Infiltration issue 2

« The Transformers: Infiltration #2 »
Don't look up!
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	February 8, 2006
Cover date	February 2006
Written by	Simon Furman
Art by	E. J. Su
Colors by	John Rauch
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Edits by	Chris Ryall & Dan Taylor
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	2006-7

On the run from the Decepticons, Ratchet and the humans find safety with the Autobots... or do they?

Synopsis

Confronted by two menacing robots demanding that she turn over her stolen palmtop computer, Verity Carlo and her companions Hunter O'Nion, and Jimmy Pink can only stand and gawk in horror at the spectacle. Their mysterious ambulance driver companion has other ideas, however: using a holographic decoy of the computer, he feigns surrender... and then disappears in a blaze of electricity when the two robots reach for the prize. The trick stuns one of the robots, who topples into the garage wall, sending collapsing rubble everywhere. Just in time, their ambulance transforms into a third giant robot, who uses his massive body to shield the humans from the debris!

As the white robot draws a weapon, their robotic rescuer deploys an ink spray to blind his attacker; with his opponents on the backfoot, the ambulance decides to get out while the going's good and, ordering his passengers to get inside, reassumes his alternate mode to ferry the three humans to safety. As the ambulance peels out, heading for the interstate, Jimmy can't help but lament the destruction of his garage. In Arizona, a police detachment finds the dead body of the businessman who had previously possessed the computer. The corpse has no ID of any kind, confusing the officers. One member of the forensics team, however, surreptitiously places a call to a faraway boardroom to report the death—a boardroom adorned with a massive letter "M".

The ambulance hightails it along the freeway, weaving in and out of the traffic as the three humans struggle to come to grips with the situation as the ambulance fills them in. His team had been tracking a coded Decepticon pulsewave, noting that a specific human, the former carrier of the palmtop, had been targeted by the Decepticons for elimination. But before their rescuer can tell them why he'd been selected, a massive sonic boom alerts them to the return of the blue jet fighter. The sonic boom causes a massive pileup, forcing the ambulance to swerve around one car after the next, and the chaos creates the perfect opening for the two sports cars, who identify themselves as Runamuck and Runabout, to catch up and deploy an arsenal of hidden weapons as they try to run the ambulance off the road. This is a bad sign, the humans learn: Decepticons never break cover, and this brazen aggression means that Verity's picked up something that they really need....

In Oregon, Starscream and Blitzwing marvel at the ore that they have discovered. Starscream is eager to refine more—even if means breaking protocol, the Decepticon leader is confident that he'll have enough time to prepare a response.

Pursued by the two Decepticons, the ambulance manages to shake its pursuers by swerving hard into an oncoming tanker-trailer. While the medical vehicle manages to get out of the way in time, the two Battlechargers aren't so lucky. The ensuing collision sends both Decepticons flying off the highway to crash in a fiery conflagration. It's all too much for Verity, and as the ambulance rounds a cliff, she screams for it to stop so that she can get some air. Jimmy follows to try and calm her down, while Hunter tries to pry more details out of their rescuer, who finally introduces himself as Ratchet. Before he can get any more information out of Ratchet, the jet comes back for another pass and fires a homing missile at the group.

It is an avatar of apocalyptic prose, the herald... of overwrought narration!

As everyone scrambles aboard, Ratchet deliberately waits until the last second to escape, pouring on a burst of speed to outrun the explosion as the homing missile impacts against the cliff. As they zoom through the desert with the jet on their tail, unexpected help arrives in the shape of three more automobiles — a yellow sports car, a red minivan, and a police car — who deploy some concealed weapons of their own to blast the airborne Decepticon until he retreats.

Ratchet reveals to the grateful humans that they're his allies, who he'd covertly summoned while he was receiving maintenance in Jimmy's garage... but their jubilation is short lived when the three cars transform into more robots and draw their weapons. Their leader Prowl lays into Ratchet for dereliction of duty and violating statutes of the Code of Interplanetary Conflict. Having glimpsed the photos on Verity's computer, Ratchet has finally realized why the Decepticons were so intent on recovering the device, and so he offers two words in his defense: "siege mode"...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"No disintegrator ray?! What kind of aliendeathwarmachine are you?"

Verity

"You and me, we belong out here, on the edge. There's a word for our sort, some new-age, PC bit of psychobabble... oh yeah, that's it... freak!"

- Jimmy tries to console Verity

Notes

Continuity notes

Maybe this is where Miles Mayhem got the idea.

• In what might be called a vision of things to come, this issue and the one that precedes it establishes a new power for all Transformers: every Autobot and Decepticon features a suite of M.A.S.K.-style weaponry accessible while in their alternate modes: Runabout and Runamuck possess recessed battering rams, Prowl sports machine guns behind his headlamps, and so on. This isn't an entirely new idea in the Transformers franchise — the Autobot Triggerbots and Decepticon Triggercons possessed similar gimmicks, for instance — but this is the first time that the power's been extended to every Cybertronian, regardless of subgroup affiliation. The concept nicely ties into the "cloak and dagger" themes of the early IDW universe, but this "power" will eventually be dropped with little fanfare as the universe changes writers.

Transformers references

• On page 12, Ratchet gets himself between two oncoming semitrucks — one black with a gray trailer, and the other red with a gray tanker trailer. It's not too much of a stretch to think someone was recalling Motormaster and Optimus Prime.

Errors

• Jimmy tells Verity he's eighteen years old, but just last issue he told Ratchet he was seventeen.

Other trivia

• Ratchet mentions "chronoticks" as a method of timekeeping on page 1; it seems that this was an abortive attempt to establish an alternate method of Transformer timekeeping in the IDW continuity.
• The "Decepticomments" section featured mail answered by Chris Ryall and short ads for next month's issues: Infiltration #3, The Gathering #2, Generations #1, and the War and Peace reprint.

Covers (7)

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover A - Everyone do "The Jerk"!

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover B - Can I have a ride?

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover C - Prowl, being his usual self.

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover D - This will teach those meddling kids!

• Infiltration #2 cover A: the Battlechargers, by E. J. Su. Half of the RI-B cover.
• Infiltration #2 cover B: Thundercracker attacks Ratchet, by Guido Guidi.
• Infiltration #2 cover C: Prowl threatens Ratchet, by Andrew Wildman.
• Infiltration #2 cover D: Thundercracker attacks humans, by James Raiz.

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover RI-A - Half a conehead.

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover RI-B - Do "The Jerk" and kill the doc!

• 

  Infiltration #2 cover RI-C - If the G1 toy merged with the character model.

• Infiltration #2 cover RI-A: Starscream, by Guido Guidi.
• Infiltration #2 cover RI-B: Battle wraparound cover, by E. J. Su. First part of a continuous image.
• Infiltration #2 cover RI-C: Ratchet, by Guido Guidi (includes 4 mini-prints).

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• 10th Anniversary Beast Wars toys
• Infiltration #3, including a 2-page B&W sketch preview
• 3-page preview of The Gathering
• Angel: "City Of" scriptbook
• The Gathering (back cover)

Reprints

Other than reprints of the full series

• N/A