ALLEGIANCE: DECEPTICON
SUB-GROUP: POWERMASTER
HUMAN COMPONENT: THROTTLE

FUNCTION: AERIAL ASSAULT
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 42

“Things are never as bad as they seem – usually they’re worse.”

Profile: If Dreadwind is the ultimate pessimist, Darkwing completes
the equation by being a manic-depressive. He believes that life is one long
ordeal of pain and suffering, and that it’s pointless struggling against it.
However, where his brother-in-arms just sits back and lets this bleak outlook
get him down, Darkwing is no passive bystander. If he’s destined to suffer,
then by Primus he’s going to make others share it… only more so! His avowed
purpose in life is to make the lives of others worse than he believes his to
be! To him, death is getting off lightly. Better to leave a foe still alive,
in terrible pain. He somehow feels better knowing that others are suffering
more than he is. But there is a side to Darkwing that’s every bit as gloomy
as Dreadwind. No matter how well things are going for him, he’s convinced that
it’s not going to last. To Darkwing, the next personal disaster is always just
around the corner. If nothing else, this attitude keeps him alert to impending
attack. He’s partnered to Throttle, a (self-admittedly) low-life thief. He revels
in his chosen profession and loves mixing with society’s dregs. Throttle sees
this as simple honesty and appreciates that in others. If he doesn’t like you,
he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms. With Throttle, what you see is what you
get. In a way, that’s why he gets on okay with Darkwing (though Darkwing might
have something to say about that), because at least Darkwing doesn’t pretend
to be anything he’s not. So he’s a pessimist – so what?

Abilities: Darkwing’s jet mode abilities mirror Dreadwind’s almost exactly.
Darkwing combines with Dreadwind to form the vehicle Dreadwing, so they are
not so much two jets as two halves of the same jet. Fast and deadly, Darkwing
is similarly laden with weaponry, the most deadly of which are his two laser-guided
electro-kinetic blasters, which turn an enemy’s power against its owner. The
more powerful the foe, the more Darkwing can hurt him. Unlike Dreadwind, he
is mobile and lethal in robot mode, specializing in hand-to-hand combat.

Weaknesses: If he weren’t teamed with such a reckless hothead, Darkwing
could probably claim to have no weaknesses. As it is, Throttle is so keen to
prove himself that he over-exerts himself in engine mode, desperately trying
to outdo Dreadwind, and overheats. When this happens in the heat of battle,
it can have disastrous consequences, leaving Darkwing high and dry and a sitting
duck. Darkwing hates combining to form Dreadwing, and is often distracted by
continually bickering with Dreadwind.

ALLEGIANCE: AUTOBOT
SUB-GROUP: TARGETMASTER
HUMAN COMPONENT: PINPOINTER

FUNCTION: WEAPONS SUPERVISOR
FIRST APPEARANCE: HEADMASTERS # 1 (Crosshairs), HEADMASTERS # 4 (Pinpointer)

“Don’t shoot until you see the wires in their eyes.”

Profile: Crosshairs had a long career on Cybertron as the Autobots’
chief armory manager. He procured, maintained and supplied to his brethren the
latest and most lethal weapons. But he grew more and more disgusted with himself
as more and more Decepticons were consigned to the scrapyard, the awful result
of his labors. He reasoned there were better ways to use his time than stockpiling
implements of death. He quit the weapons business and joined the Autobot band
led by Fortress Maximus. When Fortress Maximus renounced war, Crosshairs was
one of the first to agree with him and one of the most vocal of his supporters.
However, events on the planet Nebulos soon forced these Autobots to take up
arms against the Decepticons again, and Crosshairs grudgingly went along. Given
his prior experience, he was appointed weapons supervisor by Fortress Maximus.
He’s meticulous, cautious – some would say overcautious. Although he’s less
than happy with his job, he’s very caring about it, and mindful of his limited
resources. He doesn’t like to waste ammo; he won’t take a shot unless he’s sure
he can’t miss, and encourages others to do the same.

Pinpointer was a biomass recycling engineer on Nebulos. As such, he shares
his binary-bonded partner Crosshairs’ concerns for efficiency and avoiding waste.
He’s very businesslike and can be brief in his words to the point of appearing
rude. But he is very reliable and an ideal Targetmaster.

Abilities: Pinpointer transforms into a dual rocket-propelled grenade
launcher who can lock on a target in less than .0003 seconds, but usually trusts
Crosshairs to tell him when to shoot. He can be fired by hand or mounted on
and operated by Crosshairs in vehicle mode. In vehicle mode Crosshairs has a
maximum speed of 160 mph and a range of 750 miles. He’s built for traversing
very rough terrain and has superior durability.

