Shattered Glass II issue 4

Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	November 23, 2022
Cover date	November 2022
Written by	Danny Lore
Art by	Dan Khanna
Inks	Gigi Dutreix
Colors	John-Paul Bove
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte and Riley Farmer

Flamewar struggles to balance her desire for vengeance against the good of the mission as she leads a Decepticon strike force to Metroplex.

Synopsis

This story is told in nonlinear form. This synopsis presents it in chronological order for ease of reading.

As the war between the evil Autobots and heroic Decepticons took shape, not all Cybertronians took sides at first. Some, like Cannonball and the pirate crew of the Rising Sea initially stayed out of the conflict due to his past disagreements with Megatron, but there came a time when Cannonball and his crew joined Soundwave in a battle to protect Iacon's Titan Net from Windblade's Titan-killing "Citycrashers". Flamewar, fanatically loyal to her captain, took on Rodimus alone, ignoring her captain's warnings, and forced Cannonball to sacrifice his life so that his crew could escape. Without their captain, Flamewar and the remaining survivors slipped into a deep despair; during a drunken memorial for Cannonball at a run-down watering hole, however, Megatron approached Flamewar and her compatriots with an offer of employment—join the Decepticons and take back Cybertron from Autobot tyranny. Megatron believes that Slipstream is the new leader of the pirates, but this isn't entirely true: she might be their nominal commander, but the truth is that they go wherever Flamewar goes.

Years later, Flamewar was a part of Megatron's ill-fated mission to Earth and present for the final battle against the Autobots. Ultimately, Megatron ordered Starscream to get the surviving Decepticons to safety while he stayed behind; although the noble Seeker and his followers did what they could to rescue as many Decepticons as possible and limp back to Cybertron, Flamewar had now lost two leaders, and the experience taught the embittered Decepticon a valuable lesson: never leave a man behind.

In the present day, an annoyed Flamewar gripes that Megatron still hasn't cleared her or her unit to take on the Autobots in the Static Zone; while Slipstream urges caution, Flamewar, still fuming about her recent run-in with Blaster, insists that she's ready for action. The pair argue back and forth about Megatron's true strategy before Shadow Striker finally cuts to the heart of the matter: if neither of them really want to be here, why are they still here? Flamewar admits that Cannonball would never have sat back and waited for the action to come to him—and with that, the crew of the Rising Sea transform and speed away to find the Autobots.

Out in the Static Zone, the group find Metroplex's frozen form, surrounded by Autobots—including Flamewar's old nemesis, Rodimus. Flamewar immediately announces that she's going to kill Rodimus for everything he's done, Slipstream advises caution... but Flamewar, adamant that she'll do this even if her own teammates won't support her, promptly zooms away to settle her score. Slipstream watches her go, and murmurs that she'll always be there for her...

At Metroplex's base, Rodimus spies Flamewar on the horizon and springs into action, leaving an irritated Slicer to drag their new prisoner Jetfire away to Ratchet's newest base of operations. The pair fight until an artillery shell spirals into the battlefield and sends them both flying—a shell that belongs to Hailstorm, who tries to assist until Rodimus shoots him in a turret barrel and triggers a fatal explosion. At that moment, Slipstream swoops in to extricate her teammate from an unwinnable fight; furious and grief-stricken at losing another comrade, Flamewar struggles free and dives back down to finish the job—only for Rodimus to promptly shoot her unconscious.

Flamewar comes to inside the Titan itself... and right next to a shackled Optimus Prime, who bellows defiance at his captors as they haul him away for an unspecified "procedure". Flamewar demands to know where he's been taken, and what's to happen to her as well, but Slicer only informs her that she's being kept alive as a bargaining chip. Fortunately, Slipstream's arrived just in time to rescue her friend as she stalls for time. Noticing that Slicer has some attachment to Blaster's severed head, she grabs the body part and demands to know what Ratchet's doing to Optimus—Slicer manages to get out that Ultra Magnus's sinister plans involve Prime's body somehow, but when Slicer leaps for Slipstream, Flamewar lines up a shot and sends the amoral engineer tumbling out of a shattered wall to the ground far below. Flamewar takes stock of this unexpected victory, and remembers her last conversation with Slipstream.

