Club Con!

	; Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.
	"Club Con!"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	August 1988
Cover date	December 1988
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Penciler	José Delbo
Inker	Dave Hunt
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Bill Oakley
Editor	Don Daley
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

"Hi, I'm Starscream. Fly me!"

Synopsis

Do you really want a Battlecharger handling your luggage?

Optimus Prime and his advisers are puzzled over the Decepticons' latest scheme: Ratbat and his soldiers have converted their desert island headquarters into a tourist resort for humans called Club Con, even advertising it on television. It seems clear that this is partially to have an endless supply of human shields and/or hostages to deter Autobot attacks, but Prime suspects there is more to it. He summons Blaster for a mission to investigate the island.

Later in Portland, Oregon, Sparkplug Witwicky and Jesse are discussing how worried they are about his missing son, Buster, when Blaster drops in on them in an egg transport. He has a plan to sneak onto Club Con, but needs a human "owner" to carry him in. Sparkplug is more than willing to jump at the chance to help find and free Buster, but Jesse gently reminds him that he's too old and ugly to fit in at a resort. She offers to take his place on the surveillance mission, and Blaster accepts.

In the mechanical tower that sits just beneath the surface of Club Con, Ratbat is extraordinarily anxious about the success of their latest "operation", as it has been issued from High Command back on Cybertron.

As Jesse and the disguised Blaster arrive on Club Con, they are greeted by the club's manager, Starscream. At the beach, Jesse leaves Blaster to his surveillance work and goes for a swim. Out past the safety buoys, though, she runs into a school of Seacons patrolling the waters, and sees them enter the mechanical construction underneath the island. Returning to the beach, she gathers up a recalcitrant Blaster in a waterproof baggie and takes him back down to the airlock she saw the Seacons enter earlier.

They must lose their flavor quickly.

Sneaking around, Jesse spots a human-sized door, and enters it to find Buster held prisoner inside. Blaster questions him about the Decepticons' plans, and Buster relates what he has overheard. Several hundred years ago, the Autobots of Cybertron sent specially-encoded information to Earth on a pair of Mini-Cassettes. The message craft was damaged on arrival, though, and the cassettes wound up in a pirate's treasure chest, only for that pirate ship to be sunk in the middle of the ocean. The Decepticons of Cybertron recently learned of this long-lost mission and, suspecting the value of the information, commanded Ratbat and the Decepticons of Earth to find that sunken treasure chest and the cassettes inside. Club Con is a blind to cover their salvage operation.

Unable to break Buster free without revealing himself, Blaster promises to return when he can. On their way out, however, Jesse and Blaster spot the Seacons returning from the deep, having successfully uncovered the treasure chest. Against Blaster's recriminations, Jesse sneaks over and retrieves the cassettes right from under the Decepticons' olfactory sensors while Snaptrap is praising his team's efficiency to Ratbat. When they notice the missing tapes, though, Ratbat immediately recognizes Jesse's water-dripping footprints as belonging to a fleshling, and sends the Seacons to fetch.

Back on dry land, Jesse is ready to catch the first plane out with Blaster, but the Seacons pop up onto the beach and begin ransacking through the crowd in order to find the cassettes. Blaster feels compelled to transform and protect the humans, but is quickly overwhelmed by the six Seacons. Out of necessity, he spits the cassettes back out into the water, and transforms back into his smaller form in the confusion. Armed with the information but not the cassettes themselves, Blaster leaves with Jesse and vows to return as soon as he can.

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Fortress Maximus (6) Optimus Prime (7) Grimlock (8) Outback (10) Mirage (11) Runamuck (12) (see below) Blaster (13) Grapple (14) Jazz (15) Bluestreak (16) First Aid (17) Defensor (31) (see below) Beachcomber (32) Perceptor (33) Sunstreaker (34) (see below) Raindance (35) Grandslam (36)	Starscream (1) Drag Strip (2) Breakdown (3) Runamuck (4) (see below) Swindle (5) Vortex (20) Ratbat (21) Ramjet (22) Soundwave (23) Wildrider (24) Overbite (25) Snaptrap (26) Skalor (27) Nautilator (28) Seawing (29) Tentakil (30) Thrust (37)	Buster Witwicky (9) Sparkplug Witwicky (18) Jesse (19)

Quotes

"Ah -- I see Ramjet arrives with a fresh litter of loathsome fleshlings for me to greet. Sometimes my job can be so distasteful."

— Starscream

"I know you humans generally have a few wires loose, soft-skin, but yours must be completely disconnected!"
"Stop complaining! We got the Autobots, didn't we?"
"We're gonna get a lot more than that!"

