Broken Windshields

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"Broken Windshields"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	February 19, 2015
Written by	Jim Sorenson
Illustrations by	Jesse Wittenrich
Continuity	Beast Wars: Uprising
Chronology	circa 2384
Page count	25pp

Lio Convoy sets an uprising in motion.

Synopsis

As Quickstrike and Stinkbomb compete in the Mebius Arena, Lio Convoy watches them from the shadows but does not intervene as Quickstrike manages to win, simply through the fact that Stinkbomb's weapon is too damaged to fire. Lio Convoy returns to the Gladiatorial Administration Bureau in Thetacon, and though the two Builders on guard hassle him for his papers, they let him through and he heads up to see The Administrator, Eject. Discussing how they'd gotten the idea of the Games from the humans, Eject tells Lio Convoy that it has been decided that the Game after next is to be a "Cull" of prior champions, and that he wants Lio Convoy to ensure that the Maximal side wins by a landslide in the remaining Game beforehand, so as to create a more level—and so more exciting—playing field.

Lio Convoy heads home to the Maximal ghettos in Glibax by ground, but on the way spots what appears to be a shooting star and makes the unconventional decision to investigate. He encountered a strange newcomer, whom he takes to the Nyon Coliseum in order to conceal her from the authorities. Her ire is raised when he mentions he is the balancer in the Games and she rails at the unjustness of the system that makes the Maximals and Predacons fight for the amusement of the Builders.

Lio Convoy spends some time ruminating on her words, and several days later when he comes across two MCSF officers, Polar Claw and Snarl arresting someone, he intercedes and assaults both of them. Heading to Nyon while listening to underground broadcasts, he looks for the bot whom he had left there, but fails to find her. Driving into the wastes of Cybertron, he is instead found by her—a conversation with her and the two bots she's teamed up with, Scylla and B'Boom, reveals she is named Blackarachnia. Blackarachnia shatters Lio Convoy's windshield, revealing the energon matrix inside, and announces he is the key to freeing the planet.

With the next of the Games drawing close, Eject worries about the unusual absence of Lio Convoy, however the Maximal makes contact from the Dodecahex Arena where the Game is due to take place and Eject again instructs him to make sure the Maximals win this round. As the Game begins, the Builder Supersonic commentates for the audience, introducing the Game's contestants before signalling Game start. Even as the first Maximal and Predacon move in to fight, Lio Convoy uses an Angolmois Blaster obtained from the rebels to assassinate Supersonic. Blackarachnia and her team meanwhile invade the broadcast center and take control, training the cameras on Lio Convoy so he can give a speech. He reveals that the Games are rigged, even as he is attacked by the Builders Sunrunner and Tailwind, and plays a recording of Eject giving the order to fix the match. He shows off the energon matrix he carries, hidden inside him after it was used to create the Maximals and Predacons, calling on his brethren to rise up against the Builders. As a result of the event, civil war breaks out over the next few days, with the Builders finding themselves turned on by their own creations.

However, Eject, appealing his death sentence to the Builder Assembly, reveals that he has thought of a way out of this: a sample of Lio Convoy's CNA, which could be used to create a clone infused with the power of the energon matrix, giving them the ability to make a whole new army. Ratbat is intrigued at the idea, and tells Eject the "ball is in his court".

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"PROOF? You want my, what was it, Personal Registration Of something or other? I threw that away decades ago when I left this scrap pile of planet behind for what I thought was the last time. I've spent years, YEARS fighting against tin-plated tyrants and those who would stand on the backs of others. And do you know what I learned? I learned that the worst of the worst were those who perpetuated the so-called minor injustices of the present for the 'greater good,' better tomorrows that never seem to materialize. So don’t sell me your smog about how noble it is that you're compromising your principles because you don’t want to upset the scrapplet cart."

—Blackarachnia

"Stand down right now or you'll face a charge of resisting, and you don't want that. And you, move along or you're next."
"Then, tool of the Builders, it would appear that I am next."

