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Storm Horizon Part 2

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« Transformers: Galaxies #11 »
TFGalaxies 11 cvrB.jpg
"Storm Horizon Part 2"
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published October 28, 2020
Cover date September 2020
Written by Brandon Easton
Art by Andrew Griffith
Colors by Josh Burcham
Letters by Jake M. Wood
Editor David Mariotte, Tom Waltz, and Riley Farmer
Continuity 2019 IDW continuity

Ultra Magnus and his crew journey to the Black Sphere in search of Alpha Trion, but not all is as it seems in this strange star system.

Contents

Synopsis

Since agreeing to help Spinister find Alpha Trion's starship, Ultra Magnus has successfully negotiated the release of Chromedome and a skeleton crew to fly the Fist of Iacon to Trion's last known location, somewhere in the mysterious Black Sphere system. As the supermassive black hole looms, Ultra Magnus remembers his time with Alpha Trion in the days before the War of the Threefold Spark... and how the wise sage's guidance at the Tarn-Hauser Gate opened the young warrior's eyes to the concepts of mercy and empathy. Privately, however, he wonders if the old Magnus would've cooperated with lowlifes like Spinister, but these thoughts are cut short when Chromedome detects energon radiation emanating from the planet Obsidar, a rocky world crushed into pure diamond by the black hole's intense gravity. A cursory scan connects it to an old starship registered to the city of Tarn; Magnus knows bait when he sees it, however, and decides to personally investigate by taking a shuttle down to the surface. Chromedome stays aboard the Fist of Iacon, and before bidding Chromedome farewell, Magnus reminds him that he's the only other 'bot who knows about their backup plan...

Magnus's shuttle touches down, but no sooner does Magnus set foot on the shimmering desert plain before he finds himself swarmed by hostile natives! The reptilian creatures are immune to Cybertronian blasters, and Magnus uses some nonlethal takedowns against his high-gravity attackers before he blinds them with a flashbang round, its disorienting effects amplified by the refractive diamond dust. However, this attack turns up something unexpected: the flashbang reveals a fragment of a Cybertronian starship. The natives beg Magnus to forgive them; they only attacked because the previous arrival had bribed them with the promise of fresh meat, payment for keeping other Transformers off-planet. Subsequent flashbangs reveal the outline of an entire starship parked on the plain, and when Magnus breaks inside and accesses the ship's computers, he discovers that the vessel is called the Krm'zik. When he reports this to Chromedome, however, his second-in-command confirms that the signal they followed is a fake: the Krm'zik is from Kaon. Someone's been manipulating this quest, and someone who wanted him to find this vessel—but before Magnus can figure out who, the Krm'zik's lone occupant leaps for him with a knife!

Unfortunately for his attacker, it takes a bit more than that to put down the old warhorse. A blast between the eyes doesn't even faze him; in seconds, Ultra Magnus has his attacker restrained, disarmed, and under an impromptu interrogation. Octane, it transpires, is a black-market merchant of sorts; he claims that he was carrying a load of dead bodies from the recent Tether disaster on Cybertron to sell to the splice-thief network. Initially, Octane mistakes Ultra Magnus for another crook looking to muscle in on his territory... but another beating puts that misconception right. Magnus demands to know if he's captured Alpha Trion, but Octane swears he hasn't—before he can tell him where Trion's gone, a barrage of missiles shakes the ship. Ignoring Octane's wheedling offers to cut a deal, Magnus simply drags him out from the ship and prepares to confront Spinister and the rest of his crew. Initially, Spinister's grateful towards Magnus, having effectively deceived and misled the old soldier into helping him track Octane down. Indeed, Spinister's own boss wants a word with Octane about his recent thefts, but not before Spinister teaches him a lesson by extracting some "keepsakes" from his body. Ultra Magnus intervenes, however, and informs them that both will return to Cybertron to stand trial. But Spinister has other priorities; he and his men will execute Magnus and the crew of his shuttle, then blow the Fist of Iacon to bits. Magnus dares them to do their worst... but as Spinister's men ready their guns, a silhouette against the sun marks the arrival of the mighty Victory Leo!

Victory Leo wastes no time in carpet-bombing the splice-thieves, sending them scrambling for cover; as Spinister makes a break for it, Ultra Magnus orders Victory Leo to contact Chromedome and deal with the other gang members while he captures Spinister. As he tackles Spinister, Magnus explains the true nature of his deception: every high-risk Cybertronian mission is accompanied by escorts from Cybertron's Colonial Security division. The moment Spinister's men attacked the Fist of Iacon, Chromedome simply activated their distress beacon and ordered him to hang back until the time was right. As Victory Leo tears his way through the assorted Cybertornians and aliens, Magnus rips Spinister's rotors off—deprived of an easy getaway, Spinister relents and promises to tell Magnus the truth about Alpha Trion. Trion did visit their base of operations on Kworia, he explains; in search of a cache of Cybertronian artifacts, the sage deduced that they'd charted some of the worlds in the Black Sphere system and thus exchanged some energon for a "borrowed" Kworian starship. Magnus isn't convinced by this explanation and gets ready to beat the truth out of Spinister, until a voice from behind confirms that Spinister's telling the truth—a voice that belongs to Alpha Trion himself! Trion and his compatriot Soundblaster explain: the space-time distortions of the Black Sphere interfered with the subspace beacons he left behind, making it seem as though he'd disappeared. Trion's perplexed when Magnus demands to know why Trion's fallen in with criminal splice-thieves; when Magnus asks why Soundblaster resembles Senator Soundwave, the black Transformer cuts him off, warning that they don't have enough time to explain everything. Indeed, when Magnus tries laying hands on the pair, he passes right through them—they're nothing but holograms! Soundblaster explains that they're communicating remotely from their starship, and in desperate need of assistance... just before an explosion cuts him off, because they're under assault from a gigantic armada!

