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"Enemy of My Enemy" Part 1
Transformers vs. the Terminator #1
IDW
Story by David Mariotte, Tom Waltz, and John Barber
Written by
David Mariotte and John Barber
Art by Alex Milne
Colors by David Garcia Cruz
Letters and design by Jake M. Wood
Cover B by Alex Milne
March 2020 |
In 2029, Skynet leads the resistance in a losing war against
the Decepticon invasion of Earth and sends a Terminator back
in time to 1984 in an attempt to alter history.
Read the
summary of this issue at the Transformers Wiki
Notes from the Terminator chronology
This story takes place in TIMELINE Transformers-1 in the
PopApostle
Terminator chronology, a timeline
independent of the
Terminator series of films, though it
borrows elements from them. In this timeline, the evil
Decepticons of the
Transformers
franchise defeat the good Autobots of the planet
Cybertron and conquer Earth. Skynet rises as the Earth
resistance, using Terminators to battle the Decepticons.
Losing the war in 2029, Skynet sends a T-800 Terminator back
in time to 1984 to stop the Decepticons before they
conquered Earth.
Didja Know?
Transformers
vs. the Terminator was a
4-issue mini-series published by IDW in cooperation with Dark Horse Comics
(holder of the Terminator comic book license at the
time).
Although the comic-book series itself is titled
Transformers vs. the Terminator, the
story contained in these four issues is titled
"Enemy of My Enemy" (not be confused with the earlier
Terminator comic book mini-series
Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy from 2014).
The image seen on the inside front cover of each issue
depicts what may be a Terminator's eye view of the planets
Cybertron and Earth.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
1100100000
Jazz (body only, deceased)
Refraktor (body only, deceased)
Bumblebee (body only, deceased)
Gears
(body only, deceased)
unidentified Terminator
Skynet (mentioned only)
Starscream
Seekers
Insecticons
Megatron
T-8000
rude Big Jeff's patron (trucker, dies in this issue)
Sarah Connor
Big Jeff's manager
Optimus Prime
Soundwave
Thundercracker
Starscream
Didja Notice?
On page 1, the totaled car with a 4 on it that 1100100000
runs past is a fallen Cybertronian, as evinced by the
Autobot symbol on the hood. (This Autobot may be Jazz, who
could transform into a race car and who had the number 4 on
it in
the Transformers Online 2017 video game.) |
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Autobot symbol
(from the
Transformers Wiki) |
Decepticon symbol
(from the
Transformers Wiki) |
On page 2, one of the dead Decepticons on the bridge (lying
face down on the left edge of the page) appears to be
Refraktor, whom we will meet in 1984 in TvT:
Enemy of My Enemy Part 2. The yellow Autobot in the middle
of the bridge appears to be Bumblebee, who will also appear
in TvT: Enemy of My Enemy Part 2. And, on the right-hand
side of the bridge, Glyph.
On the next bridge up, which is split in half, the
fallen Autobot on it may be Gears.
On pages 3-4, 1100100000 is near the
Los
Angeles ruins of the Big Jeff's restaurant that Sarah
Connor worked at in 1984 as seen in
The Terminator,
although the statue outside the restaurant seen here more
closely resembles the mascot of
Bob's Big Boy
than the Big Jeff mascot. Big Jeff's is a fictitious
restaurant.
1100100000 attempts to learn to smile throughout this issue.
The protector T-800 in the 1991 film
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
also attempted this once or twice.
Skynet's L.A. resistance base is called Omega Base.
Inside Omega Base, it appears that Skynet's resistance is
building its own Transformers for use in the war as well.
Possibly they are fallen Decepticons reprogrammed to obey
Skynet orders. The concept art extras by Alex Milne at the
end of the issue identify the giant Terminator Transformers
as T-8000s.
The time displacement device has taken many different
designs in the various
Terminator stories told throughout multiple
forms of media. The one seen here is very similar to the
design seen in use by Skynet in the 2015 film
Terminator
Genisys.
On page 11, the news program on the TV set in Big Jeff's is
reporting on the imminent eruption of Mount St. Hilary in
Oregon. Mount St. Hilary is the site of the Autobots' first
base on Earth in the Transformers mythos. This is a fictitious volcano, generally
considered to be near
Portland.
Sarah's waitress uniform looks very similar to what she was
seen to wear in
The Terminator,
but the dress is too long and her white socks are too short. |
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Sarah tells the Terminator to take the 5
freeway to get to Mount St. Hilary in Oregon. U.S.
Interstate 5 runs from the border of Mexico in California at the south
end to that of Canada in the north, passing through Oregon
and Washington.
While on I-5 in Oregon, the Terminator and Sarah
pass an exit sign to Mount St. Hilary
which also indicates highways 20 and 26. These are both U.S.
highways that run east-west in the state of Oregon. If they
are on the I-5 with a sign indicating the direction to
highways 20 and 26, it would tend to suggest they (and Mount
St. Hilary) are near the town of
Albany, about 70 miles south of Portland. On the other
hand, they just passed the "Welcome to Oregon" sign during
their brief conversation on pages 16-18 and the distance
between the Oregon border and Highway 20 is over 200 miles!
Sarah refers to the T-800 as "a German guy", but since
this T-800 is identified as a Model 101 (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) Terminator, his accent is Austrian.
On the last page of the issue, the Decepticon leader
Megatron is holding a gun (Megatron's fusion cannon) on the dormant leader of the
Autobots, Optimus Prime. In the background are Decepticons
Soundwave, Thundercracker, and Starscream.
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