Weaknesses: In weapons mode, Pinpointer often suffers from nausea and
dizziness as a result of the exhaust fumes he inhales from his own grenade firings.
This can severely reduce his accuracy. Crosshairs sometimes becomes emotionally
overcome by the rampant destruction he witnesses in battle, hampering his combat
effectiveness.

ALLEGIANCE: AUTOBOT
FUNCTION: MILITARY STRATEGIST AND ANALYST
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 1

“Logic is the ultimate weapon.”

Profile: He is quiet, competent, and very loyal, but perhaps his most
valuable trait is his almost endless patience. Once Prowl is assigned a task,
he will keep at it until it is accomplished. He works with proven facts, not
imagination or guesses. If he has any doubts, he will radio Optimus Prime, his
commander, before proceeding. He hates doubts in any form, and he strives to
make everything he encounters reasonable and logical. He believes it only when
he can explain it. On a personal level he is friendly, but not too sociable.
He’s a listener, not a talker, unless someone says something unreasonable. Then
he will demand an explanation.

Abilities: Prowl has the most sophisticated logic center of all the
Autobots, giving him the ability to analyze any combat situation almost instantaneously
and then advise on the optimal course of action. For example, Prowl can observe
800 moving objects, compute their probable paths of movement, and determine
the proper countermove in .05 seconds. From his shoulder cannons he can shoot
wire-guided incendiary missiles that reach temperatures of 12,000 degrees Centigrade
upon explosion. He also carries a semi-automatic rifle that shoots pellets filled
with a highly corrosive acid. Its range is 300 yards.

Weaknesses: His dedication to logic and reason makes Prowl particularly
vulnerable to the unexpected. Irrational and inexplicable situations can really
scramble his circuits, sometimes to the point of total shutdown of his mechano-cortex
center, leaving him temporarily dysfunctional.

ALLEGIANCE: DECEPTICON

SUB-GROUP: TRIGGERCON
FUNCTION: DATA COLLECTOR
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 48

“Things are never as good as they seem.”

Profile: Crankcase is a wheezing, whining ingrate who is about as welcome
as a rash of rust-rot, even among his fellow Triggercons. His favorite pastime
is complaining about everything and everyone. Nothing is good enough for him.
He delights in the misfortunes of others. Apparently, their misery makes him
feel superior in some misguided, muddle-headed way. This juvenile “I’m-better-than-you-are”
need in him stems from his youth, before he became a Decepticon. At that time
he was little more than a gangly collection of circuits and servo-motors, performing
a menial janitorial function in the Fuel-Spill Section of the Ministry of Energy
and Nutrition on Cybertron. More robust fellow workers mocked his feeble physique
and bullied him. Feeling alienated from and hatred of established society, Crankcase
eagerly joined the Decepticons when they began their war against the Autobots.
Megatron himself rebuilt Crankcase to give him increased bulk and strength.
Crankcase’s first action in his new body was to attack the Ministry of Energy
and Nutrition. Millions of years later, the fuel spill he caused has yet to
be fully cleaned up.

Abilities: Crankcase has a vast data storage capacity. His memory can
contain 400 trillion trillion bits of information, which are encoded in patterns
of light within microscopic crystal matrices. His titanium-steel alloy armor
is resistant to all explosive shells having yields of ten megatons or less.
Twin infrared probes can penetrate and analyze most unshielded electrical circuitry.
He is armed with two high-impact laser blasters and a distortion modulator that
scrambles internal electrical signals within most targets that it hits. It can
effectively cause temporary paralysis or uncontrollable, spasmodic seizures
within a victim. He transforms into a ground vehicle with the same armor and
sensor properties. In this mode his maximum speed is 90 miles per hour and his
range is 480 miles.

Weaknesses: In vehicle mode, Crankcase is prone to frequent tire blowouts.
On rare occasions, a sharp blow to his head module causes small data dumps in
different areas of his memory – a form of amnesia similar to the type found
in some humans who have undergone similar trauma.

ALLEGIANCE: DECEPTICON
FUNCTION: DECEPTICON CITY COMMANDER
FIRST APPEARANCE: THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE # 1

“My power is everything; defeat is absurd!”

Profile: Galvatron is the new name and identity for Megatron when his
remains are metamorphosized by Unicron. Galvatron is Megatron to the ultimate
degree, more evil, more powerful, and even less subject to emotion or decency.
Through the powers of Unicron, Galvatron’s own powers are augmented continuously
so that his strength becomes so vast that his arrogance and confidence are boundless.
As long as Unicron exists, Galvatron is invincible, but Galvatron’s conceit
and greed for dominance are so great he even plots against Unicron and hopes
to retain his new might without him.

