The Iron Klaw

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"The Iron Klaw"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	May 17, 2017
Cover date	March 2017
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Fico Ossio
Colors by	Sebastian Cheng
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Hedgecock
Assistant editor	David Mariotte
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era

When the Revolutionaries investigate the Iron Klaw, they find themselves facing the Predacons—but fortunately, our heroes have Snake Eyes on their side to help out!

Synopsis

In the Eastern European nation of Kalistan, the country's ruler Count van Rani, aka the Iron Klaw, reclines on his throne in his Iron Castle. Baron Ironblood arrives to report that their newest comrade Tomax Paoli, accompanied by Garrison Kreiger's mysterious steampunk robot "Centurion," has embarked on a mission to San Francisco to retrieve the "Project: Ice Man Protocols." Centurion is not the only Cybertronian on the villains' side; Van Rani also counts the Predacons among his allies, but just as Ironblood is remarking on the impressive figures the Decepticons cut, a communication from Kreiger informs the two men that Tomax has come up against resistance and is already requesting emergency extraction. Ironblood and Kreiger retrieve Tomax using the M.A.S.S. Device, but are angered to see that Centurion is not with him. Tomax has brought a peace offering, however: the unconscious form of his attacker, Garrison Blackrock! Ironblood and Kreiger are eager to get to work studying the half-human, half-Cybertronian... unaware that everything in the castle is being silently watched from the shadows by the G.I. Joe ninja commando Snake Eyes!

Nearby, Kup, in vehicle mode, transports Mayday and Action Man toward the Iron Castle. As they drive, they review the information being sent to them from inside the castle by Snake Eyes. Kup recounts his personal history with the Predacons; how he trained them before the war, how they conducted an unsuccessful experiment with combiner technology while stranded on Earth, and their previous alliance with The People's Republic of China. Mayday has her own limited experience with the Iron Castle, having spent her early years as a member of G.I. Joe operating in the region with Big Ben. She goes on to describe how, a few years prior, Ben and Duke worked with the Isaac Craft, the son of Cobra's public relations officer, in a plan to bring Cobra down; they ultimately succeeded, but Craft died when the plan went sideways due to them being unaware Snake Eyes was operating in deep cover in the Cobra ranks at the time. With all intel shared, and their destination reached, the team charge into action with abandon—Kup shoulder-smashes his way right through the walls of the Iron Castle, only to discover that Kreiger's technology has allowed the Predacons to perfect their combination process, as they now tower over him in their gestalt form of Predaking!

Elsewhere in the castle, Kreiger and Ironblood link Blackrock up to a replica of the Talisman Kreiger has created to experiment on him, but as they do so, a slight noise catches Ironblood's attention, and he spots Snake Eyes hiding in the rafters. The castle's robotic Iron Grenadier guards open fire, and when the brief barrage is over, Snake Eyes lies lifeless on the ground. Kreiger is quick to shift his attentions, demanding Tomax hand over the protocols he was sent to retrieve, but Ironblood looks closer at Snake Eyes's remains, and realizes that the "ninja" is actually nothing but a robot drone! "Tomax" rips his face off to reveal that he is, in fact, the real Snake Eyes in disguise, his voice having been provided through a synthesizer by Kup. Moving like only the real Snake Eyes can, he quickly takes out Ironblood and Kreiger, reclaims his costume from the robot, scythes his way through the Grenadiers, and cuts Blackrock free from the Talisman. Their infiltration gamble has paid off; by letting himself be linked to the Talisman, Blackrock has discovered that it has a connection to his ancient master, Onyx Prime.

While Kup and Action Man keep Predaking busy, Mayday makes her way inside the castle and links up with Snake Eyes and Blackrock. At Mayday's instruction, Blackrock accesses Kreiger's Talisman-interfaced computers, searching for a way to force Predaking to disengage into his component parts. He treads carefully, wary that the Talisman may unlock his Cybertronian "Sovereign" personality, but Snake Eyes doesn't have time for hesitancy and simply smashes the console with a severed Grenadier arm. His percussive maintenance does the trick; outside, Predaking splits back into the Predacons, who turn out not to have been willing allies of the human villains and are furious at having their minds tampered with. Kup and Razorclaw grapple until Kup exploits the Predacon leader's "one weakness"—and just blows his head off. Blackrock, Mayday, and Snake Eyes subsequently fight their way to the M.A.S.S. Device and use it to teleport themselves outside the castle, appearing in mid-air, where they are quickly snatched to safety by Kup. The team beats a quick retreat to begin pursuit of the next objective, the real Tomax.

