
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.

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.


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:
- On the Autobots' road trip, Kup tells everyone they should pull over to refuel because they are low on energy. So... they go to a rest stop and then take out energon cubes that they already had with them... but apparently they have to transform and eat them picnic-style instead of just using the energy while still driving.
- In the year 2005, Daniel carries around a tape recorder.
- The Autobots' ship is explicitly named as the Ark. Not that unusual in Marvel Books content, but still always feels weird in stories that are more heavily cartoon-based.
- Springer was apparently present when the Ark was loaded, althought he may not have been part of the expidition itself.
- Along with the usual timeline/continuity headaches of 1986 books, Wheelie appears repeatedly in this Earth-based story in which Hot Rod has not become Rodimus Prime and Starscream is still alive.
- On page 24, Magnus is just out on the street in Autobot City, holding his rifle, standing in front of a giant fan (???) while he listens to Blurr's report about a story Kup told him earlier.
- During the battle, page 32 shows Bonecrusher succombing to a landslide in his bulldozer mode and the text reads, "As usual, Bonecrusher got buried in his own rubble." This is a reference to the "weaknesses" section of his Transformers Universe bio which I have no memory of ever being mentioned or used in any other story. I was so perplexed by it that I went to check TFU thinking, "this sounds like the way books often reference bios but surely this isn't in there"... and it was!
- Although Scrapper and Bonecrusher both appear and the latter even gets that dedicated page referencing his bio... they are the only Constructicons in the book and also, therefore, this is a rare story with Constructicons but without Devastator!
- The lost treasure has been buried at Mt. Saint Hilary since the Ark crashed there, and nobody has ever looked for it before even though Kup knew it existed. Also the entire crew of the Ark knew it existed because they loaded it.
- Further: the cubes are all packed into a single giant crate with the English words "Energon Supply" written on it.
- Starscream appears totally out of nowhere to consume the energon. He's not mentioned or even shown in the distance. Just BAM huge full-length pic of him chowing down on the cubes that spilled out two seconds earlier.
- Even though plenty of cubes are still drawn in, apparently Starscream ate enough in those few seconds that the Autobots don't care about the remainder, and leave it to the Decepticons to fight over. This is supposed to be a huge store of energy that could power the entire crew of the Ark on a long voyage to parts unknown. But Starscream was able to eat most of it before Galvatron could even lay a hand on him.
- The inclusion of Daniel, and his cross-continuity family, and the four-page detour Hot Rod takes to drop Daniel off before the Big Fight At The End... all serves essentially no narrative purpose. I think it's all there JUST for the sake of having a tape recorder around that Laserbeak can hide in when listening to Kup's story. (Which as a spy, he could just listen to from the air or a tree.) Daniel's not even the person who asks Kup to tell a story in the first place--Hot Rod does that. Daniel doesn't have a single line of dialogue! The closest is when the narration states "Daniel wanted to come along on the treasure hunt," but Buster pulls him into the house and we never hear anything else about him.
Art/production notes:
- Daniel is drawn exactly like his movie and cartoon model, complete with big-collared monogrammed jumpsuit. But his parents wear perfectly normal clothing (and live in a perfectly normal house) as if they lived in the real year 2005 instead of TF:TM's 2005.
- Also, Daniel's father is Buster instead of Spike. (Drawn that way and named explicitly.) So the exact same boy has different parentage in different continuities. Seeing Buster instead of Spike isn't too unusual for Marvel Books--presumably, because they had more reference material around for him than Spike--but combining that with Daniel who didn't even exist in the comics is weird.
- Daniels' mother, meanwhile, could maybe be Daniel's normal mother, Carly, but could also be Buster's girlfriend Jessie. She's not real clearly drawn as either nor is she given a name. The outfit and hair clip are... similar to Carly's pre-TF:TM look but far from a perfect match. On the other hand, this book's primary artist Frank Springer designed both Buster and Jessie as he was the penciller on the comics' original four-issue limited series. Which is weirder: for both of Daniel's parents to be from the comics, or for Buster and Carly to exist in the same universe? (Personally I lean toward this being Jessie based on the Marvel Books provenance.)
- Autobot City is drawn as an extremely generic "futuristic city".
- Page 26 claims that the name of Galvatron's ship is Cyclonus while showing a big picture of Scourge's vehicle mode. Scourge then appears in robot mode on the next page in an interior shot of the ship. Maybe one of them was just a Sweep...
- Galvatron orders the Decepticons to "roll out", and leaves his base by driving down the road in his cannon mode. (Hey, it's got tank treads, after all.) Strangely, although they are clearly leaving a ground-based headquarters, they were previously out in space inside "Cyclonus".
- Including the one just mentioned, six different pages in this book are dedicated to showing caravans of Transformers driving along windy roads.


