Posting a bit early this month since today's my day off, but moving day is fast approaching, and I may not have time to do this on the 15th of the month!

THE TRANSFORMERS issue #21 was first available on July 15, 1986, with a pull date of October 1986.  The front cover features "AERIALBOTS OVER AMERICA!" in their comic book debut, and we see the five Autobot jets in question squaring off against robot-mode Ramjet, Thrust, and Dirge, defending an installation on the ground, with plenty of humans running for cover.  This is one of the less eye-grabbing covers, with a background that's uncolored and Herb Trimpe artwork that is perfunctory, but not especially dynamic.  The coloring is also strange—Fireflight is entirely white, Dirge has mismatched arms, and perhaps most strangely, Ramjet's face is flesh colored!  

Bob Budiansky scripted this story, with Don Perlin penciling the artwork and the team of Akin & Garvey doing the finished inks.  Janice Chaing continues her long stint as letterer, and Nel Yomtov is our long-suffering colorist.

The story opens with a focus on the Vasquez residence, boasting a typical nuclear family in Boulder City, Nevada.  They're talking about an Independence Day fireworks performance, totally oblivious to the tiny Insecticon named Bombshell, high up in the trees, observing and waiting for his moment to strike.

Yes, the Insecticons in the comics actually shrink down to the size of real Earth insects.  This is consistent with the Hasbro toy biography depictions of the characters (Kickback can put a hole in a quarter-inch thick plate of steel, which isn't very impressive for a gigantic robot, but certainly a mean feat for a tiny bug).  Production notes for the Sunbow cartoon indicate that they were at one time uncertain whether or not the Insecticons would shrink in the cartoon, but ultimately they decided the Insecticons would remain gigantic even when they're transformed.  This effectively means that the G1 Insecticon toys are just about 1:1 scaled, at least when they're in insect form.  

Richard Vasquez, father and husband, is bitten by a bug but thinks nothing more of it.  He's entirely unaware that Bombshell has, in fact, implanted a cerebro-shell into his system, effectively taking control of his nervous system.  He promises his daughter that "nothing can make me forget" about the fireworks show.  Dramatic irony, or an outright lie?  You decide!

The Decepticons have targeted Vasquez, specifically, due to his role as the assistant chief engineer over the hydroelectric power plant near Hoover Dam.  Megatron's plan is to destroy the dam, allowing the water to travel over the space bridge and flow through turbines to generate energy on Cybertron.  At least he's finally leting Earth technology work as it's intended, instead of trying to dismantle it! He is stationed several miles away from the dam with the other two Insecticons, who have recently come to Earth and have been modified to take on the forms of native insect life.  Megatron and the three Insecticons shrink down as they transform, boarding Vasquez's vehicle as he drives to work.

Somehow, Vasquez walks right past the guard with a rifle in hand.  He heads for the Hoover Dam control room, where the tiny Kickback knocks down the door and Vasquez, weilding Megatron, takes control.

Elsewhere at the Autobot base, Optimus Prime is having a wound in his armor plating welded together by Ratchet, while Donny Finkleberg and Skids are reporting on the Decepticon space bridge.  Prime offers a token "hey, glad you're not dead after all" to Skids, but that's as close to an apology as Skids will ever get.  When they explain that a team of Autobots arrived from Cybertron over the space bridge, Prime orders Jetfire to take Finkleberg to verify the veracity of his story.  

When Bumblebee alerts Prime to a news report about the Hoover Dam being taken over by a gunman with an incredibly powerful weapon, Prime determines it must be Megatron.  Ratchet makes a big deal over the fact that Prime's wounds are not welded shut yet, so you just know it's going to be a plot point later on.  (In a somewhat humorous moment, get a load of the kid making faces at the news camera.)

Wheeljack has just completed building the Aerialbot team, using the information the Autobots stole about Devastator's ability to combine in issue #19.  It's implied that the Aerialbots have already been given life by the Creation Matrix at some point off-panel.

Despite the fact that they're not fully programmed, the Aerialbots are sent to the Hoover Dam to deal with the problem, as they're the only ones fast enough to get there on time.  Silverbolt alone is the only one whose programming has been completed.  It's interesting how, in some ways, this mirrors the Aerialbots from the Sunbow cartoon.  In the show, the four smaller jets seemed to not care much about the Autobot mission to fight the Decepticons and preserve the Earth, with the level-headed Silverbolt the only one among them who seemed to uphold the Autobot ideals.  It would be interesting to know if this parallel is just a coincidence, or whether perhaps Budiansky took some inspiration from the Aerialbot portrayal in "The Key to Vector Sigma" parts 1 and 2. The pair of episodes would have first aired in November 1985, many months before this issue was written.