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.)

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Decepticons Cybertronians Others

Quotes

"I'm a soldier, not a museum curator. Culture is the first casualty of war. History is replaced by the conquering army."
"Heh... indeed. Spoken like a true warrior. That's a consolation if you're on the winning side. That begs the question, do the vanquished deserve to have their legacies erased?"

—Ultra Magnus and Alpha Trion


"You're a relic of a past era, Magnus. And the first casualty of the new order."

—Spinister


"There's nothing obsolete about maintaining faith in our system. I'm not a naïve recruit, blinded by jingoistic idealism. I've protected Cybertron with every ounce of my being. Every spark has value to me. Even the lowest, scum-laden 'bots deserve a chance. But once you squander that chance, violate the trust of our social compact... the anchor of redemption falls around your shoulders. And it is a mighty weight."

—Ultra Magnus


"Well, General, let the "anchor of redemption" fall upon the sands of Obsidar. See, anyone can wax poetic like a pretentious blowhard. Do you have a bombastic lecture prepared before the end? Well?"
"Shut up and shoot."

—Spinister and Ultra Magnus

Notes

Continuity notes

  • Graffiti in Octane's ship includes the new Decepticon insignia, which has been recently invented by Megatron during the events of Transformers #11.
  • Magnus notes that Kaon is a haven for dissidents and war veterans; as he does so, he remembers several prominent members of the Ascenticons, who have been appearing over in the main Transformers ongoing: Sixshot, Soundwave, and Slipstream. Lurking behind Soundwave is a red-visored 'bot who is almost assuredly the mysterious Soundblaster, but the issue plays coy with whatever connection might exist between him and the more famous Senator.
  • Octane alludes to collecting the bodies of Cybertronians who perished during the collapse of the Tether on Cybertron, as seen in Transformers #18 and #19.
  • Victory Leo works for the Senate's Colonial Security division, a government branch that'd been previously namechecked in Transformers #12 and #19.

Transformers references

  • The opening flashback features Ultra Magnus and Alpha Trion discussing history in front of the "tabernacle of the Tarn-Hauser Gate." This location, a Transformerized pun on Blade Runner's famous death monologue, also appeared in the 2020 War for Cybertron: Siege cartoon, which included Brandon Easton as one of the show's writers.
  • The starship Krm'zik references Kremzeek, the electrical pest who debuted in the The Transformers episode "Kremzeek!"
  • Octane's status as a self-serving black-market trader seems like a callback to his memorable characterization in the The Transformers episode "Starscream's Ghost", which depicted him as a rogue ex-Decepticon agent on the run from bounty hunters and other unsavory sorts.
  • Octane introduces himself as "Octane of Kaon"; this kind of naming scheme originated in the 2005 IDW continuity, where an individual's "full name" combined their given name with the city where they were created. This tradition must work a bit differently in this universe, however, since every Cybertronian is born in the Pyramid in Iacon.
  • Magnus remembers several infamous Ascenticons inhabiting Kaon; in many Transformers stories, most prominently the Dreamwave, Transformers: Prime, and the 2005 IDW continuity, the city is depicted as the effective "birthplace" of the Decepticon movement.
  • Victory Leo debuted in the Japanese-exclusive Victory anime as a new body for the dying Ginrai. Poor Victory Leo never picked up the same kind of fan following as his fellow Victory Autobot Star Saber, however; in fact, this comic marks his first-ever appearance in Western Transformers fiction! Although Victory Leo's original toy was intended to be a normal two-mode Transformer, the producers of the Victory anime came up with a improvised "flight mode" for the character, and this comic runs with that conceit by depicting him as a triple-changer: robot, lion, and spaceship.

Real-life references

  • Continuing the Star Wars homages from last issue, the shuttle that Magnus takes down to the surface of Obsidar is drawn to resemble a miniature version of the "hammerhead" corvettes that appeared in Rogue One.

Errors

  • The previous comic ended with Chromedome imploring Ultra Magnus not to accept Spinister's terms, swearing that he'd rather die than see Magnus do Spinister's bidding. Here, however, he seems pretty chipper about his conditional release, so either Chromedome is a very convincing bluffer or he's a bit of a flake...
  • As Magnus and his crewmates face off against the villains on page fourteen, Erector is miscolored blue.

Other trivia

  • Originally solicited for July, this issue was delayed until September 30 as a result of IDW Publishing suspending operations, then subsequently slipped to the end of October.

Covers (3)

  • TFGalaxies 11 cvrA.jpg
  • TFGalaxies 11 cvrB.jpg
  • TFGalaxies 11 cvrRI.jpg

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External links

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