Sins of the Wreckers issue 2

« The Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers #2 »
"Now folks, he's a little shy, so let's give him a big hand when he comes out!"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	December 30, 2015
Cover date	December 2015
Written by	Nick Roche
Art by	Nick Roche
Colors by	Josh Burcham
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	John Barber
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era (2015)

A mysterious new enemy appears as the Wreckers begin their hunt for Prowl.

Synopsis

Peace has come to Cybertron, and it's all thanks to Prowl. Optimus Prime thanks his trusted subordinate for the plans he formulated that allowed the Autobots to achieve this utopia, and for his ability to compromise morality in the name of the greater good, and apologizes for taking so long to listen to him. Prowl was right. Prowl was right all along...

...except not really, as Prowl awakes from this beautiful dream to find himself trapped in a huge web. From the darkness surrounding him, a voice emanates, explaining that Prowl has just experienced a "positive reinforcement prison", a way to keep prisoners docile by fulfilling their every wish—an old idea that Prowl himself once vetoed. Prowl recognizes the speaker's voice as belonging to an old, long-missing comrade known as Mesothulas, though his captor claims the name no longer means anything to him. Mesothulas wants something from Prowl and threatens to expose his secrets to the world if he does not get it; Prowl refuses to talk before Mesothulas can offer any proof that he has dirt on him, which Mesothulas promises to soon deliver...

"Also, we're going to need a bigger boat."

In Nome, Alaska, the Wreckers try to take stock of the confusing situation. Springer—still disoriented from his coma and haunted by the dreams of his own offlining he experienced during it—is quick to suspect the Decepticons, but as Arcee points out, times have changed. With Hubcap unable to detect any trace of other Cybertronians in the region, suspicion falls on Verity Carlo, who bolts from the warehouse as another wave of sickness washes over her. Stakeout follows her, but as they talk—making peace with one another after their recent separation—a rabbit suddenly comes running up the pier and snatches Verity's backpack, containing the Aequitas data slug.

Stakeout gives chase after the creature as it runs off across the frozen sea, while Verity returns to the warehouse to alert the others. Impactor and Guzzle leave to join the hunt, but no sooner have they departed than Kup collapses—then stands right back up again, only this time, Prowl's voice comes out of his mouth! Using the protocols he installed in Kup's subconscious, Prowl has taken remote control of the old Autobot to speak directly to the Wreckers. They are all quite horrified to learn about this, but Prowl doesn't have time for their moral outrage—he fills them in on his situation, on Mesothulas, and the only clue he has to his location: the salt water traces coating his body, which suggest he was held in an undersea facility. His connection is then severed, leaving Kup with a head full of memories of his time on Tsiehshi and the Autobots he killed there. Springer comforts the old 'bot, and even Arcee falls silent at this show of emotion.

Out in the woods, Impactor and Guzzle speed through the snow, with Impactor finding it hard to disagree with Guzzle's opinion that Prowl deserves whatever he gets. Suddenly, a polar bear leaps at them; Guzzle blasts it, earning him a reprimand from Impactor... a reprimand that is suddenly made moot when the bear transforms, revealing itself to be a Cybertronian!

Guzzle guzzles!

Stakeout continues to pursue the fleeing rabbit, following it as it dives into the freezing waters, then watching in shock as it swims directly into the mouth of a huge whale. Suitably dumbfounded, Stakeout radios Verity with the information, and the Wreckers all listen as he describes the emergence of a shark and a squid from the whale's mouth, at which point his transmission is cut off. Realizing that the whale is large enough to be the "undersea facility" Prowl spoke of, the Wreckers race off in the direction of Stakeout's signal. Springer carries Verity in his helicopter mode; as they travel, she reasserts her innocence in all matters save the blackmailing of Prowl, and is about to confess something about her reasons for being in Nome when suddenly, the sound of a wolf's howl from down below forcibly transforms Springer back to robot mode and sends him falling out of the sky. The wolf introduces itself as a Cybertronian named Carnivac, who has immobilized Springer with his sonic outlier abilities. Carnivac professes that the "ruling class" of Cybertron has "duped" its population, and his group, "Mayhem," are dedicated to bringing truth to light. To that end, they have mastered perfect "bio-disguises", able to assume organic alternate modes that completely hide them from detection. Impactor and Guzzle then appear, but Impactor finds that Carnivac's words speak to him, and he makes no move to stop the wolf as he lopes away. Guzzle, meanwhile, tears the slain polar bear in two and gulps down the green fuel that spills from his innards; surging with energy from the mysterious fuel, the kill-crazy Autobot is driven into an even greater frenzy, and Impactor and the recovered Springer try to restrain him.

