Issue 7, 15 December 1984.
Written by: Jim Salicrup.
Art by: Frank Springer (pencils), Ian Akin & Brian Garvey (inks).
Colours by: Nel Yomtov.
Letters by: John Workman.
Cover art: Texeira.
Reprinted from US issue 4.
Plot: As the Autobots accuse Sparkplug of collaborating with the Decepticons, Sparkplug and Buster try to escape, and Sparkplug has a heart attack. Fear of robots spreads over thte land, and people start to abandon Portland. Sparkplug is taken to hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, the army try to take out the Decepticon base, and fail.
Naff dialogue: 'Even I find it difficult to be my usual cheerful self when my friends are being blown apart all around me!' Now, why do I think that somewhere on Ratchet's character sheet it said something like, 'Ratchet finds it difficult to be his usual cheerful self when all his friends are being blown apart all around him'?
Mirage ends up the latest to call Prime 'great Optimus'. I guess he's feeling a little bad after thinking about defecting earlier on.
Huffer, telling Optimus about Shockwave: 'I need not tell you that his power is second only to Megatron's!' Then, uh, why are you?
Megatron: 'He's had this coming for centuries!' Makes it sound like Optimus is about to get a spanking or summat, doesn't it?
Strange cliffju-- er, hangers: Hmmm. Ravage goes on a mission. I guess that's interesting...
First appearances: Reflector (maybe, see below).
Miserable glitches: Right as the story opens, Brawn is wearing Gears' colours, red and blue. Then, on the next page, those colours have leapt equally incorrectly to Windcharger (he hardly ever gets his right colours, it seems). I can understand the Gears/Brawn mix-up, though. At first I thought it was Gears, too, as those two look similar from the back.
Mirage on the next page. Guess what colours he is?
Another vision in red and blue is standing behind Optimus in the panel with Windcharger, but I can't for the life of me work out who it's supposed to be. None of the Autobots we've seen so far, that's for sure.
Does it disturb anyone that Jazz, Mr Earth-Lover himself, Mr I Love Human Culture, is the guy who whips out his gun to throw a wall of flame up to stop the Witwickys escaping?
Just where did O's dad get a nearly perfect Optimus Prime costume from, anyway? (Guess what. O's dad is called 'Mr O'. Really. That means our O is O Jr... Yeesh.)
We say 'nearly perfect', 'cos it's missing smokestacks on the shoulders. All that trouble, and they miss the little things...
This thing about people fleeing Portland really gets glossed over later. Despite the fact that people seem to be leaving whenever we cross back to the humans, this issue, no-one seems to have any problem living in Portland after this moment, and are usually pretty surprised when they run across a Transformer.
While everyone's fleeing Portland (including the Rolands - bye-bye!), Jesse watches from the window of her ballet class. As the class first notice the Rolands leaving, the auburn-haired girl talking has a brunette to her left. Next panel, the brunette's gone and another girl's taken her place. (By the way, don't you love the curiosities of these dot-colouring methods? They have to use 'blue' for 'black', but it's easy to distinguish between someone with auburn, brown, or red hair...)
I really have a problem with the notion that even Megatron could take a full barrage for a couple of minutes from an army full of tanks and guns and rocket-launchers and everything and not be in the least bit damaged at all.
Megatron's fusion cannon has a backfire/backblast here, one we've never seen before, and which doesn't last.
Fact-file: Bumblebee.
Back-up strip: Machine Man - Xanadu.
Notes: Wheeljack seems to be trying out for his Transformers Universe pose in the background on page 5...
During the repair scene at Decepticon HQ, there are three robots who haven't been seen so far. They look vaguely like Reflector from the TV series, but I don't think they're seen again after this issue, or ever named. How odd.
This issue would later be reprinted (in part) in the mysterious 1985 Australian bumper edition, in The Complete Works Part 2 in 1987 and in Beginnings from Titan in 2003.
Comments: Y'know, when Megs blasts Starscream and he goes flying, he really reminds me of when people get slugged and tumble head-over-heels in Peanuts.
There's a lot of human-based stuff in this issue. For a time it looks as though there'd be some kind of 'they live among us' angle, as the people who are scared of the alien robots fled the town, while people such as O Sr would stay to try to make a quick buck, Buster would sympathise with them while Sparkplug was less enamoured, and so on... Which might have made an interesting angle for the series, but it's not something there's a lot made of after this issue. Because robots were more interesting than humans? Or because someone decided that a more 'real world' angle was needed, where people don't mix it up with giant robots every day? Who can say? However, it's interesting to see what we do see of it, both here and later in the series (especially the Nebulos-based tales a couple of years down the line).