Head of the mysterious shadow organization known as Spectretron
Nick Roche’s Sins of the Wreckers has finally been unleashed upon us resulting in showers of praise, rejoicing, and my most favorite, biting questions! I don’t need to waste anyone’s time recapping the plot because if you ended up here from a Google search, you are already deep in the rabbit hole. So just who could’ve possibly kidnapped our favorite asshole, Prowl? Let’s identify some likely suspects! Clearly if any of the crap written below is correct, these are spoilers so read at your own risk!
Suspect 1: Noisemaze
The first question one has to ask before trying to identify a suspect is whether or not the character behind this is someone we’ve seen before in the IDW-verse, or not. IDW has been on a terror lately pulling characters from previously non-G1 canon into the fray such as Knock-out, Bulkhead, and more. The trend may be continuing with more modern and under-developed characters in order to create some fresh new villains for the Autobots and Wreckers, similar to how Lockdown has been elevated to super-villain status thanks to “Transformers: Age of Extinction”.
Evvvvil
Choosing Noisemaze as a potential culprit behind Prowl’s disappearance is kind of a lazy assumption based solely on the use of his name as a location instead of a character. Anyone reading that line on the most colorful page of the comicbook instantly conjured up visions of this guy. Is he likely the owner of that shadowy visage? No, but because of the wordplay, Noise-y here gets an honorable mention.
Suspect 2: Tarantulas
With all the newly introduced beast-formers such as Blackarachnia and Rattrap in the Transformers ongoing, the lack of certain notable characters was noticed more than the ones that did appear. Many of the more treacherous characters were missing from their ranks and specifically the covert evil scientist double-agent Tarantulas on TFwiki who infiltrated the Predacon ranks for the Tripredacus Council.
My spidey-senses are off the charts!
Perhaps this would be a non-beast-affiliated version of Tarantulas more akin to how the TFCC has recently released the character… a few times now. That would make it possible for his traditionally jangly silhouette to match the bulky shoulder profile of the quick glimpse we got from Prowl’s point of view. However Tarantulas rarely works alone. He is typically working for someone else in charge and speaking of that man in charge…
Suspect 3: Hubcap
It feels so very in-character for creator Nick Roche to leave a giant glaring clue right out in the open for us to gush over after the series is finished and in this case, I believe it to be the ever-so-unlikely timid and polite administrator Hubcap. His posturing is wonderfully rendered by Nick and with such grace that it stood out to me. How did this guy get in the position he’s in? What’s his backstory? Nice of you to ask, because it delivers us another juicy piece of the puzzle: motivation.
The Keyser Soze of Transformers?
The only historical data we have on Hubcap is that he was friends with the ill-fated Pipes. I say ill-fated because he was sent to an early grave by Overlord who was on The Lost Light. The reason he was on The Lost Light in the first place was because of a covert operation Prowl conducted and has yet to be reckoned with for.
It does seem like a stretch, but there is plenty of back story to dive into for Hubcap as the issues of this comic continue. There’s even a mention by Roadbuster about special “frequencies” going on in his brain. Frequencies that could perhaps make a lot of… noise? So much so that his mind could resemble… a maze?
If you really think about Hubcap, there’s a lot of questions that we don’t have the answers to yet. How did he get to be on the operations side of the Wreckers? Does he want to be there, or was he stationed? Is he more of a threat than he seems?
Hubcap certainly appears to be the least comfortable with his armaments on the closing spread, but could this be another red herring to make him seem even less threatening? Is he the Darth Darth Binks of the IDW Universe?! There’s four issues left, so enjoy the ride!
Suspect 4: Sideways
Along the same thought-lines as Noisemaze comes the vaporous and deceiving Sideways. Did you know that Noisemaze was his Japanese name? It all starts to make sense now doesn’t it…
It’s time for someone to get an updated toy!
Sideways is an especially delicious suspect for the ringleader because of what his existence always seems to be a precursor to: Unicron. IDW has been very careful not to open the lid on the Unicron can for the past 10 years and with good reason. The coming of the Beachball of Doom if oft times used as the final moneyshot of a series and is the penultimate event that ever seems to happen in a Transformers saga. It is truly difficult to out-do a titanic demon planet god once you’ve done it but if IDW ever goe down that road, it will most likely be incredibly drawn out and be a very long con. Sideways could be a great way to start sowing the Unicron seeds.
How would Sideways feel as a villain without Unicron? There are plenty of ways to skirt that issue and have him exist beyond being an agent of the Chaosbringer. For instance, perhaps he is a NAIL that has gone rogue. Maybe he’s a creation of the Quintessons instead. He could be from an entirely different race of robotic beings. The options are there and I would be delighted to see this slippery fellow join us on journey of Sin.
Suspect 5: Megatron (Beast Wars)
This is the big one. I don’t have a lot of proof for this, I just feel this would be an amazing way to introduce a huge villain that could really shake things up in the IDW universe. We’ve lost Megatron to the Autobots, but as Yoda said “There is a another.” Galvatron is turning out to be a despot villain, but what about a terrorist from a lost colony looking to reclaim their homeworld? Could that be the origins of IDW Beast Wars Megatron? It would certainly seem topical for today’s social issues and elevate the big purple dinosaur to Phase-sixer level fear status.
You want it to be me, yesssss…
If I was writing this story, I’d want access to some really awesome characters that have been waiting in the wings. Nick didn’t come back to this just to let Springer of the leash, he wants to really put another mark on the Transformers comics and after what he and James started with Overlord, I am positive they have a taste for greatness. Beast Wars Megatron would be, in my opinion, one of the last major “Oh no you DIDN’T!” fangasm characters left to appear in the modern Transformers era.
The only problem is… what is his name? It certainly won’t be fucking Megatron, but this would also be a wonderful opportunity to put his name on the map!
Suspect 6: Entirely new characters
It’s also entirely feasible that Prowl’s captor(s) is someone we’ve never seen and it will be a completely new character like Turmoil or Rung. If that’s the case, I’m not going to sit here and bore you with my made-up fan fiction characters because that would be more torturous than putting me in a metal box to melt my way out of.
I hope you enjoyed the read and here’s to waiting for the next issue!