Honestly, I've been so busy setting up the new house that I've lost track of time. So many curtain rods to hang. So many picture frames. (The wristwatch I've been wearing for like 20 years also died finally. Took me a few days to find a suitable replacement. It's strange, going through life and having no idea what time it is or even what day it is.)

THE TRANSFORMERS issue #22 was printed on August 12, 1986, and had a cover date of November 1986.  Only a few days after The Transformers: the Movie had hit theaters, arguably the biggest event in the cartoon universe ever, the comic book was... uh, just barely getting around to introducing the Stunticons.  Huh.  

The issue is entitled "Heavy Traffic!" and was written by Bob Budianksy.  Don Perlin was the pencil artist and Akin & Garvey handled the inks.  The lettering is credited to "Hans IV," which I think is meant to be a funny way of saying "four hands" (in other words, a couple of different letterers).  The opening pages look like Janice Chiang's work, but not the later pages.  And, naturally, Nel Yomtov colored the artwork.

The month this issue was printed, Marvel was celebrating their 25th anniversary, counting back from the first issue of FANTASTIC FOUR back in 1961.  (The math here is somewhat contentious, since Marvel would later celebrate an 80th anniversary in 2019, this time counting back to Marvel Comics #1, a title printed by Timely Comics in 1939.)  There were 29 titles that received the anniversary treatment (some titles were semi-monthly and so did not have a November issue that year), and all of them had the border filled with Marvel superheroes.  (Marvel Age didn't have advertisements, so its back cover showed these same superheroes from the rear view, and evidently poor Howard the Duck is stuck behind the UPC bar code, which means you can't see him on the front cover.)  

So, the cover for this issue features Menasor, as he is introduced in this issue.  Probably not the best choice.  For one, he's not a particularly iconic character (I've seen at least one comics collector assume this is actually a Megatron drawing).  Also, for some reason, the artist chose to draw the face of the Menasor toy by Hasbro, and not the look for Menasor as he actually appears in the comics and cartoons.  So, he doesn't even look like himself as he appears in this issue!

But, this marks the second time (but not the last time!) you could buy a TRANSFORMERS comic book and spot Spider-Man (he's there on the cover with about 31 other Marvel characters), so there's that.

The opening splash page depicts archival footage of Blaster and the Autobots arriving from Cybertron and greeting the police who have arrived on the scene.  (Why are the police cars green?  I have no idea.)  Circuit Breaker is constructing a decidedly biased narrative for the benefit of Walter Barnett; Beachcomber and Cosmos are inspecting the police cruisers with natural curiosity, while she claims, "See how they're on the brink of crushing those vehicles?" Sure, Josie, whatever you say.

So, at least we finally find out what precisely happened to the Autobots who arrived on Earth at the end of issue #18.  Shortly after the Autobots came over the space bridge, Circuit Breaker and some RAAT vehicles showed up and disoriented the Autobots with "electric snow" missiles that scrambled their circuits.  Circuit Breaker zapped them cold, and they were all hauled back on trucks to RATT headquarters for processing.  

Barnett questions whether it was a good idea to attack immediately, but Circuit Breaker isn't hearing any of it.  She won't even accept Barnett's payment for completing the assignment.  For Circuit Breaker, the chance to hurt the robots as they had once hurt her is more than enough.  With Blaster's group beheaded and their faces mounted on the wall, it seems Circuit Breaker's work is only just beginning.

At the Autobot base, Optimus is still recovering from a wound in his armor, just like last issue.  As Ratchet tends to it, Bombshell takes the opportunity to slip a cerebro-shell into Prime's circuitry.  Bombshell's plan is to take control of Prime, but for some reason he can only monitor Prime's thoughts, and cannot actually control him.  Whether or not this is due to the sheer fortitude of Optimus Prime being Optimus Prime is not directly explained. (It's odd that the only way Bombshell can slip a cerebro-shell into Prime is to get through an existing crack in his armor. Is it like this with all robots, or just Prime because his armor is so tough? This is, like, Bombshell's main gimmick, but he's only able to control the minds of robots if they have some kind of existing damage to their superstructure?)

