Weapon (issue)

« Transformers: Sector 7 #4 »
"Weapon"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	December 29, 2010
Cover date	December 2010
Writer	John Barber
Art	Lou Kang
Colors	Andrew Crossley and David Aravena
Letters	Chris Mowry
Editor	Andy Schmidt
Cover	Brian Rood Joe Suitor
Continuity	Live-action film series

1944 — At the height of World War II, the Allies' worst fears are realized: the Nazis have captured a Transformer!

Synopsis

On April 3, 1944, Walter Simmons summons his grandson, Private Billy Simmons, to the Sector Seven beta command post at the Hoover Dam, having orchestrated his transfer from his military unit to the Sector Seven forces. Billy is not happy with the situation, preferring to be out facing the Nazis on the battlefield, but as his grandfather reveals the secret history of Sector Seven to him, it becomes apparent that that's exactly where he's going: behind enemy lines to destroy an N.B.E. that the Nazis have captured and are reverse-engineering to create incredible weapons of war!

Together with Sergeant Donavan, hand-to-hand expert Horwitz, infiltrations specialist Louie Corliss, machine-gunner Garcia, intelligence officer Newcombe, and sniper Lupton (nicknamed "The Kid" because he lied about his age to join the army), Billy departs for an air-drop into Nazi territory, close to Castle Neuschwanstein where the N.B.E. is being kept. The heavy-handed speeches of Donavan and the joking of Corliss get the mission off to an uneasy start, but things suddenly get exponentially worse when the team's plane is shot down by Nazi laser-tanks! Simmons, Donavan, Newcombe, and Lupton are the only ones to survive the fall, managing to deploy their parachutes, but Newcombe doesn't last long on the ground, crushed by one of the freakish tanks as it comes rolling in pursuit of the soldiers. The three remaining men take cover in a ditch, reasoning that the tank will not be able to follow... only for the tank to transform into a humanoid mode! Luckily, the tank's conversion time gives Donavan a chance to load a bazooka and topple the tank-robot, which is revealed to have a human pilot wired into its systems. The pilot pleads for Simmons to kill him in German, and Simmons does so—but not out of mercy, since he doesn't speak German. Detecting the approach of more tanks, the men prepare to leave, but Simmons and Lupton discover that Donavan has been fatally wounded by blow-back from the bazooka, and obey his wishes to leave him.

Deducing that the pilots' brains are wired into the robot tanks to help them maintain an equilibrium, Simmons has Lupton lead the two tanks pursuing them through a dense crop of forest, where they fell all the trees in their wake. Simmons then strikes from behind, hoping to cause the robots to stumble over the collapsed trees, but only one tank falls, and the other continues to attack him. Lupton smashes his way into the fallen tank and seizes the manual controls from its pilot, bringing the robot's cannon to bear and taking down the other with a blast that also, unfortunately, severs Simmons's hand.

Simmons and Lupton conceal themselves in the captive tank and try using it to approach Castle Neuschwanstein by hiding in plain sight, but the tortured pilot's repeated pleading screams that they kill him tip off the castle guards. Abandoning stealth, the two men take the tank through the castle walls all guns blazing, prompting the scientists within to activate their ultimate creation: the "Panzer-Giganten", a huge robot that proceeds to smash the tank and kill Lupton. Simmons evades the robot and machine-guns his way through the ranks of Nazi soldiers that come at him, seizing a scientist and demanding answers. Getting only the standard "I was following orders!" response, he hurls the man out a window, but immediately regrets it, since he could have used his help in finding the captive N.B.E. The Panzer-Giganten comes crashing through the floor after Simmons, who hurls a satchel of explosives at it, only for the automaton to swat it aside. As luck would have it, the satchel blows open the cryo-containment chamber holding the captive N.B.E.—none other than Jetfire himself! Sickened by the Panzer-Giganten, Jetfire drives his fist through the Nazi robot, tearing out its human components and causing it to drop to the floor, deactivated. Jetfire then turns on Simmons, demanding to know how his own kind could do so monstrous a thing. Simmons tries to explain that it was not his doing, and that he thought the bomb would kill them all, prompting Jetfire to question why he values his life so little. Simmons's retort that he values his life, but values freedom more, causes memories of Jetfire's rebellion against The Fallen to well up in the Seeker's mind, and he tells Simmons that they are more alike than they may well realize.

