Shining Armor issue 1

Rom vs. Transformers: Shining Armor #1 »
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	July 19, 2017
Cover date	July 2017
Written by	John Barber and Christos Gage
Art by	Alex Milne
Colors by	Josh Perez
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	Carlos Guzman
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Late 1830s or early 1840s

Stardrive is a 'bot of two worlds, orphan from a Cybertronian colony planet raised by the Solstar Order. But when the Decepticons team up with the order's ancient enemies the Dire Wraiths, on which side of the conflict will Stardrive fall?

Synopsis

In the Gray Area, the border region of space between the areas of the galaxy governed by the Galactic Council and the Solstar Order, a Galactic Council vessel pursues a fleeing ship from a Cybertronian colony world. The Cybertronian ship is shot down by the Council and crashes on an asteroid, but the scene is witnessed by the Solstar Order's Rom the Space Knight, who demands the Council explain themselves. Uninterested in justifying their hatred of Cybertronians to the Space Knight, but nevertheless unwilling to risk conflict with the Order, the Council ship warps away when Rom is distracted by signs of life from the Cybertronian wreckage. Picking through the debris, he discovers a lone still-functional protoform, still in the process of taking shape.

At the insistence of Rom, doctors of the Solstar Order repair the protoform, which is kept fueled and healthy by energon the Order is able to synthesize based on a sample recovered from the wreckage of the ship. The protoform takes the form of a female Cybertronian and is enrolled in school, where she is taught the destructive history of her own race, and is dubbed "Stardrive" by her classmates for her car alternate mode. One day, on a class field trip to the planet Mato Grosso, Stardrive is attacked by a Dire Wraith, one of the shape-shifting alien wizards who are the Solstar Order's greatest enemies. Once more, she is saved by Rom and a team of Space Knights, and though the Wraith is able to escape, the encounter convinces Stardrive to join the ranks of the Space Knights.

Five years later, Rom, fellow knight Livia, and cadets Auxin and Sata arrive on Mining Colony 25-6-41 in the Farouko Cluster. Though they inform the colony personnel that they are on a routine visit, Rom privately notes that the mission is a dangerous one, and orders Sata to stay with their ship (about which the young knight-in-training is not happy). Using their Analyzers, the Knights soon locate numerous Dire Wraiths hiding amongst the populace of the colony; as battle breaks out, Auxin takes off alone after a Wraith that attempts to escape, only to be lured into an ambush in an alleyway. Unfortunately for the Wraiths, they have overlooked the unattended car sitting nearby—which reveals itself to be Stardrive in disguise as she transforms and takes them all out! Despite the fact Stardrive has likely just saved his life, Auxin is angry at being deprived of the honor of his first Wraith-kill, but Stardrive just about manages to restrain her own annoyance at his attitude. However, she fails to hold her tongue when Livia proposes that they destroy the entire colony to ensure the Wraith infestation has been wiped out, and speaks out against the idea. Rom agrees with her, and orders the Knights to withdraw.

With Stardrive now joining them aboard their ship, the Knights head off on their next mission, but it is not a pleasant journey for Stardrive; she has never been truly accepted by any of the Knights besides Rom, and as Livia and Rom argue (the former fearing the latter has been softened by Stardrive's naive idealism, the latter believing the former has become too bloodthirsty), Sata and Auxin badmouth her behind her back. Presently, the group arrives on Solstar Order station Orchid Crossing, orbiting the planet Xetaxxis. As Stardrive recharges, Rom and Livia explain to her the full reason for their presence on the station. As the Solstar Order pushes them back further and further, the Dire Wraiths are increasingly likely to flee into Galactic Council, or even Cybertronian space. As the Knights must be free to pursue them, the Order intends to open negotiations with the Galactic Council after years of avoidance, in order to secure passage for the Knights into Council space, and to prevent potential interference from them in any dealings that may become necessary with Cybertronians. Representatives of the Council will be arriving at the station he next morning, and Stardrive is there to serve as proof of the fact that the Solstar Order is capable of keeping Cybertronians "in their place."

