Ground Zero

 

Writer: Simon Furman

Publication date: July 18, 1997

 

A quick side story set during season one of Beast Wars, starring everyone's favorite Beast Wars characters: Packrat and Fractyl! Despite their lack of existing on the show, they just appear here with no explanation of where they came from and act like they've always been there. Don't you love these cool new characters and don't you want to buy many toys of them, available now at the next vendor over?

Packrat and Fractyl are repaints of Rattrap and Terrorsaur, characters who coincidentally don't appear and aren't mentioned anywhere in this comic. So why didn't they just use Rattrap and Terrorsaur? The comic's in black and white so you can't even see that these characters are different colors.

It seems that Fractyl has discovered a substance the writer self-servingly has him call Furmanite, which he uses to shield himself from the raw Energon on the planet that forced the Maximals and Predacons stranded there to adopt beast modes. The antisocial Maximal hoarder Packrat decides to steal the Furmanite for himself so he can use it to avoid having to transform into a filthy disease-carrying rat all the time. Inferno attacks Packrat while speaking like Yoda for no reason, and during the battle a sample of Furmanite comes in contact with an Energon crystal, creating a huge explosion. Fractyl deduces that Furmanite must actually be anti-Energon, because of course that's a thing.

Packrat is headed straight for the Energon-filled "Badlands." Fractyl goes to Rhinox, Cheetor, and Airazor, who are out and about enjoying the lovely weather, and tells them they have to stop Packrat before destroys himself and/or the whole planet. Packrat blows up Inferno and goes to become a wilderness survivalist, but his fellow Maximals try to convince him to stay and earn their respect. While he's distracted, Fractyl tries to zap him from behind with an energy siphon, but Packrat teleports between panels so he's suddenly right next to Fractyl and beats him up.

But he decides he wants to get rid of the Furmanite anyway because there's only one page left in the comic. Because Fractyl tried to help them despite being evil, the Maximals decide to make him look good by running away and letting him shoot at them as Megatron walks up. "You know something, Fractyl..." says Megatron as his dweeby subordinate sends four Maximals packing, "...there is hope for you yet!"

"You know something, Packrat..." thinks Rhinox as they all run for their lives, "...there's hope for you yet!"

This was lame and pointless. If I wanted to watch an evil Pteranodon Transformer discover an Energon derivative that infuses him with enhanced durability and firepower, I'd just watch "Power Surge"! Thankfully it's very short so it wasn't torture to read, but I can't get over these two characters showing up and acting like they've always been around. You couldn't even put in a little text blurb acknowledging that it makes no sense for them to be there? Simon Furman may be a veteran scribe of licensed Transformers fiction, but I'm not so sure that makes him a good writer. The jury's still out.