—Snarl and Lio Convoy

Notes

• The following Transformers are mentioned or referenced to, but do not appear in the story proper: Cyclonus, Scissor Boy, Killer Punch, Ultra Mammoth, Megatron, Primus, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Prowl, Blaster, Starscream, Shockwave, Soundwave, Kudon, Riker, Traachon, Cross-Cut, and Sigil.
• Further mentioned in the Cybertronix text are: Zapmaster, Six-Speed, Free Wheeler, Hyperdrive, Flat-Out, Holi, Ironlunge, Road Police, Battle Unicorn, Lug, Minimum Ambus, Dante, Caliburn, Ironworks, and Star Upper.

Continuity notes

• This story is the first piece of Beast Wars: Uprising fiction to place actual emphasis on the titular revolution. Originally mentioned back in 2009 in the profile for TransTech Blackarachnia in issue #25 of the Transformers Collectors' Club magazine, the universe would be mentioned on and off in the intervening years, before finally appearing for the first time in the 2014 Collectors' Club magazine storyline, "Alone Together". Over the intervening years, the circumstances and history of the universe have changed; while originally presented as a version of the Maximal/Predacon era where the war still raged, the universe as presented in this story (and indeed, for the rest of the series), is one where the Maximal and Predacons are second-class citizens under the former Autobot and Decepticon elite, now known as the Builders. Lio Convoy's role in the Games, meanwhile, was set up in his profile in issue #61 of the Collectors' Club Magazine, which also introduced his weapons and inbuilt Matrix.
• Eject's role as the Administrator of the Games was set up in his tech specs for his Timelines toy, released as part of the second Transformers Figure Subscription Service.
• Blackarachnia's profile in issue #25 had explained that she, along with a few other Maximals and Predacons, had used transwarp to escape Cybertron, ending up in the multi-dimensional hub city of Axiom Nexus, where they aligned with the evil Shattered Glass version of Alpha Trion. Alpha Trion's assistant, Topspin, transplanted her and the others sparks into their Transcendent Technomorphs counterparts. Eventually escaping from the TransTech universe, she last appeared in the "Reunification" storyline, back on Alpha Trion's Cybertron. She's still in her TransTech counterpart's body for the first half of the story, but switches back to her original form about halfway through.
  • Notably, Blackarachnia's backstory is never explicitly laid out this, nor in any future stories. Her dimension jumping is only briefly mentioned in passing, and her TransTech body is merely described as "alien" in nature, never given much attention. She hints at the death of her friends and her subsequent betrayal of her commander (Optimus Primal), mentioned in her profile.
• Eject notes that the Cybertronians are still stealing humanity's best ideas "four centuries on"; having made first contact with them back in 1984, this places the modern point of the Beast Wars: Uprising timeline in the late 24th century C.E.
• Lio Convoy is aware of previous rebellion groups; Cheetor established the first, as mentioned in Blackarachnia's profile, while "Alone Together: Prologue" saw Rattrap and Botanica's efforts to create a new one.

