The Wreckers: Finale Part 1

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Some people say that issues aren't black and white. Those people are wrong.
"The Wreckers: Finale Part 1" "Renewal"
Writer	Rob Gerbracht
Pencils	Guido Guidi
Inks	Jake Isenberg
Colors	Drew Eiden and Hans Kappers
Lettering	Junemoon Studio
Special Thanks	Greg Sepelak and RL
Continuity	3H Beast Wars continuity

While the Dinobots regroup, Cybertron prepares to repel a Quintesson invasion.

Synopsis

On Cybertron, three deca-cycles after the planet's reformatting, Rook reports on a swarm of craft landing on Cybertron. Ensuring his views he'll keep them updated, Rook is suddenly interrupted by Snarl and Longhorn charge past, reacting to the landing. A terrified Skydive reports: it's the Quintessons, invading with thousands of Sharkticons. Snarl watches through his binoculars, and orders Longhorn to activate "the reserves".

Meanwhile, at the rough'n'tumble Spaceport CSSB-16, the area is buzzing with activity. While the Monsterbots are staggering out of a bar, a group of thugs attempt to accost an old female mech, only for her to transform into a cannon and vaporize the three of them. As all this goes on, Devcon inquites the Dinobots as to whether their new shuttle, the Rusty Mace, is up to the task. The battered ship has just had some critical components replaced by Reptron, a youthful stowaway. Reptron is reluctant to inform them where he got the parts, and as the Transformers leave the hangar, a nearby alien is hopping mad as he finds his own ship is missing some critical components.

In space, T-Wrecks and Devcon compare notes on what's happened since they left Cybertron, all the while silencing excited peeps from Reptron. T-Wrecks tells of their battle with the Dweller—Airraptor and Rapticon both went down fighting, while Striker simply vaporized into thin air. Magmatron, split into his three beast modes, held the creature off long enough for the others to reach the ship, but when they came around for him, nothing remained but his sword.

T-Wrecks recognizes the beast from the history tracks as a Quintesson creation; they realize that they're being manipulated somehow, and decide to head back to Cybertron.

Apelinq, meanwhile, has figured out where the circuit patterns on the Quintesson weapons came from—Cryotek. He explains to Primal Prime that they crossed paths sometimes in his research days, and that Cryotek came to be known for his illicit methods as well as major thefts, before disappearing a few years prior.

Apelinq continues investigating the weapon, and finds a Maximal-encrypted code embedded in its firing mechanism, bearing a message: "Cryotek alliance. Quintessons to take Cybertron." Shocked, the Wreckers steer for Cybertron.

On Cybertron, the head Quintesson Derodomontatus surveys the invasion, and exits his ship to the surface, pleased with the progress. With Cyclonus alongside him, Cryotek fits the Divine Light within himself, and joins the Quintessons on the surface.

Snarl, meanwhile, is forming up the reserves—a mish-mash, motley assortment of all manner of Cybertronians, beings for whom peace is fleeting and war is never far away. Longhorn forms up the Third Battalion—a mass of hundreds of Battle Unicorns.

The Wreckers debate the veracity of the hidden warning, the plots of Cryotek and the Quintessons, the trustworthiness of the Vok... until Ramulus finally has had enough, and tells them to shut up and get ready to smash stuff.

As Snarl and Longhorn lead their troops through the fray, the Dinobots arrive, crashing their ship into the Sharkticon ranks. The Dinobots provide a welcome boost the Maximals. Snarl notes that the Quintessons seem particularly interested in controlling access to the planet's interior.

The Wreckers arrive, calling in to Snarl and asking for a direct mark to the Quintessons' main position, as that is where Cryotek will be. Devcon transforms and flies up to lead the ship in. Primal Prime orders Apelinq, Ramulus, and Tigatron to join him, while Rodimus takes the ship back to Snarl's position. Prime's crew leaps out; Al-badur demands to accompany them, and Ramulus drags him out by the tentacles.

The Quintessons have secured Cryotek's access to the planet's core, and Cryotek is becoming quite excited at the prospect of his ascension; even Cyclonus seems a bit unnerved. As he rants... Ramulus drops in to kick him in the face and tell him to shut up. The others skirmish with Cyclonus. Cryotek blasts both Apelinq and Prime, melting/fusing them together with his new powers. Al-badur screams that unleashing Primus's power so blatantly will draw Unicron like a beacon, but Cryotek is unfazed by such "legends". He is mutating, growing larger and more powerful by the moment; the others back away, until a new champion arises to face him. Apelinq and Primal Prime have been merged and reborn... as Sentinel Maximus!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Publication history

The Wreckers #4 has one of the most convoluted histories of any Transformers book. The ongoing The Wreckers storyline would have had five issues total, and the finished storyline would have merged with the other Universe comic. But 3H Productions lost its license from Hasbro after #3 was completed in 2004. The story was thus left hanging, unfinished.

Years after The Wreckers #4 failed to be published, in August 2007, Fun Publications released the first four pages, the only ones completed, in their bimonthly magazine.

Around the same time, the complete script for all of #4 appeared on a Transformers message board, carrying the story further forward. It is not known if it was ever officially approved by Hasbro. Issue #5 never made it past the stage of rough notes.

