Energon Is Forever

	; "You have no life! You have no job. You're barely a bee!"
	Chapter Three:; "Energon Is Forever"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	August 29, 2018
Cover date	August 2018
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Andrew Griffith
Colors by	Priscilla Tramontano
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Edits by	David Mariotte
Continuity	Movie continuity

It's time for Bumblebee, Reeve, and Lux to stop running as, with the help of a new ally, they track the Decepticons to their base of operations.

Synopsis

Missiles slam into Bumblebee from behind, knocking him off the roof and sending him crashing to the street below, but the little Autobot survives the blast and looks up at his approaching attacker: the triple-changing Decepticon Blitzwing! Blitzwing is out for revenge after being left near death following an encounter with Bumblebee a thousand years ago on Cybertron, and Bumblebee remembers him well, still blaming him for "convincing" Diabla to switch sides. Both Blitzwing and Diabla point out once more that Diabla was never an Autobot, having always been an undercover Decepticon spy... though Blitzwing suspects Diabla may be going soft when she asks him to kill Bumblebee quickly, rather than allow him to suffer. While Reeve and Lux try to evade the clutches of Dead End, Bumblebee engages Blitzwing but quickly realizes he is physically outmatched. Rather than prolong the fight, 'Bee instead shoots a gas main beneath the street, using the resultant explosion as cover to scoop up Reeve and Lux and flee into the London Underground. Unfortunately, he starts driving the wrong way down the tracks, and soon finds himself backing up at high speed to keep ahead of an oncoming train! Worse yet, Diabla catches up to them and attacks from behind, with Bumblebee unable to defend himself thanks to almost all of his vehicle-mode weaponry being front-facing! He opens fire with the one rear-facing gun he has, which seems to have no effect, so he instead transforms to robot mode, leaping out of the way of the train and leaving it to crash into the surprised Diabla.

After the trio make good their escape, Reeve makes contact with an "old friend" who may be able to help them. That evening, Bumblebee, Reeve, and Lux head for Hyde Park to rendezvous with this new ally, but when Reeve thinks he spots his friend sitting on a park bench, the figure turns out to be a disguised mannequin. Things look bad, and immediately get worse when Dead End, Runabout and Astrotrain appear and surround the heroes, declaring their intent to capture Bumblebee and bring him before their mysterious "boss." Suddenly, an electric blast strikes the Decepticons, knocking them unconscious—courtesy of Reeve's old friend, Sector Seven agent Heath Donavan! Donavan explains that he is in the country to covertly keep tabs on Bumblebee following the Autobot's assignment to P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E.; it's only his off-the-books status that has prevented the Decepticons from learning about him and eliminating him like they have so many others. As the group put some distance between themselves and the unconscious Decepticons, Donavan shows the trio film reels that Sector Seven has managed to acquire of numerous assassinations the evil robots have carried out around the globe and pinned on other nations—including that of P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E.'s own on-loan agent, Ian Byrde. Footage of Konrad Gotell's death includes the mastermind behind the plot killing Gotell with his own hands: a masked human-sized figure, seemingly confirming the heroes' suspicion that the Decepticons are in league with human co-conspirators. With the world inching closer to nuclear war thanks to the Decepticons' efforts to turn the planet's superpowers against one another, it is imperative that the team locate the villains and put a stop to their plan... and fortunately, Bumblebee knows just where they are, the seemingly "ineffectual" gun that he fired during their battle in the Underground having actually tagged Diabla with a homing device!

A few hours later, Bumblebee, Reeve, and Lux are strapped to the underside of Donavan's Lockheed stealth jet and preparing to HALO jump onto the Decepticons' secret headquarters in an abandoned castle on a peninsula. Just as they drop, Lux believes she hears the jet talk... but Reeve writes it off as her imagination. As they land outside the castle, Bumblebee takes out the lone Decepticon guard Darksteel and the trio head inside, where they find that the castle's first chamber is one huge shark tank! Bumblebee is unafraid, confident his metal body means sharks pose no danger, and begins to cross over the bridge spanning the tank... only to find that the waters hide not ordinary sharks, but Sharkticons, who are all too eager to take a bite out of the Autobot's hide! Just then, the walls of the room split and slide open, revealing the assembled forces of the Decepticons, who have been waiting for Bumblebee's arrival after discovering his tracking device. At their feet stands their master... not a human at all, but a tiny Decepticon named Malignus, who gleefully announces his intent to make humanity extinct!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Bumblebee (1) Jetfire (10)	Blitzwing (2) Diabla (3) Dead End (6) Astrotrain (7) Runabout (8) Malignus (12) Darksteel (13) Sharkticons (14)	David Reeve (4) Diana Lux (5) Heath Donavan (9) Konrad Gotell (11)

Quotes

"Horrible organic planet—explodes with the slightest touch."