Abilities: He possesses enough strength to pulverize an Autobot into
scrap metal. In robot mode, he carries a laser that emits chemically-produced,
direct-current electricity.

ALLEGIANCE: AUTOBOT
FUNCTION: DEMOLITIONS
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 1

“Might over microchips.”

Profile: Brawn looks on Earth as essentially a hostile environment – and he loves it. He is the most macho of the Autobots. He delights in challenges and when he faces one he becomes fully alive. He is strong, rugged and very agile – which is why he is frequently teamed with Bumblebee when the Autobots are in a mountainous environment – but it is his enjoyment of the challenge that makes him valuable to his leader, Optimus Prime. He won’t be discouraged and that helps the morale of the rest. He is hardy and enjoys a good joke, if it is not too subtle. His main fault is that he tends to be contemptuous of those not as tough as he.

Abilities: Brawn is one of the strongest Autobots. He can lift up to 190,000 lbs. and knock down a small building with one punch. His endurance and resistance to artillery fire are among the highest of the Autobots.

Weaknesses: As the Autobot with perhaps the least sophisticated circuitry – most of his components focus on his strength – Brawn is very vulnerable to attack by electromagnetic and other types of waves. His eagerness to show off his strength often results in his using it improperly and without thinking. He’s been known to destroy an entire building before realizing it’s the wrong one.

ALLEGIANCE: AUTOBOT
SUB-GROUP: DINOBOT

FUNCTION: JUNGLE WARRIOR, DEMOLITIONS
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 4

“Stomp your enemy, crush him under your feet.”

Profile: Sludge likes to make his presence known. A few steps of his
incredibly lumbering legs and everyone within a three-mile radius can hear –
and feel – that he’s around. But his awesome physical appearance belies his
unusually gentle and shy nature. Like his fellow Dinobot, Slag, he is not happy
with the leadership of Optimus Prime. He feels, however, the Autobot cause is
more important than any personal misgivings and so he rarely exhibits his feelings.
Such is not the case when Sludge is fired to battle – he then becomes a terrifying,
unstoppable force.

Abilities: In Dinobot mode, Sludge can exert pressure up to 40,000 pounds
per square inch with a single step, enough force to shatter a bridge or even
crack a mountain. Only a handful of his comrades can match his immense strength
and endurance. His armored hide can withstand all but the most powerful blasts.
He’s adept at operating in watery and swampy environments and in jungles.

Weaknesses: Sludge is often victim to the calamities he causes. Often
his fellow Autobots must dig him out of the rubble he’s brought down upon himself.
Perhaps if he were more clever he’d figure out ways to avoid these predicaments.
He’s very slow due to his huge bulk.

ALLEGIANCE: DECEPTICON
FUNCTION: MILITARY OPERATIONS COMMANDER
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 4

“Clarity of thought before rashness of action.”

Profile: Of all the Decepticons, Shockwave’s method of operation is
most characterized by the cold, brutal efficiency one would expect of a purely
mechanical being. He enters every battle not with the bloodlust of his comrades,
but with a scientist’s approach to solving a problem. The problem is always
the same: How can he use his abilities to most effectively eliminate the greatest
number of his enemies, the Autobots? All too often he finds the answer. He seeks
Megatron’s position of supremacy over the Decepticons not because his ego demands
it, but because his logic-circuits dictate it. He feels Megatron’s all-consuming
passion for conquest only hinders its achievement. With smug certainty Shockwave
believes the reins of Decepticon power will inevitably be his – after all, he
reasons, it’s only logical.

Abilities: Among the Decepticons, Shockwave’s power is second only to
Megatron’s. His total command of the electromagnetic spectrum allows him, in
his ray-gun mode, to emit a coruscating beam of energy in a wide variety of
forms: high-energy explosive gamma rays, x-rays that allow him to see through
almost anything, blinding visible light, super-hot infrared rays and radio waves
that can either send messages or jam other radio signals are but a few of the
weapons in Shockwave’s arsenal. Never having been adapted by the Ark to an Earthly
form, Shockwave remains a size consistent with his robot mode when he transforms
to a ray-gun, that is, more than 35 feet long. He can fly in either mode using
powerful jet thrusters in his boots (which become the handle in his ray-gun
mode).

Weaknesses: Shockwave’s wave-emission power, as well as his flying,
is limited by his high fuel consumption. Although he uses the same type of liquid
fuel as his fellow Transformers, he can also use radioactive fuels in the small
nuclear reactor within his torso, which substantially eliminates his liquid
fuel dependency problem. Although his logical brain center is usually an advantage,
more intuitive and emotional thinking processes often confound him, particularly
when his adversary is human.