Showdown!

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Brokeback Cybertron
"Showdown!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	May 1986
Cover date	September 1986
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Penciler	Herb Trimpe
Inkers	Ian Akin and Brian Garvey
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Janice Chiang
Editor	Michael Carlin
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

Donny Finkleberg tries to escape from Ravage, and gets some help from Skids and a new friend.

Synopsis

Donny Finkleberg is on the run from the Decepticons, and Ravage is hot on his trail. Stumbling across a temporarily vacant camp site, Donny steals some clothes and buries his old costume, then sets out to find the Autobots and alert them to the recent activation of the Decepticons' space bridge. He spots the damaged Skids, stuck in vehicle mode, off the side of the road, but fails to recognize him, dismissing him as a wrecked car and passing him by. Not far behind him, Ravage follows Finkleberg's scent to the campsite and burns the area with flame-breath, but he is quick to realize that he has been briefly deceived by the abandoned Robot-Master uniform.

In a small town several miles away, Charlene, a cowgirl cashier at Wild Bill's Market, is given a lift by her co-worker Wendell, as her car has recently broken down. On the drive she discusses with him how she wants some adventure in her life, and persuades him to pull over so they can explore an old trail. There, they find Skids, who Charlene thinks she could have fixed up to use as a replacement for her own car. Wendell—clearly smitten with Charlene—calls his mechanic cousin Bob, who tows Skids to his garage. Though soon repaired by Bob, Skids decides to continue hiding his true nature, deciding it'll be safer and more fun to be Charlene's car for a while than it will to go back to fighting Decepticons. Charlene hops in and drives off (leaving Wendell with the bill), but as she pulls out of Bob's garage, her "new van" catches the eye of irate motorist Jake Dalrymple, who recognizes it from an earlier fender-bender he and Skids got into. Jake gives chase and tries to run Skids and Charlene off the road, but Skids takes over the driving, outmaneuvering Jake and leaving him with a windscreen of green paint.

With Charlene panicking inside him, Skids drives to the outskirts of town and reveals his true nature to her, transforming to robot mode. Charlene almost flees, but Skids explains that he had been trying to find peace as her car, having no desire to fight or die, wishing only to resume his pre-war function as an anthropologist and study life on Earth. Charlene takes Skids to her house, decorated in old west memorabilia; when Skids asks about it, she tells him of how it was a great time of adventure, and even though she didn't live then, she can still dream of it. Skids laments that all his dreams are memories of war so the pair go out to make him some new ones. Over the next few days, Charlene shows Skids much of the natural beauty of Earth, and the pair grow closer, with Charlene even brushing off invitations to spend time with Wendell to be with Skids.

Meanwhile, in a diner, Donny Finkleberg overhears Jake Dalrymple ranting about the van, which he says "had a mind of its own." Putting two and two together, Donny sets out looking for the van, and tracks it to Charlene's home, arriving just as the cowgirl is in the middle of giving Skids a wash (which they're both enjoying waaaay too much). Recognizing Skids at last, Donny tries to get the Autobot to take him back to the rest of his team, but Skids keeps silent, trying to pretend to be an ordinary car. Alas, his deception is undone when Ravage appears on the scene, having tracked Donny's scent down at last. Charlene and Donny dive into Skids who speeds off at top speed. The two humans argue—Donny patting himself on the back for finding an Autobot, and Charlene pointing out that he only found Skids because Ravage is trying to kill them. Rushing through the town (and past Jake), the trio head to an abandoned mining town to battle their pursuer away from civilization.

It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.

Arriving in the town, the Autobot tells the humans to hide, but just after they leave, the pursuing Jake arrives and, still determined to get revenge, smashes his windscreen with a tire iron. Rendered unconscious, Skids dreams that he must face Megatron in a showdown to save Charlene. Knowing he must save Charlene but unwilling to fight, Skids is frozen with indecision, and is blasted to pieces by Megatron. Back in reality, Charlene and Donny argue with Jake, but a renewed attack by Ravage scatters them. Before Ravage can finish Skids, he is rammed by Jake in his Lamborghini, giving the others enough time to bring the Autobot around. His resolve to fight strengthened by his need to protect Charlene, Skids fights a desperate battle with Ravage, eventually tricking the Decepticon into falling down an abandoned mine shaft.

