Space Hikers!

The Autobots inadvertently capture a group of human children in their pursuit of the renegade Blaster – will Grimlock really use kids as leverage in his personal battle? And Sky Lynx makes his comics debut.

Blaster was my favourite character in the Marvel comics and so having him centre stage – and in demand for the Autobot leadership no less – is very welcome. However, at the close of Used Autobots, with the Protectobots placing Blaster under arrest for desertion, I was eager to get straight to the inevitable confrontation with Grimlock. Instead Child’s Play seemed to drag things out with a largely unnecessary confrontation between the Protectobots and Combaticons (probably to address the lack of Defensor and Bruticus in the previous story) and to put the four human children in the mix.

In Space Hikers the youngsters’ purpose to the plot is clear. It’s to provide a catalyst for Blaster to surrender rather than whip up a revolution (not to difficult given how fed up the Autobots are with Grimlock at this point) and thus postpone his inevitable showdown with the tyrannical Autobot leader for an incredible 30 more issues! Crikey.

I might sound like a boring parent here, but the idea of taking four little kids into space in a captured Decepticon of all things – with their families completely unaware, and without thought for the massive risks you are exposing them too seemed incredibly unwise. Yes, Blast Off was mode-locked, but just as Blaster remained conscious and was thinking of ways to thwart his captors, surely Blast Off would have been expected to do similar. He might have turned off the air supply for example. Another thought: at the point of his arrest Blaster was keen to get after RAAT and recover the Throttlebots. I’m surprised this was no longer a priority once he was freed. Or perhaps he realised the trail would have gone cold and so the next best thing is to return to the Autobots and force a change of leader.

Childs Play ended with the kids and Blaster, in orbit with the Ark bearing down on them. For Space Hikers (published in the UK in mid December 1987) writer Bob Budiansky rewinds the clocks a few hours and makes another toy introduction – the space shuttle/bird/big cat Autobot Sky Lynx. After millions of years of scrapping with Decepticons on the Transformers home world, Sky Lynx was looking for a change and so when Wheeljack asked for his assistance in the Grimlock situation he was only too willing.

Meanwhile, Wheeljack is piloting the Ark after Blast Off. They are using the mode lock’s signal as a homing beacon and Grimlock cites the Decepticon warrior Blast Off as further evidence of Blaster’s treachery. Even Wheeljack is puzzled by this and questioning his admiration for Blaster. The four kids had been having the time of their lives but with the Ark bearing down and likely to shoot them out of the sky, Blaster decides his own recourse is to surrender. Sammy decides instead to throws Blaster out of the airlock – he saved them and now the Space Hikers can return the favour.

A huge claw reaches out from below the Ark (while theatrical I can’t help thinking about the unnecessary storage space this must be taking and surely a tractor beam is more efficient) and swallows the tiny craft. Inside, the Autobots with weapons drawn have Blast Off surrounded. The four children emerge, and Wheeljack convinces the Dinobots that they don’t present any danger…

I’m not sure if the Alzamora family of New Jersey have any significance to the production team or are simply made up, but in two panels we see their TV viewing suddenly disrupted as Blaster commandeers a satellite and uses its stabilising rockets to propel himself to the Ark. Wheeljack leads the four nervous children on a tour, getting them to stand in a chamber where space suits materialise around them (and not forgetting Robin’s teddy either, lol). The suits carry two hours of air, which is significant to the plot later.

Suddenly Slag interrupts – commander Grimlock wants the see the “slime squirts” now! And despite Wheeljack’s reassurances that the commander probably only wants to meet them, they arrive to find a court in session with the crown-wearing King Grimlock presiding. This is truly ridiculous given that the children have every reason to be ignorant of Autobot affairs. Any help they have given Blaster is inconsequential you would think.

Instead, Grimlock orders them to be thrown out of the airlock – in effect executed. The faces of the other Autobots is of utter horror, but WHY DON’T THEY SAY SOMETHING? Grimlock may be a tyrant but the rest are a bunch of wimps!! Snarl questions whether this is a wise move given the other Autobots strong sympathies for humans but Grimlock only intends to use the children to draw Blaster out. Frankly, its incredible at this point that the Autobots are so cowered that they are prepared to stand idly by and allow they sacred principles to be violated.

Wheeljack, having earlier already been throttled by Grimlock, suspects his loyalties are being questioned but throws caution to the wind by calling Sky Lynx and having him swoop down and rescue the Space Hikers as they drift into space. Grimlock orders his warriors back inside to pursue this new arrival. Blaster finally gets within reach of the Ark, only for its huge engines to seemingly flame-grill the Autobot before he can grab a hold. By rights Blaster should be obliterated here or at least propelled to the other side of space by such force! He’s not.

