Raiders of the Last Ark

The Decepticons launch an attack on the Ark. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw are first to penetrate the craft, the latter tearing the hull open to allow them access, but Optimus Prime blasts Laserbeak and rallies the Autobots for action. The two forces clash in battle: Jazz finds his flamethrower is no match for Soundwave; Windcharger finds that Ravage's electromagnetic shield negates his magnetic powers; and Rumble finds his earthquake-making powers are no match for Sideswipe's piledriver arms.

Part 2: "Judge, Jury... and Executioner?"

Though the Autobots fight valiantly, Optimus Prime fears defeat is only a matter of time, unless the ship's defences can be activated. To that end, Prime leaves the battle and ventures deeper into the ship to bring its controlling AI, Auntie, online. Megatron follows and tries to stop Prime by blasting the computer's control panel, but he is too late: Auntie awakens, and brings the battle to a halt by magnetizing the ship's walls, leaving Autobot and Decepticon alike helpless. The damaged computer can no longer distinguish between friend and foe, and instructs Prime and Megatron to plead their individual cases before her so she can decide which of the two factions it will destroy.

Part 3: "Unholy Alliances!"

Every day is leg day! And every other body part day too!

Ravage and Windcharger's unique magnetism-related abilities allow them to counter Auntie's magnetic field, and the pair reluctantly team up to get past the Ark's defenses and reach the computer core. When they are confronted by a laser grid, Ravage's speed and maneuverability allowing him to make it through and shut the mechanism down, but no sooner has he done that than the floor of the corridor becomes electrified, zapping the pair and knocking them out.

Optimus Prime tells Auntie the story of the Ark's arrival on Earth, but Megatron claims it is all lies. Prime begs Auntie to consult her own databanks to see the truth, but the computer is unwilling, refusing to accept that she is damaged and refuses. Prime makes Megatron realize that Auntie is likely going to kill both sides, prompting the Decepticon leader to unleash a secret ability that he thinks will be able to stop her: he begins charging his body with antimatter, drawn cross-dimensionally from a black hole.

Ravage recovers from the electric shock, having managed to shut down his systems before they too badly damaged. Knowing he will need the help, he begrudingly reactivates Windcharger, and the two resume their mission, dodging more defenses through teamwork. Arriving at the door to the computer core, they are confronted with the final obstacle: the Autobot battle droid Guardian!

Part 4: "The Final Battle!"

Windcharger tackles Guardian through the doors, keeping the mechanoid busy while Ravage darts forward and rips the computer core to pieces, deactivating Auntie. Optimus Prime and Megatron are freed from her magnetic grip, and Megatron—deciding it would be such a shame to see all the power he has built up go to waste—prepares to turn his antimatter on Optimus. Before he can, however, Windcharger uses his magnetic abilities at maximum power to blast Megatron out of the Ark and into the stratosphere. The Decepticons retreat after their leader's exit, but Optimus Prime cannot call the outcome a victory: Windcharger has overloaded his systems and fallen unconscious, several other Autobots are also badly damaged, Auntie is lost... and as a message burned into the Ark's walls by the fleeing Decepticons warns, their enemies will soon return...

Featured Characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Others
Mirage (5) Optimus Prime (6) Hound (10) Jazz (12) Gears (13) Huffer (14) Sunstreaker (16) Prowl (17) Sideswipe (18) Windcharger (20) Bumblebee (22) Trailbreaker (23)	Frenzy (1) Megatron (2) Starscream (3) Ravage (4) Rumble (7) Skywarp (8) Laserbeak (9) Buzzsaw (11) Thundercracker (15) Soundwave (19)	Auntie (21) Guardian (24)

Quotes

Ravage: "I'll claw you to bits, Autobot!"
Windcharger: "Loathsome creature, you repulse me...or should that be the other way around?"

— Windcharger magnetically repels Ravage and had been waiting all day to use that joke

"Silence! There is nothing wrong with me! Nothing! I have heard both your stories and will now consider my verdict. Those that I judge innocent will be allowed to go free. Those that I judge guilty...will be destroyed!"

— Auntie has Optimus Prime and Megatron at her mercy

Notes

Production notes

"Raiders of the Last Ark" is the third UK-original story, produced following the conclusion of the original US mini-series to fill for time until more US issues were available to reprint. It was written to span two standard 11-page issues, but after production was finished, each part was split up into two smaller chunks to make it span four issues total. As with its predecessors, "Man of Iron" and "The Enemy Within!", character models remained unavailable to the artists, and so the Transformers are drawn using only the toys as reference. "Raiders" would be the last UK story to feature such toy-based designs; by the time of the next UK story, "Decepticon Dam-Busters!," John Ridgway and Mark Farmer had visited America, met Bob Budiansky, and obtained a copy of the production bible from him.^[1]
This story was originally published in a mixture of full-colour and black-and-white artwork, as was the standard for the comic at the time. For a long time, it was the "forgotten" UK story; unlike its predecessors, it was never reprinted in either Collected Comics or any later issues of the UK or US series. IDW Publishing eventually reprinted it for the very first time in 2011 in its original mixture of colour and black-and-white, but when Hachette Partworks Ltd reprinted it again in 2017, it was fully-colourised for the first time by John-Paul Bove.