— Blaster has learned not to mess with the Seacons; Jesse has not.

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

The cover has the Seacons in various incorrect colors.
Runamuck is erroneously depicted among the Autobots training with Blaster. Not only should he not be with the Autobots, but he was just shown in a television ad (with the Cons) on the previous page.
Page 4: Grapple is drawn with a smooth, round, "bald" head; it should be angular with several crest pieces.
Tentakil and Skalor's names are switched on the fifteenth page. However, Seawing says "This way, Skalor." with Skalor right behind him so only Tentakil's line seems out of place. In IDW's Transformers Classics reprint, two changes were applied to the dialogue to fix these errors: Tentakil now says "C'mon, Skalor" instead of "C'mon, Tentakil", and Seawing says "This way, Seacons" instead of "This way, Skalor".
Sparkplug says he's working on the car's transmission. Shouldn't he be under the car instead of up top by the carburetor?
Page 7, panel 1: Club 'Con is drawn as a totally barren island. In the next panel, it's shown with two hills, when the previous panel shows it as a single smooth mound.
Snapdragon and Apeface's robot modes are missing from their profiles. None of the Nebulan partners are shown, either, a common omission for the back-of-the-book profiles.
Page 15, panel 5: Blaster's word balloons look like they are coming from Jessie.

Continuity errors

Those are either huge-ass palm trees or it's a small-ass resort.

Runamuck is depicted among Club Con's staff, a development later ignored by Simon Furman in the issue "Surrender!".
Blaster makes the observation that Starscream has been one of the most murderous beings in the galaxy "over the last few million years" - which is odd since Starscream was actually deactivated on Earth for the past 4 million years!
It's not clear what exactly Blaster would've done if Jessie HADN'T snuck into the Decepticon base with him. Was he just going to sit there and eavesdrop, or what?
Jesse seems to have a magic snorkel that lets her go dozens of feet underwater for extended periods.
The mini-cassette backstory is several layers of continuity nightmare. First, it depicts Sunstreaker and a normal-sized Defensor on Cybertron when they shouldn't be. Next, it assumes the Autobots of Cybertron knew the Ark's crew was on Earth several hundred years before the latter group awoke on Earth, which is nonsense because we saw Perceptor and Beachcomber learn the fate of the Earthbound Autobots for the first time in issue #17, shortly before being transported to Earth themselves in issue #18. Then, as we'll see in later issues, the information they send to Earth only becomes relevant in the present... several hundred years after it was first sent. Finally, Blaster was a member of Perceptor's resistance cell on Cybertron and has been continuously serving alongside him and Beachcomber since then. If they sent the message, couldn't he just ask them what it said?
Club Con uses the same telephone number as the Z Foundation, but Scorponok and Ratbat weren't working together yet.
The Decepticons' artificial island has grown exponentially larger since we first saw it back in issue #39. Back then it was just big enough for a few palm trees; here it's a whole resort!

Continuity notes

This is technically the first appearance of the Autobots of Earth since US issue #41. This issue establishes that Optimus Prime has now officially returned as overall Autobot leader, and Blaster, Grimlock, and Fortress Maximus all seem comfortable being under his command.
This issue features Outback's second and final appearance in the US comic (after a one panel cameo in issue #41), seen here training with Blaster aboard the Ark. He will not be seen again. Given the presence of a Battlecharger (see Errors above) in the same scene, plus the fact that he's never named, introduced or explained, his appearance here may possibly be another mistake.
Starscream is now fully repaired and back working with the Decepticons as Ratbat's lieutenant commander, after being recovered from the Ark in issue #41.
Ratbat got his orders for the Club Con operation directly from Decepticon Imperial Headquarters. This is the first and last time they would be mentioned.
Blaster mentions something called the Prime Matrix.
Both Blaster and the two Autobot cassettes travel in tiny egg-shaped capsules.
Jesse's fashion sense has gotten a lot more 80s-tastic since the last time we saw her.
Missing a chance to hype up his toy's cassette compatibility, Blaster literally spits the Autobot cassettes out! Ptoo!

Real-life references

Starscream's opening line, "Hi, I'm Starscream. Fly me!" is a literal take on a somewhat suggestive 1971 National Airlines ad campaign.
The Decepticons have claimed their island/spaceship as a sovereign nation and declared Buster as its monarch to prevent interference by humans due to international law. This legal reasoning is not dissimilar to the real world case of the Principality of Sealand.
Blaster makes a short visit to Sparkplug in Portland; Jesse recalls snorkeling at Key West.

Other trivia

Instead of publishing a new Transformers Universe limited series, Marvel began shortening the main stories and including profiles for the Headmasters-era and beyond characters in the back.

