Storm Horizon Part 1

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The Ultra Magnus your Ultra Magnus wishes he could be.
"Storm Horizon Part 1"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	September 16, 2020
Cover date	September 2020
Written by	Brandon Easton
Art by	Andrew Griffith
Colors by	Josh Burcham
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Tom Waltz, and Riley Farmer
Continuity	2019 IDW continuity

When Alpha Trion goes missing, there's only one 'bot to turn to—but General Ultra Magnus discovers he's not the only Transformer interested in finding the wise sage...

Synopsis

Ultra Magnus once served in the War of the Threefold Spark, a stalwart general who led from the front, singlehandedly held the line against Exarchon's hordes with heavy weapons and two-fisted derring-do, and graciously refused any official recognition of his many wartime accomplishments... but that was all long ago. These days, Ultra Magnus captains the starship Fist of Iacon and helps keep the peace out in deep space, but as Magnus's beleaguered lieutenant Chromedome has learned, megacycles of peace haven't slaked Magnus's thirst for adventure. After cleaving his way through a horde of deadly silicon leeches on a nearby asteroid, Magnus receives a message from Chromedome—they've received word from Cybertron, an encrypted broadcast marked for Magnus's eyes only.

Magnus takes the message in his private quarters, but the news from Jazz is not good: Alpha Trion has vanished. Between a damaged spacebridge network and a burgeoning planetside crisis, Jazz has turned to Magnus for an off-the-books search and rescue mission, knowing that Magnus will do anything for Trion. Indeed, Jazz's words cause Magnus to remember his first encounter with the sage on the battlefield... even if Trion's compassion for all beings initially baffled the commander. On the ship's bridge, Magnus and Chromedome decode and review the map Jazz sent that contains Trion's last known location, but Chromedome suspects something's amiss and says as much, pointing that Trion's emergency subspace beacon failed to activate when his ship vanished. That leaves three options: someone either destroyed Trion's vessel, deliberately obscured the trail, or Trion himself didn't want to be found. Either way, Trion vanished somewhere in the remote Decimus Sector, a lawless region of fringe colonies and splice-thieves, unscrupulous Cybertronians who harvest brain modules and transformation cogs to sell on the galactic black market. Undaunted, Magnus orders Chromedome to chart a course to the Decimus Sector...

The Fist of Iacon arrives at Trion's last known location, but they're not the first on the scene. The presence of an alien battleship leads Magnus to suspect that somebody must have anticipated their arrival in this faraway quadrant; when Chromedome attempts to hail the vessel, he gets no response other than a devastating energy barrage! Magnus promptly orders his crew to return fire, but to ensure survivors; the much larger Cybertronian cruiser promptly overwhelms its foe and sends it crashing to the barren red world below, a backwater planet that the ship's database identifies as Kworia. Ultra Magnus, Chromedome, and a small survey team dispatch a shuttle to the crash site, intending to ambush the crew when they bail from the wreck; dismissing the native Kworians as no threat to their mission. As the group make their way through the canyons, however, Chromedome detects something more interesting: signs of an energon based tool. The signal leads him to a nearby rock face, where Chromedome finds a hidden series of engraved glyphs. Supposedly, this message was left by a traveller in search of relics from the Age of Expansion... but both Chromedome and Magnus suspect a trap, a lure intended to bait would-be treasure hunters to their doom. To Magnus, everything about this setup seems a little too convenient; Chromedome suggests he and his men return to the Iacon to scan the region and find out what's really going on here, while Magnus will stay behind to search for the missing crew of the downed battlecruiser.

As the sun sets, Ultra Magnus picks his way through the rocky landscape and discovers a set of footprints that don't belong to the native Kworians... a footprint trail that leads to a pile of scavenged Cybertronian bodyparts; when Magnus attempts to contact Chromedome to warn him of this new development, he discovers he can't raise his lieutenant. When he crests the next ridge, he discovers why—the valley below is a bustling spaceport, the center of the splice-thief operation! Aboard the Fist of Iacon, Chromedome and Erector puzzle over the abrupt disappearance of Magnus's energy signature. As Erector attempts to triangulate Alpha Trion's location from his last known trajectory, Chromedome spies multiple Cybertronian energy signatures on their radar, approaching fast! A massive explosion rocks the ship, and as a nearby access port slides open, shadowed figures attack!

Unseen by the splice-thieves, Magnus uses a side vent to gain access to their main building, and lands amidst a ghoulish graveyard of Cybertronian parts and one still living victim, who begs Magnus to put him out of his misery. Magnus, unable to bring himself to kill an innocent, hesitates... only for Spinister to introduce himself and his crew by blasting the dying Transformer in the head! Magnus promptly recognizes Spinister as one of the many 'bots exiled from Cybertron and announces that he's bringing down his entire operation; the moment he kills one of his henchmen, however, Spinister warns him not to get hasty—if Magnus harms Spinister, then his men will make spare parts of their new hostages. Spinister has a business proposition for the old soldier: he's after ancient Cybertronian artifacts, and his own calculations have determined that Trion's somewhere in the Black Sphere, a system on the horizon of an ancient, supermassive black hole, and Spinister lacks the resources and manpower to commit to such a quest. Magnus initially refuses... and that's when Spinister reveals his grisly collateral—the crew of the Fist of Iacon, trussed and bound! Spinister gloats that Magnus's glory days are behind him, that the peaceful Cybertron he fought for is dying as they speak... and that he has no other choice but to serve him. Chromedome implores Magnus not to help the villains, that he'd rather die then see his leader serve a splice-thief, but Magnus has his own code of honor, and that code means he'll do anything to bring his men safely home. Gritting his teeth, Ultra Magnus agrees to Spinister's terms...