Sky Lynx introduces himself to his passengers and – with the Ark gaining on him – he travels into a meteor shower and reverts to Lynx mode to hop between rocks as the Dinobots exit the Ark and pursue.

Blaster makes a nice reference to not feeling this bad since he swam in the smelting pools of Polyhex (an encounter we fans remember all to well – a great story). He gets into the Ark through a hatch and is warmly greeted by his fellow Autobots. After explaining that he hadn’t teamed-up with Blast-Off, the Decepticon was mode-locked and under control, the Autobots including Prime’s old number two Prowl want him to stay and take charge. As a Blaster fan this idea appealed to me greatly at the time also! But true to his character, Blaster has to put his the four young charges first.

When Sky Lynx radios in to say that the Dinobots have surrounded him and are playing a waiting game its clear that the kids will run out of air unless something is done. Jetfire offers to lead a strike against the Dinobots but Blaster refuses – that might endanger Sky Lynx and the humans. There is only one way to ensure their safety… Blaster goes outside and surrenders! Darn it!

So what happens to Blaster after this shock ending? Readers were not destined to find out until issue #174, well over four months away! The US material seems to drop this whole storyline to concentrate on the Headmasters’ arrival on Earth. We’ll shortly be heading back to the future for one of the most momentous stories of the run, which will take the UK comic up to and past its milestone 150th issue… But first it’s time for a change of pace and the annual tradition that was the Transformers Christmas edition.

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Child’s Play

The Protectobots are escorting the Autobot deserter Blaster back to the Ark for trial when they run into a Combaticon ambush – and four human children get caught in the middle.

In issue #122, when Blaster and Goldbug deserted rather than put up with Grimlock’s tyrannical leadership, it was obvious that a reckoning would be coming. Last issue it looked like that moment had arrived, when the Protectobots caught up with Blaster and placed him under arrest. Anyone reading Child’s Play and expecting a showdown between Blaster and his old commander will be disappointed, as the situation is destined to drag out for two more stories before taking a long hiatus and coming to a head in issue #174 – eight months on from this point.

For the moment Blaster is wearing a mode locked (the Transformer equivalent of a car clamp) trapping him in cassette-deck form, and chained to Groove, who is in turn in the back of First Aid, as the Protectobots keep the prisoner secure for the journey back to the Ark. We’re about to meet four human children – Sammy, Allen, Jed and little sister Robin, and Daisy her teddy bear, who look like being this issue’s human support cast but are destined to be around for a surprisingly long while (much to the annoyance of some fans).

Bob Budiansky’s story (which is published in Transformers UK issues #141/2 in November 1987) opens in a rail yard in northern California where the boys are playing with toy guns. Little Robin just wants the game to finish so she can go home. When the children see a police car approaching they decide to hide. However, it’s not the authorities come to reprimand them for playing where they shouldn’t, but Streetwise leading the Protectobot convoy.

Their update to HQ triggers Grimlock, who makes another embarrassing outburst about Blaster being “leader of traitors” and will be punished. Wheeljack, who is fast becoming Grimlock’s whipping boy, is thinking he can hardly blame Blaster for going his own way. Grimlock orders the Protectobots to hurry back as the Ark is repaired and ready for take off! Why there is a need to get space-borne is unclear, particularly as Wheeljack has just constructed a device which draws heat from the volcano in order to supply the Autobots’ fuel needs.

As Blaster contemplates the diminishing possibility of escape, Blades spots tanks treads in the area, possibly belonging to the Combaticon Brawl and suggesting an ambush (in fact the Combaticons have been hanging around like a bad smell since the events of Ladies Night two stories ago). Groove is told to deposit Blaster somewhere out of the way for safe keeping. Jed witnesses the driverless motorbike and tries to persuade his doubtful friends, while Blaster is stuck in an open water pipe and sees the kids. There’s nothing he can do to keep them out of harm’s way.

In a train shed a mile away, Brawl and Swindle lay in wait and startle a railway worker. When Vortex gives the signal they roll-out, demolishing the shed, and confront Hotspot’s team. Sammy is shocked to find a talking cassette deck and run back to tell the others, who think his winding them up. Robin collects who tells the kids to evacuate the area (wise advice given the fierce battle ensuing nearby).

With too much going on the previous issue to feature the Combaticon and Protectobot combined forms, Budiansky makes up for that now by having Bruticus enter the fray and blast the Protectobots. They retaliate by forming Defensor and the two giant gestalts go at it, throwing carriages at each other. A quick check in at the Ark, shows Cosmos and Beachcomber completing Grimlock’s infamous ‘Variable Voltage Harness’ torture chamber for Blaster, their old colleague in the Cybertron resistance. (You have to wonder when exactly the Autobots are going to stand-up to Grimlock and his ever more extreme ways).

