The Cosmic Carnival

	; Explain to me again how we got into this situation?
	"The Cosmic Carnival"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	May 1988
Cover date	September 1988
Writer	Bob Budiansky
Guest penciler	Frank Springer
Guest inker	Danny Bulanadi
Colorist	Nel Yomtov
Letterer	Bill Oakley
Editor	Don Daley
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity

Things get weirder...

Synopsis

On their way back to Earth and the Ark aboard the Steelhaven, Optimus Prime and his comrades are confronted by a laser-beamed advertisement for "The Cosmic Carnival". Prime is ready to forgo visiting the show, until it projects an image of the Autobot Sky Lynx among the show's attractions. Curious and suspicious, Optimus changes course to investigate.

"Tentacle monsters? What is this, Kiss Players?"

Optimus Prime and Goldbug enter the carnival and begin searching the traveling show/starship, when they come across a quartet of Earth children on display in the sideshow: the Spacehikers! When Goldbug tries to retrieve the captive humans, the energy field around their cage knocks him back with considerable force. After Prime demands to see the proprietor, the kids' handler, Berko, takes them to see Big Top. Big Top refuses to release the children, as they have signed a binary coded contract along with Sky Lynx, making them virtually his indentured slaves until they pay off their debt.

To show he's not a total slug, Big Top gives them two free passes to the main event. In the arena, the Autobots observe Sky Lynx's act, and meet up with him backstage after the show. Sky Lynx relates his story, about how he and the kids stopped off at the cosmic carnival after escaping from the Dinobots a few months back. When they couldn't pay for their admission, however, Sky Lynx signed on as a "temporary" performer to pay off his debt. He and the kids have been stuck there ever since.

Unable to think of a way around the contract or the bomb planted in the kids' cell, Optimus Prime and Goldbug helplessly head over to say good-bye to the children. They are confronted by Berko again, who explains his story: an alien abductee brought aboard the carnival, he eventually became a trustee and worked his way out of the sideshow. So long as the kids inhabit the cell, he stays free. A loner all his life, Berko is shocked when Optimus offers to free him and take him back to Earth as well.

Berko suddenly has a remarkable change of heart, and begins arranging to free the kids. He sends Optimus Prime to collect Sky Lynx from the arena, where his next act is beginning. Prime tries to batter a way to the exit for him and Sky Lynx, but Big Top throws the other performers in their path. After dealing with a gilashark, crazed jugglers, and Rorza, the Rocket-cycle Racer from Rigel III, they make their exit.

Goldbug and Berko have freed the kids, but Big Top gets in their way and knocks Goldbug around. "Buggo" manages to right himself, though, and rams Big Top into the open cage. Leaving Big Top to a suitably ironic fate as a sideshow freak, the humans and Autobots take off and leave the carnival to the rubes.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Humans	Nebulans	Others
Goldbug (1) Getaway (2) Optimus Prime (3) Joyride (4) Slapdash (5) Sky Lynx (10)	Berko (11) Sammy Wainwright (12) Robin Lindley (13) Jed Lindley (15) Allan Silver (16)	Hi-Q (6) Lube (7) Hotwire (8) Rev (9)	Daisy (14) Ollie (17) Big Top (18) Gilashark (19) Rorza, the Rocket-cycle Racer from Rigel III (20)

Quotes

"Berko! So this is what I get for puttin' you on the payroll! ...Well, I got a bonus for your good work -- first I'm gonna rip your limbs out, one by one... and then I'm gonna fire you!"

—Big Top

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

Either that's Kari or Berko brought a date home.

When the Nebulan Powermasters are shown standing in front of their armors, each is standing in front of the wrong one. Rev is even standing by the evil Nebulan Hi-Test's armor.
Issue #42 had given Powermaster Optimus Prime's small robot some design changes to make it look like the toy (i.e. hip wheels, smokestacks inside his shoulders instead of attached to the outside, and no gas cans on legs), but in this issue Optimus Prime is drawn like his pre-Powermaster form.
Page 15, panel 4: As he mopes in his cage, Berko's closed eyes are colored white.
Prime didn't take his trailer with him to the Cosmic Carnival and drove around without it, but it is drawn on page 20 when he transforms.
In the long shot panel on the final page, one of the Powermasters appears to have been replaced by Kari (or some other woman, they're veeeery small figures).
Sky Lynx is almost always drawn badly in the comics, but his last appearance on page 22 is especially egregious - his neck isn't connected to his body, his wings are wrong, his tail is missing, and one foot is phasing through his torso.

