much of the issue miscolored, with a black muzzle tip and body. The black tip sticks and is almost always present, but occasionally the body's colored white/silver, with the black correctly being shifted to the "slide" to which his fusion cannon/scope would attach (if he had it attached, which he doesn't, which you could consider an error in and of itself).
Additionally, when in robot mode, his Decepticon insignia is coloured very faintly, except on page 22.
The artist forgets which gangster had been specified as "Marko". At the start, two particular men are identified by Joey as "Whitey and Marko", but in the later chase involving four gangsters, a different man in a pink suit and a hat is twice referred to as Marko, with the two guys from earlier both visible amongst his companions.
Page 5, panel 3: Starscream has red wings and purple null rays. Soundwave is colored a very dark purple (so dark he almost looks blue, a little darker than he appeared last issue) instead of his normal lighter shade.
Page 17, panel 3: Some of the lettering in Joey's speech bubble has been obscured or erased, turning the sentence "Buncha bloodsuckers!" into "Bunc a bloodsucker !"
Page 21, panel 4: Megatron's gun barrel, which normally peeps up over his shoulder, is missing here...
Page 22, panel 1: ...and here.

UK printing

Issue #51:

Published: 1st March, 1986
Cover date: 8th March, 1986
Back-up strips: Robotix ("A World in Chaos," Part 1), Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat. Due to an error, this issue's Robo-Capers was missing the black layer of print. A corrected version would be printed in issue #58.

Issue #52:

Published: 8th March
Cover date: 15th March, 1986
Back-up strips: Robotix ("A World in Chaos," Part 2), Robo-Capers and Matt and the Cat
Fact File Interface: Smokescreen and Mixmaster
Free Gift: A Panini Transformers sticker album

Other trivia

For God's sake do not scroll left.

This story would be the subject of an annoyed letter to the UK comic in #61, asking why the art had "gone back to sub-standard dotty colouring and often ropey drawing". At the time, the comic didn't admit it was running reprints from America—which used a different colouring method and different paper stock to the UK, and thus meant colorists like Yomtov had to work with a more limited palette than his British counterparts—and ~~Simon Furman~~ "Soundwave's" cover was that this was the artists "experimenting with different colouring methods".^[1]
Marvel Age #33 reported Sam de la Rosa as the inker of both "Prime Time!" and this issue instead of Al Gordon. While de la Rosa would never work on Transformers, he did go on to ink a number of comics starring Venom.
This issue is the first time Bob Budiansky uses the names "Jake" and "Charlene" for some incidental human characters (Jake Lomax and his moll, Charlene). These will (deliberately? unconsciously?) go on to become Budiansky's "go-to" names for multiple guest-spot characters in future issues of the series.
Rather than the Daily Bugle, used in past issues when a newspaper has been required, this issue features two fictional papers, the Daily Globe (pictured at right) and the Globe-Journal. This is probably reflective of the decision to "separate" the ongoing Transformers adventures from the Marvel Universe, which it spent much of its first year being written to take place in. That said, there is a Daily Globe in the Marvel Universe!
The sole decorations in Joey's apartment: a couple of pinup girls. Classy!

Bot Roster

Autobots: 11 active; 12 inactive. (23 total)
Decepticons: 16 active as Megatron returns to operational status; Shockwave missing in action; Jetfire left lifeless when last seen. (18 total)

Covers (3)

US issue #13: Gun mode Megatron, by Don Perlin.
UK issue #51: Megatron and Joey Slick, by Geoff Senior.
UK issue #52: reuse of art from US cover.

US issue #13 - Look, it's STILL a gun...
UK issue #51 - A purple Megatron? That is just crazy!
UK issue #52 - The UK gets free sticker albums. What do you get?

Reprints

The Transformers Comics Magazine #7 (Marvel US, 1987)
Transformers: Cybertron Redux paperback (Titan Books, 2003)
Transformers: Cybertron Redux hardback (Titan Books, 2003)
The Transformers: Generations #2 cover A (IDW Publishing, 2006)
The Transformers: Generations #2 cover B (IDW Publishing, 2006)
The Transformers: Generations #2 retailer incentive cover (IDW Publishing, 2006)
The Transformers: Generations #2 TPB (IDW Publishing, 2007)
Classic Transformers Volume 1 (IDW Publishing, 2008)
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 1 (IDW Publishing, 2011)
The Definitive G1 Collection, Vol. 4: Second Generation (Hachette Partworks, Ltd., 2018)
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4 (Mediaboy Mook, 2019)

Titan edits

It's standard practice for any collection of comics to remove the publishing indicia usually found on the first page of an issue, but Titan's Cybertron Redux reprint of this issue accidentally deletes the creator credits along with it, because they're printed outside the splash page panel, just above the indicia itself.

IDW Transformers Classics edits

Quality!

IDW's reprint of this issue was created using a scan of a physical copy featuring several printing defects that caused splotches of the lineart to be missing.
- Page 5, panels 3 and 6: Portions of the lineart of Megatron's chin in panel 3, and his chest, knee and the barn wall behind him in panel 6 are missing (see right).
- Page 6, panel 5: The lower-right corner of Lomax's mouth has been re-drawn to fill in the missing lineart.
- Page 9, panel 3: Likewise, a portion of Joey's chin and shirt.
- Page 17, panels 3-4: Patches of colour appear within the silhouette of Joey as he sits in his chair when he should be solid black.
The Transformers Classics series of reprints normally recolors Soundwave blue to match his cartoon and toy appearance, but his one panel appearance in this issue goes unaltered.
Mr. Kim is recolored with a Caucasian skintone.
Page 11, panel 6: The yellow patches on the motel clerk's newspaper (used in several other spot in this issue, intended to add a sense of texture) are erased from this panel only.
Page 17, panel 3: The missing lettering is filled in.
Page 22, panel 1: Careless text recreation turns the word "member" in Megatron's speech into the nonsense "memser."

References

↑ Soundwaves, issue 61

[0] Soundwaves, issue 61

[1]

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