Transformers references

• Gladiatorial combat has long been a part of the Transformers franchise, extending back to the Marvel UK The Transformers prose story "State Games", published in the Transformers Annual 1986.
• Quickstrike's opponent is Stinkbomb, a Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Maximal skunk.
• Arena-cities in this story include: Mebion, a settlement mentioned in the tech specs of the e-HOBBY-exclusive Collector's Edition toy, Magnificus; Nyon, a city first introduced in IDW Publishing's Autocracy mini-series; and Dodecahex, a polity seen in issue #1 of 3H Productions' The Wreckers convention comic.
• The Cortex, Eject's headquarters, is also known as the "Cyclonus Memorial Tower", setting up the idea of dedication of buildings to fallen 1984-1986 Autobot and Decepticons that would be seen as the series went along. It's located in Thetacon, a city seen in IDW Publishing's Foundation mini-series.
• Various workers at the Cortex include security guards Barrage and Half-Track, Micromaster members of the Astro Squad and Battle Squad, respectively, from the original The Transformers toyline. Standard-sized Builders wired up in the building include Zoom Out (based on the Real Gear Robot Zoom Out 25X, from the 2007 live-action movie toyline) and Slog (member of the Pretender Monsters).
• Eject's office doors are made out of fluoro-steel, an alloy mentioned in issue #28 of the original Marvel The Transformers comic.
• Sports for which updates are displayed in Eject's office include: mecha-soccer, the Cybertronian version of soccer (or football, if you live outside the United States) originally mentioned in the Marvel UK comic's letters page; basketrek, the Cybertronian version of basketball mentioned in issue #21 of the Marvel The Transformers comic; pugilism; track-and-field; lobbing, the Cybertronian version of catch introduced in the Transformers: Prime cartoon; volleyblast, a new sport that is the Cybertronian equivalent of volleyball and is a light riff on the more trademark-friendly term fireblast that replaced "firepower" on modern Transformers tech specs; marksmanship; and retro-rodeo, the Cybertronian version of a rodeo show.
• Sports memorabilia in Eject's office includes:
  • The Carnage Clamp of Beast Wars II Scissor Boy.
  • The machete used by Beast Wars Neo Killer Punch against Ultra Mammoth. Timelines Ultra Mammoth was a redeco of Beast Wars Neo Big Convoy sold as part of the first Transformers Figure Subscription Service, depicted in concurrent fiction as a Maximal version of the Autobot Ultra Magnus; here, they are separate characters. Notably, Killer Punch's profile in IDW Publishing's Beast Wars Sourcebook noted that, among other conspiracy theories, Killer Punch believed that Ultra Magnus was actually a Decepticon spy.
  • The supposed Energon mace of Megatron, originally introduced all the way back in the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon episode, "More than Meets the Eye, Part 2". "State Games" depicted Megatron as a gladiator before the war, and as such, that history is mentioned here as well.
• Lio Convoy's home is in the Maximal slums of Glibax, a city first seen in the Wings Universe prose story "Flames of Yesterday". Industrial equipment in the city includes "smelting pits", assuredly a variation of the infamous smelting pools introudced in Marvel's Transformers comics.
• Glibax's administrator Longtooth is drawn to resemble Guido Guidi's design for the character in Robots in Disguise; his strange, voyeuristic behaviour may be a reference to how IDW's iteration of the character was depicted as a news cameraman.
• Lio Convoy remembers the former Cybertronian stellar polities of the Autobot Commonwealth and the Decepticon Star Empire, originally established in The AllSpark Almanac II (which writer Jim Sorenson was co-author of) as the modern nation-states (stellar-states?) of the Autobot and Decepticons.
• The Maximal Command Security Force was introduced in the BotCon 2006-exclusive comic "Dawn of Future's Past", and was expanded upon in further Timelines stories, such as the animated short film Theft of the Golden Disk. The Predacon Secret Police, meanwhile, was first introduced in the Beast Wars season 2 episode, "The Agenda (Part 2)".
• Blackarachnia uses the phrase "tall, dark, and [adjective]" several times throughout the story, which was something of a catchphrase for her in the Beast Wars cartoon.