With Ravage gone, Charlene tries to convince Skids to come back with her but he says he is going with Donny back to the Autobots. He cannot avoid his responsibility, and he would be living in a dream if he stayed, no matter how much he wants to. Charlene tells him she'll miss him, but he did better than the last car she loved—when its transmission went, she just junked it!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"On my world I was an anthropologist—a student of life. I want to continue my studies here, to understand your world. With your help, I can do that. I simply want to be...your car."

—Skids makes a proposal to Charlene

Notes

Continuity notes

• Observing an ordinary Earth car undergoing the same treatment, Skids observed last issue that being washed and polished looked like "a pleasant way to pass the day," foreshadowing the events of this issue.

Real-life references

• Charlene shows Skids the real-life 1952 western, High Noon.

Artwork and technical errors

• Skids' torso is colored red on the cover.
• The stripe on the side of Skids's vehicle mode is consistently miscolored this issue: it should be a thick red stripe bordered by thin white stripes, but the area that should be red is always colored "unpainted" blue like the rest of him, while the lower bordering stripe is red instead of white (except in instances noted below). It's so consistent, it might well be an early color model or something.
• Page 2, panel 7: Donny is left uncolored white, the same as the sky behind him. A rare moment of Yomtov not block-coloring!
• Page 3, panel 4: Ravage's eye is the same blue-black as the rest of his body.
• Page 9, panel 6: Donny's hair is colored reddish-brown instead of its normal pale brown.

• Page 11:
  • Panels 4-5: Panel 4 shows Wendell inside the grocery store, having a conversation with Charlene, but in panel 5, he is suddenly outside the store, hiding behind a corner watching her as she leaves, even though she's still in the middle of speaking to him (right). Evidently, in this panel, Wendell has mistakenly been drawn in place of Donny Finkleberg, who is snooping on Skids after hearing about the "living van" a few pages prior. He obviously must follow Skids to Charlene's house after recognizing him; thanks to the art mistake obfuscating this plot point, how Donny tracks Skids to Charlene's isn't clear in the finished comic.
  • Panel 6: Charlene's belt is left uncolored, remaining the same pale purple as her shorts, when it appears magenta on the next page.
• Page 12:
  • Panel 1: Skids's red stripe is white.
  • Panel 6: Ravage's eye is white instead of yellow.
• Page 13:
• From his reappearance on this page through to page 21, Ravage's eyes are colored white instead of yellow, with two exceptions on page 14, panel 2, and page 20, panel 2.
• Page 13, panel 2: Skids's red stripe is white again.
• Page 15, panel 4: Skids's front grille is colored a greyish-purple instead of the pale blue it should be.
• Page 16, panel 2: Once again, Skids's red stripe is white.

Page 17:

• • Panel 1: Megatron is missing his shoulder-mounted gun barrel.
  • Panel 2: Skids's red stripe is white yet again.
  • Panel 2 & 4: Charlene's top is colored orange instead of pink.
• Page 20:
  • Panel 1: The damage to Skids's windscreen is missing.
  • Panel 4: Skids's damaged windscreen is still missing, plus the white stripe on his door is yellow.
• Page 21, panel 6: Skids's entire windscreen/door kibble is missing.

UK printing

Issue #72:

• Published: 26th June, 1986
• Cover date: 2nd August, 1986
• Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, Hercules ("What Fools These Immortals Be!" Part 3) and Matt and the Cat
• The final page of this issue's strip is misprinted, with the magenta and yellow layers of ink transposed.

Issue #73:

• Published: 2nd August, 1986
• Cover date: 9th August, 1986
• Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, Hercules ("What Fools These Immortals Be!" Part 4) and Matt and the Cat; Matt and the Cat concludes this issue.
• Fact File Interface: Ravage
• "The Transformers Transforms!" feature on the upcoming new look for UK issue #74 onwards.
• Skids would return to the Ark with Finkleberg in the very next US issue, but in the UK, these two stories were separated by fifteen issues, the longest run of UK-original material yet. To compensate for the unavoidable delay to Skids's return, a small dialogue edit is performed on the final page that has Skids state that, rather than leave right away, he will first wait for his wounds to heal (right).

