IDW - Revolution #1

Title: Concord Hymn

Written by: John Barber & Cullen Bunn

Art by: Fico Ossio

Colours by: Sebastian Cheng

Letters by: Tom B. Long

Edited by: David Hedgecock

Editor-in-Chief: Chris Ryall

Publisher: Ted Adams

Plot

Action Man, following a distress signal winds up at Mount Olympus (totally a real place!) and finds a cavern filled with Ore-13, and several dead bodies. One of the "bodies" is still alive, and introduces himself as Big Ben, a former member of GI Joe, he warns Action Man that some shady covert agents did this to them, and they were after the Ore-13 crystals, he gives Action Man a set of nametags he took from one of them, which are GI Joe-issue, implying their involvement.

The crystals start to react and Action Man is yanked out of the cave by his helicopter partner. Big Ben stays behind, too badly injured to leave and apologizes to a picture of his daughter.

The Ore explodes and takes most of Mount Olympus with it.

In Washington, the President and Joe Colton are discussing the situation in Greece, and aren't sure what to make of it. They think that the Cybertronians planted the Ore on their planet, but are somehow detonating it as part of their "invasion" plans. Scarlett, nearby, decides to put GI Joe on the case.

At Auotbot City, Optimus wonders what happened to Mount Olympus too, and worries that the humans may blame them, but also worries about the cache of Ore-13 under the city as well. Optimus decides to recall all his troops from around Earth, in case of retaliation for this possible perceived attack on them. Kup posits to him that the humans may have detonated the Ore-13 themselves just to give a reason for the humans to go against the Cybertronians in force.

In Portland, Arcee and Jazz are helping to deal with a flood, when GI Joe arrive and start watching them. Scarlett begins to questions why they would be helping with flood efforts just after blowing up a mountain, but Colton reminds her that the Cybertronians must have ulterior motives. Scarlett has Mainframe fire a missile at the Autobots, and injures Jazz. Arcee heads towards the Joes to confront them, Jazz follows her, knowing she'll do something stupid otherwise.

Arcee approaches the Joes, and starts attacking their vehicles with her swords. Optimus soon arrives with Soundwave, Windblade and Victorion, and tries to enact a ceasefire to talk through their issues, but Scarlett takes it as an order to surrender, which makes her more angry. Luckily though, the Joe weapons aren't effective against the Cybertronians, and they just shrug them off.

Nearby, Mainframe prepares to use his adapted version of the EDC Mindbomb on Soundwave, intending to kill him, despite Mayday/Ayana Jones' protests that Soundwave and Optimus' alliance is important to Cybertron.

Soundwave however uses his own skills to knock out the human vehicles and weapons in the area, stopping the Mindbomb and the other vehicles in general.

Optimus attempts to talk to the humans again, to try and make peace, but no-one is listening, and still see them as the enemies.

Rom, the Space Knight appears in Portland, and the Joes assume he's another Cybertronian due to his armour. Colton orders the Joes to kill Rom immediately, but isn't quick enough, as the Space Knight blasts him with his Neutralizer, killing him, much to everyone's shock.

In the immediate aftermath, the Joes are stunned and Rom kills three more, but doesn't attack anyone else. Jazz tries to restrain Rom so they can easily clear up that he's not a Cybertronian, but he's attacked by the Joes, knocking  him down, allowing Rom to escape.

The Cybertronians are lifted away with Victorion's gravitational field and they give chase to Rom. The Joes now believe that a Cybertronian just killed several of their team, including their leader, and now Scarlett wants revenge...

Transcript

Before the battle in Portland, Action Man contacts Mainframe to inform him about the dog tags found by Big Ben, and identifies the owner as Countdown of GI Joe, Mainframe believes that the Cybertronians planted them for some reason, and considers that one of the Cybertronians was disguised as a human to frame the Joes.

Characters

Autobot

Optimus Prime - Truck Cab

Windblade - VTOL Fighter Jet

Victorion - Torchbearer Gestalt

Kup - Pick Up Truck

Arcee - Sports Car

Jazz - Sports Car

Ironhide - Van (Image)

Prowl - Police Car (Image)

Decepticon

Soundwave - Personnel Carrier

Other Cybertronian/Colonist

Metrotitan - Autobot City

Aileron - Space Shuttle (Image)

Council of Worlds (Mentioned)

Solstar Order

Rom the Space Knight

GI Joe

Scarlett/Shana O'Hara

Mainframe/Blaine Parker

Mayday/Ayana Jones

Roadblock/Marvin Hinton

Grunt/Robert Graves

Rock 'N Roll/Craig McConel

Agent Helix

Slip Stream/Gregory Boyajian

Beach Head/Wayne Sneeden

Short-Fuze/Eric Freistadt

Breaker

Big Ben Killed in Ore-13 Explosion

Random Unnamed Joes

Duke (Mentioned)

Other Human

Action Man/Ian Noble

Terrence Salmons

Madame President

Big Ben's Team Killed by Dire Wraiths

Betsy (Image, Big Ben's daughter)

Mercy Gale (Mentioned)

Dire Wraith

Joe Colton Killed by Rom

Red Zone/Luke Ellison Killed by Rom

Hi-Tech/David Lewinsky Killed by Rom

Wreckage/Dillon Moreno Killed by Rom

Countdown/Dave Dubosky (Mentioned)

Notes

• Turns out Mount Olympus is actually a real mountain!
• So...Ore-13 IS actually very explosive after all! It blew up a mountain!
• I like how they gave name tags for every character in this comic, but the President is still unnamed...
• Optimus learned that Autobot City is sitting on top of an Ore-13 deposit during the Titans Return event.
• Windblade is on Earth! The reason will be explained when the Till All Are One tie in is released (all we know so far is that it involves the Titan and the Micronauts)
• It's mentioned that the rest of the Earth team is currently on Cybertron doing relief effort (wonder if that's a spoiler for the upcoming Till All Are One Titans Return tie-in, with the army of Titans approaching the planet?)
• GI Joe and the EDC are now fully integrated it seems, with EDC agent Ayana Jones now going by the "Mayday" code name.
• The Joes seem shocked that Arcee uses swords...makes sense, you wouldn't think an advanced alien robot would use swords would you?
• Mainframe reveals that some of his friends were killed during the Decepticon Occupation of Earth, and remembers Soundwave's major role in the event.
• Mainframe has revamped the mindbomb used by the EDC to make it fatal rather than just painful
• Rom's appearance here follows directly from his own Revolution tie-in, where he learns that Joe Colton is a Dire Wraith. Evidentally he must have scanned the other Joes here and identified the other three as Wraiths too
• Rom does not talk in this issue...it could be because there's a few different languages being used in the area and would get confusing, but more likely it's to cause some future drama.
• In the transcript at the end, Action Man alludes to the fact that Countdown is now a Dire Wraith as well, which is known to Rom readers, but not to the Joes or general in-universe characters so far
• Mainframe alludes to some Transformers who can look Human, this is most likely a reference to Blackrock, who was revealed to be a Cybertronian named Sovereign during the Titans Return storyline.