Pod Part 1

« Transformers: Beast Wars #7 »
"Pod Part 1"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	August 25, 2021
Cover date	August 2021
Written by	Erik Burnham
Art by	Winston Chan
Colors by	Sidvenblu
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Jazmine Joyner and Riley Farmer
Continuity	Transformers: Beast Wars

A crashed stasis pod releases a dangerous new Cybertronian with the potential to tip the Beast Wars in favor of the Predacons.

Synopsis

In the Axalon's gymnasium, Optimus Primal spars with Dinobot as the ex-Predacon recovers from the grievous injuries he suffered during their last encounter with the Predacons. As they spar, Optimus asks if his new ally has integrated with the other Maximals, but Dinobot admits that he's still keeping his social interactions to a minimum—although the ever-suspicious Rattrap has already taken a dislike to him. Although Primal does his best to rouse Dinobot's warrior spirit, with the pair transforming into their respective beast modes to continue their duel, Dinobot's wounded body ultimately betrays him and he concedes defeat. Primal congratulates him on a good fight as they return to the restoration chamber, but Dinobot growls that he doesn't need Primal's concern. Optimus retorts that he'll get it anyways; after their last battle, they've altered the ship's shields to recognize Dinobot's spark signature. As long as they stay in their ship, they won't have to worry about the Predacons—but Dinobot warns Primal that Megatron and his forces fight dirty, and will surely find another loophole to exploit.

Meanwhile, inside the Darksyde, Megatron has taken advantage of the momentary lull to refocus on the mysterious Golden Disk. The Predacon leader is briefly elated when he successfully decrypts one of the messages, but is confused when he sees an image of himself on the computer screen! Megatron hears only a brief fragment of the message before the file abruptly deletes itself; when he tries to retrieve it, however, the Darksyde's computer announces that the file has been irretrievably corrupted. Outisde his quarters, Terrorsaur, Waspinator, Skold, and Scorponok overhear Megatron's scream of frustration. Terrorsaur promptly takes it as a sign that Megatron's losing his mind and won't be fit to lead for much longer, but Scorponok promptly accuses him of treachery. Despite Terrorsaur's protests that they should be doing more than huddling in their ship, Scorponok reminds him that the Maximals are still hunkered behind their impenetrable shield—they won't hit first, and their hesitance will give the Predacons time to refocus on their original goal of gathering energon and conquering Cybertron. Skold timidly asks if she can come too, but Scorponok brushes her off by ordering her to guard the base should the Maximals attack... when Skold points out that he just told them that the Maximals wouldn't attack, Terrorsaur bluntly tells her that she's too slow—in every sense of the phrase—to keep up before he and Waspinator take off. As they head towards one of the floating islands, Terrorsaur reminds Waspinator that Skold's stronger than any of them, and to prevent her from putting herself in charge of the Predacons, they all need to remind her of her place.

Far above the planet, a lone stasis pod receives a transmission that attempts to upload a shell program into its system—as its orbit decays, however, the protoform within is only partially affected, and when the pod makes planetfall near a riverbank, the newborn Blackarachnia emerges confused and disoriented. With no one to welcome her into the world, and no one to rely on except her onboard computer, Blackarachnia takes its suggestion to finish downloading and installing the new program her stasis pod received in orbit. While her systems adjust, Blackarachnia sets off to explore this unfamiliar world; as she fords the river, however, she's promptly beset and dragged under the surface by a vicious crocodile-like creature and pinned to the riverbed! Despite the animal's best attempts to turn her into a meal, however, Blackarachnia successfully evades the creature's grip and lethally disposes of the creature; as she emerges from the water in her new beast mode, her systems pick up a nearby Cybertronian signal...

Aboard the Axalon, Dinobot makes another attempt to socialize with the other Maximals over a friendly game of cards. As they discuss the personalities of the Predacons, Rhinox is distraught by Dinobot's blunt opinions on his former allies; though he'd hoped to find some kind of peaceful resolution, Nyx argues that terrorists are terrorists. The debate means that they don't see Blackarachnia scuttling towards their ship—as the defense system doesn't recognize her spark, she can walk right through the shield and into the ship. Initially, she thinks it's abandoned... but as her Predacon programming finally comes online and her new loyalties assert themselves, Blackarachnia realizes that she's been handed a golden opportunity to cause some real damage.

