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Written by Nancy Krulik
Illustrated by Charles Nicholas and Roberta Edelman

This book was published by Marvel Books with a copyright of 1985. ISBN 0-87135-061-0.

The scans!

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

These scans were made by Shawn Murphy. They include all the interior covers and spacer pages, even the blanks, which I've preserved for completeness.

Summary:

Sunstreaker is chilling by the river, admiring himself, when Devastator somehow manages to sneak up behind him. Sunstreaker is captured and taken back to the Con hideout where he learns that Devastator--who he's never seen before--is composed of six individual Decepticons.

The Autobots receive a message from Megatron about the capture. He demands that the Autobots surrender and leave Earth, or they will destroy Sunsteaker and rebuild him as a Decepticon! Sideswipe vows to rescue his twin Autobot, and Slag and Sludge volunteer to go with him.

The three of them ALSO get captured by Devastator. Megatron renews his threat to the Autobots over the radio. Then, the Autobots put a new plan into action: building a Trojan Horse shaped like Devastator, which they deliver with a letter attached saying the statue is a peace offering to go along with their surrender.

Megatron falls for it completely, and then of course the Autobots burst out. Rumble accidentally drops a bunch of Decepticons into an earthquake crack and Megatron defeats himself when Prime holds up a shiny piece of scrap metal to reflect his laser back at him. The Autobots then gather up their wounded and head home.

General observations:

This and the other Marvel hardcover, Battle For Earth, both feature the Constructicons quite heavily. If we are to shoehorn the two books into a shared timeline, this one comes first because the Constructicons are unknown to the Autobots (other than Optimus) at the outset. In the other book, although Buster doesn't recognize their construction vehicle forms, Jazz and the other Autobots are aware of them. (This book's ISBN has a "61" in the spot that the other has "62", for what it's worth.)

The art in the other Marvel hardcover is all full-bleed two-page spreads, but this one is all single-pages with large margins. They do have different primary artists, but it's still a bit surprising for the format to be so different.

Setting/continuity for this story is ambiguous, but it lacks any comic-specific elements other than the Dinobots speaking normally, without broken caveman manner of the cartoon.

Snarl is never shown nor mentioned, but the other four Dinobots are. Slag and Sludge go on the initial rescue mission without other Dinobots.

The Decepticon hideout has several generic troop-builder Decepticons in it, but weirdly they all look like Soundwave instead of Reflector or Seekers.

Specific story notes:

• Depending on how juvenile your mind is, there is a LOT about page 1 (seen here) that might raise your eyebrows.
• Not only did Devastator manage to sneak up on Sunstreaker next to the peaceful mountain stream, he is repeatedly described as being too quick and agile for Suntreaker to handle.
• When Sunstreaker is thrown into a cell at the Decepticon base, he still has his weapons, and uses them repeatedly from inside, but the Cons don't bother to confiscate them.
• Hook and Bonecrusher have a fight over who gets to destroy the captive Autobots. Megatron handles them like children, saying "I promise you can both destroy an Autobot. But you must wait until tomorrow."
• Rumble's earthquake results in "thousands" of robots falling into chasms!

Art/production notes:

• Many characters are said to be firing "laser rockets" or "laser missiles". The first instance refers to Sunstreaker, which COULD be a distortion of his tech spec bio's mention of "laser-guided ground-to-air rockets". But Megatron and the Dinobots are also described as firing laser missiles.
• When the Autobots emerge from the statue, Bumblebee is mentioned by name for the first time, although he was seen in vehicle mode at Autobot HQ earlier. The art on that same page, though, shows Brawn in Bumblebee's colors!
• During the attack, Prime orders "all fighter planes in the air" and the narration says, "Up went all the Autobot jets." You might wonder, who are these jets? Is it the Aerialbots? Skyfire? Turns out it is (at least) two toy-based Jetfires, although they are never named.
• Swoop's pterosaur mode is drawn with robot arms still available to hold his weapons. His robot legs do seem to be flipped up onto his back properly, but it still makes him like like a bird-person.







• The cover of this book was done by Brad Joyce, and is signed "BRADKIRK '85", just like Battle For Earth. Joyce was the primary artist on the other book, but not this one!
• Roberta Edelman is credited in Battle For Earth as well, so I suspect she was the colorist for both books even though her existing comics credits seem to be for inking. The books share a very similar coloring style featuring limited color palettes and lots of primaries on large flat areas. Although a bit simplistic, the style is also kind of striking.

Mystery Guy

There's an Autobot who appears twice, on pages 18 and 33, that I just cannot figure out. He's only seen from behind and seems to have been drawn with incomplete reference such that the artist had to wing it. In addition, there are a lot of coloring errors on these pages, making things even trickier.

Below, you'll see the most-relevant pages regarding Mystery Guy:

The main distinguishing feature for this guy is flat panels attached to the rear of his upper arms, which resembles the toys for Trailbreaker and Hoist, but nearly all the art in the book (other than "the Autobot jets") is based on cartoon models and neither of those characters has those panels in the cartoon. Additionally, according to their cartoon models Trailbreaker and Hoist both SHOULD have stuff on their shoulders and this dude doesn't.

Mystery Guys head is somewhat squarish and even resembles some reference for Trailbreaker, especially if his forcefield projector is attached to his head instead of his shoulder. Trailbreaker even partially appears on page 32, but there he's on-model and in proper colors, instead of Mystery Guy's ambiguous appearance. Also note that on page 33 Mystery Guy's back looks like Bluestreak or Prowl, which is not even remotely similar to Trailbreaker's. It's also not like his own back from his first appearance on page 18.

Despite these conflicts, Trailbreaker may be the best guess as to who it's supposed to be. If the penciller had reference only for his front, perhaps even a reference without the launchers like his Transformers Universe profile, that could explain the drawings. Trailbreaker's TFU art even shows remnants of the flat panels in his bicep area. Once the linework was done, it's a lot easier to understand errors in the coloring, done later by a different person who might've had access to different model sheets.

I definitely don't consider Trailbreaker to be a satisfying or definitive answer, but it's the best I've got.