Outside the dam, the news media is trying to establish the identity of the gunman. Vasquez's wife and kid show up just in time for the reporters to produce a photo of Richard Vasquez, creating some pathos when the young child realizes it's her own father.  The Insecticons manage to electronically take control of the dam.  As this happens, the Decepticons send a signal to Cybertron, activating the space bridge.  Ramjet, Thrust, and Dirge are summoned, also having been recently modified into Earth-style forms.  (I'm not sure where the Decepticons are getting their information from.  While all three characters have an F-15 fuselage, none of them have a wing configuration that matches an actual Earth vehicle.  Ramjet's original toy, for example, was likely based on the single-engine F-16XL prototype that was never manufactured.  Dirge is similar, but not identical, to the single-engine Saab 37 Viggen.  No idea about Thrust.  No real-life jet plane could really have VTOL engines in the wings; the wings would create so much lift that they would, in all probability, rip right off the fuselage.  But, he looks cool, anyway.)

There's a coloring oddity where the yellow Diaclone cockpits on the Insecticons, as well as the cockpits on all three coneheads (as well as the wings on Dirge), are colored magenta instead of orange.  Now, my understanding of the four-color printing process is that it could only print black, cyan, yellow, or magenta.  If for some reason one of those colors didn't print, then that resulted in an incorrectly printed comic.  Usually, the publisher would recall incorrectly-printed comics to have them destroyed.  However, I've never seen a copy of issue #21 that didn't look this way.  So, I guess either Marvel didn't notice, or didn't consider it a significant enough error to worry about.  (There's also the possibility that Nel Yomtov simply grabbed the wrong marker when he was coloring these pages. He pulled some long hours.)  Following the trio of Decepticons is a huge drilling machine, which begins burrowing into the surface of the dam.  

Elsewhere, Jetfire and Finkleberg are still hunting for Blaster's group of Autobots.  Jetfire is alarmingly jokey, dropping Donny in mid-air before catching him, then making a quip about how humans probably don't bounce very well.  That's positively psychopathic.  He doubles down and continues to talk about how ballobots on Cybertron love to bounce when they play basketrek.  Finkleberg is not amused.  I swear, Jetfire is evil.  Once a Decepticon, always a Decepticon, I guess.  When they spot some Transformer fuel on the ground (Finkleberg slips on it, actually), they arrive at the conclusion that the missing Autobots were definitely there.  But, where have they gone?  It's a mystery!

The Aerialbots arrive at Hoover Dam, but as soon as Ramjet and Dirge and Thrust notice them, they take to the air to engage them.  A dogfight between the Aerialbots and some Decepticon jets seems like a perfectly natural match-up, but it feels strange that the first major appearance of these 1985 characters is when they take on a group of 1986 characters who are also appearing for the first time.  In the cartoon, the coneheads popped up halfway through season two, with the Aerialbots showing up near the end of the season.  The comic book continues to lag behind the cartoon when it comes to character debuts.  (This is also right before The Transformers: the Movie will hit theaters, which of course introduces many new characters as well.  That's gonna create a nightmare for Marvel Comics.)

You may recall that the introduction for Dirge and the others very nearly took a different turn, and probably could have all showed up as early as issue #10 if it weren't for Hasbro's insistence on showcasing the Constructicons instead.  Better late than never, I suppose.  (Meanwhile, whatever plans Budiansky might have had to introduce Inferno and Red Alert must have completely fallen by the wayside in favor of skipping ahead to the 1986 toys.  There are so many new products to advertise that twelve issues a year just doesn't seem like enough!)

The Aerialbots and Decepticons take turns showing off their special features, with Fireflight espousing such remarks as, "Who cares about the humans, Silverbolt?  They just get in the way!"  Yes, clearly his programming is not up to snuff.  By accident or design, this is very in synch with the Aerialbots from the television series.  We also get an interesting pairing when Dirge squares off against Silverbolt, using his ability to generate fear to magnify Silverbolt's acrophobia.  It's a logical character pairing.

Once the water is drained from the reservoir, most of the surrounding states will be reduced to an utter wasteland.  There's evidence that Vasquez isn't happy about this, but as of yet, he is completely unable to resist Bombshell's control.  

