Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Target: 2006
Written by: Simon Furman
Penciled by: Geoff Senior, Jeff Anderson, Will Simpsons, Ron Smith
Inked by: Tim Perkins and Geoff Senior
Colored by: Gina Hart
Lettered by: Richard Starkings
Editor: Ian Rimmer
Publisher: Titan Books, with permission from Hasbro and Marvel Comics
Considered to be one of the best Transformers stories ever written, “Target: 2006†is at long last available in the United States after over a decade of being the stuff of urban legends amongst American Transformer fans. Originally serialized in a weekly format as filler material so as to allow Marvel Comics UK to space out their publication of the US Transformers series, Titan Publishing now brings this classic story to the United States. Now fans no longer have to resort to having to pay out the outrageous (read- around $50 to $75 PER individual issue) prices to read the story nor do they have to resort to combing the Internet for websites where the story has been painstakingly scanned and uploaded to the world-wide-web. Now, for the low price of $20, US Transformers fans can finally read this legendary story in a convenient trade paperback format.
Note: The following trade paperback reprints Transformers UK #78-88 (published by Marvel Comics UK) and takes place immediately after the events of Transformers #20 (published by Marvel Comics). As a result, Target: 2006 takes place after the introduction of Omega Supreme, who has just slaughtered half of the Decepticon army during a raid on the Autobot’s spaceship, the return of Megatron as Decepticon leader, Ravage getting tossed into a mine shaft by Ravage, and the desertion of the Dinobots from the Autobots.
Fresh off his transformation at the hands of Unicron and killing off Starscream, Galvatron decides to travel back in time to the year 1986 in order to set into motion a plan to destroy Unicron after being ordered back to Earth to locate and destroy the Creation Matrix. With Scourge and Cyclonus backing him up, Galvatron storms into the Decepticon headquarters and demands his past self Megatron to give him control over the Constructicons for an unknown project. Unfortunately Galvatron uses crack-head logic in making his case to his past self, omitting the fact that Galvatron, Scourge, and Cyclonus are upgraded versions of Megatron, Thundercracker, and Skywarp as well as the true nature of his scheme: build a giant solar-powered death ray to blow up Unicron when he arrives back on Earth in the year 2006 and to free Megatron/Galvatron from being Unicron’s flunky.
So Megatron starts a fight and for his trouble, both Megatron and Soundwave are buried alive under an avalanche of rocks. This scares the Constructicons into servitude while Laserbeak (the only Decepticon cassette that hasn’t been blown into a million pieces or dropped down a mineshaft) recognizes Galvatron as Megatron. Shockwave is strangely absent (presumably he was off sulking that he let Megatron fast-talk him into giving up leadership of the Decepticons in Transformers #19) as Galvatron begins his evil scheme.
Except as we learn, there was a major hitch in the operation of Galvatron’s time machine. In whatever time period one travels to, a random person must be exiled into limbo and stay there so long as the time traveler is in the past. And as luck would have it, Optimus Prime (along with Ratchet and Prowl) were randomly zapped into limbo as a result of the arrival of Galvatron. This leads the entire Autobot army to rush to the Decepticon’s base, where they stumble upon Galvatron’s scheme. And being the most powerful of all Decepticons, Galvatron easily beats the Autobot army to an inch of their lives before the Autobots are rescued by a knight in shining armor in the form of Ultra Magnus.
On Cybertron, the sudden removal of Optimus Prime from the time-stream has caused the Matrix Flame to suddenly go out. The Matrix Flame is a symbolic flame that serves a means for the Autobots to know whether or not the carrier of the sacred Creation Matrix is dead. If the wielder of the Matrix is dead (or in the case of Optimus Prime, removed from this plane of existence) the flame will go out and inform the Autobots that the Matrix is lost. This causes the Autobot Resistance, known as “The Wreckers†to send their top warrior to Earth to find out what is going on. That warrior is Ultra Magnus and he is the only thing standing between the Autobot Forces on Earth and a slow and painful death at the hands of Galvatron.
But Ultra Magnus is in a deep, deep bind. The Wreckers can only spare Ultra Magnus for a couple of hours, as they have a MASSIVELY important mission about to unfold on Cybertron. Called “Operation: Volcanoâ€, the plan is to lure the ten most sadistic and murderous Decepticon warriors (including Insecticons Kickback, Bombshell, & Shrapnel, Triple-Changers Octane and Blitzwing, and Seeker Jets Dirge, Thrust, and Ramjet) into a trap where the murderous robots would be killed off assassination-style by The Wreckers. Ultra Magnus is critical to the assassination plot, as he has to guard the only entrance into the area where the slaughter will take place and has the extremely important task of killing any Decepticons that tries to stop The Wreckers from their mission of death. Without him, The Wreckers are essentially screwed when help arrives for those Decepticons that they kill.