Back at the fight, a dialogue box which I think is intended for Bruticus is ascribed to Defensor. The giant Autobot shows off his forcefield ability to repel his opponent’s weapons discharge. Meanwhile two of the boys are arguing with each other again in a tedious and unnecessary way that brings to mind that old Harry Enfield Scousers sketch until Allen pulls the mode lock off Blaster, enabling him to transform. He goes on to win the kids’ trust by saving them from a falling pylon.

When Bruticus uses a train to batter Defensor into submission (echoing Dan Reed’s cover), Blaster shows up claiming to have turned against the Protectobots who had kept him prisoner. Bruticus asks Blaster to prove it by destroying one of the kids (which reading that now feels a little uncomfortable). He pretends to open fire on Sammy who fakes being dead. The distraction is enough for Blaster to whack Bruticus with the downed pylon, sending thousands of volts coursing through the Decepticon’s body and causing him to break into his component parts.

Later Blaster offers his surrender to the Protectobots but Hotspot has other ideas: if he arrested someone who does a better job of protecting than he does he ought to ‘turn in his engine’. Instead they decide to mode-lock Blast Off in shuttle mode and allow Blaster to take the kids for a trip into orbit as a thank you. As they launch you get the impression that the Protectobots are now going to be in a world of trouble with Grimlock, since they have now effectively defied orders too and should also be fugitives like Blaster.

Finally, the children are just starting to enjoy weightlessness, when Jed spots a large ship bearing down on them – it’s the Ark! After four million years of be buried inside Mount St Hillary it is free and space-bourne again, and what timing. To be continued…

In closing the Ark has been under repair for a long time but ironically it’s under Grimlock’s otherwise disastrous leadership that progress has been made. (He obviously has ways of motivating his troops to deliver). Now we know what the Autobots were doing during the period of Grimlock’s tyrannical reign, because they weren’t out battling Decepticons, although some were looking for Blaster and Goldbug! Luckily the Decepticons have been quite idle as well with a hypnotising car wash the height of their global masterplans of late.

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Fallen Angel

Galvatron is back from the future… and this time he’s here to stay. That’s bad news for Centurion, the Cybertron seven, the Dinobots, Shockwave and pretty much everyone else!

Simon Furman’s masterpiece Target: 2006 unleashed the phenomenon that was Galvatron on to the unsuspecting readers of the UK Transformers comic. Without doubt this was the ultimate nemesis that either the Autobots or the Decepticons for that matter had faced; a more cunning, more powerful and more indestructible version of Megatron. Galvatron was the great disruptor that shook up both Autobot and Decepticon camps, even forcing them into an unlikely alliance with one another.

The trouble is, when you establish a big bad adversary such as this you can’t feature them too often or they start to lose their shock value and potency (think The Borg on Star Trek). So, I must confess to feeling a certain trepidation when I saw Galvatron on the cover of the Christmas edition (Transformers #95) and learned of his impending return in issue #101. Here we are in January 1987, just three months / thirteen issues after the conclusion of Target: 2006 and Galvatron is back. I’m sure that many readers will have been ecstatic but for me it felt a little too soon.

So, what’s going on? My take on it is that Transformers has just notched up its centenary issue and Simon Furman is looking ahead to the next hundred and thinking of how he can keep up the momentum and up the ante. One idea he has come up with it is to reintroduce Galvatron but this time as a regular recurring character and in Fallen Angel he’s pitting the fugitive future Decepticon leader against one of the readership’s (and Furman’s) favourite teams, the Dinobots!

On paper it’s a good idea (and yes, I realise comics are printed on paper) but in practice the Dinobots have been royally stuffed by Megatron at every encounter, so can they really expect to prevail against his more powerful future incarnation? Well, no and yes, as we find out in the story.

It begins with Skids and the ‘Cybertron seven’ – Blaster, Perceptor, Cosmos, Seaspray, Beachcomber, Warpath and Powerglide – walking leisurely towards the sanctuary of the Ark following their release by Circuit Breaker. This is odd for a couple of reasons, first because several of them including Skids have vehicle modes and are capable of transporting the whole group, and second the headquarters of their former captors RAAT was in New Jersey on the East Coast, whereas the Ark is on the West Coast – that is a long way to travel on foot, even for a giant robot.

The reason for the walking is quickly apparent. It means Skids is in robot mode and we’re able to see him engulfed by the familiar dark antimatter and vanish, heralding an arrival from the future. As we know from Target: 2006 when one Transformer arrives from the future, they clear a space for themselves by mass-displaying a present-day Transformer into the Limbo dimension. Poor Skids!

Furman would have had to be confident that his US writer counterpart Bob Budiansky was not planning to use Skids again in a major way, otherwise it would have created a very tricky problem plot wise.

