Original

While on their latest fantastical exploit, gentleman adventurers Walter Simmons and Theodore Joseph Wells run afoul of a race of inhuman subterranean monsters beneath the Sierra Nevada mountains. After escaping the beasts and re-entombing them beneath the Earth through a combination of Theodore's fondness for firearms and Walter's predilection for rational thinking, the pair are approached by United States Secret Service agent Billy North, who has been sent to draft the two men on orders of the president. Walter and Theodore's history of endeavours into the worlds of the unreal make them the ideal men to study the case of Captain Archibald Witwicky, who has returned from a voyage to the Arctic blind and mad, spinning "delusional" tales of a giant mechanical man frozen beneath the ice. After questioning Witwicky in Boston, Walter is intrigued at the possibility while Theodore scoffs at the notion, enraging Witwicky's first mate, Reginald Danco, who accosts him. Defusing the confrontation, Walter and North learn that Danco also saw the metal man, and begin putting together an expedition to follow Danco's directions back to the Arctic and see it for themselves.

A short time later, Walter, Theodore, North, and Danco set sail for the Arctic, joined by metallurgist Jack Arden, explosives expert Philippe Bowen and geologist Theodore Grant. Witwicky's claims prove more than mere fantasy when the team discovers the frozen form of Megatron, and Walter begins speculating about the true nature of the alien marvel before him. As Witwicky's presence did before, however, the arrival of the seven activates something within Megatron, and one-light second away, in Havana, Cuba, the long-dormant Jetfire senses the Decepticon leader's energy signal. Having been disguised as a United States Navy boat, Jetfire promptly transforms and flies away, leaving his crew none the wiser, thinking that their ship has merely been sunk by the Spanish.

Danco advocates destroying Megatron to North before he can pose a threat to humanity while Walter and Theodore discuss each other's reactions: the former shocked by the latter's incredulity, the latter fearing the former may be consumed by the enormity of what they face. Arden, meanwhile, studies Megatron's metal body, coming to the frustrating conclusion that he is made of no metal he has ever seen; information without which Grant cannot calculate where Bowen should place his charges to free Megatron. The whole matter soon becomes a secondary concern when Jetfire comes crashing through the roof of the ice cave, having followed Megatron's signal there. Ignoring the humans, who look on in awe, he converses with the reactivated Megatron, but upon learning that the Decepticon is not The Fallen, upon whom he seeks revenge, he simply punches his prone form. Jarred out of their shock by Jetfire's violent act, the seven spring into action, with North firing upon the Transformer with his six-guns. Irritated by the "insect's stings", Jetfire seizes North, and hurls him over his shoulder to his death. At Danco's direction, Grant and Bowen set up charges to blow the ice out from under Jetfire while Walter, Theodore, and Arden distract him from either side. The resultant explosion sends Jetfire plunging into the depths of the freezing sea, and partially immerses Megatron as well, knocking him offline; as he shuts down, Megatron gasps out his name, which Walter mis-hears as "Mega-Man".

The death of Agent North weighing heavily on his conscience, Walter tells Theodore that to be consumed by the extra-terrestrial mystery is inevitable. He tells the others he expects nothing from them, their duty to him and the mission done, but they all object, insisting that the group stay together. And so ends the first and only adventure of the First Seven...

Featured Characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Decepticons	Humans	Others
Megatron (10) Jetfire (11)	Theodore Joseph Wells (1) Walter Simmons (2) Billy North (4) Archibald Witwicky (5) Reginald Danco (6) Jack Arden (7) Philippe Bowen (8) Theodore Grant (9)	Cave brutes (3)

Quotes

"Maintaining a scientific demeanor might have proved the better part of valor, Theo."
"They made the first move."
"They growled at you."
"That's a first move, Walter."

—Walter Simmons and Theodore Joseph Wells

"I am but a humble servant of progress. Or at least that's what I tell myself when I lie awake at night."

—Simmons

"Who piloted this--or, good god, man! What if this is the creature itself?"

—Simmons is stunned by Megatron

"We killed a space-robot! Do you know what a metallurgist usually does? Lemme tell ya, it ain't as fulfilling as you musta heard!"

