Megatron Origin issue 2

« The Transformers: Megatron Origin #2 »
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Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	July 25, 2007
Cover date	July 2007
Written by	Eric Holmes
Art by	Alex Milne (pages 1-11, 20-22) and Marcelo Matere (pages 12-19)
Colors by	Josh Perez
Letters by	Chris Mowry and Robbie Robbins
Edits by	Chris Ryall
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	4 million BCE

The former miner decides to kill other guys for the hell of it.

Synopsis

Since returning to Cybertron, Megatron and his motley group of rebellious miners have made new lives for themselves as gladiators, competing in the illegal pit fights that take place in the Forge, deep in the bowels of crime-ridden Kaon. In his very first match, Megatron finds himself up against a particularly durable foe, who shrugs off Megatron's initial attempts to impale him. He has the upper hand until Megatron uses his alternate mode as a weapon, harnessing its weight and mass to crush his opponent and run him over. As the other gladiator lies helpless on the floor, Megatron seems ready to end the fight, much to the confusion of the audience watching... until Clench, the ringmaster of these games, orders Megatron to finish the fight by killing him. Though briefly haunted by his memory of taking his first life back on Mining Outpost C-12, Megatron grabs the other gladiator's spear and uses it to fatally stab him, basking in the adulation of the crowd.

Meanwhile, Senator Ratbat dismisses the concerns of his meager assistant to attend to more important matters. A thoroughly corrupt member of the Cybertronian Senate, Ratbat lives on the upper echelons of society, and uses his wealth and connections to easily manipulate planetary events for his personal gain. During his latest session, however, Ratbat is intrigued by a report on the illegal gladiator games sweeping Cybertron, and sends his servant to investigate...

As the days pass, Megatron swiftly rises through the ranks of the bloodsports and eventually finds himself fighting alongside Clench. In one such match, Clench's team is up against the wall, giving Megatron the perfect opportunity to take advantage of Clench's momentary distraction to fatally stab the gladiatorial leader and take over.

The coup doesn't go unnoticed by Cybertronian law enforcement, who are increasingly worried about the rise of these illegal fights, the increasing prominence of Megatron's team, and their inability to find the arenas where these illicit activities take place. At Kaon's Security Services Headquarters, Prowl shows footage of the battle to his team, who are eager to put a stop to the unlawful violence—a sentiment shared by Sentinel Prime, who arrives and announces his plan to nail the gladiators in a wide-ranging police operation: a plan that will require the assistance of every Autobot officer in Kaon.

Eighteen cycles later, Cybertronian Security officers Bumper and Fastback stake out a location suspected to be the grounds for the next game. Bored with the work, their patience is rewarded when the Constructicons arrive: the gladiators aren't shipping parts to set up their mobile arenas, they're building them on-site... using parts obtained from hapless vagrants like Wheezel, who finds himself thrown into a smelting pool, his metal melted down to become the rivets and plates required to refit the abandoned venue into a suitable arena. No sooner have they finished then Soundwave turns up—a new convert to the cause who, on the behalf of his employer, offers the recently arrived Megatron an array of black market weaponry, provided that Megatron uses them as he "sees fit."

The two Autobots witness this exchange, but aren't so lucky when Megatron realizes that he's being eavesdropped on. Though the Autobots try to call for backup, they're immediately ambushed and incapacitated by Soundwave's partners: Ravage, Laserbeak, and Buzzsaw.

Bumper awakens to see Megatron stomping Fastback flat, before the gladiatorial leader turns his attention to Bumper. Bumper refuses to give in to Megatron's interrogation, and so Soundwave deploys Laserbeak—a "specialist"—to pry the necessary data from Bumper's mind. Realizing that they've been compromised, Megatron realizes that he'll have to scuttle the arena. Pleased with Soundwave's services, however, he agrees to do business with Soundwave's master... and then ties up the last loose end by crushing Bumper to death.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Finish Him!"

—Clench

"'Til all are one!"

