Strange Visitors

« Revolutionaries #5 »
"Do this...prove yourselves to me, be loyal to me, and I will never betray you!"
"Strange Visitors"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	June 14, 2017
Cover date	April 2017
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Fico Ossio (pg 3-4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18-20) Guido Guidi (pg 1-2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17)
Colors by	Sebastian Cheng (Ossio pages), Guido Guidi (own pages)
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Hedgecock
Assistant editor	David Mariotte
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era

The secret of the steampunk Transformers and their connection to the Talisman is revealed as our revolutionaries go up against the new Cobra Commander!

Synopsis

Thousands of years ago, the spacecraft Axalon filled with Cybertronian beastformers draws close to prehistoric Earth, still in the throes of its ice age. The vessel, captained by Domitius Major, has been sent on a mission across the stars by Onyx Prime, but has diverted to Earth upon detecting the energon on the planet that they need to replace their dwindling supplies. As they draw near to the planet, however, the crew of the Axalon receive a peculiar transmission, sent by Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, meant for another vessel—which the beastformers quickly realize has been bounced to them by another Cybertronian craft that now streaks towards them on an attack vector. This mystery ship shoots the Axalon down, then follows it down to Earth's surface, where its sole occupant is revealed: Shockwave, come to Earth to check on the progress of the Regenesis ore with which he has seeded the planet.

Under Shockwave's watchful eye, the first of the Axalon crew to recover from the crash is a little 'bot named Centurion, but his memories are jumbled, and the first thing he sees as he awakes is the still-looping transmission from Optimus and Bumblebee. The passing resemblance between Centurion and Bumblebee confuses the beastformer, and he thinks he is Bumblebee—a misconception that gives Shockwave an idea for another of his terrible experiments. The Decepticon scientist replaces the lost memories of the entire Axalon crew with data on the Autobots and Decepticons of Cybertron so that he can pit them against one another, playing out the Autobot/Decepticon war in miniature to study. As Centurion had become "Bumblebee," Domitius Major becomes "Optimus Prime," and so on, with Shockwave even patterning one of the beastformers after himself. He spends a century observing their conflict, and further, watches as, under its own power, a mysterious device from the Axalon—the object key to the beasts' mission, that which would become known to humans as the Talisman—creates an army of robotic drones out of the wreckage of the ship. But, eventually, Shockwave has to leave his experiment to tend to the Ore-13, only to wind up entombed in lava by the Dynobots. His "creations" fight on until their energon runs low, whereupon they enter hibernation beneath the Earth.

The beastformers, still believing their false memories, awake in the mid-to-late 19th century to find Earth populated with humans. The "Autobots" defeat most of the "Decepticons" with the aid of the human John Henry, and soon after, combat the rise of an Elder God. But time marches on, and as war grips the planet, one by one the beasts perish, including "Optimus Prime" himself, their implanted memories of endless war doing little to prepare them for the real thing. Eventually, during World War II, only Centurion and "Shockwave" remain, and their final clash is observed on the battlefields of France by Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles. Centurion destroys "Shockwave," and, left as the last of his kind, he requests the help of Savage and his men in finding the wreckage of the Axalon so that he can return to his ship to die in peace.

Savage and Garrison Kreiger help Centurion locate the Axalon in Brasnya, but as they approach its remains, the Talisman-created drones gather to stand in their way. The team plough through the robots and enter the Axalon, where they discover that the Talisman has been removed from its housing and is nowhere to be seen. Before Centurion can tell them any more about the device and his original mission, the drones resume their attack, this time linked together and wearing the corpse of Domitius Major like a suit of armor. Kreiger—fascinated by the machines since the Screaming Eagles' first encounter with them in Kalistan—steps out of the Axalon to get a better view of Centurion's battle with this effigy of his former leader, but as he looks on, both the drones and the ship begin to glow with the power of the Talisman. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Axalon vanishes—taking Sgt. Savage with it. Centurion proceeds to triumph over the Domitius effigy, but is distraught at having lost what was to be his final resting place. Kreiger offers to help him, intending to locate and take the Talisman and its power for his own...