• The term "mechanimal" originates from the Wings Universe series of stories. Quite a fair few are seen in this story, including rustbugs (mechanical insects mentioned in issue #276 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic); mecho-gnats (mentioned in issue #12 of the Marvel The Transformers comic); glitch mice (mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode "S.O.S. Dinobots"); nosorons (the Cybertronian version of a rhinoceros. Animated Ramhorn was established to be a nosoron in The AllSpark Almanac II, which in-turn took the name from Beast Wars Rhinox's Polish name); electro-toads (mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode "Atlantis, Arise!"); pneuma-lions (mentioned in "Flames of Yesterday"); zap-ponies (mentioned in the Wings Universe comic "Battle Lines, Part 4"); machadrons (a beast mentioned in IDW Publishing's Spotlight: Arcee); alloygators (mentioned in the BotCon 2007 comic "Games of Deception"); and oxide sharks (mentioned in the online bio for the 2010 Transformers toyline Toys"R"Us-exclusive Constructicon Devastator toy).
• Scraplets are small, metal-eating parasites originally seen in the Marvel The Transformers comic.
• MCSF members in Glibax include Polar Claw, the Maximal polar bear from the Beast Wars toyline, and Snarl, the Maximal lion from the Beast Machines toyline. Snarl is described as being in the black-red-and-yellow colors of his Universe toy. The unnamed Maximal they harass in this story is Beast Wars Noctorro.
• Stasis cuffs were introduced in the Animated cartoon.
• Noctorro tries to access Autopedia when being arrested, the Cybertronian version of Wikipedia seen in the profiles included in several issues of the IDW Publishing mini-series, Last Stand of the Wreckers.
• This story makes use of mechanometers, a unit of length mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode "City of Steel".
• The Pit, the Cybertronian version of hell first mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon, is referenced several times throughout the story.
• Acid rain on Cybertron was seen originally as an artificial phenomenon in the Sunbow The Transformers episode "Divide and Conquer", with later fiction depicting it as a naturally-occurring weather pattern.
• The Nyon Coliseum is overseen by Black Omen. This the Decepticon Trakkon Fearswoop, released exclusively in Europe as part of the 1993 range of figures in the original toyline, using his Dutch/French name.
• Cybertron's sun, Hadean, was originally mentioned in the pseudo-canonical Alignment, a novella written by Simon Furman which tied up several plot points of the Marvel Generation 2 comic. It was later canonized in The AllSpark Almanac II.
• Blackarachnia's Maximal body is not visually depicted in this story, but it's clear from the description given by the story that she's a "virtual" redeco of the Generations Thrilling 30 Chromia toy. A lithograph released at BotCon 2016 would confirm this.
• Blackarachnia's small revolutionary cell includes Scylla (one of the Beast Wars II Space Pirate Seacons), Beast Wars B'Boom, Beast Wars Neo Break, Beast Wars Retrax, and Beast Machines Longhorn. Scylla and B'Boom are also "virtual" redecos/retools of pre-existing toys: Cybertron Thunderblast and Revenge of the Fallen Brawn, respectively.
• Blackarachnia mocks Lio Convoy's outlook as being "that "transform and transcend" scrap"; "transform and transcend" was one of the mantras of the Oracle supercomputer from the Beast Machines cartoon.
• Lio Convoy's Energon Matrix originates from the original Beast Wars II version of the character; while the cartoon depicted it as a mere status symbol with some vaguely-mystical abilities, its depiction here is more in-line with the Creation Matrix from the Marvel The Transformers comic. Like the Creation Matrix, the Energon Matrix seen in this story can bring new Transformers online, having been built by humanity for this purpose.
• Blackarachnia met Scylla in the Predacon ghetto of Burthov, an area of Cybertron introduced in IDW Publishing's Defiance mini-series.
• Ratbat was first depicted as a politician in IDW Publishing's Megatron Origin mini-series, where he was a member of the corrupt Senate. Other members of the Builder Assembly include: Kudon (a member of the Council of Ancients seen in Dreamwave Productions The War Within mini-series), Riker (Micromaster branch chief of the Cybertronian colony of Micro from the Victory cartoon), Traachon (member of the Autobot High Council seen in a few of the Marvel UK The Transformers stories), Cross-Cut (originally named "Crosscut" (see below), an e-HOBBY-exclusive Collector's Edition redeco of the original Skids toy, based on the Diaclone toy that would become Skids. His tech specs depicted him as the Autobot's ambassador to various alien races), Sigil (a member of the Aligned continuity family version of the High Council seen in the Transformers: Exodus novel), and Octus (member of the Decepticon Triumvirate that took over Cybertron's Decepticon after Straxus' death, from issues #213-214 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic).