—Dead End

"Never place faith in other people, Bee—they'll let you down. That's the first rule of spycraft."
"That's a terrible rule, Reeve."
"It's kept me alive this long."

—Reeve and Lux

"Where are we, anyway?"
"Looks to be Tooting Broadway."
"Good Lord, Lux. I haven't been this far south in my life."

—Reeve and Lux

"I can't believe we're waiting here for some friend of yours."
"Where would you have us meet?"
"No, I mean I can't believe you have friends."

—Lux and Reeve

Notes

Continuity notes

Now we're getting into that rich, creamy, IDW movieverse history!

Astrotrain goes unnamed in the issue, but it's hard to imagine the character is meant to be anyone else. This IDW-original character first appeared in the Foundation and Rising Storm mini-series in 2011. His being on Earth in the 1960s doesn't particularly contradict anything from those series, as he just sort of popped up out of nowhere on Earth even then.
Heath Donavan is the son of Sergeant Donavan from IDW's Sector 7 #4.
Donavan's jet is strongly hinted to be Jetfire, who we know from both the Sector 7 mini-series and Tales of the Fallen #3 was active and roaming the Earth at this point in history, having not yet entered the state of stasis he would be found in during the Revenge of the Fallen movie. See "real-life references" below for notes on his alternate mode.

Transformers references

Blitzwing's appearance in this comic sets up his role in the Bumblebee movie. While the film depicts him as a Seeker who looks so much like Starscream that everyone thought he was Starscream when he first appeared in a trailer, the comic redesigns him to evoke his Generation 1 predecessor, complete with Triple-Changing jet and tank alternate modes.
Similarly, Astrotrain has a new design with flaring shoulder-wings and a chestplate that make him look a lot more like his Generation 1 predecessor than he previously did in the movie continuity.
Also unnamed in the comic is Darksteel from the Dark of the Moon toyline, who Bumblebee whomps as the heroes arrive at the Decepticons' base.
Malignus's name originates from the Brazilian version of the Generation 1 toyline, in which it was used as the name of the toyline's evil faction of robots.

Real-life references

Continuing the theme of the series, the title of this story is another play on a James Bond movie, in this case 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, complete with a recreation of the logo from the movie's poster.
Real-life London locations and landmarks featured or mentioned in this issue include Carnaby Street, Tottenham Court Road, the Northern line of the London Underground, the Tooting Broadway tube station, including the statue of Edward VII in front of it, Belgravia, and Hyde Park.
Bumblebee notes that he can navigate London because he's scanned an "A to Zed," referring to the famous Geographers' A–Z Street Atlas series of maps. 'Bee is sure to give the second letter its proper English pronunciation!
On page 9, panel 4, a sign can be seen that reads "POLICE BOX/ALL TIMES/TRAVEL WITH COMPANIONS," an allusion to British sci-fi series Doctor Who, about an alien who travels through time in a police box and is well known for journeying with companions.
Donavan's video of the Decepticons' assassinations around the world shows French agent Pierre Chavotet being killed in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris; Chinese agent Zhōu Zhèn Fān dying in front of the Forbidden City in Beijing; and Ian Byrde meeting his end near the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.
Reeve notes that HALO jumping is "only four years old," which is accurate to the real world, where the earliest experiments in the technique were conducted by the US military in 1960.
Appearing only in alternate mode, Jetfire looks to have adopted the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird form he's best known for. In the real world, the SR-71 would not enter military service until December 1964; this story takes place in 1964, but we'd have to assume December is still a few months away, given the lack of any seasonal decorations in the high street scenes. This, then, would seem to contradict Tales of the Fallen #3, which showed that Jetfire only acquired his SR-71 form after a functional one of the jets crashed on top of him. The art is vague enough that Jetfire might actually be in the form of the SR-71's real-life predecessor, the Lockheed A-12, which would remove the contradiction... but would be a heck of a coincidence!