And so, the way is clear for Galvatron’s return to the Earth of the 1980s. He materialises above the planet and falls to the surface in one huge fireball. This attracts the attention of the mute mechanoid Centurion, who unbeknownst to his new comrades the Dinobots is controlled by Professor Morris, the scientist who once took over the mind of Swoop. Being a man of science, he is drawn by the unknown and approaches the impact crater. A hand reaches out and in dramatic fashion seizes Centurion’s wrist!

Galvatron emerges, looking utterly crazed in a fantastic splash panel by Geoff Senior and tears poor Centurion to bits mistaking him for Rodimus Prime! When Galvatron’s rage subsides, he remembers being thrown out of Unicron into space by Rodimus (at the end of Transformers the Movie) and using his time jump trigger to transport him back to the past. The planet fall disorientated him, much to the misfortune of Centurion. Not that Galvatron is particularly remorseful.

Another robotic hand finds the head of Centurion and clenches a fist. We don’t see who it is but its fair to conclude its one of the Dinobots.

Meanwhile, Perceptor in giant microscope/cannon mode is scanning for a Transformer life sign they have detected – trouble is that it’s not Skids, it’s Galvatron. Not recognising him but not wanting to get into a fight, Perceptor and Warpath fire a couple of warning shots across his bows. Galvatron responds by transforming into cannon mode and blasting the pair of them skywards! The explosion is sufficient to get the attention of Shockwave, over at the Decepticon coal mine base in Wyoming, who thinks Megatron may have returned to exact his revenge for the recent coup attempt involving the Predacons. He assembles his warriors to go and meet the threat.

Back at the main action, Blaster hits Galvatron with him high frequency sonics, causing his earlier madness to resurface! And the Dinobots to claim revenge for the death of their friend Centurion. As part one ends, the scene is set for a battle royal as the story continues in Transformers #102.

Following a recap from Blaster about their various misfortunes since arriving on Earth (having their heads put on a wall as hunting trophies of Circuit Breaker was a pretty major one) we see Galvatron lays into the Dinobots. He meets Grimlock’s brute force in kind and floors the Dinobot leader. Blaster, having not used sonic energy in previous stories now seems to be doing it all the time.

He transforms into his tape deck mode (now having an Earth mode rather than the Cybertron version we saw previously) and unleashes a further burst on Galvatron, who falls to his knees and throws a sword in Blaster’s direction (with deadly accuracy). Luckily for my favourite Autobot, he’s plucked out of harm’s way by one of my other favourites, Swoop. And in fact, Swoop is about to be a big player in this instalment of the story.

The Dinobots show good teamwork by flooring, trampling and fire roasting Galvatron.  But this is no ordinary opponent and he’s quickly back on his feet and laying waste to the Autobots. While flat on his back and dazed, Swoop is contacted by Centurion (or rather Professor Morris) via the mental link they share, which he’s conveniently just discovered.

Morris reveals himself and asks Swoop to trust him and work with him. If he takes control, they might stand a chance of saving the others. Swoop is understandably reluctant but agrees. He attacks Galvatron from the air, pecking frantically at the Decepticon’s face. And salvation arrives in the form of Shockwave and his Decepticons who conclude that Galvatron is the bigger threat and turn their fire on him. Though Galvatron would gladly like to claim the Decepticon leadership he decides it is best to flee and plan for his conquest, rather than being forced to destroy his future troops. So, off he goes…

And Shockwave is off too. He concludes that further action against the Dinobots would also be a waste of resources, and he has bigger fish to fry in the shape of Galvatron. Of course, he has Swoop with an unsettling thought: when Galvatron returns the Dinobots are likely to be his first target!

Some closing thoughts:

Just how much punishment can Galvatron take? Not only has he fallen from orbit and landed intact, but he also is able to absorb attacks from the Autobots, Dinobots and Decepticons simultaneously. Professor Morris is officially one of the good guys now after finally atoning for his treatment of Swoop in The Icarus Theory. However, he’s now without a body to control and he only has a year’s supply of food and water in the Triple III vault where he’s holed up. It’s quite a predicament. Could he be the Fallen Angel of the title, or is this Galvatron? He’s certainly fallen from previous heights of his near omnipotence in 2006 but he’s hardly an angel, more like a devil.

While not one of my favourite stories, there are good moments. The scene with Galvatron destroying Centurion is awesome and gives you a real idea of the amount of raw unchecked power he has. Galvatron is incredibly dangerous and nobody apart from maybe Rodimus Prime can stop him! It’s good to have the Cybertron seven back, and Blaster is one of my favourites, but Furman’s Blaster feels like a different character to the one written so impeccably by US writer Bob Budiansky.

The roots of Shockwave’s long-running rivalry with Galvatron are planted here, when he sets his warriors on the future Decepticon. That’ll play out over the next one hundred or so issues.

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