And then he started calling everyone 'Bub'.

In the present day, Tomax Paoli returns to his office in the I.R.O.N. building in San Francisco, leaving Centurion outside in vehicle mode. His secretary Violet informs him that Garrison Kreiger is in his office; Paoli fires her for not leaving per previous instructions, feigning anger when, really, he is just trying to get her out of the inevitable line of fire. Kreiger—in fact, a holographic projection beamed in from Iron Klaw's headquarters in Kalistan—warns Tomax of the recent attack on the Iron Castle by Kup, Action Man, Mayday, and Garrison Blackrock, and that they will be coming for Tomax next. Left with little choice, Tomax begrudgingly dons the "Cobra Commander" uniform given to him by Baron Ironblood to get ready for a fight—and immediately, the helmet's scanners detect Action Man lurking in a nearby corridor. Tomax quickly sends the British super-agent flying out a window, but he is safely caught by Kup, who is waiting outside. In revealing himself, however, Kup prompts Centurion to transform to robot mode and initiate his own attack on his fellow Transformer, considering himself and all of his kind abominations who need to die. Kup "Fastball Special"s Action Man back into the building, right at Tomax; Action Man's forcefield protects him, and hurls Tomax into a stairwell, down which Ian and Mayday then pursue him.

With the fighting serving as a cover, Blackrock accesses the I.R.O.N. database and learns the truth about Centurion's past from it. Realizing that they are both agents and pawns of Onyx Prime, Blackrock is able to calm Centurion down, and explain to him that, in fact, he is not the last of his kind: there are many planets' worth of Transformers still alive out there. Knowing he is not longer alone in the universe, Centurion stands down, and asks that he be taken to meet the real Optimus Prime. Concurrently, Action Man and Mayday manage to take down Tomax, with a precision shot from Mayday striking the only non-bulletproof spot between his suit and helmet and nicking his throat. The wounded Tomax surrenders, but has no useful information to give the team on the other villains' plans. Fortunately, Blackrock has discerned their next destination from the I.R.O.N. database: Brasnya.

For it is in Brasnya that the villains' "Project: Ice Man" facility, containing the body of Domitius Major, is located, and where Doctor X now readies a teleporter to transport Kreiger and Ironblood in to finish their scheme. The good doctor herself does not plan to be there when they do, though; she wants to be long gone by the time Mayday and co. arrive and see what the villains have done to their other prisoner: former Adventure Team member, the long-thought-dead Mike Power, the Atomic Man!

Featured characters

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

Quotes

"Anybody ever tell you a mirror mask and a fascist overcoat makes you look like a bad guy? The powder blue doesn't really mitigate anything."

—Action Man critiques Tomax's Cobra Commander outfit

"The only thing we bring is war and destruction!"
"Those are two things—but aside from that, you're makin' a philosophically sound argument."

—Centurion and Kup

"Bulletproof suit and helmet means you're still risking your neck, Paoli. Hands in the air, or I really go for the jugular."

—Mayday's not above wordplay

"My trousers aren't bulletproof—you could have shot me in the leg. And won't you take this helmet off? It keeps trying to see through walls."
"I heard Cobra Commander's helmet is explosive."
"I assure you, I wouldn't... oh. Kreiger would."

