Reviewer: Iain Burnside
Story Title: Atonement
Written by: James “Brad Mick†McDonough & Adam Patyk
Penciled by: Don Figueroa
Inked by: Elaine To
Colored by: Espen Grundetjern
Lettered by: Ben Lee
Editor: N/A
Publisher: Dreamwave
A full-on, play-by-play review…
We start where we left off last issue, which makes a nice change, and find Sunstorm falling helplessly into a mysterious smelting pool buried deep in the bowels of the Earth’s core. His hand slowly falling into the perilous acid may be a blatant homage to Terminator 2, but it is one damn impressive splash page to begin the issue with. This is all being watched by Sunstorm’s clone, “brother†and betrayer, Starscream, while Jetfire lies unconscious on the ground following their tussle last issue. Also present and very much at the mercy of Starscream’s malice is Bumblebee…
Meanwhile, on Cybertron, Prowl has assembled an emergency council in the War Room of Autobase in Iacon. Following his investigations with Perceptor into the mysterious origins of Sunstorm, he has tried to make contact with the Autobots on Earth but met with little success. Following Optimus Prime’s code of honour, Prowl proposes that the assembled Autobots return to Earth to aid their comrades and protect the humans from any menace they may have inadvertently led there. Since they have only just returned from Earth, one or two of the soldiers are understandably reluctant to return, most notably Mirage and Huffer, but it is eventually settled by Ironhide’s sternly veteran demeanour. The dialogue here is absolutely spot-on, so massive kudos to McDonough/Mick & Patyk for their work here. The likes of Mirage and Huffer have always been the proverbial thorns to the Autobots rose, and the paranoid atmosphere surrounding their failed transmissions to Earth is well-suited considering the events of War & Peace.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, we catch up with the remnants of the Autobots – Bumper and Warpath. If you recall, they were last seen rescuing their stasis-locked comrades from the bottom of a swamp following the run-in with Starscream and Bruticus at the start of the arc, before they were stopped and kidnapped by a Special Forces task force led by one Melissa Fairborne. Locked and loaded in one big mother of a transport vehicle, they are whisked to some sort of secret underground base that we will presumably return to in a future issue.
Meanwhile, up in Alaska, Cliffjumper waits impatiently with Omega Supreme, who took one heck of a pasting at the hands of Sunstorm in issue #4 and needs some time before he can become fully operational again. Bumblebee left Cliffjumper to stand guard “just in case†yet he is getting understandably frustrated at not knowing what is going on with his friends and Sunstorm. Again, the dialogue is flat-out brilliant. Omega has a… unique speech pattern that truly sets him apart from the rest of the Transformers and reinforces his repressed emotional state and immense power levels.
Meanwhile, at the secret underground smelting pool, Starscream plays a little game of Bond Villain with Bumblebee as he toys with the idea of blowing his brains out. It turns out that Starscream is not as cynical about Sunstorm’s plans after all, at least, not now that he introduced them to this hidden structure within the Earth that looks decidedly Cybertronian in design. The power-hungry and ever-scheming Starscream is far too smart to ignorantly dismiss the possibility that there might have been something to Sunstorm’s theological rants after all.
And then…
Sunstorm leaps out of the smelting pool, drenched in flame, energy sparkling from him in all directions. It is a beautiful piece of work from the Figueroa/To/Grundetjern team and well worthy of inclusion in the upcoming Transformers Posterbook.
Anyway, as you can imagine, Sunstorm is rather pissed at his “brother†Starscream tricking him into sharing his beliefs and then spitting in his face as he betrayed him and left him for dead. That sort of thing tends to irritate even the nicest of cloned robotic religious zealots. He takes down Starscream with one shot and then starts on Bumblebee, crushing his face in as time begins to run out for him and his circuitry starts to dissolve. Jetfire begins to come to but it is none other than Starscream who saves Bumblebee with a well-timed shot to the back (how apt!). Now the shit really hits the fan. Sunstorm prepares to massacre Starscream until Jetfire knocks his former friend-turned-sworn enemy to safety. Bumblebee, bless his golden little heart, tries his best to choke out Sunstorm but is easily overmatched. Sunstorm, disintegrating with every step, completely flips out and jets off to â€push this very world into oblivion.â€
Reading between the lines, it would seem that the pure essence of order that Sunstorm’s memory banks were overloaded with in Shockwave’s laboratory due to corrupt information being duplicated from the Vector Sigma super-computer has been mixed with some form of pure essence of chaos in the smelting pool. He had originally intended the chaos to be for Starscream as some part of a “greater purpose,†yet now both elements are mixing within him. As Jetfire puts it, this has sparked a type of binary-agent reaction that has doomed him to oblivion. The only course of action in the eyes of Jetfire is to fly off after him in an attempt to limit the damage he could achieve before finally succumbing to his fate. It harkens back to the same code of honour that Prowl used earlier on in the issue. In the never-ending struggle the Autobots must live with, there can be no backing away from their mission of peace simply because the odds are stacked a bit higher than you would like.
Seeing his former ally doing this even inspires Starscream to take Bumblebee to safety before flying off to join in the battle. Of course, this being Starscream and this being an issue written by people who truly know the Generation One characters inside and out, he claims that this is simply a matter of self-preservation, that Sunstorm will come for him after he is done with Jetfire. Meanwhile, Jetfire is having one hell of a time with Sunstorm. In his confused state even he, a thoroughly straight-laced scientist, starts to seriously question himself as to whether or not Sunstorm could be some sort of supernatural phenomenon. Whatever secrets Sunstorm’s creation held though, his demise is in no doubt. His overloading power levels will explore and they will kill a lot of innocent lives from the resulting explosion. Therefore, pursuing his Autobot heritage to the very last, Jetfire pushes him into outer space with one final push, just in time for the inevitable explosion. Starscream never had a chance to get there in time. Bumblebee was on the ground, helpless to do anything but watch the blast. In a touching showing of respect, Bumblebee salutes his fallen comrade, lays his blaster down in the desert sand, turns and slowly walks away…
All in all – pretty damn good.
