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Is this the 50's, or 1999?
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	December 23, 2020
Cover date	November 2020
Written by	Cavan Scott
Art by	Juan Samu
Colors by	David García Cruz
Letters by	Neil Uyetake
Editor	David Mariotte and Chase Marotz

It's a history lesson like no other as Marty and his new allies meet the Autobot resistance and discover that there's more to Gigawatt than meets the eye.

Synopsis

In the ruins of Hill Valley, Marty McFly can't believe his eyes: his mysterious rescuer is a Cybertronian who's taken the form of Doc Brown's time-travelling DeLorean! Even though the robot introduces himself as Gigawatt, an Autobot from the future, Marty uses his skateboard as an improvised weapon to swat his hand away, and this distraction gives Starscream the chance to pick himself up and shoot Gigawatt in the back. Covered in manure, Starscream's eager to even the score... but when he sees his enemy's face, he can't help but wonder if he's met Gigawatt before. His hesitation gives the Autobot the opening he needs to transform and ram the Seeker in the chest, but Starscream's too canny a fighter to fall for the same trick twice and promptly takes him out of the fight. Marty makes a stand and hurls his skateboard at the flying Decepticon. Starscream mocks the futility of this pitiful attack... but what happens next takes everyone by surprise: the skateboard grows and transforms into the Autobot Skilz, who promptly kicks Starscream in the face! As Gigawatt recovers and prepares to take off, the pair scramble inside, and an irate Starscream can only watch from the ground as the flying car disappears in a flash of light.

The trio arrive in the year 2015, and discover that another thirty years of Decepticon occupation have reduced Hill Valley to a burnt-out wasteland. As they swoop over the town and toward Delgado Mine, Skilz can't believe that the Autobots haven't defeated the Decepticons, but the truth is far worse: the Autobots have been routed, pushed to the brink, and now only survive as a ragtag resistance led by Rodimus Prime. Inside the refitted mineshaft, Gigawatt touches down and delivers his final report to the Autobot commander: although his malfunctioning flux capacitor preemptively foiled his mission through time, his discovery of Marty in the year 1985 might yet provide the edge they need. Gigawatt hopes that Marty might know the whereabouts of his friend... because, he continues, Doc Brown's responsible for everything that's happened.

When Doc Brown made his trip through time, Gigawatt explains, he failed to notice that Rumble had stowed away inside the DeLorean. Doc arrived in the year 2015 without incident, and when Rumble—still badly damaged from his run-in with Bumblebee—revealed himself, the ever-compassionate Doc brought him back to his workshop to fix him. In return, Rumble pretended to befriend the human, and even helped upgrade his DeLorean with future technology... and once they'd finished, Rumble promptly betrayed his "friend" and summoned Megatron to steal the time machine. But Rumble discovered that the Megatron of this era had fought a losing war against the Autobots for thirty years, reduced to a broken-down wreck unable to even blast a single human with his malfunctioning fusion cannon; a disgusted Rumble hatched a new plan on the spot, stole the time machine, and traveled all the way back to the year 1974, where he procured the unwilling services of Biff Tannen. Armed with a ten-year head start, Rumble and his human slave stockpiled energon cubes until 1984, when the pair traveled to Mount St. Hilary, broke into the Ark, and reactivated Megatron and the other Decepticons ahead of schedule. But once Megatron had killed the still-dormant Optimus Prime, he decided that he had no need for two Rumbles, and promptly killed the version who had masterminded the entire scheme. Only a few Autobots survived the massacre, and those that remain are far too few to fight back against Megatron's conquest of Earth. When Marty wonders how they even know any of this, Gigawatt explains that Megatron kept Rumble's head intact so that they could extract all knowledge of the future from his memory banks. But it's Skilz who puts two and two together and comes to the correct conclusion: Gigawatt is a Decepticon!

The past: as Megatron tightened his grip on Earth, the Decepticon leader turned his attention to increasing the efficiency of his human slaves. But Gigawatt's distaste for his leader's habit of executing inefficient coordinators only draw Megatron's ire, and a warning to fall in line or face the consequences. But Gigawatt could not suppress his crisis of conscience and came to realize that his work analyzing the secrets of Doc Brown's stolen DeLorean might give him a way to undo Megatron's conquest of Earth. Trans-scanning the DeLorean gave him the opportunity to make a speedy escape from Decepticon headquarters, but not without first taking a blast from Megatron's fusion cannon before he could make his getaway. Unfortunately, Gigawatt explains, that narrow escape left his flux capacitor badly damaged and incapable of properly calculating his destinations; he was in fact aiming for 1974 on his last temporal trip and bumped into Marty in 1985 by pure accident. Marty dashes Rodimus's hopes when he admits that he has no clue how to fix the capacitor—the only person who can do that is Doc Brown, and nobody knows where, or when, he might be...

In the ruins of 2015 Hill Valley, Lorraine and George McFly toil away in the Decepticon workcamp until the surprise reappearance of Einstein the dog trips up George and sends him tumbling over. When Scrapper rolls up and orders George to get back to work, Lorraine unwisely stands up to the Decepticon... but before Scrapper can terminate either of them, a blast of energy nails him in the back. That blast was fired by Doc Brown himself, wielding an improvised blaster and a cadre of advanced technology, and who tells the pair that today's the day they take back Earth from the Decepticons!

