The Big Broadcast of 2006 (issue)

« The Transformers (US) #43 » « The Transformers (UK) #180–181 »
I don't care if this isn't really happening! It's still gonna feel good to knock that goofy look off your face!
"The Big Broadcast of 2006"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	April 1988 (UK version: 20th & 27th August 1988)
Cover date	August 1988 (UK version: 27th August and 3rd September 1988)
Adaptation	Ralph Macchio
Script	Simon Furman (UK framing sequence)
Pencils	Alan Kupperberg, Lee Sullivan (UK framing sequence)
Inks	Dave Elliott
Colors	Nel Yomtov, Steve White (UK framing sequence)
Letters	Kurt Hathaway, GLIB (UK framing sequence)
Editor	Don Daley
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity (UK version) Alternate future (US version)

Tales from a hopefully-forgotten future, or Wreck-Gar's story-time torture theatre!

Synopsis

On a distant planet, Wreck-Gar is being tortured for information about a mysterious but valuable canister. He finally gives in to the pain, and begins to "squeal"...

The Quintessons disgorge the Sharkticons on the planet of Junk to recover a lost artifact. When Wreck-Gar learns of their presence, he leads his fellow Junkions in driving off the Sharkticons. Realizing that the Junkions' power and defensive nature will make recovering their canister by force too difficult, the Quintessons arrange for a more passive approach.

The next day, Wreck-Gar and his people awaken to find a massive new projection TV and satellite dish waiting for them, transmitting the Universal Broadcasting Network. Instilling the programming with hypnotic harmonics, the Quintessons begin broadcasting subliminal xenophobic messages to the Junkions, convincing them that "all other lifeforms are their enemies!"

As word of the Junkions' transfixation spreads, space scouts Sky Lynx and Astrotrain bring word of it to their respective Autobot and Decepticon camps. Rodimus Prime instructs the Aerialbots to commit further surveillance, but Galvatron couldn't be any less interested.

On Junk, the second hypnotic signal begins transmitting, influencing the Junkions to adopt the principles of neatness and organization. In effect, the Quintessons are making the Junkions search for their canister, and leave it neatly labeled and categorized somewhere for them to retrieve.

As the Aerialbots begin their reconnaissance run, though, they get caught in a crossfire between the now-xenophobic Junkions and the hiding Quintessons. Fireflight uses his photon displacer gun to disrupt the Quintesson ship so that they can't track the Aerialbots anymore. The Autobots manage to regroup and form Superion, attacking the Quintesson ship head-on. His attack on the ship's force field overloads their systems, causing a feedback explosion which knocks Superion for a loop, but also destroys the Quintessons' weapons. They beat a hasty retreat while Superion is rescued by Sky Lynx.

Back on Junk, though, another aspect of the Quintessons' system damage becomes evident, as the Junkions are now being fed the message of "caring and sharing". In following that directive, Wreck-Gar realigns the satellite dish to broadcast the Quintessons' subliminal message out into the universe. This puts the entire universe on the edge of interstellar war, and the center of the conflict is the planet Junk, where the majority of hypnotized warmongers felt compelled to travel to.

As the Autobots and Decepticons arrive, Omega Supreme deals with the space armada while Rodimus Prime heads down to Junk and battles a hypnotized Galvatron, who was also drawn into the conflict. By freak coincidence, he happens to redirect one of Galvatron's blasts perfectly to catch a passing Quintesson ship, sending the canister it had come to retrieve hurling out through the vacuum of space.

In the meantime, Ultra Magnus and Blaster have come up with a plan to stop the hypnotic broadcasting. Omega Supreme carries Blaster high into the air, where he broadcasts a high volume musical jamming signal. His mind momentarily cleared, Galvatron wails about how TeeVee bewitched him, and destroys the projection screen and antenna.

Freed of their mind control, the Junkions join the Autobots in driving the Decepticons off of Junk. It's all over, but the Autobots still have no idea what this all was about. In the meantime, the Quintessons lament the loss of their canister.

With Wreck-Gar's story concluded, the torturer turns to his shadowy employers with pride at a job well done. Unfortunately for him, his employers are the Quintessons and they know full well that Wreck-Gar's story is full of slag. They sentence the torturer to death for his incompetence. The Junkion concludes the story with a touching "Good night children... everywhere!"

