Titan - Transformers Prime #4.19

Title: Smoked Out

Script: Chris Cooper

Art: Andres Ponce

Lettering: Comicraft

Cover Date: Mar/Apr 2014

Cover Price: £3.99

Poster: A mess of a Poster of the cast (see notes below for my moans)

Plot

Smokescreen is having a nice drive around a mountain road when he's attacked by a patrol of Vehicons and Skylynx, he easily takes down the Decepticons, but decides to run from Skylynx, however he gets damaged whilst driving away and winds up in a river which takes him to Jackdaw city where he finds a small garage to hide in and attempts repairs, when there he finds he's unable to transform and his weapons are offline, just then the garage's owner (Joe) arrives and is shocked to find a talking car.

Joe quickly realizes that Smokescreen is one of the rumoured alien robots from the internet, but decides to help him anyway, just to get him out of there, though he does intend to charge him a lot of his services afterwards.

By the next morning Joe's mostly finished, but he hears from his police radio (he has to so he can get to accidents to help with repairs quicker) that a large metal dragon (Skylynx) is attacking the city. Smokescreen is still unable to transform, so Joe helps him by forcing a chainsaw into his seems and forcing him to transform that way.

Soon Smokescreen is riding in the back of Joe's tow truck and swings the attached chain at Skylynx, drags him away and dumps him in the ocean. Afterwards Joe decides not to charge Smokescreen for the parts.

Characters

Autobot

Smokescreen - Race Car

Predacon

Skylynx - Winged Dragon

Decepticon

Vehicons - Muscle Cars

Human

Joe

Jackdaw Citizens

Notes

• I think I'm the only one buying this comic now....
• As promised above, here are my moans about the poster, it features 6 of the main Autobots: Optimus, Bumblebee, Arcee, Bulkhead, Ratchet and Wheeljack, HOWEVER it shows Bumblebee in his season 1-2 colours and Optimus in his Beast Hunters body...now how was this "picture" taken exactly? This is also annoying because Smokescreen and Ultra Magnus aren't included despite being main characters in Season 3 (Beast Hunters) AND because Smokescreen is in fact thee main focus of this very comic issue!!
• All of the screenshots and CGI images of Smokescreen in the magazine are of him in his white and blue colours, but the comic has him wearing the blue and yellow version...
• The images of Skylynx and Darksteel in their profile page appear to be taken straight from the Art of Prime book
• AGAIN! Skylynx shouldn't be a) on Earth or b) aligned with the Decepticons!
• It's mentioned several times in the comic that Smokescreen was badly dinged up etc during his accident, yet all I can notice are a could of paint scratches!
• Joe the Mechanic sort of resembles Sparkplug Witwicky from the Marvel series.
• Smokescreen has a cartoonish sweat-mark when Joe tells him he's never tried prying open a Transformer manually before.
• It appears that more humans know about Transformers, or that Raf has been slacking a bit as some reports of them have been on the internet according to Joe.
• Smokescreen revealing himself to Joe ISN'T unprecedented in the Aligned continuity (besides the 3 kids in Prime) as the Rescue Bots were permitted to reveal their true natures as living robots, so long as there was no other way to save lives otherwise.
• Why didn't Skylynx bite the chain away or fly off ratehr than being dragged along to the ocean and dumped there?
• Yeah...I can just imagine Skylynx coming back for revenge just after the last panel of this comic....

Other Features

Adverts Galore!

Competition! You can win some old Transformers products (judging by the image!)

All about...SMOKESCREEN

Best of 'Bots! Quiz (Find out which Prime Autobot you are most like - I'm Bumblebee apparently....boo)

Double Trouble! Spot the difference game

The Trans Files Fun Facts about Darksteel and Skylynx

Soundwave's Stumpers! Puzzles from Soundwave

Relic Race A cut out board game (which would ruin the comic)

Mega Mouth Megatron and Arcee read the reader mail...guess I'm NOT the only reader after all!