• Eject's "Galva Contingency" (a plan to clone Lio Convoy and his Energon Matrix with a CNA sample) is heavily hinted to be related to "Galvatron Color Lio Convoy", a Lucky Draw version of Lio Convoy's original toy in Beast Wars II Galvatron colors. We would turn out to be right a few months later, when Galva Convoy was the customization class figure at BotCon 2015.
• Tritanium is one of the materials used in the Dodecahex Arena's dome; while being a real-world material, it has been used several times in various pieces of Transformers fiction.
• The Great Rust Sea is another name for the Rust Sea, an area of Cybertron first mentioned in the Marvel UK letters page, and which has since gone on to appear in multiple continuities.
• Supersonic, the announcer for the Games, was introduced in the Japan-exclusive series, 1992's Operation Combination. In that toyline, he was an Autobot, but when his toy was redecoed and re-released in 2004's The Transformers: Micromaster toyline, he and the rest of the Wing Team were released as Decepticons, with pack-in fiction explaining how a dimensional shockwave had turned them evil. Supersonic has both faction logos, and his colors are a combined version of both toys, with the red forearms and torso of his Operation Combination toyline, and the purple shoulders, black elbows, and blue face of his Micromaster toy.
• The rosters for the Maximal and Predacon teams for the last games reference a number of characters. The Maximal roster deliberately mirrors both the beast mode and personality of a Maximal from the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons, appearing in reverse order to their counterparts' appearances in the show:
  • Binary (one of the pre-production names of Beast Machines Botanica), representing Botanica
  • Sonar (Transmetal 2 bat from the Beast Wars toyline), representing Nightscream
  • Manta (Predacon released as part of the 1996 Beast Wars McDonald's promotion, now a Maximal in this reality), representing Depth Charge
  • Crystal Widow (part of the Universe toyline), representing Blackarachnia
  • Air Hammer (Fuzor from Beast Wars), representing Silverbolt
  • Skywarp (from Beast Wars II), representing Airazor
  • CatSCAN (BotCon 2002-exclusive), representing Tigatron
  • Dinotron (member of the Beast Machines Dinobots), representing Dinobot
  • Panther (a Maximal also released in the 1996 Beast Wars McDonald's promotion), representing Cheetor
  • Tasmania Kid (from Beast Wars II), representing Rattrap
  • Rhino (one final Maximal from the 1996 Beast Wars McDonald's promotion), representing Rhinox, and
  • Optimus Minor (Transmetal 2 from the Beast Wars), representing Optimus Primal.^[1]
• The Predacon team, meanwhile, is not a direct mirror of the Beast Wars Predacon cast like the Maximals. However, the roster does manage to sample from virtually every Beast Wars franchise and sub-line evenly.
  • Megalligator (the Japanese name for the alligator version of Beast Wars Megatron)
  • Insecticon (from the Beast Wars toyline, year one releases)
  • Transquito (from the Beast Wars toyline, year two releases)
  • Scavenger (a Transmetal from Beast Wars)
  • Terragator (a Fuzor from Beast Wars)
  • Scourge (a Transmetal 2, from Beast Wars)
  • Autostinger (an Autoroller from Beast Wars II)
  • Queen Rage (a jellyfish Transformer from the Beast Wars Neo manga),
  • Night Viper (a Maximal cobra from the Beast Machines toyline, his bio was originally meant to depict him as a Predacon who had joined with Optimus Primal's Maximals against Megatron and his Vehicons, but this was dropped from the final toy)
  • Creepy (one of the Monster GoBots from the GoBots franchise)
  • Reptix (a Mini-Con from Micron Boosters in Japan) and
  • Rot Gut (a BW transplant from the Prime: Beast Hunters toyline)
• Binary comes from Uraya, a city-state seen in The War Within.
• Override, the overseer of the Dodecahex Arena, is a Generation 1 version of Cybertron Override.
• Break creates Lio Convoy's Angolmois Blaster; Angolmois Energy was the lifeblood of Unicron, introduced in Beast Wars II.
• Among the Micromasters engaging Lio Convoy are Tailwind and Sunrunner, members of the Air Strike Patrol and Battle Patrol, respectively, from the original toyline.
