Underworld!

Initiation rituals turn out to be more than meets the eye...

Synopsis

In caverns deep underground on Cybertron, three Autobot Military Academy cadets—Subsea, Tailgate, and Flattop—hide as a group of mutant Transformers hunt for them. Once the mutants have passed them, the three Autobots move off, though Flattop is frozen with fear.

Up on the surface, Pipes and Outback comment that initiations in the Underworld went out with the Ark but Flattop was headstrong and talked the others going in. Outback and Pipes agree to go in to rescue their fellows.

Down below, the mutants find the Autobots and kill first Subsea then Flattop. Before they can kill Tailgate, he blasts Smeltdown's furnace, triggering an explosion which kills all the mutants bar Rotgut. Tailgate throws the survivor into the pyre as Outback and Pipes arrive to find their help is not needed.

But the explosion has released something else, something that has not fed in countless years...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

• In the penultimate frame Tailgate's name is rendered "Tail Gate" when Outback speaks to him.

Continuity errors

• TBD

Continuity notes

• This is the first appearance of Tailgate (bar a one panel cameo in "Resurrection!") and Pipes.
• It's not at all clear when the story is set. All three Mini-Autobots are cadets at the academy, but in his previous appearances Outback was a regular soldier.
• Cybertron has a long-disused sewer system.

Real-life references

• TBD

Other trivia

• Flattop inadvertently used the same name as a toyline Decepticon; when questioned by a reader in #255's Dread Tidings Letters page, Dreadwind claimed that the Flattop featured in "Underworld!" was an unsuccessful clone of the Decepticon.

Back-up material

• Additional Transformers story: "The Resurrection Gambit!"
• Other strips: Action Force - "Evasion" and GI Joe the Action Force - "Divided We Fall!"
  • "Divided We Fall!" was a mini-comic detailing how the European Action Force and its American counterpart G.I. Joe have merged to form G.I. Joe the Action Force, a name change that would be carried over to the back-up comic strips from issue #248 and the cover from issue #249, as well as the toyline. The mini-comic was also printed in The Incredible Hulk Presents #8, which was published the same week, as well as being given away free in some toy shops.

Foreign Localization

Swedish

• Title: "Den Undre Världen" ("The World Below")

Cover

• Issue #245 cover: Tailgate hides from a Mutant, by Andy Wildman.

• 👁 (thumbnail)
  

  Issue #245

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Reprints

• Transformers: Aspects of Evil: Rodimus Prime and Unicron fight, by Stephen Baskerville. Cropped version of issue #254's cover.
• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Vol 19: Perchance to Dream: Megatron (from early IDW promo art), by Guido Guidi above a retro scene of the Battlechargers (from Marvel UK #255 cover), by Stephen Baskerville.

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  Aspects of Evil TPB
  (Titan Books, 2005)

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  The Definitive G1 Collection Vol. 19
  (IDW Publishing, 2017)