—Spectators at the execution of Cy-Kill

Notes

Continuity notes

• The arena bouts are key to this series and Megatron's path: Holmes' plan is that in exposure to violence, Megatron "finds out that he likes it and that he can make a good living through exploiting it."^[1]
• Throughout the issue, Megatron wears an emblem around his neck that resembles what might become the Decepticon insignia. As with many things in this miniseries, this has become subject to the whims of later authors: the "Chaos Theory" duology suggests that Megatron had already designed a Decepticon insignia even before leaving Cybertron.
• In James Roberts's stories:
  • Megatron is a famous political activist and not just some random guy. That means three things:
    • Ratbat would know who Megatron is when he decides to arm and fund him on the quiet. Before it wasn't clear if he wanted to profit off the gladiatorial matches or profit off instability, but these retcons mean it's definitely the latter.
    • Sentinel Prime and the Security Services would know who he is. When Sentinel takes control not long after Megatron becomes leader and talks about crushing "cult[s]" and saying "that one will hang", it's no longer the bloodsports themselves that concern him!
    • The one gladiator who just thinks he's a "newbie" is one dumb son.
  • Megatron's lost friend Terminus had advised him that violence may be necessary to achieve his political goals and that he needed to make himself a figurehead. Instead of accidentally becoming a leader, Megatron can now be read as deliberately becoming one and making himself an army.
  • Sunstreaker is shown to be a law enforcer in "The Chaos of Warm Things". And yet there he is in the stands, watching the very matches (and fighting in them in #3) that his bosses and co-workers are trying to stop!
  • Whirl is a long-time cop and basically forced to work for the Senate and Sentinel. He's not in the Security Service scenes by choice!
  • Sentinel's plans for dealing with the nascent Decepticons were being reined in by Prowl, who kept reminding Sentinel of collateral damage. The tyrant would decide it was thus Prowl's fault he lost, rather than his own.

Transformers references

• The use of gladiatorial combat as the arena where Megatron first honed his fighting skills is an idea that first saw use in one of they key texts of Transformers lore, State Games from the Transformers Annual 1986. It would later be picked up by Dreamwave Generation One continuity. As this miniseries was originally slated to be released in that continuity—which, through sheer coincidence, also depicted a young Megatron battling a Cy-Kill lookalike in the gladiator pits—this might not come as a surprise. These stories would go on to shape the backstories of other versions of Megatron.
• The weapons which Soundwave offers to Megatron include the usual energon flail, a Seeker's null-ray, and Shockwave's blaster hand.

Real-life references

• Megatron's first opponent is pretty obviously based on Cy-Kill, leader of the villainous Renegades and the primary antagonist of the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon. This iteration of the character sports some shoulder decals that seem evocative of kill markings.
• "Finish him!" roars Clench, which seems like a deliberate nod to the famous catchphrase of the Mortal Kombat series of video games.

Errors

• Among the crowd of enthralled fans thirsty for blood is Monstructor. While this does seem like his kind of scene, Spotlight: Optimus Prime would detail an entirely different origin story that would render his cameo here impossible to reconcile.
• During the montage on page 9, as time passes, Megatron is rebuilt to some degree, notably sporting new, squarer arms. On Marcelo Matere's pages 12-19, however, Megatron is drawn with his previous design, Matere evidently having not been supplied with updated reference material.
• When Megatron first enters the Constructicons' latest arena, he's not wearing his Decepticon necklace, but when he interrogates Bumper and Fastback not long afterwards, he's wearing it.

Other trivia

AND I'M PRETTY

• In a moment perhaps best forgotten, Megatron takes off his buckethead helmet to unfurl elaborate decorative panels on his head, in a scene mimicking modern "historical epic" type movies where the hero takes off his helmet to flick his hair around like it's a shampoo commercial.
• Throughout this miniseries, artist Alex Milne included several female Transformers in the background of various scenes. For most of the IDW continuity's run, this was considered to be something of an error: Spotlight: Arcee would go on to state that Cybertronians were an agendered species; even after later stories re-introduced female Transformers as inhabitants of various lost colony worlds, the issue remained thorny until 2017, when Lost Light issue #13 rectified these cameos with a simple off-handed conversation. For more information, see our article on female Transformers.
• Clench and Frenzy mention the departed Betabear. Since he was in a combat arena for robots, we can assume Betabear is a godless killing machine.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Megatron in arena, by Alex Milne (pencils) and Josh Perez (colors)
• Cover B: Megatron roars over over a dead Cy-Kill, by Marcelo Matere (pencils) and Andrew Elder (colors)
• Cover RI-A: Uncolored cover A

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  lol go-bots suck amirite?

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• Megatron Origin #3
• Movie Prequel
• Transformers movie comic adaptation
• CGC: Certified Guaranty Company
• Transformers posters
• Manga-sized collections of Stormbringer and Beast Wars: The Gathering
• IDW trade paperbacks (Infiltration, Stormbringer, The Gathering, Hearts of Steel, Transformers: Generation 1 vol. 2: War and Peace, Generations)
• Greatest Battles of Optimus Prime and Megatron
• The Transformers: Cover Gallery Volume 2
• Star Trek: Year Four
• Devastation (back cover)

Reprints

Other than reprints of the entire series

• N/A

References