—Tomax and Mayday

Notes

Continuity notes

• So, our big takeaway from this issue is that the events of Hearts of Steel and Infestation 2 did, in fact, happen in mainstream 2005 IDW continuity—because the characters in it, who appeared to be Optimus Prime and all our other favorite recognizable Generation 1 'bots, were actually explorers with beast modes whose memories had been tampered with by Shockwave for shits 'n' giggles. John Barber has noted that the other story that was set in what we perceived as the "Hearts of Steel continuity," The X-Files: Conspiracy, did not happen in IDW continuity—the story was a self-cancelling time-loop so to be fair, it had already "unhappened" as soon as it was over, but it wouldn't have been possible for it to fit even if that hadn't happened. Or... hadn't... not happened. Or didn't... not unhapp—look, just don't worry about it, okay?
• Shockwave is on Earth to observe the progress of the Ore-13 he implanted there, as seen in Spotlight: Shockwave. Accordingly, Guidi's rendition of Shockwave in this issue tends toward the thinner, pointier, more stylized appearance artist Nick Roche drew him with in that issue.
• The rank "Major" being held by the pre-modern era Transformer Domitius is fitting, as the only previous use of this rank system in IDW continuity was by Nova Major in the final stages of the First Cybertronian Civil War, as depicted in Robots in Disguise #34.
• The message from Optimus Prime and Bumblebee that Shockwave bounces to the Axalon has Optimus attempting to contact Prowl on the Ark-19. This vessel, under Prowl's command, was the base of operations for the Autobot infiltration team on Earth in the original IDW mini-series Infiltration and its sequels, but this story is set long before it would ever arrive on Earth.
• Savage and Kreiger recall their earlier encounter with IRON Troopers in Kalistan, as seen in issue #3.
• Tomax sarcastically inquires after Flint and Chameleon; he spent some time working with them while he was on the outs with Cobra, in Cobra vol. 2, before inevitably betraying them in The Cobra Files.
• The Axalon crashes in what becomes modern-day Brasnya, the breakaway Russian state that was the setting for Escalation.
• "Ironhide" remains green after Shockwave's conditioning, the only one of the Axalon crew seen to retain their original colors. This is no mistake: Ironhide was one of several characters given arbitrary new colors for the opening Ice Age scenes of Hearts of Steel #1.
• Per issue #3, Atomic Man is presently believed to have died at Kreiger's hands under unspecified circumstances. The final page of this issue reveals otherwise!

Transformers references

• Hearts of Steel began by showing the "Autobots" and "Decepticons" engaged in a Beast Wars-like conflict set on prehistoric Earth, and this issue plays up the similarities. The crew of the Axalon arrive searching for energon, as the Beast Warriors did, and their ship is the Axalon from the Beast Wars cartoon, while Shockwave's ship—unnamed—is the Predacon spaceship from the same series.

Hasbro franchise references

• Tomax's "Cobra Commander" outfit is the classic Commander uniform, based on the original action figure, which hasn't been worn by anyone in IDW continuity before.
• The idea of Sgt. Savage "disappearing" with the Axalon is IDW's slant on the original Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles backstory, in which the Sarge, like a certain other Sentinel of Liberty, disappeared during the war, only for it to be discovered in modern times that he had been cryogenically preserved.
• Mayday refuses to remove Tomax's helmet for him, having heard it is "explosive". This idea goes back to issue #24 of the original Marvel G.I. Joe comic book, in which it is noted to be lined with plastic explosive as an anti-tamper mechanism; it's previously been used in Transformers media in Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, where it ended up killing its wearer.

Real-life references

• The title of this issue comes from one of Superman's famous taglines: "strange visitor from another planet". This probably stems from the fact that the character that became Centurion was initially conceived as a Superman pastiche who "grew up" on Earth!^[1]
• As Kup carries Action Man up the side of the I.R.O.N. Building, Ian notes the Autobot is "doing a King Kong", but qualifies that he is referring to the original movie, not the "Vietnam metaphor" of 2017's Kong: Skull Island.

Errors

• During the flashback sequences, Kreiger is missing his facial scar and eye injury, acquired in issue #3 during the Screaming Eagles' first encounter with the IRON Troopers.
• Centurion/"Bumblebee" is drawn in his mid-19th century automobile body during the flashback to the original Hearts of Steel miniseries.
• Spotlight: Shockwave established that Shockwave came to Earth 10,000 years before the present, but a caption on page 13 says that Centurion is stepping into the Axalon for the first time in 20,000 years. This is probably down to the last Ice Age taking place longer ago than that.