When the Council representatives arrive the next morning, pleasantries are short and they immediately begin pouring scorn upon Stardrive and the very notion of working peacefully with Cybertronians. But disrespect for one of their Knights soon proves to be the least of the Order's worries when the Council representatives reveal that they are, in fact, Dire Wraiths, and that their ship is the Cybertronian Decepticon Astrotrain! As Auxin perishes under an onslaught on Astrotrain's firepower, a team of Decepticons led by Starscream comes blasting through the station walls, and joins the Wraiths in assaulting the Knights. Stardrive appears to be the reason for this alliance of evil, as the Wraith leader Vekktral points her out to Starscream; Stardrive in turn recognizes the Wraith as the one who attacked her on Mato Grosso, and fights to overcome her fear. Before she can get her wits together, she is seized by Starscream, who quickly realizes that she has never seen another Cybertronian in person before, and tries to tempt Stardive over to their side. When she refuses, Starscream kicks her through a wall, revealing the true object of his interest on the other side: the energon synthesizer Stardrive uses to recharge, which Starscream had deduced the Order must possess. Before anyone can make another move, however, another hole is blasted in the station's hull as Autobots Ultra Magnus and Bumblebee arrive to stop Starscream's plans!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"You've been enchanted by a machine woman as soft as you. You cling to emotions we should rise above."
"A hard heart does not elevate us, it lowers us. We must not become like the Wraiths we fight."

—Livia and Rom

"There, Starscream! There is the Cybertronian, as promised!"
"You know what, Vekktral? I could actually tell which one wasn't six feet tall and made of flesh."

—Vekktral and Starscream

"Organics live but a fleeting moment, then fade away. But we have eternity."

—Starscream extols the virtues of Cybertronians in an attempt to sway Stardrive

Notes

Continuity notes

• This story takes place "around 175, 180 years in the past," according to Christos Gage.^[1] This places it in the little-explored period of time after Cybertron was rendered uninhabitable and the Transformers scattered to the stars, devoid of any sources of true energon, as originally explored in Stormbringer, but before significant modern-day Transformer activity on Earth. Starscream and Bumblebee both appear here before their eventual relocation to Earth, where they were stationed in Infiltration. It's not immediately clear if the Ultra Magnus in this story is Minimus Ambus inside the armor, though that will be clarified further next issue...
• Which of the multiple known Transformer colony worlds Stardrive hails from is left unsaid in the story, though John Barber clarified on Twitter^[2] that it was Caminus, which is supported in-story by her energon being blue (a distinction from normal, pink-purple Cybertronian energon originally made in the Titans Return one-shot). The dictates of continuity necessitate that she is from a colony world rather than Cybertron itself, because a) she is a cisgender female Transformer (that is to say, one who identifies as female and whose metal has naturally shaped itself into a female physical form) and such Transformers do not exist on Cybertron at this point in time, per lore originally laid down in Spotlight: Arcee (though Lost Light #8 would reveal soon after the publication of this issue that male-to-female transgender Transformers do); and b) she starts out as a protoform, a "natural" Cybertronian birth, the like of which has most recently been described as not occurring on Cybertron since over four million years ago, per the 2017 Transformers annual.
• The Galactic Council captain in this issue at first appears to be of the same species as K'gard, another Galactic Council captain introduced in the 2012 More than Meets the Eye annual, which was also the first appearance of the Council itself. However, Alex Milne clarified on TFW2005^[3] that they are actually a related-but-distinct species: K'gard towered over Ultra Magnus in the annual, while the captain here is small enough that Astrotrain is capable of transforming into a shuttle for him and his crew.
• As members of the species are quite hard to tell apart, it's not clear if the captain of the Galactic Council vessel who shoots down the ship carrying Stardrive's protoform at the beginning of the story, and the being whose form Vekktral has stolen years later, are one and the same individual, or different members of the same race. But that said, the Council ship warps off for the sinister-sounding "Shadow System" after their run-in with Rom; could they have encountered and been taken over by Wraiths there?
• The masked bear and snake-like knight who are present when Rom and Livia rescue Stardrive from Vekktral go unnamed here, but they are Nikomi and Orphion, pre-existing characters from IDW's ROM series.
• Livia mentions the death of Rom's family at the hands of the Dire Wraiths, a story told in the 2017 ROM annual.
• Like the other knights, Stardrive dons crystalline armor, which becomes bonded to her. The ROM annual explained this armor is formed from a symbiotic ore, and given that Revolution implied a connection between the armor and Ore-13, the implication is that it is one of Shockwave's other Regenesis ores.
• As established in ROM #4, the Dire Wraiths have never acquired a Neutralizer and are eager to examine the weapon.