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.)

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Nix the 'General' nonsense. True soldiers don't collect badges. There's no chain of command in a graveyard."

—Ultra Magnus

"A long-range weapon is the arsenal of a coward. We're meant to look our enemies in the eyes. Or what passes for eyes!"

—Ultra Magnus versus the silicon leeches

"The rest of you, return to the Iacon with him. I'll continue to explore the area."
"What if you encounter the crew of the downed battlecruiser?"
"You should ask them what will happen when they encounter me."

—Ultra Magnus and Chromedome.

"Do you have any idea of what's happening back home? Any idea what's about to occur? The Cybertron you cradle in your memories like a delicate crystal is long gone. You're in love with the ghost of a dead world."

—Spinister

Notes

Continuity notes

• General Ultra Magnus served in the War of the Threefold Spark, but we already knew this from a conversation between Orion Pax and Sentinel Prime in Transformers #19, which foreshadowed this arc of Galaxies. That issue established the existence of four "Great Generals" who spearheaded the war effort against Exarchon: Ultra Magnus, Dai Atlas, Strika, and Pyra Magna.
• The flashback portion of this issue is set 2.2 megacycles before the present day; this chronology lines up with Transformers #6, which showed postwar cleanup efforts taking place about two megacycles ago.
• Megatron appears as a soldier in the war, in keeping with his flashback in Transformers #15.
• The enemies Magnus faces off against include several airborne warriors who wear the "Seeker" body, at least one "Conehead", and many, many identical 'bots with visors and faceplates. We can safely assume that these last soldiers are mass-produced clones, but it's not yet clear how the Seekers fit in—Transformers #15 showed Skywarp fighting on Exarchon's side in the war, for instance, but it's not yet clear if 'bots like Starscream or the Rainmakers began life as Exarchon's clones.
• Jazz refers to a troubled political situation on Cybertron, in what's obviously a reference to the dire events playing out over in the ongoing's "Rise of the Decepticons" arc. He also discusses damaged spacebridge communication arrays, which might have something to do with either the fall of the Tether in Transformers #18 or Heretech's attack on the planet in the previous Galaxies issue.
• The message Chromedome finds on the canyon wall mentions lost artifacts from the Age of Expansion—the Constructicons unearthed one such artifact, the Enigma of Combination, in issue #1, while Termagax later complained that Sentinel Prime's government wasn't interested in finding them in Transformers #7.
• Magnus reveals that Spinister was "exiled" after the war. While the populace of Cybertron is evidently unaware of this banishment, we saw other victims of Nominus Prime's strict policies in the first arc of Galaxies, including the Constructicons and Insecticons. Of course, his flagrantly illegal activities in this issue suggests that Nominus Prime might have been right on the money when he gave Spinister the boot?

Transformers references

• The war flashback features Ultra Magnus using a body based off the Magnus Armor from More than Meets the Eye, and although this gung-ho, action hero incarnation of the character is a far cry from that comic's stern, officious bureaucrat, he does seem to share his predecessor's inability to tell jokes. By the present day, however, he's upgraded to a frame based on his War for Cybertron toy.
• Megatron expresses his relief that Magnus "still functions" in reference to the Decepticon leader's well-trodden bit of dialogue from The Transformers: The Movie.
• In addition to the more-famous Chromedome—drawn to resemble his Titans Return toy—Magnus's crew includes some Micromasters, including Erector, Powertrain, and the obscure Operation Combination character Discharge.
• The comic uses both "breems" and "astroseconds" as units of time; the former hails from Marvel's US comics, the latter from the The Transformers episode "Transport to Oblivion".

Real-life references

• The alien battleship the Fist of Iacon shoots down is drawn to resemble a Mon Calamari star cruiser from Star Wars.

Errors

• In the flashback, Megatron wields his traditional fusion cannon—a weapon that he not only has yet to obtain during the current timeframe of the Transformers ongoing, but also one that he didn't have in the flashback to his tour of duty in Transformers #15.

Other trivia

• Originally solicited for June 17, this issue was pushed back to September 9 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and was then delayed for another week before releasing digitally on the 16th, with the print release pushed back to September 30.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Ultra Magnus and Soundblaster, by Andrew Griffith
• Cover B: Ultra Magnus and Alpha Trion, by Thomas Deer
• Retailer incentive cover: Charge! by Jack Lawrence

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• Transformers Volume 3: All Fall Down (February 24, 2021) ISBN 1684057396 / ISBN 978-1684057399
  • Collects Transformers (2019) issues #19–24 and Galaxies issues #7–12.
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