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"The fools! They made such a racket, the whole planet's been alerted! The canister is lost to us!"
"And we came so close! So close!"
"Shut up!"

—The Quintessons are jerks even to each other.

"I'll take American history for five hundred, please."
"With ketchup."

—Wreck-Gar and Junkion lady

"And this combination granny and attack-dog bot can be yours if you name that price!"

—Gameshow host offering the product of the century.

"The television! It bewitched me!"

—Galvatron says one of his best lines ever.

"Imbecile! Wreck-Gar's whole account is full of absurdities and contradictions, not to mention lies! ...You have fallen for the equivalent of a children's story! I accuse you of feeble-minded stupidity!"

—The Quintessons are not impressed with this issue.

Notes

• US #43 was written as a fill-in issue, an adaptation of a cartoon script from Season 3. As such, the events of The Transformers: The Movie are part of the story's intended backstory. When it was published, there was still a chance the comic would take a path similar enough to the movie that the issue would blend right into the continuity. This didn't happen so the issue doesn't work at all with the backstory intended by the writers and its place in the Marvel Comics continuity is left ambiguous. In 2015, Vector Prime declared that the issue existed in a fragmented universal stream, Primax 488.0 Gamma, while existing as a fictional work in Primax 986.13 Gamma. Ask Vector Prime
• This issue marks the only appearance of several characters in the US comic: Ultra Magnus, the Junkions, the Quintessons, and the Sharkticons.
• The UK-only framing sequence picks up the tale of the future Autobots, last seen in "The Legacy of Unicron!".
• The story's spelling of "Chaar" (two As, one R) matches the spelling that would be found years later in internal Sunbow Productions documents, such as the dialogue scripts. This means that the planet's official spelling has been known since 1988... yet "Charr" still persists in the fandom to this day. Oh well.
• The Sharkticons rather hilariously communicate with verbalizations such as "WRONK! WRONK!" and "SNART! SNART!" and "BNORT!"
• The narrative box refers to Omega Supreme as an "it".
• The text mentions the evolution of mechanical life alongside organic life. This is given as the origin of the Quintessons, and possibly the Sharkticons and Junkions.
• In the US version of the story, the Quintessons once ruled Cybertron. They were driven off centuries ago.

Errors

• On page 13, panel 4, Wreck-Gar is misnamed as Junk-Gar.
• Superion is depicted as barely taller than Rodimus and Ultra Magnus on one page.
• The two Transformers riding inside Omega Supreme look like unrecognizable generics, but they are apparently Ultra Magnus and Rodimus Prime.
• In one panel, Omega Supreme is depicted as large enough for Ultra Magnus and Rodimus Prime to be comfortably riding inside. On the next page, he's barely taller than Galvatron.
• Galvatron's first line on page 17 is directed toward Omega Supreme.
• Three panels later, Cyclonus is drawn in place of Galvatron.
• Scourge is referred to as "Sweeps".
• On page 18, Galvatron buries Rodimus in a rock slide. On 19, their battle continues. On 20, Rodimus finally breaks free of the rocks holding him down. Uh...?

Real world references

The US adaptation cuts some of the original cartoon episode's Junkion-spouted pop culture references and retains others. See "The Big Broadcast of 2006" for a complete list. Additional references include:

• "I'll take American History for five hundred, please"—Wreck-Gar spouts a random line in the style of the game show Jeopardy!
• The narrative box tells us that the giant TV announces its presence by playing Thus Spake Zarathustra, famous among other things as the main theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• As they approach the box, Wreck-Gar says "Trust me... I know what I'm doing"—the catchphrase of the cop parody show Sledge Hammer!
• The starship Enterprise can be seen among the ships departing Junkion on the Quintessons' monitor screen.

