Linkage Part 13

The final battle with the Mini-Cons' creator!

=Linkage Part 13=

Plot: Hirofumi Ichikawa Script: Hirofumi Ichikawa Pencils: Ichikawa, Hirofumi Inks: Ibid Lettering: ? Colors: HIROFUMI ICHIKAWA, MOTHERF***ER Editor: ?


 * Major characters (in order of appearance): Stella Holley, Unicron, Kingbolt, Impulsor, Quench, Falcia, Combusta, Twirl, Ravenus, Midship, Redline, Flat-Out, Servo

Synopsis
On Earth, Stella has taken up drawing as a way to keep remembering and honoring her Mini-Con friends.

And around Cybertron, the combined forces of the Autobots, Decepticons and Mini-Cons are locked in battle with the massive Unicron. Ravenus makes a point to fight alongside the Sonic Assault Mini-Con Team to make up for his past acts.

A squad of evil Mini-Cons led by Midship advance on the Super Stunt Mini-Con Team. Against the backdrop of Unicron facing off against the combined Mini-Con Unicron doppelganger, Redline and Midship clash...

One year later, while Stella is on a break at her job, her friends notice soemthing very strange going on... her hair is turning platinum blonde! Stella knows this is a sign from her friends... and somewhere, Redline and the others have returned to Earth and established a free city for Mini-Cons... and it's only a matter of time before they are all reunited!

Errors

 * TBA

Items of note

 * Four pages, and the final chapter.


 * Unicron is using the toy's light-up hand to make the ship-smashing energy wave. His eyes are also lit up red, just like the toy!


 * Overload makes a one-panel appearance here. For a time, Ichikawa had intended to use "Linkage" to explain where Overload came from as well, but didn't have the room.


 * With this final installment, all but one of the Sonic Assault and Hazard Mini-Con Team members' weapon modes are shown. Poor Impulsor.


 * The Dead End drones shown here use the cartoon's light-gray coloration rather than the toy's dark gray and yellow. This is also the only in-fiction appearance of the drones' robot mode.


 * Stella's hair turning blonde has nothing to do with the energon-sensing powers of the Energon-series human Kicker Jones, which turns his hair blonde. In fact, Ichikawa was totally unaware of Kicker when he wrote the comic.  Reportdely, his reaction to learning about the hair-color change thing was, quote: "Oh, this can't be good", but he went with it anyway.


 * The device on the cliff in front of the Mini-Con city is an Autobot space bridge, its design taken from the Panini UK Armada comics. Further proving that Ichikawa is a huge geek, but the good kind of huge geek.


 * Ichikawa originally intended to have some Omnicons and/or Terrorcons in the shot of the Mini-Con city, as the toy development teams on both sides of the planet decided that those groups were evolved Mini-Cons (which was relfected in the Dreamwave Energon comic). However, when he discovered that the cartoon production team had never heard of this and had their own origins for them, Ichikawa geudgingly dropped them.