Other trivia

• Whence Hearts of Steel? Early on, John Barber unsuccessfully pitched a story about a Transformer "ghost" left behind from an earlier era. A later pitch involved a Cybertronian who was raised in isolation from their species. While this latter pitch certainly inspired the character of Stardrive in Shining Armor, Michael Kelly suggested that Barber do something with the largely-forgotten Hearts of Steel continuity. Barber initially balked at the idea, realizing that it was fundamentally irreconcilable with the modern IDW universe, but slowly warmed to the idea after realizing the story potential and possible connection to then-current big bad Onyx Prime, crafting the alternate backstory for the universe we see presented here. Both of Barber's earlier pitches found their way into the character of Centurion: a remnant from the ancient past unaware of other Transformers.^[2]
• Originally solicited for release in April, this issue arrives significantly late, two months after the fact, halfway through June. The solicitation for the issue erroneously described issue #6's story, as a result of Barber briefly intending to adjust the order of events,^[3] but some of this issue's covers also seem to have been intended for next issue too. Both issue #5 and #6 were intended for release before issue #1 of the Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook, but because of these delays, they were not, and the details of Centurion's backstory were consequently spoiled by the Sourcebook a week in advance of this issue's release.
• Original Hearts of Steel artist Guido Guidi returns to the characters with this issue, drawing all the flashback pages that chart their history. All of his pages are done in the retro-style previously seen in the 2012 More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise annuals, emulating the coloring and printing of the original Marvel Transformers comic.
• The Hearts of Steel stories included versions of the three "main" Insecticons (with a memorable "Insectrain" combined mode), but as per All Hail Megatron, those three Insecticons shouldn't exist at this point for Shockwave to base the beastformers on. Robots in Disguise #21 confirmed there to be an earlier, separate Bombshell, so we suppose there were also earlier versions of the other Insecticons (such as the Kickback who showed up in Megatron Origin #4) for these ones to be based on? Issue #1 of the Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook notes that the Insecticons were a pre-existing Cybertronian sub-race that were experimented on in All Hail Megatron, which goes some way to backing that notion up.
• In a similar vein, Scourge, sporting a fanciful zeppelin alternate mode, was one of the "Decepticons" involved in the conflict on 19th century Earth. His real counterpart had vanished from public knowledge long before the outbreak of the Great War and the formation of the Decepticon faction.
• Pierre Droal's retailer incentive cover shows a unique design for Cobra Commander with a Red Hood-esque helmet, one that goes unused in the story proper.

Covers (4)

• Regular cover: Cobra Commander calls in a squadron of Rattlers on "Optimus Prime" and "Bumblebee", by Robert Atkins and Simon Gough; Cobra Commander is here drawn in the uniform worn by deposed commander Krake.
• Subscription cover A: Kup, M.A.S.K., and the Adventure Team's "Big Trapper" in a wacky race, by Jed Dougherty and Sebastian Cheng
• Subscription cover B: The forces of M.A.S.K. reflected in Cobra Commander's helmet, by Tone Rodriguez and Thomas Deer; the Commander's mask is here drawn as the one worn by the original modern-day Commander, who died at the end of IDW's first G.I. Joe series.
• Retailer incentive cover: Cobra Commander looms as Centurion takes out another 'bot, by Pierre Droal

• 

  Bumblebee is amazed at how lame Cobra Commander's phone is.

• 

  Dirk Dastardly in last place.

• 

  Hi Baldy!

• 

  Cobra Commander makes a poor Overlord.

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• Revolutionaries #6
• "The Hasbro Tribune" editorial page promoting April's Hasbro Universe titles, including this issue, G.I. Joe #5, Micronauts: Wrath of Karza #1, Optimus Prime #6, Lost Light #5, and Till All Are One #9
• Micronauts: Wrath of Karza #1
• Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook
• "FIND YOUR HERO" IDW house ad featuring Optimus Prime; art by Casey Coller
• Free Comic Book Day 2017 (which had already taken place over a month prior to the late shipping of this issue...)
• IDW Yokai Watch comic

Reprints

Other than full or partial collections of Revolutionaries.

• N/A

References

External links

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