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashback.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Whoa! Now my board's a robot, too?!"
"Your board? Dude, we've only just met."

—Marty McFly and Skilz

"You're a robot. An actual functioning robot. The future truly is a wonderous place."

—Doc Brown meets Rumble

"I've never seen anything so pathetic. I'm outta here!"
"The time machine. No!"
"Sorry, Doc. But you know how it is. Places to go—history to rewrite!"

—Rumble betrays Doc Brown

"Hey, watch where you're driving, butthead."
"You! What year is it?"
"T-the year? It's 1974."
"Excellent! We have much to do. And when I say we, I mean—YOU!"

—Biff Tannen gets acquainted with Rumble

"You still function? I'm almost impressed... but almost isn't good enough. You're no Decepticon."
"No. No, I'm not. I quit!"

—Megatron and Gigawatt

"I'm glad to hear it, Mr. McFly, because this is a red letter day—the day we take the world back from the Decepticons. The question is... will you join the fight?"

—Doc Brown

Notes

Continuity notes

• The Autobot resistance operates out of Delgado Mine, located in the desert that lies beyond Hill Valley. The mine itself appeared in the opening act of Back to the Future Part III as the location where Doc Brown stored the DeLorean in 1885, so that his younger self could find and retrieve it in 1955.
• Following on from both issue #1 and the ending of the original film, Doc travels to the year 2015 and uses future technology from that era to upgrade the DeLorean with a Mr. Fusion generator and its iconic flight circuits. In this timeline, however, he apparently didn't get around to installing the orange barcode-styled license plate that appeared at the end of the first film and in both sequels, as it doesn't appear on either the real DeLorean or Gigawatt's alternate mode.

Transformers references

• In his flashback, Gigawatt's shown working alongside Flamewar—originally created for the Transformers Collectors' Club, this feisty bike-bot became the breakout character of IDW's rebooted Transformers comic over the previous year, and her appearance in this story reuses Anna Malkova's distinctive design from that series.
• A readout on Gigawatt's HUD is written using Jim Sorenson's "Ancient Autobot" font, a substitution cypher based off the hieroglyphs from the Generation 1 cartoon episode "Cosmic Rust". When translated, it reads "DELOEAN"—it's anyone's guess as to whether this is an unintentional flub or a deliberate misspelling.
• Gigawatt is specifically noted to have "trans-scanned" the car; although the idea of scanning for potential alternate modes is an old one, this particular word originated in ancillary 2007 Transformers film media, which used it to describe the process by which Transformers could instantaneously analyze and reconfigure their bodies into vehicles and other machines—in the years since, this kind of "on-board" depiction of the technology has generally become the standard depiction for how Cybertronians receive new alternate modes.
• After blasting Gigawatt, Megatron sardonically notes that his former underling "still functions" in reference to his famous final exchange with Starscream in the 1986 film.

Back to the Future references

• The first flashback shows Doc Brown arriving in the original version of 2015, which features several of the iconic flying cars that appeared in the opening act of Part II. In a departure from the original film, however, this vision of 2015 depicts a more urbanized future for Hill Valley, featuring skyscrapers and other tall buildings rather than the green, park-like space from the film.
• When Rumble travels back to the year 1974, the Biff Tannen he encounters sports sideburns and a slicked-back mullet, the same hairstyle he possessed in Part II as the Trumpian ruler of an alternate Hill Valley.
• Doc returns sporting a pair of thick, visor-like sunglasses and a yellow duster, a modified version of the outfit he wore in Part II to blend in with the citizens of Hill Valley in 2015.
• Doc says it is "a red-letter day"; he had used that term in the original film when describing Nov. 5th, 1955, the date he first visualized the flux capacitor.
• Marty sarcastically asks Starscream "Are you deaf and stupid?" — which he also said to Griff Tannen in Part II.

Errors

• Skilz is missing his Autobot insignia when he kicks Starscream on page five.
• On page fourteen, Jazz’s torso is miscolored to resemble Smokescreen.
• After last issue's mix-up, the DeLorean is correctly drawn with the Mr. Fusion generator after Doc Brown and Rumble augment their ride with future technology in the year 2015... but subsequent panels of both the original DeLorean and Gigawatt's alternate mode are missing the device.
• Unlike the last issue, in which Soundwave was drawn to resemble his Music Label toy, this issue has him based on his standard G1 cartoon model, as is most noticeable by the buttons on his waist.

Other trivia

• Originally solicited for November 2020, this issue arrives almost a month late, the latest in an ongoing series of delays.

Covers (9)

• Cover A: Doc, Marty, and Gigawatt do the time warp again, by Juan Samu and David García Cruz
• Cover B: Marty and Skilz get in trouble with the Decepticons, by Philip Murphy
• Retailer incentive cover: Marty, Skilz, and Gigawatt outside Lyon Estate, by Dan Schoening and Luis Antonio Delgado

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External links

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