The rest of the team, meanwhile, have made it to Stakeout's location and begin firing into the water. Stakeout has disappeared, but his attackers burst from the water, transforming to their robot modes for battle. The whale—Tidal Wave—is instructed to remain below the surface, but the big bruiser proves to be a sensitive type who does not take kindly to being shot at, and emerges from the waves in a huge tank form. Guzzle, Impactor, and Springer arrive to join the fight, so Tidal Wave tries to transform to robot mode, only to find himself stuck halfway—a technical failure he suspects is the work of Carnivac. Springer, Arcee, Verity, Hubcap, and Roadbuster take advantage of the giant's frozen transformation, hacking their way through their animalistic opponents to enter Tidal Wave's body through an exposed hatch. Roadbuster takes the squid—Claw Jaw—hostage, shocking Springer with the brutalization he subjects him to until he promises to lead them to the Noisemaze. Suitably cowed, Claw Jaw activates the portal within Tidal Wave that will teleport the Wreckers to Prowl's prison...

In said prison, Prowl awakens after blacking out from the forceful severing of his connection to Kup, something that Mesothulas claims no responsibility for. Mesothulas taunts Prowl some more, and reveals that he has gained the proof Prowl required. The Aequitas data slug dangles from a thread of webbing in front of the Autobot... and Prowl agrees to talk.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"You have an intellect to rival the width of your shoulders."

—Arcee, on Springer, without a trace of sarcasm, we assure you

"You're millions of years old, and you've only known me for five of them. How can I mean anything to you?"
"Out of all those millions of years, Verity—out of all those billions of days and trillions of hours, the five years I've had with you have been the highlight."

—Verity and Stakeout

"You're a monster, Prowl."
"Noted."

—Springer and Prowl

"Here come the spatter patterns!"

—Guzzle ain't right

"None of these—heh—things are reading as alive. Without visual contact, they, um, might as well be invisible."
"What's the actual point of you?"

—Hubcap fails to impress Roadbuster with his inability to detect the Chimeracons

"Where I lived as a kid, the light pollution was so bad. Nothing flattens your hopes and dreams harder than seeing a big muddy butt-sky just before you go to sleep. Then I learned about the Aurora Borealis; the Northern Lights. A big, natural light display—something to do with electrons; I don't care—like a curtain of color in the air. And its visible up here, in Nome, where we are now. I wanted the sky to dance when I sleep. Imagine if that's the last thing you saw when you closed your eyes. Springer, I'm..."

—Verity is cut off before she can reveal something

"Is that a fish tank?"
"Whales are mammals - mammal tank."

—Impactor and Arcee discuss the taxonomy of Tidal Wave

"This has to be what Prowl was talking about—huge; amphibious; big enough to accommodate regular sized 'bots. We need to get inside—we get in there, we can get Prowl."
"Your eyes..."
"What about them?"
"It's the first time they've looked... alive..."

—Springer and Arcee

"I don't want to believe that same 'bot who sat with me for five years still does... this."
"The two things aren't mutually exclusive—they don't cancel each other out."

—Springer is horrified by Roadbuster's treatment of Claw Jaw

Notes

Continuity notes

• Mesothulas invented spark extraction to replace the positive reinforcement prison. It was previously used as a punishment for the worst offenders in Garrus-9, as seen in Spotlight: Arcee.
• When Kup announces that he is one of Arcee's suspects in the disappearance of Prowl, Guzzle remarks "Say it ain't so!" His sarcasm is evidently not apparent to his fellows; Guzzle harbors a deep grudge against Kup for killing friends of his in Spotlight: Kup, one of the major dangling plot threads left over from Last Stand of the Wreckers.
• Verity dons her battle armor from Last Stand.
• As we noted last issue, Kup has been under the subconscious control of Prowl since All Hail Megatron #15. As a consequence, in this issue, Kup finally learns about the awful things he did in his self-titled Spotlight. He regained those memories once before, when Prowl used their connection in Infestation (an incident Prowl recounts this issue), but that was never followed up on when Kup returned, suggesting he lost or suppressed the memories again during his time in the Dead Universe.
  • Not for nothing, but if Prowl's secret plan to puppeteer Kup and manipulate people into following his suggestions always meant puppet Kup would having obvious glowing eyes and a hollow voice, this was ...not a good plan.
• As Verity and Springer talk about their dreams, Springer says his are filled with red skies, referring to the skies over Garrus-9. The one panel we see of his dreams features the uniquely-scarred moon that orbits the planet, and a motion-blurred hand—Overlord's hand, whipping towards Springer moments before it tears his face off, as seen in Last Stand of the Wreckers #5.
• Carnivac previously appeared in the IDW continuity many moons ago, in Stormbringer #4. He is revealed to be an outlier, a kind of Transformer with a "super-power" introduced in More than Meets the Eye #11.
• We've seen "bio-disguises", as Carnivac calls them, in this continuity before: waaaay back in Spotlight: Shockwave, the Dinobots scanned Earth dinosaurs to create organic-skinned beast modes in a direct allusion to Beast Wars. The technology has improved since then.
• Guzzle rips Polar Claw in two at the waist, which was the same thing Overlord did to him in Last Stand #5.
• Arcee observes how Springer's eyes glow brightly with life at the prospect of success when he realizes Tidal Wave is the undersea facility. The "arresting, thousand-watt blue" glow of Springer's eyes had previously been commented on in "Zero Point", which pointed out that they were so bright and pure that it might even mean he was Matrix-compatible.