As she sneaks past by the other Maximals, Cheetor overhears her; though Nyx and Rhinox don't hear anything, Cheetor abandons the game and goes off to investigate. As he makes his way through the ship's empty corridors, Blackarachnia ambushes Cheetor! Cheetor dodges her vicious strikes, and tries to tell her that she's probably just confused due to environmental factors garbling her primary programming—until Blackarachnia paralyzes him with a blast of cyber venom! As Optimus tries to contact Cheetor, the Maximal lies helpless on the ground, powerless to stop Blackarachnia from making her next move...

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Skold can put her fist through solid duranium, yeah, so the last thing we want is for her to have any confidence... she might decide she's strong enough to be in charge. I can't let that happen. For the good of the cause, naturally."
"Nnnaturally. But what if you puzzzsh her too far...?"
"At this point, she'd probably end up cowering in a corner. Big deal."

—Terrorsaur and Waspinator on Skold

"Skold is powerful but insecure... Terrorsaur is a petty bully with delusions of glory he can never hope to achieve. Waspinator isn't very bright, though I could never tell if it was an act or not... and Tarantulas, well. His reputation should precede him, even among the Maximal ranks."
"Yeah, I heard he's a real backstabber. What, too soon?"

—Dinobot and Rattrap

"I'm still going to check. I'll be back."
"Well, if he's gonna be like that... huh. Remind me to thank the kid for being paranoid. That's the best hand I've seen all night."

—Cheetor and Rattrap

Notes

Continuity notes

• Tarantulas previously discovered the stasis pods in orbit in issue #6. He attempted to land the stasis pods and reprogram the protoforms within into Predacons before Rattrap threw him out of the ship. That issue left it ambiguous as to whether his attempts had actually succeeded, but this issue reveals that he's managed to turn at least one unborn Transformer to his side.
• Shortly after landing, Blackarachnia has a close encounter with another native organism. Much like the quasi-feline creature which attacked Nyx in issue #4, it resembles an Earth crocodile or alligator at first glance, but its webbed, external "ears" don't match up with any terrestrial crocodilian, living or extinct, and it appears to bleed purple when she kills it.
• As Dinobot runs through the roster of Predacons aboard the Darksyde, he notes that even the Maximals should be aware of Tarantulas's notorious reputation. They certainly are—when she was captured by the Predacons in issue #3, Nyx immediately recognized Tarantulas as a "butcher". Rattrap cracks a bad-taste joke about his reputation for "backstabbing", which was, of course, how he nearly took out Dinobot in the previous issue.
• Rhinox's interest in peaceful negotiation and him seeing the Predacons differently to the rest started in "Savage Landing Part 1", where he thought they should talk to "the separatists" first", and "Savage Landing Part 4" where he reminds Cheetor there's not anything inherently suspicious about Maximals talking to Predacons.

Transformers references

• Megatron was revealed to have seen a secret message on the Golden Disk from another Megatron in "The Agenda (Part 2)", which told him to use transwarp and that we saw in distorted, fragmented form.
• Terrorsaur and Waspinator are shown harvesting energon from one of the many floating islands on the planet. This might be a reference to the Beast Wars episode "Power Surge", which centered around Terrorsaur exploiting a large energon deposit on a floating island.
• It wasn't clear at the time what Tarantulas was doing in issue #6, but it seems that he's successfully uploaded a shell program into at least one of the orbiting stasis pods. Shell programs played a pretty major role in the first season of the original Beast Wars cartoon—they were the method by which the Predacons turned Maximal protoforms into new Predacons, including both Inferno and Blackarachnia herself.
• Blackarachnia blasts Cheetor with what appears to be paralytic cyber venom, which was one of her trademark weapons in the Beast Wars cartoon.

Real-world references

• Primal mixes his discussions with sparring as it "makes things less boring", a sneaky nod by Burnham to the need to make a 'talking heads' scene visually interesting in comics.
• Terrorsaur notes that Skold is strong enough to damage solid duranium, a fictional metal from Star Trek.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: A new fighter appears, by Fico Ossio and Luis Antonio Delgado
• Cover B: Megatron and the Golden Disk, by Ed Pirrie
• Cover RI: Blackarachnia menaces our heroes, by Gavin Guidry and Leonardo Ito

Advertisements

• Transformers: King Grimlock

Reprints

• The Transformers: Beast Wars Volume 2 (June 29, 2022) ISBN 1684059038 / ISBN 978-1684059034
  • Collects Beast Wars issues #7–12.
  • Bonus material includes alternate covers, and an one-page sketch by Burcham.

• 

  Beast Wars, Vol 2; cover art by John Yurcaba

External links

Preview