• The Great Uprising is also given the name "the Fourth Cybertronian War"; Sunbow The Transformers episode "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4" established that the Great War of the modern period was the Third Cybertronian War.
• Rumors abound that the Resistance has given Lio Convoy the title of Supreme Commander; this was the rank held by Lio Convoy in the Beast Wars II cartoon.
• CNA is the genetic code of the Cybertronian race, introduced in Spotlight: Arcee.
• Starting a trend for the Uprising prose stories, each section of the story is broken up by a small graphic, on which a Cybertronian language will be displayed, with further hidden information. This time, it takes the form of the sports ticker in Eject's office, displaying the "Maximal" form of Cybertronix, the Cybertronian language introduced in the Beast Wars cartoon. There are two tickers, one in red and one in purple, and with all sections added up throughout the story, it gives us some further insight into Cybertronian's current sports culture:
  • The Micromaster-run Iacon 5000, a race mentioned in the letters page of issue #326 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. Competitors in the race include Zapmaster (a Micromaster version of the Mini-Con from Armada), Six-Speed (a Micromaster version of the Mini-Con who was a member of the Recon Mini-Con Team from Cybertron), Free Wheeler (a member of the Race Car Patrol from the original toyline), Hyperdrive (a member of the Sports Car Patrol from the original toyline), Flat-Out (a version of the Mini-Con who was a member of the Super Stunt Team from Legends of the Microns), and Holi (a member of the Rescue Patrol Team from Victory).
  • Another section is on retro-rodeo. Ironlunge, a competitor of the sport arrested for drug abuse, was a Mini-Con/Predacon Triceratops, redecoed from Classics Knockdown and released as part of the fifth assortment of "Micron Boosters". He was arrested for having 1.4 kilo-units (a unit of measurement mentioned in the Animated episode "Rise of the Constructicons") of syk (a circuit booster mentioned in issue #275 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic). The investigator into the case, Road Police, was a member of the Turbo Team from Operation Combination. Ironlunge is known for having wrestled a brontobot; Animated Zaur was named as a brontobot in The AllSpark Almanac II, in-turn named for a preliminary name of Generation 1 Sludge. Another participant of retro-rodeo is Battle Unicorn, a Maximal from the Beast Machines toyline.
  • Cyberdroids take a bit of explanation: in the Micromaster pack-in fiction, it was established that before they gained the ability of transformation, the Micromasters were non-transforming Cybertronians known as Cyberdroids. Meanwhile, in The Headmasters cartoon, the titular characters were depicted as small, non-Transforming Cybertronian refugees before gaining their ability to transform. TFWiki opted to link to them to the Cyberdroid concept, and Jim Sorenson runs with that idea, depicting many Headmasters and Powermasters as such, including some that were originally part of the Western Nebulan version of those concepts. Master was the Cybertronian colony that the Headmasters escaped to. Lug is a Cyberdroid version of Autobot Headmaster Hosehead's Nebulan partner, who was an athlete on Nebulos before joining the Autobots. He's a member of the Triax Troublemakers, the basketrek team from Triax, a city seen in Autocracy. Minimum Ambus is a Cyberdroid version of Minimus Ambus, the true identity of Ultra Magnus as seen in IDW Publishing's More than Meets the Eye comic. He's a member of the Throttlebot Wanderer's, a mecha-soccer team mentioned in the letters page of issue #316 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. Dante is a version of Abraham Dante, the human Headmaster partner of Scorponok from IDW Publishing's 2005 comics continuity. He's a member of the Corumkan Corruptors (misspelled as "Corumcan"), a volleyblast team from Corumkan, an area on Cybertron seen in the Reaching the Omega Point prose story "Herald".
  • Competitors in the Micro-Weight Boxing Championship include Caliburn (a Generation 1 version of the Micromaster partner of Universe Megazarak, sold at OTFCC 2004) and Ironworks (the Micromasters sold with the Micromaster construction station in the original toyline). The championship took place on Robbisol night; Robbisol was one of the Cybertronian days introduced in The AllSpark Almanac II, named after Sunbow The Transformers story editor and writer Dick Robbins.
  • Pugilist Star Upper was a Maximal kangaroo from Beast Wars II, created as part of a character design contest in the Japanese magazine Comic Bom Bom.

