Escape Part Five

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"Escape Part Five"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	July 6, 2021
Cover date	April 2021
Written by	Brian Ruckley
Art by	Beth McGuire-Smith
Colors by	Priscilla Tramontano
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Tom Waltz, and Riley Farmer
Continuity	2019 IDW continuity

Autobots, neutrals, civilians, and more take on the Insecticon swarm in the final battle to save Cybertron's organic refugees.

Synopsis

Doom has come for the citizens of Darkmount—as the ravenous horde of Insecticon clones overrun the Autobot refugee camp, panicked organics flee for their lives as the Autobots struggle to keep the swarm at bay. As Road Rage rescues Nautica from an abandoned transport, Hound and his team struggle to hold the line. Wheeljack and Gears do what they can to escort the organics to safety, but the Insecticons have numbers on their side, dogpiling Powerflash and drowning him in a tide of their own bodies. As the swarm forces the Autobots back towards the gates of Darkmount, the titanic Leviathan lumbers into action, crushing dozens of clones with every swing of her mighty fists, and even some of the more courageous organics use custom anti-Cybertronian technology to fight back.

From the safety of Darkmount's central spire, Straxxus observes the chaos playing out. Cursing the Autobots for bringing chaos to his doorstep, the Senator orders his men to seal the gates. This move will assuredly doom the Autobots and their allies, but it will keep the Insecticons occupied and buy the people of Darkmount just enough time to sound the alarm, board the two operational Arks, and evacuate Cybertron for good. Outside, Dai Atlas battles his way through the swarm as he remembers the War of the Threefold Spark; as he once fetched up against endless waves of Skywarp drones, he muses, so does he now fight another mindless clone army, the personification of mindless hunger in a new guise. A cry from Leviathan draws his attention, and the general turns in time to see the Insecticons overwhelm and topple the giant Cybertronian. As the clones swarm over her helpless body, Hound, Speeder, and Dai Atlas try and keep the Insecticons at bay; it's Gears and Wheeljack who come to the rescue, wielding some overcharged alien technology that shorts out all of the nearby Insecticons but leaves Leviathan unharmed. Unfortunately, this maneuver required them to tap into their own energon reserves; without power, the pair promptly collapse where they stand.

The remaining clones converge on the city gates, where organics and their Cybertronian protectors find themselves pinned between the walls of Darkmount and the onrushing swarm. As Road Range pounds on the door, Nautica realizes that Straxxus has deliberately locked them out; when Hound sees the city's central spire unfurl into a launching bay, he realizes that Straxxus intends to launch the Arks ahead of schedule without them. As Cromar mourns over Powerflash's mangled corpse, Dai Atlas and Speeder arrive... with the rest of the swarm hot on their tail! Though Hound and Cromar team up to make their final stand, the swarm abruptly changes course and takes off into the air in pursuit of the Arks. Nautica is the first to put together what's happening: the Insecticons are drawn to energon... and now, the Arks in the sky represent the largest concentration of the substance in their immediate vicinity. Aboard the lead Ark, Straxxus demands a status report, and is horrified to learn that the Insecticons have intercepted and attacked their second ship—that vessel carries their energon harvester and all the necessary colonization and terraforming equipment. Straxxus shouts for them to do something, anything... but as the Insecticons eat their way into the ship's inner workings, the entire vessel explodes! While the other Ark continues on its way, the remains of its sister ship and its unlucky passengers fall from the sky, a grim rain of ash and debris. The explosion might have taken out most of the Insecticons, but as the wounded stragglers buzz away, Speeder points out that their victory has come at a cost: they have only one working Ark now, which won't be enough to evacuate everyone.

The Insecticon clones limp back to their base hidden in the Cybertronian Mountains, where the original three Insecticons await. Skrapnel and Kickback point out that they've lost most of their soldiers, but Bombshell has more ambitious plans. The clones were designed to eat and concentrate raw material into energon; Bombshell and the others will devour these clones to produce the concentrated ultra-energon required to fuel their cloning machine. Bombshell gloats that this unchecked exponential growth will soon give them control over Cybertron, as the trio begin their grisly harvest...