The UK framing story adds more:

• When Wreck-Gar first acquiesces to the torturer, he exclaims, "I'll squeal, Mister Regan," a reference to the lead character in the classic British police drama, The Sweeney.
• Wreck-Gar then opens his story by asking, "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...", the famous opening quote from the British radio programme, Listen with Mother.
• After dropping a direct reference to Lost in Space, Wreck-Gar also says "Same time, same channel," a phrase made most famous by the 1960s Batman television series.
• Wreck-Gar's closing line, "Good night children... everywhere!", was the catchphrase sign-off line spoken by the much-loved Derek McCulloch at the end of every episode of the kids' radio show Children's Hour, broadcast in the UK from 1922 to 1964. The phrase became so ingrained on the British national consciousness that in 1940 it was used as a song title by singer Dame Vera Lynn, and also as the title of an award-winning 1997 play. The phrase was also memorably quoted in the surreal 1960s British TV series The Prisoner (specifically, the episode "The Girl Who Was Death") - as with the aforementioned Children's Hour radio show (and also Wreck-Gar in this story), it was used to signify that a reader had finished recounting an imaginary tale.
• Also from The Prisoner, one of that's show's trademark icons, the image of a Penny Farthing bicycle, is silhouetted across Wreck-Gar's face in the final panel.

Changes from the episode

Quite a few changes were made to the episode for its adaptation. Some were clearly to compress the story into 22 pages; others make less sense.

• The comic begins with the Sharkticon landing and subsequent battle. In the cartoon, this doesn't happen till after the Quintessons have analyzed the Junkions' culture and concluded that they "must attack by more subtle means". Considering that the very next scene shows a pack of freakin' SHARKTICONS landing on Junkion (about as unsubtle as you can get), it seems that the comic might feature the original, intended order of these scenes.
• In comic and cartoon, Wreck-Gar opens his attack on the Sharkticons with a hearty "Live from New York, it's..." In the cartoon, his fellow Junkions respond with "Your Hit Parade!" In the comic, this is changed to "No problem!", which was a catchphrase of the title character of the TV series ALF. ALF also had a Marvel comic book series at the time, originally published under the Star Comics imprint.
• During the following battle, one of the Junkions rather randomly says "Where's my lunchbox?!"
• Instead of announcing that they "will return to the air at 6 A.M.", "Nancy" randomly says "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness," a reference to The Christophers, a religious order which has a long-running television series.
• The Quintessons have various added lines during this whole segment.
• Subsequently, an entire scene not present in the cartoon shows the Quintessons setting up their hypnotic subliminal feed, and the Junkions discovering a giant projection TV that has appeared on their planet. The Junkions are hypnotized while watching the action movie Crambo.
• Sky Lynx's run-in with Astrotrain over Junkion is omitted entirely; he just reports back to Rodimus.
• Rodimus and Magnus's conversation about leadership is omitted, leaving only Magnus's perfunctory line about "the new hyper generator".
• Some minor dialog changes during Sky Lynx and Astrotrain's reports to their respective leaders.
• The Junkions' initial reaction the Aerialbots' arrival ("Warning, Will Robinson!") is omitted from the comic.
• Unlike the cartoon, Silverbolt actually manages to command the team to combine before doing so. The comic, however, hilariously misparses a script instruction to have only Air Raid and Silverbolt combined. In the cartoon, they're both in Superion mode, so it's just Superion with only one leg. In the comic, however, they're just kind of stuck together in jet mode (referred to as "semi-Superion mode".)
• The comic includes a subsequent scene with Fireflight using his photon displacer gun to disrupt local light rays, buying the Aerialbots time to combine. This causes them to disappear from the Junkions' sight as well—explaining Wreck-Gar's otherwise-random line of "Jeepers, Mr. Kent! Where'd they go?"
• The entire battle sequence of Cyclonus and the Sweeps attacking Junkion is omitted from the comic.
• The "combination granny and attack-dog-bot" line is still present—but it's drawn coming from an aerobics class instead of a game show.
• Superion's return to Cybertron is compressed down to a single panel and two lines of dialog.
• The Quintessons' lines about selling arms to the warring factions is omitted from the comic.
• Cyclonus's second encounter with Galvatron is completely omitted; instead he and Scourge are surprised to see Galvatron leaving Chaar, and follow him.
• The cat-like inhabitants of Delta Pavonis IV get hypnotized by watching the show "Space Ace Jack" instead of "Space-Age Jack".
• Galvatron receives the subliminal message while he "watches the broadcast in his bubbling pool" (which, by the by, doesn't actually show the broadcast.)
• The Autobots' run-in with Cyclonus and the Sweeps while en route to Junkion is omitted.
• The Quintesson's last strategy discussion ("War rages everywhere!") is omitted.
• Naturally, the meeting of Cyclonus and Galvatron in space is omitted.
• "Laser wars..." gets changed back into the original "Star Wars... nothing but Star Wars!"
• Omega finally shows up at this point; he flies around in robot mode the entire issue.
• The scene of Omega taking the shot for Rodimus is omitted.
• Rodimus is given Galvatron's line of "A scrapyard! What an appropriate place for you to meet your end." Rodimus's response of "You're the one that'll be junk" is given to... Cyclonus. Oops!
• Wreck-Gar's line of "substantial penalty for early withdrawal", originally said as the Decepticons retreat, is randomly placed in the early stages of the battle instead.
• The comic inserts a whole page of battle and comic-style banter between Galvatron and Rodimus, including Rodimus getting buried under some rubble.
• Again, as Blaster counters the hypnotics, Omega flies in robot mode, rather than rocket mode. He's carrying a giant radio-mode Blaster, rather than Magnus carrying him.