Flamewar decides that she could pointlessly avenge Megatron and Cannonball and everyone else she's lost... but there's a real fight underway now, and there'll be plenty of other chances to make up for lost time!

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Decepticons	Autobots	Others
Slipstream (1) Hailstorm (2) Barricade (3) Flamewar (4) Skywarp (5) Sunstorm (6) Tracer (7) Megatron (8) Shadow Striker (9) Hotlink (10) Soundwave (14) Frenzy (16) Thundercracker (19) Starscream (20)	Slicer (12) Rodimus (13) Windblade (17) Optimus Prime (21) Springer (22) Drift (23) Tailgate (24)	Metroplex (11) Cannonball (15) Jetfire (18)

Quotes

"This isn't even really disobeying. This is just... speeding up the timeline."

—Flamewar

"If you're not right behind me, then I guess you weren't 'with me' like I thought you were."
"We're always with you, don't you get it?"

—Flamewar and Slipstream

"I gotcha, Flamewar!"
"Which one of us do you think is quicker on the draw? Me or Hailstorm?"

—Hailstorm dies to Rodimus

"You do those experiments on your own people? Sick."
"I get the feeling you've got a broader idea of 'your own people' than I do."
"I don't get it."
"You've got people. I've got a job."

—Flamewar and Slicer

Notes

Continuity notes

The comic picks up in the immediate aftermath of issue #2, in which Blaster led a raid on Kaon and used his sonic powers to smash his way through a wall, catching Flamewar off-guard in the process.
The third flashback takes place immediately after the flashback in 'Shattered Glass issue #2, in which Megatron deliberately sacrificed himself so that Starscream—wearing his F-15 Earth body from the same flashback—could lead the remaining Decepticons off Earth.

Transformers references

While Flamewar rocketed to stardom during Brian Ruckley's tenure on IDW's 2019 Transformers reboot—in which he famously characterized her as a chaotic terrorist who delighted in trolling her nominal allies—this take on the character hews closer to her depiction in BotCon 2014's "Hoist the Flag" storyline, which depicted her as a new recruit to Cannonball's pirate crew. As we noted in our article for last issue, however, her affiliates are (mostly) mirror-universe members of Team Stream from the 2019 comics.
Cannonball himself is based directly on his "Hoist the Flag" incarnation, a retool of Prime Ratchet with a new head and color scheme.
While in Iacon, Flamewar, Soundwave, and Cannonball fought to defend the city's "Titan Net", a piece of Titan-related technology that originated in the 2019 Transformers reboot. They're opposed by, among other characters, Windblade; rather than a cityspeaker, she and Lightbright are "citycrashers" who deliberately destroy Titans.
In her conversation with Soundwave, Flamewar namedrops Lowload, a Shattered Glass version of a minor character from IDW's reboot, as a former member of Cannonball's crew.
In the same conversation, Soundwave namedrops Blackjack, a Shattered Glass version of the G1 character. This Blackjack is described to have evacuated alongside the rest of the Titan Net team, a reversal of how in the IDW 2019 comics Blackjack was a part of the team that blew it up.

Errors

On page two, "engex" is misspelt "energex".
On page four, Flamewar's line—"we're not Constructicons"—is missing a period.
On page eleven, Cannonball's dialogue is also missing a punctuation mark.
On the first panel on page fifteen, Flamewar's handcuffs are black like the inner parts of her forearms instead of blue.
On the second panel of page seven, Rodimus is missing his mustache.

Covers (4)

Cover A: Flamewar, by Livio Ramondelli
Cover B: Flamewar's up to mischief, by Ashleigh Phillips
Retailer incentive cover: Metroplex, Megatron, and a perky Flamewar, by Josh Burcham
Hasbro Pulse exclusive cover: Flamewar attacks, by Casey Coller