After destroying Castle Neuschwanstein and everyone in it, Jetfire flies Simmons to an Allied command post and departs without leaving any tangible evidence of his existence. One great mystery remains: a map of a cave system that Nazis had pried from Jetfire's mind. Although the copy in the castle was destroyed, Simmons fears that they may have duplicated the information, and requests permanent transfer to Sector Seven, at last understanding why someone, like his mother and grandfather before him, would so dedicate themselves to the organization.

Featured Characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

Notes

Transformers references

• Mentioned but not named in the previous issue, Billy is the son of Walter Simmons's daughter, Margaret Simmons, who has died since last we saw her. Barber's continuity notes at the end of this issue confirm the man in the photo of her and Billy in the first panel of this issue is Roy Thompson, who evidently began a romance with Margo somewhere in the intervening decade.
• When describing the N.B.E. in the Nazis' custody, Walter Simmons refers to it not as a "Non-Biological Extraterrestrial", but instead uses the occasionally-seen variant term, "Non-Biological Entity". Barber's notes explain that this usage is deliberate, since Simmons cannot be sure if the creature is Cybertronian, and that this variant eventually became interchangeable among other agents down through the years.
• Jetfire was last seen teleporting off to parts unknown after being exposed to the AllSpark in issue #2.
• Jetfire recalls his rebellion against The Fallen from Tales of the Fallen #3, complete with cribbed dialogue from that issue.
• The cave system that the Nazis have mapped is the same one previously seen in the first two issues of this series, which Jetfire spent over a decade crawling around in.
• In the first live-action film, Tom Banachek claimed that Megatron was moved to the Hoover Dam in 1934, a fact contradicted by both IDW's Movie Prequel series (which showed that he had not been moved by 1935, but that preparations were under way to receive him) and the Ghosts of Yesterday prequel novel (which had him being moved in 1969). In his notes, Barber foregoes any real attempt at smoothing over this continuity error, and just writes off Banachek's claim as a lie; not hard to do, given that construction of the Hoover Dam hadn't been finished in 1934. The outbreak of World War II is credited for the delay in Megatron's move from the late 30s to 1969; presumably, this has in turn delayed Walter Simmons's retirement, which he claimed he was on the cusp of in Movie Prequel #3.

Real-life references

• Sector Seven is remarkably progressive on racial issues - the mainstream U.S. military would not integrate for another four years, and a black officer leading white troops was unheard of at the time the story is set.
• Sector Seven is using the Surface To Air Recovery System (STARS) nearly a decade before the CIA started using it in real-life. Here, it is merely known as "Fulton Recovery", after its creator, Robert Edison Fulton, Jr.
• Neuschwanstein Castle is a real place, though it wasn't destroyed by a giant robot in real life.
• Despite what you might think, the Panzer-Giganten's war-cry, "Exterminieren", is not real-life German for "exterminate". It is, in fact, a made-up German-sounding word uttered by German-speaking Daleks (in place of their regular English catchphrase of "Ex-ter-min-ate!") in the 2008 Doctor Who episode, "Journey's End".
• Jetfire is sporting a Lockheed P-38 Lightning alternate mode in this issue; the same type of plane flown by Barber's grandfather in the war.

Other trivia

• This issue was originally promoted with a different standard cover featuring Jetfire, which was changed for the finished release.
• Garcia and Horwitz's deaths are not explicit; they simply don't appear again after the team's plane is shot down.

Covers (2)

• Cover A: Art by Brian Rood depicting Billy and one of the transforming tanks outside Neuschwanstein Castle.
• Cover RI: Art by Joe Suitor, the fourth of a series of interconnecting exclusive covers depicting archival Sector Seven documents and photos that cover the events of this issue.

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