With Straxxus and his followers gone, Wheeljack and the other Autobots have taken control of Darkmount and unanimously agreed to donate the last working Ark to the A'ovans and the other organics left homeless by the conflict. Though Dai Atlas will go with them to keep them safe, Hound muses that there might be no escape for the rest of his species—the only escape they have is to finish the war here and now before it can spread to other worlds. As the third Ark launches, Nautica and Road Rage watch the ship go; though Nautica yearns to go with them, she cannot deny that she too is a citizen of Cybertron, and has her own part to play in the impending conflict by helping the remaining organics on the planet. Besides, she muses, the Autobots still have one Ark left—it might be damaged, but someday, perhaps, its time will come...

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.)

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"It's okay! I'm still here."
"I know you are, because I'm still here. And if you die, it'll only be because I'm already dead."
"Normally I'd say you were being melodramatic. Not this time."

—Nautica and Road Rage

"Can we not fight for ourselves? You want to be our threat and protector? You are huge living machines. Machines beyond all control. Fear breeds invention. You do know the galaxy is full of weapons designed to destroy Cybertronians, don't you? And I have four of them!"

—Alien civilian

"No resident of Darkmount is dying while I rule here, and this planet is spiralling into the void. We're leaving. Now."

—Straxxus

"The blade in my hand. A clone swarm. Nothing has changed. Then, I fought against Exarchon's clone-drones. The mindless armies of a would-be tyrant. Now, I fight what? The endless armies of simple madness? The armies of deranged hunger? Nothing has changed."

—Dai Atlas

"And anyway, there's one left. No engine, I know. No hardly anything... but perhaps we'll get to ride away from here in an Ark eventually. Perhaps its time will come."

—Nautica

Notes

Continuity notes

• The four-armed alien who makes a stand against the Insecticons belongs to a race that's previously appeared in both Transformers #5 and Escape #1, though his species hasn't been named yet in the comic.
• Cityspeaker-turned-Insecticon stooge Skystalker makes a brief appearance in their subterranean lair; although Skrapnel expressed an interest in eating him in issue #3, Bombshell told him that they'd be keeping him around for the time being.
• Nautica's final conversation with Road Rage mirrors her running internal monologue from Transformers #12, where she noted that she didn't feel at home on Cybertron anymore and yearned to explore different cultures across the galaxy.
• Alpha Trion had previously shown Ultra Magnus a hologram of the fourth and final Ark in Galaxies #12, though we didn't know its significance at the time.

Transformers references

• Hound wields Cromar's alternate mode as a man-portable artillery weapon—while this story beat is, of course, inspired by his recent Weaponizer toy; the specific way Cromar transforms takes some inspiration from Cog and the other Weaponizers from the War for Cybertron Trilogy television show, who all transformed into bulky weaponized "backpacks" that the other characters could carry around.
• Dai Atlas's new role as the protector of the Cybertronian refugees seems inspired by his depiction in IDW's Drift and Monstrosity comics, which showed him organizing the Exodus from Cybertron before eventually leaving the planet himself with the other members of his reclusive Circle of Light.
• The last Ark hadn't appeared on-panel until this point; unsurprisingly, this golden, wedge-shaped model is based on the ship that appeared in the original Generation 1 cartoon, and will presumably become the method by which Optimus Prime and his followers will someday use to leave the planet.

Errors

• The one-panel flashback to the War of the Threefold Spark depicts Dai Atlas fighting a number of Skywarp drones; while Transformers #31 showed all of the Skywarp drones wearing identical black-and-purple paintjobs based on their clone progenitor, this flashback shows them in a variety of colors, including green and red.
• On page eleven, Mudslinger is incorrectly colored grey.
• On the next page, Cromar is colored silver instead of black.

Other trivia

• Originally solicited for May 12, the final issue of the miniseries lands just short of two months late; coming just three weeks after the preceding issue pushes the series back onto a semi-reasonable schedule at the eleventh hour.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: The Insecticons poised to devour everything, by Beth McGuire-Smith
• Cover B: The swarm descends, by Livio Ramondelli
• Retailer incentive cover: All-out bug war, by Dan Khanna and Josh Perez

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Reprints

• Transformers Volume 4: Declaration of War (January 19, 2022) ISBN 1684058066 / ISBN 978-1684058068
  • Collects Transformers (2019) issues #25–30, Transformers Valentine's Day Special, and Escape issues #1–5.
  • Bonus material includes alternate covers.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Volume 4: Declaration of War – cover art by Cryssy Cheung

External links

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