Continuity notes

"Raiders of the Last Ark" follows on directly from "The Enemy Within!". Like both that story and "Man of Iron" before it, it was published after the original US mini-series, but is set in some vague time during its events, even alluding to the looming events of its fourth issue on the final page. The "Robot War" text features which would later run in issues #22, #36 and #63 would clumsily suggest that "Raiders" took place somewhere "between panels" at the end of US issue #3, after Spider-Man rescued Sparkplug Witwicky from the Decepticons, but before Sparkplug was returned to the Ark. This really doesn't work, not least of all because Gears appears active in the story, when he was offlined and would not be reactivated until Sparkplug's return.
"Raiders" builds its story around Auntie, the Ark's computer, the sole other reference to which was seen in US issue #1.

Real-life references

The story, of course, takes its name from the Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Windcharger freeing himself and Ravage by "reversing the polarity of their own magnetic fields" is a nod to the recurring line "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" in the long running British TV series Doctor Who.

Continuity and plotting errors

An opening recap of the Transformers' arrival on Earth shows Auntie computing that a suicide course into Earth is the only logical choice. In the original telling of that story, in US issue #1, Optimus Prime reached that decision on his own—a decision that would be reiterated in issue #198, marking "Raiders" as an error, rather than a deliberate retcon.
Jazz uses his flamethrower against Soundwave, but, repeating an error from US issue #4, the art shows him wielding a hand-held weapon, instead of the shoulder-mounted weapon it's supposed to be.

Artwork and technical errors

As in "The Enemy Within!", Optimus Prime has a solid-blue mouthplate, and Megatron appears throughout the story with a golden chest—an overly literal artistic interpretation of the way his package art represented his toy's chromed chest (pictured at right).
Part 1, page 1, panel 1: The text in the caption that begins the story has been erase or obscured, turning "Created by the Autobots, the Ark..." into "reated by the Autobots, he Ark..."
Part 1, page 1, panel 2: An all-red Decepticon jet appears in the flashback to the Decepticons' attack on the Ark. Generic, or pre-emptive use of Thrust's colour scheme by artists who didn't know better?
Part 1, page 2: Hound shouts "we're under seige!", misspelling "siege".

Other trivia

This story marks the first use in media of Megatron's ability to link up to a black hole and channel antimatter (right)—but writer Simon Furman misinterpreted exactly how this power was supposed to work. Per Megatron's full-length bio (written by Bob Budiansky and later published in The Transformers Universe), "Megatron can use his internal circuitry to connect (his fusion cannon) interdimensionally with a black hole, where it can draw on anti-matter as its power source." However, the cut-down language of version of this profile used for Megatron's Tech Specs unintentionally obfuscates the fact that the cannon is involved, merely saying that Megatron can "link up interdimensionally to a black hole and draw antimatter from it for use as a weapon." Evidently, Furman only had the cut-down version to work from, and chose to interpret it by having Megatron channel the antimatter through his own body (as a swirl of blackness and stars), wielding it with his bare hands. In an interview for The Transformers Classics UK Volume 1, Furman said the reason he did this was the tech spec said Megatron could do it and felt if that was the case, the comic should show it happening.^[2]
To facilitate its referential title, the story refers to the Ark as "the last of the great arks", implying a series of such vessels. The comic itself would never corroborate this, but the animated series did feature multiple ships of the same design, and decades later, IDW Publishing would explicitly establish the Arks as a series of numbered vessels.

Back-up material

Issue #18:

Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, The Chromobots, Machine Man ("Alone Against Alpha Flight!" part 1), Planet Terry ("Part III: Some Answers"), and Matt and the Cat
Fact File: Jazz
June calendar: Laserbeak (pictured)
Other features: "Robot Round-Up"

Issue #19:

Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, The Chromobots, Machine Man ("Alone Against Alpha Flight!" part 2), Planet Terry ("Part IV: Malt Shop Menace"), From the Transformers Fact Files ("The Battle of Hastings – The True Story."), and Matt and the Cat
Fact File: Rumble
Other features: "Warrior Word Search"

Issue #20:

Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, The Chromobots, Machine Man ("Alone Against Alpha Flight!" part 3), Planet Terry ("The Saga of Princess Ugly"), and Matt and the Cat
Other features: "Twenty Transformers Questions" quiz; "Your Transformers Toy Checklist," Part 1; "Robot Round-Up"; mail-in competition to win a Bontempi BN8 keyboard

Issue #21:

Back-up strips: Robo-Capers, The Chromobots, Planet Terry ("Part 2: Too Close (Enough) for Comfort"), From the Fact Files ("The Saga of Erik the Red"), and Matt and the Cat. Machine Man was skipped for this issue.
July calendar: Sunstreaker
Other features: Mail-in competition to win a Magnetic Ludo board game; "Transformers Alphabet," a poem sent in by reader Andre Knowles gets its own segment; and "Your Transformers Toy Checklist," Part 2. The checklist refers to Soundwave only by his Micro Change name "Cassette Man", which he would later "explain" in issue #24's letters page as a nickname he allows select humans to call him.

Covers (4)

Issue #18: Autobot/Decepticon battle, by Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson, and Gina Hart; art reused from page 4 of the story
Issue #19: Optimus Prime and Megatron encounter Auntie, by Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson, and Gina Hart; art reused from page 5 of the story
Issue #20: Windcharger and Ravage caught in the electric field, by Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson, and Gina Hart; art reused from page 3 of the story
Issue #21: Megatron activates his anti-matter power, by Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson, and Gina Hart; art reused from page 1 of the story