On November 30, 2007, Fun Publications released to the Fan Club a new illustrated text story ("Finale Part II") which wrapped up the entire storyline. The story does account for the events of the Wreckers #4 script; thus they are recounted here as necessary background for that story, which is Hasbro-approved.

The Wreckers #4 would also have contained "Primeval Dawn Part 4", the last part of that story. Presumably the story would have contained the fate of Airazor (the creative team has elsewhere stated that she mysteriously vanishes during the story), the defeat of Tarantulas, and the Maximals being joined by Fractyl, Packrat, Spittor, and Sonar and returning to Cybertron. "Primeval Dawn" remains unfinished; Fun Publications apparently had no plans to complete it.

Notes

• Characters mentioned include: Primal.

Continuity notes

• Devcon worries what happened to the Mutants. They met a sticky end back in "Betrayal".
• Striker's disappearance is a tie-in to the intended-to-be contemporary Universe run, where Striker has been abducted by Unicron before #1.
• T-Wrecks refers to "The Dweller in the Depths" as a historical event.
• Apelinq and Cryotek used to be colleagues, meeting several times when Apelinq worked for the High Council's Research Cooperative.
• Tigatron asks if they can trust Al Badur's origin of the Transformers from last issue; Al Badur shrugs and says he can do what he wants with it. Which is handy if anyone wanted to walk it back later.
• In one line, the Wreckers go from being a small ops group to a large special operations force as Apelinq IDs himself as "2nd platoon commander of the 7th Wreckers Squadron".
• Unicron's arrival in Universe is subtly attributed to Cryotek's actions.
• Cheetor shows up! Yay!

Transformers references

• Rook reporting on new arrivals was also how the first Universe issue opened two years before (this was meant to come out before then, of course).
• Snarl, Longhorn, Che, and Skydive are all Beast Machines toyline originals. (However, see "errors")
• Che, in particular, is colored in his toy's black variant deco.
• The plasma cannon grannybot has the unique insignia of Cybertron Cannonball on her shoulder.
• Reptron is based directly on the Playskool Go-Bots character of the same name. He uses his original color scheme.
• Skydive swears by "Primal" instead of Primus, as in planet-saviour Optimus Primal.
• Apelinq swears by the Divine Weld, originally mentioned in issue #5 of the Marvel Transformers comic.

Real-world references

• Among the beings glimpsed in the CSSB-16 Spaceport are Bender from Futurama and Blue Bomber and Red Rocker the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.
• The script specifies that a panel of a Transformer off to war should resemble World War II propaganda imagery of a male soldier off to the war and a woman bidding him farewell.
• Reptron's enthusiasm is described in the script as: "Think Short Round in Temple of Doom."

Errors

• Right off the bat, Rook's claim of it having been about three deca-cycles (or "months") since the planet's reformatting is downright ludicrous. The planet was only just reformatted during the time of "Disclosure", and was still a fairly recent event by that point. There is no way that three whole months suddenly transpired off-panel between that issue and this one, not with how tightly knit this whole Wreckers series has been from chapter to chapter.
  • Luckily, Part II retcons this away by claiming the events of the finale to instead occur about one week after the planet's reformatting, which is much more believable.
• Snarl is colored with his Universe toy colors, rather than his Beast Machines toy colors.
• T-Wrecks refers to the Quintessons in "aught-six", instead of the previously established "After Unicron" dating.
• Cryotek has been wanted for "vorns" and hasn't seen Apelinq in about two or three vorns, which a caption helpfully reminds us is 83 Earth years. If Beast Machines takes place 316 years after 2005, as previous 3H stories say, then Apelinq and Cryotek are over 166 years old. Which is possible but Beast Era characters generally consider the Great War (which ended shortly over 300 years ago in 3H continuity) to be much further into the past than shortly before they were 'born'. Several supplementary bios and profiles for Apelinq and Cryotek would confirm that both had actually been around since the end of the Great War, among the earliest Maximals and Predacons who succeeded the Autobots and Decepticons at that point.
• More conflicting is the fact that, in "Disclosure", Apelinq says he last saw circuitry patterns like the ones in Cryotek's Sharkticon blaster back in a research facility on Cybertron "two stellar cycles ago", and says earlier in this story that Cryotek disappeared "a few stellar cycles ago" at the time of the Golden Disk theft. Those "few stellar cycles" can't be more than two, or else Apelinq would have last seen Cryotek's handiwork at a time set after Cryotek's disappearance. Plus, if that was when Apelinq last saw Cryotek's work, then the last time the two saw each other couldn't have two or three vorns ago. Cryotek ought to have said "years" or "stellar cycles" instead of "vorns".
• Rodimus says Primal Prime went after Megatron rather than Optimus Primal.
• Not so much an error as just weird: Cheetor, the guy who fought the Beast Wars and Spark Wars and was Optimus's second in command at the saving of the Cybertronian race, is simply a platoon leader under Snarl and nobody's too fussed he's with them.

Other notes

• Yes, the first half is titled "The Wreckers: Finale Part 1" while the second half is titled "Wreckers: Finale Part II". Sigh.
• Part of the script focuses a lot on how the Transformers are using a volunteer army, down to a young 'bot being too small for his battle armour.
• We have no idea who the "RL" being thanked in the Special Thanks is.

External links

• Transformers: The Wreckers, Part IV – "Renewal" (PDF)
• The published first four pages of "The Wreckers: Finale Part 1" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club (followed by Part II's prose).