Air Raid seems ridiculously overpowered in this issue.  He carries a torque rifle that can twist metal, and one shot manages to completely mangle Ramjet's nosecone, as well as Shrapnel's antenna a few panels later.  Now, this isn't a weapon we've seen other Autobots carry previously, so evidently it's new technology developed by Wheeljack, put into a weapon, and was entrusted to Air Raid to use.  It's difficult to imagine that the Autobots can't figure out how to get a handful of robots to connect together into a combined form, but they can develop a weapon that can literally twist metal into scrap just by shooting at it.  Why don't all the Autobots equip this weapon?  

After the Decepticon jets are chased off, the Aerialbots still need to stop the drill.  The Aerialbots combine together into Superion, with Silverbolt secretly hoping that he is able to maintain control in the combined form.

Vasquez appears on the scene, still clutching Megatron and threatening to destroy Superion.  The gigantic Autobot responds with "you must die!" and makes a move to crush Vasquez.  The portion of Superion that is Silverbolt's mind is forced to interject and attempts to take control.  Silverbolt is actually arguing with Superion over what to do! There's a moment that's unintentionally hilarious, with Superion hovering over a human, struggling to kill him, while Megatron keeps chanting, "Pull my trigger, fleshling!  PULL MY TRIGGER!"

Finally, Vasquez's daughter, Maria, tips the scales and runs over to him.  He hesitates long enough that Silverbolt is able to exert control over the shared Superion form, forcing the components to separate back into the individual Aerialbots.  The others wonder why the mission hasn't been completed, but Silverbolt refuses to allow them to recombine.  With his mind filled with thoughts of his daughter, Vasquez finally opens fire—not on the Aerialbots, but on the drilling machine.  

Kickback and Shrapnel scoop up Megatron and fly away with him.  The Aerialbots return to the Ark, unaware that Bombshell is clinging to Silverbolt's wing and is hitching a ride.  Back at the dam, Vasquez is going to be brought in for questioning.  He apologizes to his daughter that he won't be able to take her to see the fireworks after all.  Maria responds, "I don't care, Daddy!  I saw plenty of fireworks already today, anyway!"

In an epilogue, we see the headquarters for RAAT (Rapid Anti-robot Assault Team, so it should really be called RARAT), a government agency specifically tasked with dealing with the Transformer problem.  We've seen that the police and the military are largely ineffective, so this seems to be the next sensible move.   

We see workers tending to some deactivated robots (one is colored like Optimus Prime, but it's pretty obviously the body of Blaster) and doing something with an acetalyne torch.  On the final splash page, the fate of Blaster and the others is shockingly revealed—their faces removed from their bodies and hung on the wall like trophies, with Circuit Breaker standing triumphantly before them!  (Blaster's head is still being colored as if he were Optimus Prime, and I have no idea why.)  

Does this remind you of the dead Autobots all hanging from the ceiling like "slabs of beef" in issue #5?  Have we come far enough into this comic yet for it to already be repeating itself?  Or was this inspired by the cartoon episode "Prime Target," in which a big game hunter wants to mount Optimus Prime's head on a wall like a trophy?  In any event, it sure seems like these poor Autobots are finished for good.  Alas, poor Blaster and Perceptor, we hardly knew ye.

This issue continues the trend of subverting expectations when it comes to new toy introductions.  The Aerialbots were a huge detriment to Autobot operations in this issue.  Normally, the moment when the combiner teams merge into a super robot form in the cartoon series is the climax of the episode, and the combined forms are always awesome and powerful.  Instead, Superion is an utter dolt, and his appearance on the scene was, like, the worst thing that could have possibly happened.  He's a monster.  This is quickly becoming standard operating procedure when it comes to new character introductions.  What's the point of reinforcements when they're all uniformly incompetent?

So, I think that, a lot of the time, the question in the writer's room is raised, "If x character is so powerful, why don't the Autobots/Decepticons use him/them all the time?"  The answer seems to be that each new character or group introduced has a major liability.  The Dinobots are terrifying to humans, and can't operate out in the open.  Devastator is exceedingly slow and stupid.  And so it goes.  Omega Supreme seems to be the singular exception to this rule, who pretty much exists to kill Decepticons.

Next issue promises Stunticons, as well as more Aerialbots and more Circuit Breaker.  We'll look at that one next month!

Zob (my daughter freaked out that I packed up some of the toys in her bedroom yesterday, and proceeded to open up all the boxes again... sigh)