Betrayal

Primal Prime imitates the pose I made while reading this issue.

 

Writer: Rob Gerbracht

Publication date: July 26, 2002

 

Last time, on The Wreckers, we were introduced to this series' absurdly mammoth cast. 

 

The Dinobots: T-Wrecks, Magmatron, Striker, Rapticon, Dinotron, Airraptor, Triceradon, and Terranotron.

The Mutants: Icebird, Razor Claw, Soundwave, and Poison Bite.

The Deployers: Rav, Mol, and Dillo.

The Wreckers themselves: Primal Prime, Apelinq, Rodimus, Arcee, Ramulus, Tigatron, Packrat, Fractyl, Spittor, and Sonar.

Some other guys who tagged along: Rotorbolt, Cyclonus, Skywarp, and Devcon.

This issue adds three more members to the team: Glyph and Tap-Out, survivors of a long-lost Autobot survey mission dispatched by Rodimus Prime after the battle against Unicron, and CatSCAN, who is basically the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. 

 

That brings our dramatis personae up to 32. Having introduced this Game of Thrones-sized cast, the writers of The Wreckers then immediately perform a Red Wedding on them. 

 

The Dinobots travel to the planet Arkus, tasked by the Oracle to "restore the sleeping giant." Despite T-Wrecks being identified as their leader in the previous issue, here he's taking orders from Magmatron, whose Predacon allegiance and history from Beast Wars Neo aren't mentioned at all. It seems weird to deliberately use a character with an established backstory only to treat that backstory as non-canon and make no attempt to develop a new one to replace it. Anyway, the only giant the Dinobots find is the Dweller in the Depths, who kills Airraptor, Rapticon, Striker, and Magmatron.

 

The Mutants arrive in the Outer Orion Cluster, where they are immediately sentenced to death by the Quintessons and eaten alive by Sharkticons. In league with the Quintessons is Cryotek, Megatron II's former mentor who previously appeared in the Theft of the Golden Disk animation and nothing else. He now appears as a blue repaint of Transmetal 2 Megatron. The comic doesn't trouble itself to explain this, but if you bother to read his character bio on BotCon Online, all is made clear:

Upon Megatron's return, Cryotek struck up a bargain with his old student, willingly "assisting" Megatron with the elimination of his hated beast form - or at least those elements that Cryotek could most readily exploit! Unprepared for the painful metamorphosis involved in assuming Megatron's Transmetal II body, Cryotek was sent into temporary stasis lock, allowing his research and development operations to fall into Megatron's waiting hands. Left betrayed both by his former protégé and his own pursuit of power, Cryotek recovered only in time to see his empire - and Cybertron - fall completely to Megatron's sinister designs.

Megatron still has his Transmetal 2 body and dragon mode in Beast Machines though. What happened.

Cryotek has also sabotaged the Wreckers' shuttle. In mid-space flight, an explosion rips a hole in the aft hull. Packrat wants to separate the ship into two like Ultra Magnus did in The Transformers: The Movie, but Primal Prime tells him not to because Spittor, Sonar, and the Deployers are still back there. Packrat does it anyway, coldly abandoning these five minor characters, some of whom have not even spoken a single line of dialogue, to their deaths, which come immediately when their section of the ship explodes.

Rodimus is mad at Packrat, I think with good reason, but Primal Prime tells him to cool his jets and calmly relieves Packrat of his duties. Why is Rodimus Prime taking orders from this douchebag? Dude killed Unicron, bore the Matrix, and has been in a leadership position for hundreds of years, while PP was created by evil aliens like two days ago. Who put him in charge???

At this point the remaining Wreckers meet up with the survivors of the Autobot expedition on the planet Archa IX. "Another of my less-than-stellar command decisions," Rodimus ruefully comments on the failed deep-space survey initiative. Was this written by a former '80s kid who was still salty about Optimus Prime being replaced by Judd Nelson? Is that why this comic keeps treating Rodimus like an asshole?

Glyph and Tap-Out lead the gang to the Dwelling of the Divine Light, a mystical religious item revered by the local population of Akalouthans that is reputed to have fallen from the sky millennia ago. Packrat, seemingly not at all troubled about recently murdering five people, rubs his hands together greedily and says this thing must be worth a fortune. Speaking of garbage, this comic finally reveals how Packrat came to be involved with the Beast Wars, having previously appeared without explanation in a number of BotCon tie-in stories. Apparently he was a thief back on Cybertron, and upon being arrested by Imperial Peace Marshal Devcon, he was locked in a stasis pod and shipped off-planet aboard the Axalon. This sounds highly illegal, and only came five years too late for anyone reading to care.

Cyclonus doesn't trust Packrat's avarice, so he takes Rotorbolt aside and assigns him to secretly keep an eye on the verminous Maximal. These two were introduced as part of a three-bot team, but I have no idea what happened to Skywarp, the third member of the trio, or why he's absent for the rest of the issue.

Exactly one page later, Devcon is like "hey, where are Rotorbolt and Packrat?" He goes looking for them and FINDS THEM BOTH DEAD. Oh my God, they really did it, they killed Packrat. After keeping him around for so long and pointlessly forcing him into so many stories, the ultimate fate of his character is to die meaninglessly off-screen like a little bitch. Incredible.

It turns out that the real traitor is Cyclonus the Warrior, who has been working for Cryotek all along. He steals the Divine Light and escapes, with Devcon vowing to hunt him to the ends of the universe, just like Inspector Javert. 

 

Primal Prime rushes in and is sad, cuing this text box: "Primal Prime comes to a tragic understanding. Regardless of what knowledge or wisdom one has been granted, or what position of authority one assumes -- A true leader must never ignore the needs of his team."

What the FUCK does that have to do with anything that just happened?

On the final page, Cyclonus reports his success to Cryotek, who delivers a lengthy expository speech revealing that the Oracle, established in the actual Beast Machines TV show to be the benevolent supercomputer Vector Sigma, is really an imposter program created by the Quintessons to manipulate the Transformers so they can take over Cybertron again. Stupid Optimus Primal spent the whole stupid cartoon dancing to the bad guys' tune! What a moron!

Cryotek also reveals that his alliance with the Quintessons is merely one of convenience, for "while they play about with their disingenuous 'Oracle' and attempt to manipulate Vector Sigma's lost flock, I have taken my first triumphant step... ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■"

You should open your mouth a little wider when you speak.

I would say that Betrayal is a betrayal, but the preceding issue wasn't much better. Nevertheless, this was still really, really bad. I don't like being overly negative, but there was nothing good about it. It was just terrible.