Other trivia

• Ravage breathes fire now, apparently?

Bot Roster

• Autobots: 11 active after Skids is repaired; 5 rogue Dinobots; 7 wayward arrivals from Cybertron; 14 in repair bay. (37 total)
• Decepticons: 10 active after Ravage is taken out (right); 7 offline. (17 total)

Courtesy of my...

• Skids counters Ravage’s fire-breath with a blast from his super-cooled liquid nitrogen rifle.

Covers (3)

• US issue #20: Megatron and Skids as cowboys, by Herb Trimpe.
• UK issue #72: Ravage with Robot-Master costume in his mouth, by Geoff Senior.
• UK issue #73: reuse of art from US cover.

• 

  US issue #20 - Megatron is cheating again, he doesn't even own a holster

• 

  UK issue #72 - Ravage doesn't brush after meals.

• 

  UK issue #73 - The things you do for women...

Reprints

• 

  The Transformers Comics Magazine #10 (Marvel US, 1988)

• 

  Transformers: Showdown paperback (Titan Books, 2003)

• 

  Transformers: Showdown hardback (Titan Books, 2003)

• 

  Classic Transformers Volume 2 (IDW Publishing, 2008)

• 

  The Transformers Classics, Vol. 2 (IDW Publishing, 2012)

• 

  The Definitive G1 Collection, Vol. 5: The Smelting Pool (Hachette Partworks, Ltd., 2019)

IDW Transformers Classics edits

For The Transformers Classics series of trade paperbacks, IDW Publishing "remastered" the coloring of the series with varying degrees of success. These changes were sometimes to fix errors, but often to alter characters' color schemes to make them resemble their toy and/or cartoon selves, and were rarely applied with consistency. IDW's recolored version was also used for Hachette's Definitive G1 Collection.

• Page 3, panel 4: Ravage gets his eye correctly colored yellow.
• Page 11, panel 6: Charlene's belt is now correctly colored magenta.
• Instances of Ravage's eyes being white in the original version are haphazardly corrected to yellow; the errors on pages 13-15 remain, but are corrected on pages 17-20.
• Page 15, panel 4: Skids's front grille is corrected to pale blue. However, the individual responsible for the "remastering" misread the original art and thought that Skids's red stripe was in the wrong place; it wasn't, and the remaster incorrectly moves it further down, to below his door.
• Page 17: Charlene's miscolored top and Skids's miscolored stripe are corrected.
• Page 18, panels 1 & 5: The bottom corners of Ravage's Decepticon symbol have been recolored blue-black. In panel 2, his Decepticon symbol has been colored purple.
• Page 20, panel 2: the top of Ravage's head and neck have been recolored blue. In panel 4, Ravage's Decepticon symbol has been colored purple.
• Page 22, panel 2: Ravage is supposed to be colored entirely pale blue to represent his being shrouded in the darkness of the mineshaft. The "remaster" ignores this and changes his fangs to white.

Advertisements

US

• M&M's (inside cover)
• Great A.I. Gang Contest - between pages 4 & 5
• Bonkers! chewy candy - between pages 5 & 6
• Star Comics - between pages 7 & 8
• Escape From Tenopia, comic book price guide and Marvel Super Mart - between pages 8 & 9
• David seed snacks - between pages 16 & 17
• Olympic prizes or cash - between pages 17 & 18
• Sales Leadership Club - between pages 19 & 20
• Bullpen Bulletins - between pages 20 & 21
• Transmissions
• Subscribe to Marvel Comics at only 56¢ per copy!
• Yamaha DX100 Synthesizer (inside back cover)
• Marvel's New Universe (back cover)

UK

• Both issues:
  • 1986 Marvel Summer Specials (including Collected Comics #4)
  • Cyclonus, Scourge, Hot Rod, Kup, and Blurr toys (right)
• issue #72
  • The Nesquik Supershakers
• issue #73
  • Classified ads for comic and fantasy shops