Real world references

• The story's title is a play on the broken windows theory of criminology, a...controversial-at-best theory that states that visible signs of criminal behavior in an urban environment leads to further, more serious crimes.
• Lio Convoy's Solipsistic Staff comes from the philosophical idea of solipsism, where one can only be sure that their mind exists.
• The premise for Beast Wars: Uprising was obviously inspired by The Hunger Games franchise. Meta-fictionally, Eject notes that this is true for the series as well, with the Builders having modeled the Games after the film series, having intercepted transmissions of them from Earth. Eject notes that he's only recently seen the second movie, Catching Fire, which was only recently picked up by Cybertron. The "Cull" that Lio Convoy oversees is probably based on the "Quarter Quell" from Catching Fire, which also had the champions of several prior Hunger Games return to the ring to fight again.
• Eject's speech is peppered with sports phrases; aside from more generic ones like "slugger" and "first base", terminology he uses includes "sticky wicket" (a term originating from cricket), bush league (an informal term for a minor league of a professional sport), and "Hail Mary", a type of pass from American football.
• Noctorro speaks in a vaguely Eastern-European accent, as various comical depictions of Dracula and other vampires tend to be.
• In the Beast Wars cartoon, several locations, objects, and other concepts were named after members of the Transformers fandom. This story makes use of that, with Polar Claw mentioning Grid Khajida (sic), from a member of this very wiki.
• The underground broadcast Radio Free Cybertron is mentioned. It is named after Radio Free Cybertron, the first Transformers podcast and one of the first podcasts in the world, which was named in-turn for Radio Free Europe, a United States-funded organization created during the Cold War, which broadcasted to Eastern European countries under the Soviet Union's control.
• In keeping with her history as a pirate, Scylla speaks with a stereotypical pirate "accent", and has an eye patch. B'Boom's speech patterns are inspired by "surfer dudes/bros", while Break speaks entirely in hashtags.
• Blackarachnia calls Lio Convoy "little lion man", referencing the song of the same name by English folk rock band Mumford & Sons.
• Farad Spaceport takes its name from the farad, an SI unit of electrical capacitance. This in-turn references Shuttle Complex Ohm, a spaceport in Dodecahex seen in The Wreckers issue #1, which is named after the SI unit of measurement for electrical resistance, the ohm.
• The Dodecahex Arena employs baffle fields, a piece of technology from the Culture stories by Scottish writer Iain Banks.

Notes

• The first section of the story was printed as a preview in issue #61 of the Collectors' Club magazine.
• Most cities on Cybertron have almost completely fallen into ruin, becoming synonymous with the arenas that now dominate them.
• Throughout the story, mention is made of a class system organized by the English alphabet, which goes from class A to at least a class J. This system isn't mentioned again until "Not All Megatrons".
• Although not an error at the time, Lio Convoy demonstrates a mystifying lack of knowledge about humanity, considering future revelations about the Uprising universe. He doesn't even recognize the word "Earth" when Blackarachnia says it, and apparently has no idea why Cybertron doesn't travel to other stars anymore, like the Builders use to. Compare that to later stories, where the Cybertronian Navy regularly patrols the limits of the Allowed Zone under the watchful eye of the Human Confederacy ("Intersectionality"), the average proto-former knows the arrogance of humanity ("Cultural Appropriation"), and Galvatron is widely known as "History's greatest monster" because he challenged humanity and lost, and Cybertron paid the price ("Micro-Aggressions").
• A more minor retroactive "error" is the description of Glibax here as having equatorial climate, whereas the map of Cybertron presented in "Safe Spaces" shows the city-state is among the northern most polities, with only the polar city of Iacon being further north.
• Beginning with this story, Jim Sorenson starts a trend of alternate name spellings in Beast Wars: Uprising for the many Cybertronians who share a name. Thus in this story, Crosscut the Japanese-original Autobot gets "Cross-Cut" while offscreen, Crosscut the Marvel Comics-original Decepticon presumably keeps his original name rendering. However, due to being added in at the last minute, Beast Wars Scavenger does not have a different name in line with Uprising convention despite Beast Machines Scavenger already having that name rendering.
• This story also establishes another Uprising trend developed by Sorenson: when a character has different and distinct secondary toy and/or body concept, that concept is characterized as a distinct individual. Thus, Megalligator in Uprising is neither the original Megatron nor the Predacon Megatron and Ultra Mammoth is a separate individual from Ultra Magnus.

Errors

• Gladiatorial is misspelled as "Gladitorial" in reference to the Gladiatorial Administration Bureau.
• Micromaster is spelled "Micro Master".
• Glibax is misspelled as "Gilbax" on three occasions.
• The Maximal Command Security Force is variably spelled "Forces" or "Force".
• Technically, Blackarachnia should be more than twice the size of Lio Convoy in her TransTech body, but is described as being only slightly taller than him at most.
• Scraplet is misspelled as "scrapplet", although its use in this story is as part of a pun on the phrase "upset the apple cart".
• Terragator is misspelled as "Terrorgator" twice.

See also

• "Broken Windshields" Cybertronix translation

References

External links

• "Broken Windshields" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club website
• "Broken Windshields" annotations by Jennifer Alexis Carlo