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Tread & Circuits Part 1 - Transformers Wiki

When a terrorist group threatens the most important race on Velocitron, Thunderclash and his high-octane team of Wreckers investigate.

Synopsis

To the inhabitants of Cybertron's myriad colony worlds, there are few Transformers as popular or daring as Thunderclash and his team of Wreckers, a troupe of travelling stunt-bots renowned for their livestreamed performances. Broadcasting live as he and his team freefall toward the surface of a barren, rocky world, Hot Shot reveals that today's stunt is a death-defying skydive from their starship Stuntmaster without any levitators or safety equipment. The thrilling aerobatic show that ends with all five Wreckers—Thunderclash, Hot Shot, Ricochet, Aileron, and Circuit landing safely on their feet; as they take a bow, strike a pose, and congratulate one another on another successful adventure, however, their broadcast suddenly cuts out...

Having successfully hacked Thunderclash's broadcast, Mayhem spokesman Octopunch and his minions have a message of their own: the time for chaos is now. For too long, the inhabitants of the colonies have been fed a steady stream of mindless entertainment to turn them complacent and incurious, and no world better exemplifies this complacency than Velocitron. For years, the winner of that planet's Speedia 500 race is traditionally appointed head of the planet's senate; currently, Road Rocket leads the senate after the previous winner chose to abdicate his position. To the 'bots of Mayhem, the Speedia is a fundamentally broken system, one that deliberately locks out the majority of Cybertronians from ever effecting meaningful change. To illustrate this point, Octopunch turns his attention to their prisoner Electrons; he ran the race last kilocycle not to help his fellow 'bots, but to seek wealth and glory—and this selfishness earns him a quick execution. Octopunch's demands are simple: if the upcoming Speedia race is not called off, Mayhem will ensure that they take control of Velocitron instead. Mayhem might not hold the Wreckers in high esteem, but when it comes to the business of revolution, Octopunch concedes that their famous slogan gets it right: "wreck and rule".

Although Thunderclash initially writes off the outage as an ordinary glitch, their medic Minerva flies the Stuntmaster down to meet with the other Wreckers, and informs them what's really happened: terrorists have somehow hjacked their signal and used it to broadcast a threat to the people of Velocitron. With their cameras off, Thunderclash reverts to full business mode and demands a sit-rep from Aileron—because, although the Wreckers look like civilian thrill-seekers on camera, they're really top-secret Autobot agents who operate outside the remits of Colonial Security and use their travelling stunt shows as a pretense while handling dirty jobs the Autobot government can't tackle. When Circuit traces the pirated signal back to its source, the Wreckers follow it to Velocitron, where Speedia fever is already mounting; although Aileron planned a discreet landing, she's dismayed to see crowds thronging their landing pad. Thunderclash steps up to podium to greet their adoring fans and establish their cover story: the Wreckers have come to Velocitron to show their support for the Speedia; he, Aileron, Ricochet, and Hot Shot will all be entering the famous race as a show of goodwill. As reporters bombard the Wreckers with questions, Circuit takes advantage of the chaos to leave the ship through a back hatch and slip into the city unseen... While tracking the mysterious pirate signal, Circuit passes the time by recording another one of his ongoing personal logs: since the Iron Hope disaster, Circuit's struggled to cope with the loss of his alternate mode, and his self-esteem issues are only exacerbated when a Velocitronian passerby hurls junk at him for walking in an alternate mode-only lane.

Aboard the Stuntmaster, meanwhile, Aileron lays into her commander for going against their carefully-laid out plan on the spur of the moment—they were only supposed to monitor the race from afar and intervene as needed. Thunderclash, however, has a reason behind this controversial decision...

Circuit has finally tracked the signal to an alley in a run-down warehouse district, but on an unfamiliar planet that doesn't cater to mode-locked Cybertronians, the timid Autobot is briefly overwhelmed by his own self-doubts. As he pounds a wall and tells himself to pull it together, the roar of an engine and a blinding set of headlights catches his attention...

Thunderclash and Aileron's argument interrupts a gaming session between the other three Wreckers on the ship: Thunderclash's idealism may have served him well during the War of the Threefold Spark, but they're not here to take stands or make point: they're here to do a job. Thunderclash admits that he might've made the wrong call now, but they'll have to live with it. When Minerva exults at defeating the other two Wreckers, Aileron runs a headcount: why hasn't Circuit returned? As it turns out, Circuit's discovered that the wall he's pounded is a façade, concealing a metal building... but before he can investigate further, a blast from his mysterious pursuer sends him running further down the alley. Pinned against a dead end, Circuit can't believe who's found him: Axer!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Organize your chaos. Use your voices and, when it fails, your violence. Let Mayhem lead the way."

—Octopunch


"All I'm saying, Ricochet, is that I could protect and win the race."
"Didn't we already establish you're a slowpoke? How about I win the Speedia while you cover for me?"

—Hot Shot and Ricochet


"Why is there a crowd outside the ship? I thought this was a covert mission."
"Right. And how do Wreckers do covert?"
"Poorly."

—Thunderclash and Aileron


"Now, a lot of you weren't back home during the war. Or were forged after Exarchon's downfall. You experienced the death and carnage wrought by the Threefold Spark from a distance of space and time. I have seen death before, but that never makes it easier. And while I may no longer be a soldier, I will do my damndest to make sure you never see death again. This is my promise to you. We show no fear. We don't bend to extremism. We face our problems head-on."

