The Lost Treasure of Cybertron

Written by Sonia Black Woods
Illustrated by Frank Springer and Phil Lord

This book was published by Marvel Books with a copyright of 1986. ISBN 0-87135-103-X.

The scans live here: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/tf/books/coloring/lost-treasure/. Browse them at your leisure. "FC" is the front cover. You can use the lost-treasure-all.html file to load all the pictures on one page (may be slow). These scans were sent by Derik Smith.

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE MISSING PAGE 44 OF THIS BOOK.
Additionally, the scan of page 10 is not very good.
If you have this book and can help out with a scan or two, please let me know!

Artwork notes:
As with most books from this late in the series, the characters are pretty much drawn in their standard models. There are some pictures that appear sort of incompetent (or more realistically, rushed), but they were clearly trying to match the model sheets. Sometimes quite slavishly so, with several pictures being lifted from reference art or other pre-produced pictures. One interesting part is that although Daniel is drawn just like his movie and cartoon model, complete with his big-collared jumpsuit, his parents wear perfectly normal clothing (and live in a perfectly normal house) as if they lived in the real year 2005 instead of TF:TM's 2005. Also, his parents seem to be Buster and Jessie from the comics instead of Spike and Carly from the cartoon.

The quality of the art in this book is variable. There are some nice pictures, lots of adequate ones, and several awful ones. I rather like much of the picture that spans pages 32 and 33. The poses of some of the Autobots, and the blocking, are pretty nice. Then they ruin it on page 34 by giving Magnus a tiny torso with huge limbs. Pages 42 and 43 are another spread. Galvatron looks terrible, but in the same picture there's a wonderful injured Seeker (Ramjet, I suspect) on his hands and knees.

Story notes:
Like the previous coloring book, "The Battle For Oil Valley", and like a large quantity of licensed material from 1986, this book apparently takes place in the middle of "Transformers: The Movie" because the leaders are Ultra Magnus and Galvatron, with Hot Rod not turned into Rodimus and Starscream not dead yet. See my statements on the setting for that book, and note that this book probably takes place after "Oil Valley" because it seemed to be the Autobots' first encounter with Galvatron, whereas this time they seem to be familiar with him.

Also, as noted above, Daniel's parents are apparently Buster and Jessie. Buster is named explicitly, although I suppose it's possible his wife is supposed to be Carly. She looks like Jessie though, just as much as Buster is clearly Buster and not Spike. Considering these books were produced by Marvel using Marvel artists (heck, this book even credits Frank Springer, one of the regular pencillers for the TF comic) it probably shouldn't be too surprising if they used Marvel Comics's in-house reference material instead of getting stuff sent from Marvel Productions (who made the cartoon under contract from Sunbow) or Hasbro.

Some other random bits: The Autobots' ship is named as the Ark (not unusual in comics-based stories, but as noted elsewhere this name was never used in the cartoons). Springer was apparently present when the Ark was loaded, althought he may not have been part of the expidition itself.

Summary:
Out on a leisurely drive, the Autobots and Daniel stop to rest and eat. While relaxing, Kup tells the story of the lost treasure of Cybertron. You see, "the most precious cargo on board the Ark" when it left Cybertron all those years ago was a supply of energon cubes. A supply which was lost in the crash, and not been seen since. Hot Rod decides they should try to find the energon, and the other Autobots agree with enthusiasm, as you can see from the very jubilant-looking Sunstreaker shown here. Or... maybe he's just stretching. Or flexing? It's hard to tell. Anyway, Laserbeak, who has been listening in, flies home to let Galvatron know about the cubes. Both teams head to Mt. St. Hilary to try digging random holes to find the energon cubes. They run into each other and have a big fight. During the fight, Rumble makes a big earthquake which accidentally unearths the crate containing the energon. During the struggle the crate breaks open, and then Starscream -- who has not appeared or been mentioned yet -- shows up, shovels most of the energon into his mouth, and declares himself leader of the Decepticons. He fights with Galvatron, and the Autobots walk off, apparently unconcerned.

The good bits:
In the year 2005, Daniel carries around a tape recorder.

Autobot City is a comically generic "futuristic city".

On page 22, Magnus is holding his rifle, standing in the street in front of a giant fan (???) while he listens to Blurr's report about the story Kup told them.

Page 24 claims that the name of Galvatron's ship is Cyclonus. Also, it shows a big picture of Scourge's vehicle mode. (Scourge appears, in robot mode, on the next page... I guess he's inside himself. Or maybe one of them was just a Sweep.)

Galvatron orders the Decepticons to "roll out", and leaves his base by driving down the road in his cannon mode. (Hey, it's got tank treads, after all.) Strangely, although they are clearly leaving a ground-based headquarters, they were previously out in space inside Cyclonus.

During the battle, page 30 shows Bonecrusher succombing to a landslide in his bulldozer mode, and the text reads, "As usual, Bonecrusher got buried in his own rubble." ...what? When has this ever happened before?

The lost treasure has been buried at Mt. St. Hilary since the Ark crashed there, and nobody has ever looked for it before. Further, the cubes are all packed into a single big metal crate with the English words "Energon Supply" written on it.

Starscream appears totally out of nowhere (presumably on the missing page) to consume the energon. Even though plenty of cubes are still drawn in, apparently he ate enough in those few seconds that the Autobots don't care about the remainder, and leave it to the Decepticons to fight over. Which... makes you wonder how much of it there could have been in the crate in the first place. They acted as if it was a huge store of energy, but Starscream was able to use most of it up before Galvatron could even lay a hand on him?

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