Continuity errors

From all appearances, the Cosmic Carnival's advertising system depends on linear beams of light (or whatever) randomly hitting spaceships - particularly their windows. The odds of shooting out a random beam and hitting anything are.. ahem... cosmically small.
How did Sky Lynx and company get in initially without paying admission?

Continuity notes

Optimus Prime, like Chromedome before him, shows the ability to project images out of his eyes.
Prime's recap of the Transformers' war includes weird flashbacks to issues #1 and #2 - including one panel of a Cybertronian Decepticon menacing the human military.
Sky Lynx briefly recaps issue #36 for us, and we find out some of what happened after Blaster surrendered - apparently, Grimlock was true to his word and let Sky Lynx go.
The Powermasters are clearly shown to be able to doff their armor and hang around as normal humanoids.
Consistent with his other appearance, Sky Lynx is seen to be a sort of Triple Changer, changing from lynx to dino-bird to space shuttle without separating into two components at all. In this issue, his bird mode is bipedal, the undercarriage vanishing altogether. This was not the case previously.
Although Powermaster Optimus Prime is drawn like his old self, it can be said that this is the second of the four times he appears in his smaller robot form.
Optimus Prime and his soldiers became Powermasters in US issue #42.
The Spacehikers left Earth with Sky Lynx back in US issue #36.

Real-life references

The Cosmic Carnival is of course based on the traveling carnivals and circuses of old, complete with three rings in the main arena.
Big Top seems to have a New Jersey accent.

UK printing

This story was printed after "The Big Broadcast of 2006" in the US, but moved to before it for the UK. This is because the UK version of "Broadcast" leads directly into "Space Pirates!", necessitating a switch to keep the future continuity in one piece.

Issue #178

Back-up strips: Action Force - "Launch Base" and Combat Colin
In Grim Grams, Grimlock speaks for the debut appearance of Blaster's cassettes, discusses back-up strips and threatens the use of the variable voltage harness on someone who thinks the The Real Ghostbusters comic superior to the Transformers (ironically directly across from a full-page ad for that comic).

Issue #179

Back-up strips: Action Force - "Launch Base" and Combat Colin
In Grim Grams, Grimlock discusses clocking up over a hundred Grim Grams even as he hints that it's perhaps time for someone else to take up the mantle and that Stubbie Smith should also be introduced to the variable voltage harness for Flame's re-appearing/disappearing Autobot insignia in "Legion of the Lost!"/"Meltdown!"

Other trivia

Optimus Prime says "There is more than meets the eye here." In-continuity catch phrases are funny.
Barring art errors, this issue is one of the few of the series to feature no Decepticons.
It also marks the spectacular comics debut of... Rorza, the Rocket-cycle Racer from Rigel III!!!

Covers (3)

US issue #44 cover: Sky Lynx vs Gilashark by Frank Springer and Dave Hunt.
UK issue #178 cover: Sky Lynx and Berko by Stephen Baskerville.
UK issue #179 cover: Optimus in full Powermaster mode wrestling the Gilashark by Jerry Paris.

US issue #44 – This week on Strictly Come Dancing...
UK issue #178 – Watch out Sky Lynx, it's Lex Luthor!
UK issue #179 – Animal cruelty Prime! Animal cruelty!

Reprints

Transformers: Maximum Force TPB – Scorponok, a Targetmaster gun, the Steelhaven and half of Skullgrin's head, by Andrew Wildman.
Transformers: Maximum Force HC – Skullgrin, by Peter Snejbjerg.
Transformers: Magazine #2 – Mirage attacks as Soundwave takes cover by Robby Musso.
Classic Transformers Volume 3 – Panels from this issue and US issues #35 and #36. Art and pencils by José Delbo, pencils by Don Perlin, finishes by Dave Hunt & Don Hudson, inks by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, colours by Nel Yomtov.
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4 – Starscream, by Guido Guidi.
Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 12: Cosmic Carnival – Skullgrin and the Cosmic Carnival by Don Figueroa, Frank Springer and Danny Bulanadi.

Maximum Force TPB
(Titan Books, 2004)
Maximum Force HC
(Titan Books, 2004)
Transformers: Magazine #2
(IDW Publishing, 2007)
Classic Transformers Volume 3
(IDW Publishing, 2009)
The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4
(IDW Publishing, 2012)
The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 12: Cosmic Carnival
(Hachette Partworks, 2018)

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