Wheeljack is installing a chemical tracker into Skids so that he and Donny Finkleberg can track the Autobot fuel that Skyfire and Finkleberg discovered in the previous issue.  Prime is doubtful about Finkleberg's claims that there were Autobots who arrived over the space bridge.  Finkleberg is, predictably, mouthy towards Prime in the extreme.  When Skids offers to reason with Finkleberg, he's drawn very strangely.  He's got a rather unconventional design, but when he grabs Finkleberg, it looks like his arms are extending from his body, with his wheeled shoulders telescoping so that they become the center of each arm.  Very odd.

Clever Skids has observed that humans can be coerced with money, so he pickpockets Finkleberg and removes from his wallet the check given to him for $25,000.  (Skids has to use telescoping tools from his fingertips to manipulate such comparatively small objects, of course.)  

There's a moment where it's very difficult to tell what's happening.  It looks like Skids is dropping the empty wallet back into Finkleberg's hand, but at the last moment, Bombshell swoops in and grabs it.  "Another opportunity too good to pass up!" he thinks to himself.  I assume it's Bombshell, anyway, since it's drawn very indistinctly.  Almost like an arrow or a tiny missile.  Why doesn't Finkleberg notice that Bombshell has taken his wallet?  And why would Bombshell want an empty wallet in the first place?  (It turns out later that Bombshell is actually slipping a homing device into the wallet, because it's explained to us later, but it's absolutely not clear at all from the artwork.)

So, a reluctant Finkleberg goes off with Skids, while Prime tells Wheeljack to "prepare the Aerialbots for Matrixing."  Putting aside for the moment that Prime is verbing words, weren't the Aerialbots already given life with the Creation Matrix in the last issue?  What are they going to do this time?  Make them stronger, faster, MORE alive?

But now we see the real reason why Budiansky was going out of his way to broadcast that Prime had a huge wound in his armor, and why Bombshell's cerebro-shell is only able to receive instead of control.  It's all some clever plot trickery to enable the Decepticons to hijack the energy from the Creation Matrix without necessarily needing to seize it for themselves.  At the same time that the Aerialbots are about to be brought to life for the first time all over again, the Decepticons plan to use the Creation Matrix energy to bring life to their newest creations, the Stunticons.

Again, it's interesting how the comic book accidentally mirrors the Transformers cartoon series sometimes.  In the cartoon episode "The Key to Vector Sigma," the Autobots and Decepticons have to use the super computer Vector Sigma to bring life to the Aerialbots and Stunticons.  There's a real parallel here when we see the Stunticons standing in robot mode, lifelessly, awaiting an injection of life energy.  I honestly think Budiansky caught some episodes of the cartoon on occasion, and was using it was inspiration for his own writing. (He's said in interviews that he never watched the cartoon, but if I were borrowing plot ideas from other sources, I probably wouldn't openly admit it. I mean, J.K. Rowling said she never read any J.R.R. Tolkien until after she published Harry Potter.)

What's more disturbing, though, is the notion that the Aerialbots' minds were all wiped clean.  Effectively, Wheeljack killed them.  I mean, okay, four of them hadn't been fully programmed.  But, Silverbolt was finished.  He was ready to go.  He, alone, was the only reason the Hoover Dam mission didn't become a completely unmitigated disaster.  And yet, his mind was wiped as well.  That's some savagery, right there, Wheeljack.  Stone cold.  

Well, anyway.  Skids and Finkleberg are tracking the Transformer fuel down the highway (the path Circuit Breaker's trucks took, no doubt) in a rain storm when they spot a live wire threatening a motorist.  Skids, naturally, rushes to the rescue, while Donny just grouses about being out in the rain and how his day couldn't get any worse.  He's such a turd biscuit.

Even when Skids' heroic rescue is reported on the news, Circuit Breaker refuses to believe that any of the robots could be good guys.  She's got the idea firmly ingrained in her mind that they are all to be destroyed.  

Meanwhile, Megatron and Soundwave have also heard of Skids' exploits, and decide to use the Stunticons to sully Skids' good name.  Each of them name-checks himself before transforming and following the tracking device planted by Bombshell.

Finkleberg insists on stopping at a motel to get some rest.  Skids instructs him to press a button on his dashboard to shut him off for the night..  This seems like an incredibly bad idea to me.  However, Skids claims to trust Finkleberg, especially since the Autobots are still holding his cashier's check for ransom.  The next day when they head out, the Stunticons have already caught up to them and are literally parked right next to Skids.