Transformers references

• We wouldn't like to indulge in speculation, but the identity of Prowl's captor barely seems like it's supposed to be a secret. Adding together his cackling laugh, his scientific background, the webs he holds Prowl in, his association with Transformers possessing organic beast modes, and his name—from "Mesothelae", a suborder of spider, and ending in "-las"—everything points to Mesothulas being Tarantulas.
• Back in the Generation 1 days, Carnivac was a Pretender, a real-world precedent of sorts for his organic alternate mode in this story. His group, "Mayhem," is named in reference to the Mayhem Attack Squad, which he was a member of in the Marvel UK comic; he and Springer became quite chummy in the comic after Carnivac became disenchanted with the Decepticon way of life, inspiring their scene together and Carnivac's philosophy in this issue.
• 'Bots or beasts, they're still the baddest! Polar Claw and Claw Jaw hail from the Beast Wars toyline, while Stampy is an import from the Japanese Beast Wars Neo line, where he was a main cast member of the Neo cartoon. Of these beasties, only Claw Jaw is named in-story.
• The shark in the group might logically be assumed to be Cybershark, then, but he'll be identified in issue #4 as Overbite, originally one of the Seacons, who in his original form transforms into a mechanical shark.
• Tidal Wave doesn't fully appear in robot mode, but just enough of him can be seen when he gets stuck between modes to recognize that he's directly based on the Armada character of the same name (in Hasbro colors). Previously, Tidal Wave has only appeared in the Generation 1 continuity family as a ship, rather than a 'bot, in the 2014 BotCon comic. He's the only beast-mode character in this story who doesn't have a precedent for his organic form. However Tidal Wave turning into both a whale and a base of operation bares some similarities to Orcanoch.
• Might just be a coincidence, but the way that Guzzle becomes unhinged, crackles with green energy, and foams at the mouth after ingesting Polar Claw's green fuel suuuuuure looks a lot like what happened to Razorbeast when he got a shot of the just-as-green Angolmois Energy in IDW's Beast Wars: The Ascending series. The Beast Era flags are flying high with this one...

Real-world references

• Verity continues to pull nicknames for Arcee from Grease, calling her "Frenchie."

Errors

• On the second page, Prowl's "speck one" should probably be "one speck".
• The planet on which Kup was stranded back in his Spotlight is spelled "Tsiehchi" here, but when its name was revealed in Robots in Disguise #17, it was spelled "Tsiehshi."
• On page 16, when Claw Jaw says "Tidal Wave, you utter blowhole", his speech doesn't use the distorted font that the other Chimeracon speech balloons have.
• On page 19, Claw Jaw is yet again using the wrong font when Guzzle stomps on his face.
• Also on page 19, Claw Jaw says "were" when he should be saying "we're." This was fixed for the trade.

Other notes

• The solicitation for this issue named the group of organic-alt-mode Transformers the "Chimeracons," but the name hasn't been used in-story yet.

Production

• In the first outline this issue opened with a flashback set on Cybertron during the early days of Robots in Disguise. Here Prowl would have assembled a team of new Wreckers to act as a sleeper cell, with Arcee being the groups leader as a 'reward' for her loyalty to him (this would have caused tension between her and Springer). Hubcap was the only member of the New Wreckers to make it into the final story.
• Before they were cut Guzzle would have mocked the New Wreckers as phonies who hadn't even seen the Shimmer.
• In an early draft the Chimeracons forces would have also included more conventional Transformers. Emergency services would have seemingly arrived at the warehouse to investigate, only to be revealed as a group of Decepticons- Barricade, Smoulder and Bodybag (a new character who turns into an ambulance). The trio would have been the ones who kidnapped Prowl.

Soundtrack

• "Nature Trails" by The Comsat Angels^[1]
• "Hunter" by Björk^[2]
• "Trimm Trabb" by Blur^[3]

Covers (3)

• Regular cover: Stakeout looks set to become Tidal Wave's next meal, by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham
• Subscription cover: Arcee and Verity, by Stephen Mooney and Josh Burcham
• Retailer incentive cover: The Wreckers versus Squadron X, by Andrew Griffith and Josh Burcham

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