Before Dreamwave was shut down due to not paying its creators so Pat Lee could buy fancy cars for his parents, they did manage to put out minicomics for the then-current Transformers toyline. They only got as far as Transformers: Energon, never completing the Unicron Trilogy in mini or full size comics. Mine are currently packed away with the regular Transformers comics, so rather than do wor…I mean to make things easier on myself, and I was going to link you to it anyway, I sought out the minicomic online. Transformers fansite In Space, No One Can Hear Starscream (not only a reference to the first Alien but a gag from a fan-produced MST3K style riff of Transformers: The Movie) has us covered. Read along here.
“No, I don’t want a hug!”
This is when I drop the credits, but I don’t have them available. According to the Transformers Wiki, nobody’s sure who worked on them, though some of the Dreamwave minis would feature credits somewhere in the comic. This one doesn’t and they didn’t keep track who did what. Simon Furman doesn’t remember writing this, though the Transformers wiki speculates it might be Chris Sarracini, who did work on the early Armada comics as well as other Transformers comics for Dreamwave. Aaron Archer, who was the toy designer on this series, thought Marcelo Matere might have been the artist, but he doesn’t remember working on it, and again the Wiki seems to think the design is closer to Don Figueroa. That’s the best we’ve got.
This is still the time when Hasbro had their packaging in all three languages of North America: English, French, and Spanish. That’s the order the word balloons are in for this un-subtitled comic if you go to read it. It doesn’t leave much room for dialog, but Hasbro didn’t think of that. They just wanted to their own bit of lazyne…make their job easier and cheaper. It does hurt the speaking parts of the story, but it is still somehow a good read?
Somewhere in the desert, Hot Shot and Strongarm find a large pool of liquid energon. Energon is a confusing substance. Originally “energon” was just the name of the cubes Soundwave would use to collect and convert Earth’s energy resources to a form Cybertronians could use as fuel. Over time, energon has become the name of that fuel, and in the various series we’ve seen it in many form. Unless stored in the cubes, G1 treated it like liquid. In Beast Wars, raw energon existed in a crystal state but there was a line about it being stabilized as energon cubes after the aliens tried to “sterilize” the planet. In the Unicron trilogy the animes treated it as a type of ore, as did the Dreamwave comics and early IDW stories. And yet here is a minicomic produced by Dreamwave that has it as a liquid pool in the middle of nowhere. There’s really no consistency when it comes to how energon is depicted in this franchise.
I’m adding trivia like that in because otherwise this would be a short summary for those of you not reading along. The pair are ambushed by an army of Battle Ravages, a group of drones used by the Decepticons in this series. Like their G1 namesake they appear as some form of mechanical cat, but they have actual robot modes and can form energon into weapons, one of the gimmicks of this line. The “Ominicons” and “Terrorcons” came with parts that could form weapons for themselves or the larger figures, then also serve as armor or combine into a bigger weapon. Not shown in this story is the “energon stars”, which connected to a port on the Autobot or Decepticon and you could pretend it was boosting them somehow. This was a replacement for the Mini-Cons backstory, and yet they still had ports to connect Mini-Cons to. There were even new Mini-Cons for this line, but not many and the larger robots no longer had gimmicks activated by the Mini-Con. Had they used Mini-Cons properly as plug on weapons, tools, and armor, I would have been happy.
Anyway, the ambush is a diversion as more Terrorcons take in the energon pool. Hot Shot and Strongarm manage to move towards them only to be attacked by Scorponok, who is not the G1 Scorponok but still a good villain. He manages to hold off the Autobots with help from a mace weapon created by one of the Battle Ravages. Strongarm, being one of the aforementioned Omnicons, gets just enough energon gathered to form an axe for Hot Shot to use, but it’s too late as the Terrorcons and their leader head off victorious. Strongarm tries to claim a form of victory by noting they survived the currently most powerful of the Decepticons but Hot Shot isn’t sure worse isn’t coming. Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the remains of Unicron, Megatron in his new Energon body is coming out of a portal.
On it’s own this story is at best serviceable. The action is okay, though you’d think having the villains win would be a strange way to go. I know the Omnicons weren’t treated as the troop builders the Terrorcons were and they were outnumbered, but even the Super Powers Collection managed to have the villains lose in stories that starred them because it came with the toy. And every Super Powers figure had their own comic while this was a wave one comic, meaning every figure in that wave that could come with a minicomic came with this one. So at this point the only story they had was the villains winning, and some kids might be confused that the Battle Ravages talk, which they didn’t in the show and I don’t remember them doing in the comic. It has some good action and shows off the weapon feature as the lore was using it, but that’s all. The triple dialog in three languages didn’t help the dialog pacing any, and having to get a full sentence in by splitting it across two panels probably didn’t help the visual pacing, either.
If memory serves Hasbro did eventually fix this in later minicomics, but that’s for the future. Next time in this series, unless a new entry comes along, it’s time to see if I can track down the comics from the Aliens toyline, where they can’t hear you scream.
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