UK printing

"HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW HE WAS QUOTING A TV SHOW?! THAT'S ALL HE DOES!"

• While the UK offices were in no position to pass up on any US material being produced, issue #180 also completely conflicted with the Movie-Future they had established. To sidestep continuity problems, Simon Furman wrote a framing sequence establishing US issue #43 as an imaginary story dreamed up by Wreck-Gar, as part of a lead in to his "Space Pirates!" arc.

Issue #180

• Back-up strips: Action Force - "Launch Base" and Combat Colin

Issue #181

• Back-up strips: Action Force - "Launch Base" and Combat Colin
• In issue #181, UK writer Furman takes a not-so-subtle dig at the quality of the story via his Quintesson interrogator.

Courtesy of my...

• Fireflight transforms and fires his photon displacer gun.
• The Quintesson ship fires charged particle beams.

Covers (3)

• US issue #43 cover: Rodimus vs Galvatron by Herb Trimpe.
• UK issue #180 cover: Wreck-Gar reading the story itself by Lee Sullivan.
• UK issue #181 cover: Wreck-Gar dreaming of Rodimus and Galvatron fighting by Lee Sullivan.

• 

  US issue #43 – That's it Galvatron, hit his fist with your chin...

• 

  UK Issue #180 – If the Big Bad Wolf turns out to be a Sharkticon, we quit.

• 

  UK Issue #181 – Wreck-Gar always kicked off the bondage sessions by fantasizing first.

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US

• Capcom's Gun Smoke game - inside front cover
• Nintendo's Double Dragon - between pages 4 & 5
• Candilicious candy - between pages 5 & 6
• East Coast Comics - between pages 9 & 10
• Konami NES video games - between pages 12 & 13 (2 pages)
• Mark Jewelers rings (glossy insert)
• Rambo for Nintendo (sadly not adjacent to the comic appearance of Crambo) / Great Eastern comic book conventions - between pages 15 & 16
• Bullpen Bulletins and checklist - between pages 19 & 20
• Marvel's Super Mart - between pages 20 & 21
• Transmissions
• Marvel subscription service
• TSR Hunt for Red October board game - inside back cover
• Chips Ahoy! (back cover)

UK

????

Reprints

• Classic Transformers Volume 3 – Panels from US issues #35, #36, #42 and #44, by José Delbo, Don Perlin, Dave Hunt, Don Hudson, Ian Akin, Brian Garvey, and Nel Yomtov.
• The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4 – Starscream, by Guido Guidi.
• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 14: Space Pirates – Hot Rod and a scene of Blaster and Wheeljack strung up, by Don Figueroa, Dougie Braithwaite and Dave Harwood.

• 

  Classic Transformers Volume 3
  (IDW Publishing, 2009)

• 

  The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4
  (IDW Publishing, 2012)

• 

  The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 14: Space Pirates
  (Hachette Partworks, 2017)