IDW - Transformers vs The Terminator #1

Title: Enemy of My Enemy, Part 1

Story by: David Mariotte, Tom Waltz & John Barber

Written by: David Mariotte & John Barber

Art by: Alex Milne

Colours by: David Garcia Cruz

Letters & Design by: Jake M. Wood

Editor: Tom Waltz

Assistant Editor: Riley Farmer

Plot

In the year 2029, a solo T-800 Terminator runs through the ruins of Los Angeles, amongst the corpses of humans, Skynet robots and Autobots as he makes it to a hidden Skynet resistance base, where they have developed a time machine to go to 1984, and stop the Decepticon uprising before it can begin...

As the T-800 activates the machine, Starscream, the Seekers and Insecticons find the hidden base and tear through it, but fail to stop the lone Skynet operative from time travelling...

45 years earlier, the Terminator arrives in Los Angeles (nude, as per time travel rules), and disconnected to Skynet. He locates a near-by diner and heads towards it. Inside, Sarah Connor, a waitress accidentally spills some coffee onto a showboating trucker, leading to him leaving without paying his bill.

Sarah follows the trucker, to get him to pay up, when he goes to punch her, however the Terminator stops him and orders him to hand over his clothes. The trucker shoots the robot in the hand, but it doesn't phase him, so the robot knocks him out with a single punch.

Sarah tries to run back inside the diner, but the staff lock the doors, seeing the fight outside. The Terminator, now wearing the clothes stolen from the trucker asks whether Mt St Hilary has erupted yet, as she confirms that it's due to erupt any time now. She gives him directions to it, but he doesn't understand them, so he orders her to come with him, at gun-point.

The Terminator and Sarah drive in the trucker's vehicle, where he explains to her that he needs to get to the volcano before it erupts so he can prevent the destruction of the world in the future...only for them to see the volcano has started erupting already!.

The Terminator goes into his secondary objective and runs through a police barricade and heads towards the Ark, now unearthed and exposed at the base of the volcano.

The Sky-Spy probe exits the Ark and scans the truck, only to get shot down by the Terminator, and crashes into the cab of the truck, smashing a hole into the driver's side of the vehicle, and exposing half of the robot's endo-skeleton head. He explains that he is a robot, but one from Earth, not an alien like the Transformers, and since he failed to stop them from waking up, he's going to kill them all now, before it's too late.

Only to find Megatron and his Decepticons awake, and looming over the still-inert body of Optimus Prime from the stasis lock.....

Characters

Autobot

Optimus Prime Still Inert from Ark Crash

Future Jazz - Porsche Dead

Future Powerglide - Glider Jet Dead

Future Bumblebee - VW Beetle Dead

Future Glyph - VW Beetle Dead

Future Cosmos - Orbiter Dead

Future Gears - Pick Up Truck Dead

Other Future Autobots Dead

Decepticon

Megatron - Pistol

Starscream - Fighter Jet

Skywarp - Fighter Jet

Thundercracker - Fighter Jet

Soundwave - Cassette Player

Reflector - Camera

Future Starscream - Hunter-Killer Aerial

Future Skywarp - Hunter-Killer Aerial

Future Thundercracker - Hunter-Killer Aerial

Future Bombshell

Future Shrapnel

Future Kickback

2 Future Seekers Dead

Skynet

T-800 Time Travelled to 1984

Other T-800's Most Destroyed by Decepticons

T-8000's Most Destroyed by Decepticons

Human

Sarah Connor

Truck Driver Knocked Out by T-800 

Big Jeff's Diner Staff and Patrons

Mt. St. Hilary Blockade Cops

Notes

• Like most of the recent "Transformers vs <BLANK>" series, the Transformers setting appears to be set in a universe based on the G1 cartoon, whilst the Terminator setting is from yet another alternate timeline, where humanity has been wiped out, the Autobots are dead, and Skynet are the resistance against the Decepticons.
• Despite Sarah Connor looking pretty accurate to Linda Hamilton's appearance in the original Terminator movie, the T-800 doesn't really look much like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but from the dialogue, Sarah says he has a German accent, so he should look like him logically.....It's probably just an image-rights thing or something.
• This story confirms that Mt St Hillary's eruption was expected to happen, and the nearby settlements were evacuated during it.
• Since the T-800 shoots down the Sky-Spy just after Optimus' alternate mode is scanned we can assume that the other Autobots aren't able to get alternate mode scans yet (unless there's more than one Sky-Spy unit)
• So in this version of the story, it seems that rather than leaving the Autobots to rot asleep in the Ark whilst they conquer the Earth, the Decepticons planned to finish off Optimus whilst he was in stasis