—Arden is having fun

Notes

Continuity notes

Theodore and Walter previously appeared, unnamed, in the second issue of IDW's Movie Prequel comic; Walter was previously named in the prequel novel, Ghosts of Yesterday. A building containing mysterious objects that appeared to be Sector Seven's headquarters appeared in that comic, at a time before the movie itself claimed the organization was supposed to have been founded, but is here retconned away as being Walter and Theodore's trophy collection from the various strange adventures and treasure-hunts they've been on (in his notes, Barber says these guys were presented as adventurers in the Prequel, which is a bit of a fudge). Barber also says that since the Prequel says Seymour Simmons' great-grandfather was part of the original Seven, he had to be one of those guys.
- A bit of a retcon-slash-error-smoothing takes place with the characters, however: despite not being named, the second issue of the prequel treated the dark-haired, mutton-chopped character (Wells) as being the one with the family and the growing obsession with Megatron. The third issue, however, then puts the silver-haired, moustached character (Simmons) in that role, as he wistfully returns to Hoover Dam before his retirement over thirty years later. Sector 7 united all these attributes in Simmons.
- Danco also appears in the prequel as part of Witwicky's crew, and does get named. A guy quite like him is seen with Sector Seven's crew later in the Prequel, so Barber decided to make them both the same character.
Jetfire's appearance in this issue comes during the time he was wandering the Earth, previously glossed over in the final pages of Tales of the Fallen #3. The old coot hasn't really appeared in a lot of media outside of the film itself, but Sector 7 is fairly notable for being about the only thing to actually recreate the boisterous, self-aggrandizing, violence-happy personality that Jetfire has going on in the movie (complete with plenty of instances of him referring to himself in the third person!), compared to the much more reserved characterization seen in Tales of the Fallen, or the Kup-like treatment the video games gave him.

Transformers references

The ship's manifest seen on page nine is the list of the "First Seven" released on the internet during the Sector Seven alternate reality game promotion for the first movie. The names are here established to be aliases for the real men.

Real-world references

Jetfire's maritime accident is a little unclear. It's based around the real-life sinking of the USS Maine, which started the Spanish-American War. Barber's notes at the end of the issues claim that Jetfire was responsible for accidentally sinking it, but the art itself actually appears to suggest that Jetfire was the Maine (observe the anchor chains, masts and gunnery cannons that decorate his robot mode), and that him transforming was mistaken for the ship breaking up and sinking. Barber later clarified that Jetfire was only part of the ship (the metal part, naturally!), since being the whole ship wouldn't make sense in terms of scale, and that when he transformed and flew off, the remaining, wooden part of the ship broke up and sank.[1]
On page fourteen, Bowen is reading The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (for whom Joseph is named).

Errors

While the art keeps our heroes Joseph and Walter consistent (Joseph has dark hair and mutton chops, silver-haired Walter has a mustache), the script does not do them such favors. They are supposed to be Walter Simmons and Joseph Wells, but on page four, North refers to them as "Joseph Simmons" and "Walter Wells". The names then switch to the correct arrangement from page eight onward. One is perhaps given pause to wonder, then, why it is Wells who mispronounces "Witwicky" as "Wickety", just as Seymour Simmons did in the first movie, when this would make more sense as a joke if it was Seymour's ancestor Walter doing it.
Despite the correct design of Megatron being used on the cover, the inside pages depict Megatron as he appeared in Revenge of the Fallen.
Just when you think you've got the names sorted out, John Barber's continuity notes at the end of the issue give Wells's name as Theodore! This name will be used (almost) consistently throughout the second issue of this series, while a blurb on the inside cover of the third apologizes for the mistake and clarifies that his name should indeed be Theodore (while in the process trying to harmonize the error by saying his full name is "Theodore Joseph Wells").
The use of the word "robot" is a bit of a historical anachronism. The word did not enter the English language until 1923, from the English translation of the play "R.U.R" ("Rossum's Universal Robots") by Carel Kapek. Further, the aforementioned play uses the word to describe artificially created organic people, not mechanical beings.

Other trivia

We won't judge you if you didn't realize this story had a title, because it's basically hidden as part of the artwork on the splash page of the seven boarding their ship, as a weathered word painted on the boards of the deck. It doesn't really look like a title, even, but later issues have clearly one-word titles that prove it must be.
The issue has "FIELD NOTES From Agent John Barber": continuity notes and behind-the-scenes info about how the issue was created. Barber says this was editor Andy Schmidt's idea.
The human cast are meant to represent "disparate parts" of the era, according to Barber: Simmons and Wells are "Jules Verne/HG Wells gentlemen scientist-adventurers", North is a "cowboy", Bowen is "basically... Oscar Wilde as an explosives expert", Grant is a "rugged hero in the mold [sic] of... fictional colonialist Allan Quatermain", and Arden is a throwback to the vanishing "pre-Industrial Revolution master-apprentice era".
Early online solicitations for this issue accidentally claimed it was being written and drawn by the creative team of IDW's True Blood comic. Copy-paste cock-up!

Covers (3)

Cover A: Archibald discovers Megatron, sepia version by Brian Rood of art originally by Josh Nizzi.
Cover B: Sector 7 flotsam and jetsam by Joe Suitor.
Cover RI: An incentive cover of the flotsam and jetsam in lovely black borders.