Bot Roster

Autobots: 75 active, as the Steelhaven's crew joins the Ark; 5 bodyless Throttlebots. (80 total)
Ratbat's Decepticons: 46 active as the Seacons join the crew and some - presumably all - of the formerly captive Decepticons are restored; 4 offline/missing. (50 total)
Scorponok's Decepticons: 25 active.

Courtesy of my...

It's a Blaster story so of course the electro-scrambler is back.

Character profiles

UK printing

Issue #194

Back-up strips: Action Force - "Unmaskings"
This is the last time a cover featuring a US artist would appear on a UK Transformers comic. It was a heavily edited (and mirrored) version of the US cover for this story, with the addition of a thought balloon for Jesse and a banner proclaiming the return of the Seacons. The recoloring of the cover was also striking — the Seacons now are more accurate to their usual color models and Jesse's bikini was changed to green to match the interior story.
While in the US, this story was the Seacons' first first appearance, in the UK, the Seacons had their debut in issue #152.
In the UK continuity Starscream was revived quite some time earlier, way back in issue #81, though he was locked in a pod in issue #88 and did not come out of it until #145. But this is still his first appearance back with the Decepticons for UK readers as well. Starscream's conversation with Ratbat had minor changes so his excuse for not using Ratbat's title is now attributed to having spent such a long time in a life support pod rather than having recently been brought back on line.
Outback appears to have dropped on to Earth for just this issue. In his other appearances in the UK comics, he was always on Cybertron.
The splash page for this issue was edited, removing reference to the Underbase Saga as a 4-part epic. In the UK, it was printed over 9 issues, and was interrupted halfway through for the epic "Time Wars".
In Dread Tidings, Dreadwind reveals that Grimlock left the variable voltage harness behind for use on any mistake-prone Stubbies. He also foreshadows the appearance of Chop Shop and Venom in "Time Wars".

Issue #195

Back-up strips: Action Force - "Jungle Moves", Death's Head, and Combat Colin
AtoZ: Long Haul and Menasor.
The Death's Head "backup strip" this issue is actually a one-page comic strip meant as an advertisement for Death's Head's own regular series. The UK comics often blurred the line between backup strips and advertisements.
In Dread Tidings, Dreadwind confirms that he is 4 million, 60 thousand, 3 hundred and forty two years old, and still reads comics.

IDW Transformers Classics edits

Ma E.T. want to go to shrinking island!

IDW's reprint of this issue was created using a scan of a physical copy. As a result of the poor quality paper used by Marvel US (especially when compared to the Marvel UK printing, which had access to the original artwork masters and used better quality paper, resulting in much cleaner lineart overall), combined with possible printing defects, a lot of the lineart is either washed out, or actually had to be retouched to "restore" any semblance of lineart at all, occasionally leading to outright atrocious results.

Page 2 is just a mess overall. In the first panel alone, the family's mother sitting inside Starscream's cockpit became the victim of such severe misinterpretion that IDW's reprint gave her a tiny blotch for a head on top of what only barely resembles a body, while the dog sitting between her and her son was eliminated from the artwork. The opposing side of Starscream's cockpit hull was misinterpreted as part of the canopy, thus losing the linart separating them, the color of the water (which was originally a green-ish blue in the Marvel US printing and veered more towards blue in the UK version) became outright green, and the island in the upper right corner of the panel became a distorted mess that rivals the infamous defaced painting Ecce Homo in terms of how poorly it was retouched, with the waves surrounding it just becoming vague white shapes with barely any traces of lineart left at all.

Covers (3)

US issue #47 cover: Overbite attacking Jessie, by Bob Budiansky and Kevin Nowlan.
UK issue #194 cover: Reuse of US cover with a word balloon.
UK issue #195 cover: Snaptrap blasts Blaster, by Stephen Baskerville.

US issue #47 - All the better to eat you with my dear.
UK issue #194 - I... don't get it. CHEW?
UK issue #195 - This is what happens when you don't put anti-blaster cream on before going out in the sun.

Reprints

Transformers: Dark Star TPB: Starscream, Carnivac, Overbite, Dogfight, and half a Mecannibal by Andrew Wildman.
Dark Star hardcover: Starscream victorious by Seth Fisher and Chris Blythe.
Classic Transformers Volume 4: Panels from US issues #59 and #60, pencils by José Delbo, inks by Dave Hunt and colours by Nel Yomtov.
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4: Starscream by Guido Guidi.
Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 13: City of Fear: Trypticon / Zombie killing Chuffer by Don Figueroa / Dan Reed

Dark Star TPB
Dark Star hardback
Classic Transformers Volume 4
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4
The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 13: City of Fear

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