—Thunderclash

Notes

Continuity notes

  • The floating camera drones used by the Wreckers to broadcast their stunts have cropped up over in IDW's ongoing Transformers reboot a few times—for instance, Andromeda used several in Transformers #26.
  • While hyping up their free-fall, Hot Shot notes that most Cybertronians know someone who's gone skydiving with the assistance of levitators or other mechanical aids; in Transformers #6, Orion Pax remembered a time when he and Megatron pulled off such a feat, although unlike the Wreckers they used a levitator disk to slow their descent.
  • Although Tread & Circuits marks Velocitron's first on-panel appearance, the planet received a prior namedrop in Transformers issue #17, which featured Lightbright dancing to a song about the planet.
  • In Transformers #3, Bumblebee briefly mentioned Blurr in a conversation with Rubble. This issue reveals that he won a previous Speedia, but declined the position of leadership and left Road Rocket to rule in his place.
  • In his personal logs, Circuit notes that, like fellow Action Masters Treadshot, Catgut, Charger, and Fire Beast, he was a survivor of the Iron Hope disaster.
  • Aileron sardonically wonders if Thunderclash has rust worms in his brain module, destructive pests who were formally introduced in Transformers #34. Later, she sarcastically wonders if Mortilus is somehow responsible for her lot in life; Transformers #25 previously established Mortilus as a folkloric figure whom Groove occasionally prayed to.

Transformers references

  • The Wreckers have enjoyed a flexible lineup across multiple continuities: their original appearance in "Target: 2006" consisted primarily of random toys who hadn't yet appeared in the comic, with a few original characters like Impactor thrown in for good measure, and this anything-goes attitude has translated over to most of their other fictional incarnations. In a surprising but welcome return to this grab-bag origin, Tread & Circuits eschews the traditional Wrecker big names—Impactor, Springer, Whirl, etc.—in favor of an entirely new roster pulled from odd corners of the Transformers mythos: in addition to team leader Thunderclash, there's also Headmasters extra Ricochet, a Cybertronian version of Minerva from Super-God Masterforce, a "Generation 1" incarnation of Unicron Trilogy protagonist Hot Shot, Action Master Circuit, and IDW's original character Aileron, whose put-upon dynamic with Thunderclash evokes her combative relationship with Optimus Prime in the Robots in Disguise and Optimus Prime comics.
  • Ricochet and Hot Shot are drawn using their Generations Selects toys, while Minerva is based on the, at the time yet to be revealed, Legacy Elita-1.
  • The Mayhem terrorist cell is based on the Mayhem Attack Squad from the Marvel comic, and Octopunch, who ran with the group of the later days of the original Transformers comic, appears to serve as its spokesman. The group's abbreviated name, and their depiction as a loose-knit group of anti-authority radicals not formally allied with the Decepticons, is lifted from the Sins of the Wreckers miniseries.
  • While skydiving, Hot Shot calls Thunderclash "Big 'Bot", a nickname Cheetor used for Optimus Primal in the Beast Wars cartoon.
  • The planet Velocitron was one of the four Cybertronian colony worlds central to the plot of the Cybertron series. Although all previous Transformers stories have depicted the planet with an arid climate—ranging from a dry desert world in Cybertron all the way to a Mercury-like hellscape in Windblade, this universe's Velocitron is temperate in nature, with green continents and a liquid ocean.
  • The Speedia 500 debuted in the final episode of the Cybertron cartoon; it later cropped up again in Transformers: Exiles and the Windblade miniseries. Blurr is shown to be a previous winner of the race, but it's unclear if he's a native Velocitronian or not: Exiles established him as a native Velocitronian, while in IDW's previous continuity he briefly travelled to the planet to race in the Benefit 500.
  • The videogame controller that Minerva is holding resembles High Score 100 from the Real Gear Robot subline, but with the buttons colored like Nintendo's Super Famicom controller. As the controller does not transform or display any sentience, we cannot assume it actually is High Score 100.
  • Although he's lost his ability to transform on his own, Circuit's shown wearing the transforming exo-suit that came with his original toy. In his monologue, he notes that he used to be a "chronicler" with a camera alternate mode, recalling his role as a news reporter in the pages of Robots in Disguise and Windblade.
  • Circuit's fellow Action Master Axer is shown riding his original Action Master accessory, the bespoke Off-Road Cycle.
  • A pair of background Velocitronians sport bodies based on Jazz and "Aligned" Sideswipe's Fall of Cybertron toys, although they're both coloured light blue with red highlights.
  • In her rant, Aileron namedrops the Pit, a hellish location occasionally alluded to in Beast Wars media.

Real-world references

  • As the team prepares for their show, Thunderclash counts down from three before crying "Let's jam!", evoking the famous Cowboy Bebop theme song.

Errors

  • On page ten, the phrase "sit-rep" is erroneously hyphenated.

Other trivia

  • The opening scene of this comic features Ricochet riding Hot Shot's jeep mode like a skateboard; just a few months earlier, the second story of 2021's My Little Pony/Transformers crossover featured Rubble doing almost the exact same thing. It's not clear if this is a deliberate callback or just a particularly bizarre coincidence, but it's definitely noteworthy!

Covers (3)

  • Tread&Circuits 1 cvrA.jpg

  • Tread&Circuits 1 cvrB.jpg

  • Tread&Circuits 1 cvrRI.jpg

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