Transformers references

• The planet Xetaxxis originally appeared in the Generation 1 cartoon episode "The Quintesson Journal".
• Blitzwing has a pair of "goggles" on his helmet that evoke the design of his Animated counterpart.
• The two other Decepticons accompanying the more famous squad of Starscream, the Triple Changers, and the Coneheads are, in fact, not generics, but a pair of characters from the defunct 2012 Chinese MMO Transformers Online. The green one, Ursa Major is identified by name when he is quickly killed by Livia; the other, in purple and peach, is Doomwings. They had Chinese-language names in the game, but were later given these English ones by Ask Vector Prime—a rare, if not the actual first, example of something from that feature crossing over into "mainstream" Transformers fiction.

Real-life references

• The planet Mato Grosso is named after the real-life Brazilian state. Its name means "thick bushes" in Portuguese.
• Stop us if you think we're reaching on this one, but it seems like Mining Colony 25-6-41 is named in reference to June 25, 1941, the date on which Executive Order 8802 was signed into law by President Roosevelt. The order prohibits racial discrimination in the military-industrial complex, which sure seems relevant to Stardrive and the obvious racism she is a victim of while serving in the Solstar Order's equivalent of the military.
• The "W" logo of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation|Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien film series can be seen on the side of a building on the colony on page 7. Among the ships docked at the colony is the Discovery One from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• In keeping with Rom's name being derived from read-only memory, Stardrive's fellow cadets also have names taken from computer terminology: Sata from SATA connections and Auxin from "aux-in" electrical connectors.
• Trinkets and toys on Stardrive's "bedside table" include the NX-01 and NCC-1701 versions of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, Super GoBot action figure Zeemon, and a kabuki mask that looks rather like the one worn by the villain Amon from The Legend of Korra animated series.
• Among the crowd in Stardrive's flashbacks are individuals coloured like a Stormtrooper, an X-Wing pilot, and a Kamen Rider.

Other trivia

• Stardrive was originally intended to be Strongarm, but after creating her backstory it was decided to make her a new character and save Strongarm for a different story.^[4]

Covers (5)

• Cover A: Space Knights, Autobots, and Wraiths, by Alex Milne and Josh Perez
• Cover B: Starscream and the Dire Wraiths versus the lone Rom, by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham
• Cover C: Rom and Stardrive, by Paolo Villanelli and Alessandra Alexakis
• Retailer incentive cover: Rom versus Bumblebee, by David Lafuente and Lovern Kindzierski
• Convention exclusive cover: Partially black-and-white version of Cover C, available from IDW's booth at various 2017 conventions

• 

  Episode VII: The Farce Awakens.

• 

  Starscream loves a fair fight.

• 

  Riding baked potatoes is the latest craze.

• 

  I'm rooting for Rom.

• 

  Hey, who turned off the colors?

Advertisements

• Shining Armor #2
• "The Hasbro Tribune" editorial page promoting July's Hasbro Universe titles, including this issue, G.I. Joe #8, Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook #3, Optimus Prime #9, Revolutionaries #8, Lost Light #8, and Till All Are One #12.
• G.I. Joe Vol. 1 TPB
• Revolutionaries Vol. 1 TPB
• IDW Clue comic
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo one-shot

Notes

External links

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