The Lost Treasure of Cybertron

An image of the book's cover. Sludge and Rumble (the red one) face off against each other, a wooden crate on the ground between them. The crate bears a large label reading 'energon supply'.

Written by Sonia Black Woods
Illustrated by Frank Springer and Phil Lord

This book was published by Marvel Books with a copyright of 1986. ISBN 0-87135-103-X.

The scans!

View the scans as... a single web page, a CBZ archive, or a PDF.

The majority of these scans were made by Derik Smith. An anonymous benefactor provided a few missing images, and I stitched one of those together with one of Derik's to complete a two-page spread. If you have an eye for such things, I'm sure you can identify which one has mismatched scan quality! I also scanned the back cover, which was missing from the original set.

Summary:

Out on a leisurely drive, the Autobots and Daniel stop to rest and eat. While relaxing, Kup tells the story of the ~Lost Treasure of Cybertron~. You see, "the most precious cargo on board the Ark" when it left Cybertron all those years ago was a supply of energon cubes. A supply which was lost in the crash, and not been seen since.

A closeup of Sunstreaker with his arms raised awkwardly over his head.
"Yay for finding the treasure. I am enthusiastic about this adventure."

Hot Rod decides they should try to find the energon, and the other Autobots agree with excitement, as you can see from the very jubilant-looking Sunstreaker shown here. Or... maybe he's just stretching. Or flexing? It's hard to tell.

Anyway, Laserbeak, who has been listening in, flies home to let Galvatron know about the cubes. Both teams head to Mt. St. Hilary to try digging random holes to find the energon cubes. They run into each other and have a big fight. During the fight, Rumble makes a big earthquake which accidentally unearths the crate containing the energon.

During the struggle the crate breaks open. Starscream--who has not appeared or even been mentioned until now--shows up and shovels most of the energon into his mouth, spilling them all over like Cookie Monster. He (naturally) then declares himself leader of the Decepticons and starts fighting with Galvatron. The Autobots walk off, apparently unconcerned.

General observations:

Regarding 1986 stories: Although '86 art is usually pretty standardized, the setting is often ambiguous, taking place in a strange continuity based on the 84-85 seasons of the cartoon and the 86 toy bios, where Galvatron and Ultra Magnus were framed as "city commanders". They seem to have been written either without full knowledge of the story in Transformers: The Movie or with a deliberate attempt to avoid spoiling it. These stories sometimes feel like they take place "in the middle" of TF:TM after Optimus and Megatron have died but before Hot Rod is upgraded to Rodimus Prime, leaving Magnus in charge of the Autobots. Also, sometimes Bumblebee is around (instead of stationed on a moon base) and Starscream isn't dead yet. If you insist on shoehorning these stories into TF:TM, then they take place after the battle of Autobot City and the creation of Galvatron and co., but before Galvatron interrupts Starscream's coronation ceremony. Despite the large number of cartoon-centric conceits in these books, it's probably better to think of them as taking place in a universe where the events of TF:TM do not occur at all, and these characters reached their current status (existence, leadership role, etc.) through unknown other events.

As is often the case, a bunch of the art in this book is clearly just copies (some good, some bad) of character model sheets or other pre-existing art, just standing in a generic sort of way regardless of what's happening in the story. Many of the vehicle mode drawings also appear to have been basically traced or physically cut-and-pasted/taped into place given how their perspective doesn't quite match their placement.

Still, there are some nice pictures! And several awful ones. The bad art mainly comes down to awkward re-use of model sheets and weird proportions on new artwork, like the picnic on page 5 or tiny-torso Magnus on page 36. The two-page spreads on 10-11 and 34-35 both have some great stuff going on including interesting blocking, poses, etc., but mixed in with more of the same awkward, crooked model poses. In the final spread on 44-45, Galvatron looks terrible but in the same picture there's a wonderful injured Seeker (Ramjet, I suspect) on his hands and knees, drawn in a totally novel pose and angle. The hungry-Starscream picture is a true classic, both ridiculous and also very-competently drawn.

Malproportioned, but mainly on-model Decepticons.
Note how we are looking up at Galvatron but down at shrunken-head Soundwave and the others.
Starscream vocaciously shovels tiny energon cubes into his mouth.
ME HUNGY

One simple potential explanation for all of this is the dual art credit. It may be that the more creative, comics-esque art was done by Frank Springer (who also drew interiors and covers for several Marvel G1 comics, and two other coloring books). That could potentially leave Phil Lord as the artist on the more rote stuff. Lord is hard to find information on because of the film producer of the same name who co-wrote "Into the Spider-Verse" and has a lot of other connections to Marvel. Lord is also listed as the second artist on the bizarre Decepticon Patrol alongside Charles Nicholas.

Specific story notes:

Art/production notes:

A weirdly-styled Autobot City full of domes and elevated highways.
Autobot City: the setting of classic sci-fi film "Logan's Run".
Buster, Jessie,
and Future Boy Daniel.
"DANNY! What are you doing in that stupid outfit! Come inside right now and put on normal clothes!"
Galvatron, in cannon mode, drives along a winding road with Scrapper and Bonecrusher following behind him.
Just a normal space canon driving through the mountains.


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Content last changed on 2023-December-21.