The New Order

Part 1

Issue 22, 13 July 1985.

Written by: Bob Budiansky.
Art by: Alan Kupperberg.
Colours by: Nel Yomtov.
Letters by: Rick Parker.
Cover art: MD Bright.

Reprinted from US issue 5.

Plot: Shockwave, as well as having taken out so many of the weakened Autobots, has assumed command of the Decepticons (he claims he is the logically better choice, although Megatron unsurprisingly doesn't agree). Ratchet has been the sole Autobot to escape the mass deactivation, as he was being used as an ambulance by workers at the hospital he took Sparkplug to.

Brill!: Shockwave has made short work of the Autobots on Earth - we see a double-page spread of him casually strolling through loads and loads of their deactivated bodies, hanging from the ceiling of the Ark. Well nasty.

Wicked dialogue: Ratchet gets sick of humans swarming over him: 'Do you organic creatures mind? I don't go poking around your mouths to see how you talk, do I?'

Naff dialogue: Megatron begins his story with, 'As you know, on our home planet, Cybertron...' I'm sorry, but sticking 'as you know' on the front of something is the classic worst excuse for needless exposition around. If the writer was that desperate for a recap, why couldn't he have put a 'story so far' page at the front? (Because then we couldn't open with V?)

Technobabble: Apparently, Ratchet's counterpart to the Hippocratic medical oath is the Cybertronic one.

Strange cliffju-- er, hangers: A whole bunch of humans run away from Ratchet. It'd be more exciting if he'd actually done something beyond just talking...

Britishisms: Now this one, brought to my attention by Mark Wesler, is a bit curious. In this issue, the story opens with a still from V, with speech-bubbles over the top of it. Which kinda works after a fashion, aliens in disguise, all that sort of thing. But in the original US issue, this is a drawn rendition of Ed, Ralph and Alice from The Honeymooners. Why change to V? If it was a matter of reader identification, why not to a British program? (What, you can't see Shockwave watching Brookside?) If they didn't change it to a British show for believability's sake (ie, because it's set in the USA?), then why not something that turns up a lot in reruns in the States, like...The Honeymooners?
Incidentally, not everything was re-edited for this. While the first two pages were changed to the new TV image, Jackie Gleason still gets his mug in a few pages later in one of the corner screens.

First appearances: Big company man and fuel magnate GB Blackrock, engineer Josie Beller.

Miserable glitches: Ironhide's colours are off in that double-page spread. As are Trailbreaker's, coloured in that red and blue Nel Yomtov loves so much. Windcharger, too, coloured yellow and green like Brawn. In front of him over on the left, Cliffjumper and Bumblebee have their colours swapped around (almost forgivable, with their everso similar designs), while over on the right, Jazz sports red highlights, including his unrecognisable head.
Ravage seems to be in mid-jump as he is in the life-support machine on the sixth page. Guess Shockwave read Transformers Universe, liked Ravage's picture, and posed him thus.
When he faces Megatron, Shockwave goes all red, like he's a background feature. (I know that it was the practice to just block-colour entire characters at various points back then, but you'd think when there's only two of them in shot, and one's almost all one colour anyway...)
Shockwave refers to the Autobots lying on the ground. They're not, they're hanging from the ceiling.
Why does Megatron spout out all this 'story so far' stuff to Shockwave? After all, Shocks was there for most of it (though, granted, he probably wouldn't know the stuff about the nuclear power plant).
Mind you, maybe Megs just isn't sure what anyone would remember...it looks very much as if the robots flying towards the fortress include Shockwave! (Maybe it's that mysterious double of his that was hanging around in previous issues.)

Back-up strip: Machine Man - Jolted by Jack O'Lantern, Planet Terry - Doom of the Domed City.

Notes: The plot here picks up once more from then end of issue 8. According to last issue, the events of the last few issues happened before Shockwave put the Autobots into the dormant state they're in here. I'm not really sure how that makes sense, but you can read more about such things here. Incidentally, maybe as an acknowledgement of some sense of keeping continuity together, this issue is the first with the 'next issue' section in it. Or maybe that's just them finally confirming the comic was going to last?
As well as that 'next issue' bit, this issue saw the debut of the 'TransFormation' editorial page at the start of the comic, replacing 'Openers'. TransFormation (a play on the word 'information', I guess) would be a feature of the comic for the rest of the series' run.
I'm using the American edition (as scanned by Liam) here.
This issue establishes that at least some Decepticons can fly in robot mode - although as we'll later see, not all of them, and they don't do it as often as they do on TV.

Comments: You know, maybe it's meant to be some kind of contrast with what happens to her later on, but the big-eyed cute-faced Josie Beller we meet in this issue almost seems ditzy compared with how we'll come to know her. Hey, Shockwave just rips some guy in half to show how hard he is - pretty scary. Maybe it'd be more scary if it was actually a character we'd seen before or since (hey, maybe that's why we never saw Reflector again). Alan Kupperberg's art fluctuates a fair bit - he seems to be more comfortable drawing some Transformers (like Shockwave) than others (like Megatron). Mind you, that double-page spread with all the deactivated Autobots is well worth the price of admission.