In the wake of the heroes' escape, Ironblood advocates cutting ties to Tomax and Centurion, but Kreiger objects, pointing out that they will need them now that the heroes stand poised to learn the secrets of "Project: Ice Man". Doctor X chimes in over a communicator to say that it does not matter, because she has finished preparing the facility... which contains the frozen body of another steampunk Cybertronian who looks just like Optimus Prime!

Featured characters

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

Quotes

Kup: "We're not gonna wind up spendin' all day lookin' at pictures, are we?"
Mayday: "How come an ancient Cybertronian sounds like my five-year-old nephew?"
Action Man: "You get used to him."
Kup: "Hey, I got ears. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean."

"Our banter musta finally got to it!"
"I'm sure that's it."

—Kup and Action Man watch as Predaking screams and de-combines

"I known you since you were barely more'n a protoform, Razorclaw. An' you always had one weakness..."
(Kup places his gun under Razorclaw's chin and blows his head off)
"That's his weakness?"
"Well, it's a lotta fellas' weakness."

—Kup and Action Man

"A robot ninja fronting for a rubber-masked Trojan horse carrying a mechanical alien. Oldest trick in the book."

—Baron Ironblood

"Turning metal's made you soft."

—Mayday wryly reacts to a show of concern from Blackrock

Notes

Continuity notes

• Following the appearance of the "Hearts of Steel Bumblebee" robot in the previous issue (given the name "Centurion" in this story), the fact that he and Tomax have gone to San Francisco jumps out as notable, since portions of the original Hearts of Steel mini-series were set in the city.
• Kup having trained the Predacons before the war is new information. If taken literally, the flashback image that shows them with their beast modes during the pre-war era is a little odd, but not an outright error; though their earliest-dated appearance, in Megatron Origin #3, had them with vehicle modes, the later miniseries Primacy showed they had access to their beast modes many, many years before coming to Earth, and that they switched back and forth between them and their vehicle forms over the years.
• The Predacons are identified by Kup as a special forces unit for Megatron, likely a nod to how during the Simon Furman era they were supposedly the Decepticon boogeymen, an idea that wasn't really explored, and consequently fell by the wayside in favor of the Decepticon Justice Division.
• The fact that the Predacons once unsuccessfully experimented with combiner tech is also a new story point. Per Kup's telling, this unchronicled adventure—which Kreiger notes involved the Predacons using a mysterious "object" of some kind—must have taken place somewhere in the two-year timeskip between the end of All Hail Megatron and the Predacons' reappearance during the "International Incident" arc of the 2009-2011 ongoing series. Though not mentioned in this issue, Razorclaw had become separated from the rest of the team by the time of their Chinese alliance; consequently, the flashback image of him having a staredown with Optimus Prime on Earth must have taken place during this untold story.
• China's failed alliance with the Predacons is speculated by Mayday as being a big part of the reason Zilong Qian hates Transformers so much.
• Mayday reveals that, before becoming a Joe, she was a member of Skywatch. Since, according to her bio on the cast page, she was serving with the Joes by the time of All Hail Megatron, that means she must have been a member of the organization in its earlier incarnation, from Simon Furman's "-ations" era of IDW history, before Spike Witwicky was put in charge. Lucky for her.
• Mayday notes her early days in the Joe ranks were spent in Eastern Europe with Big Ben; Ben was still active in the area, though no longer associated with Joe, in G.I. Joe vol. 4. Action Man also recalls Ben's death in Revolution #1.
• Continuing with her recap of her history, Mayday covers the public outing of G.I. Joe by Cobra from G.I. Joe vol. 2 #12, following which she transferred to the Earth Defense Command (where we first met her in Robots in Disguise #31), and the Joe team went public, as seen in G.I. Joe vol. 3.
• This issue provides some vague closure to the stories begun in G.I. Joe vol. 4 and Snake Eyes: Agent of Cobra, the final G.I. Joe comics published by IDW prior to their revival as part of Revolution. As things had been left, Snake Eyes was working for Cobra for no clear reason, and Big Ben and Duke had allied with Isaac Craft to take down Cobra; this issue reveals that Snake was actually working as a deep cover agent for Joe, and is implied to have been the one who killed Isaac when whatever he, Duke, and Ben did went down.
• Blackrock dreams of his master, Onyx Prime, who recites the same poem heard when Pyra Magna dreamed of him in the 2017 Transformers annual (itself taken from the Generation 1 cartoon episode "Cosmic Rust").
• As with "Bumblebee"/Centurion, it appears—at first blush—that the "Ice Man" in question is the Hearts of Steel incarnation of Optimus Prime. Prime didn't take on an Earthly form in the original Hearts of Steel mini-series; he appears here as he did in Infestation 2, in which he also appeared frozen (in the Mare Rurek Glacier). What is going on here? It's frankly too long to fit into this bullet point, so read the next issue to find out!

