Robots in Disguise comic issue 1

Robots in Disguise comic issue 1 is the first installment in the Robots in Disguise comic book series.

Excerpt: The Bee Team find their teamwork is going to have to improve if they hope to bring in paranoid Decepticon Spinhead.

Synopsis
The Bee Team plays a round of "Capture the Flag" in their scrapyard base to strengthen their teamwork, with Fixit serving as an "evil Decepticon" for the other to compete against. Strongarm gets the drop on him, but Sideswipe ignores her and tackles the Mini-Con instead. Grimlock joins the action, "dinopiling" on top of Sideswipe; when Strongarm takes a little too much amusement in Sideswipe's plight, he sweeps her legs out from under her, and the pair start fighting while Grimlock watches, the exercise forgotten. The exasperated Bumblebee calls an end to training, informing them they have all failed, then withdraws to talk with Denny about the discipline and trust shared by the members of his old team, which his new comrades lack. Russell is annoyed to discover the Autobots have had combat training without him, but just as Bumblebee is announcing the team's need for more training sessions, a blackout strikes. A moment later, the yard's backup generator kicks in, and Fixit traces the cause of the power outage to a blown transformer nearby. Sideswipe proposes checking it out in case a Decepticon was responsible, and Bumblebee allows it, but instructs him to take Strongarm with him, rather than the disappointed Russell.

Strongarm and Sideswipe bicker all the way out to the transformer, but quickly fall silent when they discover that a Decepticon was indeed behind the blackout: the dragonfly-like Spinhead, a dangerously paranoid conspiracy theorist and member of the "Free Will Faction" terrorist organization, convinced that power lines are used by the Cybertronian government to transmit mind-controlling radiation. Spinhead departs in his helicopter mode without seeing the two Autobots, ranting about how he will destroy every power source on the planet—a clue that allows Sideswipe and Strongarm to track him to the nearest power substation, though when they don't find him immediately they quickly fall to arguing once again. Spinhead soon strikes from above and battle begins, but the Decepticon's powers of flight give him the upper hand, and the two Autobots soon retreat to the scrapyard, admitting that they need to focus more on fighting Spinhead than each other. Russell is able to deduce Spinhead's next target, but only agrees to tell Bumblebee what it is if he is allowed to accompany them on the mission. 'Bee agrees, acknowledging that Russell is a member of the team like anyone else, and they all set off for the Anitoba Institute for Extraterrestrial Communication.

The Bee Team arrives to find that Spinhead had taken over the facility, and they try to convince him that they're not the tools of a giant government mind-control conspiracy that he thinks they are. He accepts their word—but they're still Autobots, so he attacks them just the same! The disorganized team scatters, each doing their own thing, attacking Spinhead one after the other in vain... until Bumblebee jams a pylon into Spinhead's rotors while he's occupied fighting Grimlock, crippling his flight capability. Grimlock "dinopiles" onto the fallen Spinhead, and the Autobots celebrate their victory, having simply pretended to be disorganized to trick the Decepticon. But out of the corner of his optic, Bumblebee spots a shocking scene: hidden in the nearby brush, his old teammates Arcee and Bulkhead have been watching the fight! Unaware that they are being watched, the pair report to Ultra Magnus that they have successfully kept themselves hidden from Bumblebee. When the Autobots return to the scrapyard to unwind, Bumblebee confides in Denny what he has seen, and now wonders if the trust he believed his old team had in one another ever really existed...

Continuity notes

 * Sideswipe has a Decepticon Hunter, which would chronologically place this issue after he received one in "Sideways". Spinhead wrecks it, but we're sure Fixit could fix that up.

Transformers references

 * While playing the Decepticon role in the team's training exercise, Fixit wields a "My First Blaster", Swerve's weapon from issue #18 of More than Meets the Eye.
 * The flag in the training exercise is decorated with the image of Kremzeek.
 * Spinhead says "Oh, you didn't need that, did you?" as he breaks Sideswipe's Decepticon Hunter, an inversion of Prime Ratchet's usual reaction when one of his tools are broken.
 * As they unwind after the battle, Sideswipe and Russell play the Mystery of Convoy video game. Sideswipe struggles with it as much as the rest of the world did.

Errors

 * While probably done deliberately for a bit of toyline synergy, Bumblebee's memory of Team Prime shows Optimus Prime in his post-death Robots in Disguise body-design, rather than the look he had in the Prime cartoon (or more specifically, the Beast Hunters segment–Smokescreen is seen in his post-"Project Predacon" blue and yellow.)

Other notes

 * The story is followed by a letter to the readers from John Barber, and a short comic strip in which Optimus Prime contacts Bumblebee to give him a "gift" for his "human allies": an exclusive downloadable character for the Robots in Disguise mobile game, which the reader can obtain by scanning the symbol that appears on Bumblebee's chest. The character is a unique redeco of Starter Underbite, named "Cybertron Underbite". It's more than a little weird that Optimus would be giving us a Decepticon, but maybe it's best not to look a gift bot in the mouth.