Transformers references

• "Project: Ice Man" takes its name from the first live-action Transformers movie, in which it referred to the frozen form of Megatron. Within this continuity, the phrase previously appeared as an Easter-egg newspaper headline glimpsed in Devastation #2 – it's not unthinkable that John Barber might be making a deliberate reference to that newspaper here, having previously pulled a similar trick in his movie comics with a newspaper gag from Revenge of the Fallen.

Hasbro franchise references

• Ironblood remarks on the outfit "Tomax" (actually the disguised Snake Eyes) is wearing; it's Tomax's classic outfit from the original G.I. Joe series. He's never worn it on-panel in IDW continuity before, but he was shown wearing it along with his brother Xamot in a wall-mounted painting in G.I. Joe vol. 4 #1.
• Like the man said, "G.I. Joe is the codename for America's daring, highly-trained special mission force"... but it's not often that it's mentioned what the team's actual name is. This issue gives it the same real name as the original Marvel comic: "Counter-Terrorist Group Delta"; however, see "Errors", below.
• Their appearance here is obviously intended to thematically tie into the Iron Klaw, Kreiger's I.R.O.N. Army, and Baron Ironblood, but the Iron Grenadiers are normally depicted as Destro's private army in G.I. Joe lore (and they're normally humans, rather than the robots used here). On the final page of this issue, a speech bubble appears from over Iron Klaw's shoulder belonging to an unseen speaker who claims ownership of the Grenadiers; the next panel shows Ironblood entering the room, but it's not 100% clear if this line was supposed to be his, or an unseen third party's. Either way, perhaps it can be taken as a hint as to who else the villains are working with...

Errors

• On subscription cover B, Rampage is miscoloured as Razorclaw.
• Continuing an error from last issue, the inside front cover credits page gives the issue's title as that of issue #2, "Enter the Shadow".
• Razorclaw's head is consistently colored with a red helmet and yellow faceplate, rather than the correct yellow helmet and red faceplate... except for one panel on page four, where he has a red helmet and faceplate with a yellow face underneath.
• Mayday refers to G.I. Joe as "Counter-Terrorist Group Delta"... but G.I. Joe vol. 3 #1 gave its name as the "Joint Services Special Counterterrorist Group", a fact made even more egregious by the flashback on the same page to that same issue. Future issues will consistently use "Counter-Terrorist Group Delta"; considering that John Barber clarified that Heavy Duty's real name was retconned to be "Hershel Dalton" at Hasbro's request, maybe something similar happened here?
• A red, orange, and grey robot lies before Onyx Prime in Blackrock's dream, as two versions of Blackrock, one in his human guise and one in his Cybertronian form seen in this series, walk off to the left and right, respectively. It looks like this robot is supposed to be Blackrock's original "Sovereign" appearance, as seen in the Titans Return storyline, prior to his Revolutionaries redesign, but if so, it's been significantly miscoloured from its original purples.

Other trivia

• Originally solicited for release in March, this issue arrives significantly late, two months after the fact, halfway through May. The solicitation for the issue erroneously described issue #5's story, as a result of Barber briefly intending to adjust the order of events.^[1]

Covers (4)

• Regular cover: Our heroes, Snake-Eyes, and Predaking, by Tradd Moore and Felipe Sobreiro
• Subscription cover A: Snake-Eyes versus Predaking, by Robert Atkins and Juan Fernandez
• Subscription cover B: Rampage loom over Snake-Eyes, by Tone Rodriguez and Thomas Deer
• Retailer incentive cover: Snake-Eyes and the Revolutionaries under fire, by John Royle and Juan Fernandez

• 

  Pat Lee?

• 

  Good luck there, Snake-Eyes.

• 

  Rampage cosplaying as Razorclaw.

• 

  I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

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• Revolutionaries #5
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• "The Hasbro Tribune" editorial page promoting March's Hasbro Universe titles, including this issue, G.I. Joe #4, Lost Light #4, and Optimus Prime #5.
• Free Comic Book Day 2017 (which had already taken place over a week prior to the late shipping of this issue)
• Wynonna Earp season 2

Reprints

Other than full or partial collections of Revolutionaries.

• N/A

References

External links

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