Shockwave

Shockwave is the Decepticons' logician, and in the cartoon he is also their absentee landlord. When Megatron pursued the Ark four million years ago he left Shockwave as guardian of Cybertron, a posting neither expected to last, and Shockwave simply held it, keeping the home world under Decepticon control for the entire span of the series while the main war happened on Earth. He is described in his own fiction as a computer on legs, and the description is fair: emotion is a defect to be engineered out, and every decision runs through cost and probability first.

On screen this makes him the Decepticons' science division as much as their viceroy. The space bridge that underpins most of Megatron's Earth operations is Shockwave's work, as is a functioning time machine, and he supplies Cybertonium when the Earth force starts failing. He is also, entertainingly, not invincible. "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2" has him overpowered by the Dinobots and outmanoeuvred by two human teenagers, and "The Search for Alpha Trion" reveals that Elita One's female Autobots have been siphoning energon from under his single optic for years while he believed them extinct.

In the cartoon he is fanatically loyal and never once moves against Megatron, which is precisely why he reads as the steady, unglamorous professional in a command structure otherwise built on treachery. Corey Burton's performance, modelled on David Warner's Sark from Tron, gives him a clipped synthetic calm that made him a fan favourite well out of proportion to his screen time.

Shockwave's left arm terminates in a fixed energy cannon rather than a hand, and it is one of the heaviest single weapons in the Decepticon arsenal; his alt mode is a laser gun that can be wielded by another Transformer, and he is capable of independent flight in that configuration. He is a first-rate engineer and researcher, credited with the space bridge, a working time machine and, in other continuities, cloning and multi-mode transformation research. The fiction repeatedly suggests he may be physically more powerful than Megatron. Documented weaknesses: his single optic is a genuine vulnerability, memorably exploited when a human throws sand into it in the Marvel story 'Robot Buster', and his commitment to logic is brittle. When a situation resists rational analysis he does not adapt, he degrades, and the comics take him to the edge of a breakdown more than once.

• Megatron: in the cartoon, absolute and unquestioning loyalty across four million years of separation. In the Marvel comics the same relationship is a running war for command that Shockwave wins outright more than once.
• Starscream: in the comics they become uneasy allies after Shockwave saves him from Circuit Breaker, and together they attempt to salvage the Ark.
• The Dinobots: his oldest enemies in Marvel continuity, where his crash into the Savage Land is the reason they exist at all, and his most embarrassing defeat in the cartoon.
• Soundwave: a functional working relationship in the comics, where Soundwave serves Shockwave's regime as smoothly as he served Megatron's, and later helps end it.

The difference could hardly be larger. Marvel's Shockwave is not Megatron's loyal caretaker, he is his usurper. Landing in the Savage Land rather than Oregon, he creates the Dinobots by proxy, then arrives at the Ark to find both armies exhausted, knocks out every combatant, strings up the Autobots, decapitates Optimus Prime and calmly informs the reviving Megatron that logic dictates new leadership. Megatron challenges him in 'The Worse of Two Evils!' and is beaten so decisively that he swears service. Shockwave then runs the Decepticons for a long stretch, building the Constructicons and Jetfire with Matrix power drained from Prime's severed head. He loses command, regains it, is forced into joint leadership in 'Second Generation!', gives it up in 'Command Performances!', conspires with the Predacons to have Megatron killed in 'Prey!', and takes over again. He is also allowed to break: burial, humiliation and Galvatron's manipulations push him into genuine irrationality, and in the Marvel UK future timeline he is finally destroyed by the bounty hunter Death's Head, who crushes his memory module. None of this has any cartoon equivalent, where he never once challenges Megatron.

In the American cartoon Shockwave relinquishes his guardianship when Megatron reconquers Cybertron by 2005, attends Starscream's coronation, and commands the Decepticon defence during Unicron's attack in The Transformers: The Movie, where he is presumed killed. His death was written into the movie script but cut from the released film, and IDW's 20th anniversary comic adaptation restored it. His model appears in a handful of season three shots and during the Battle of Autobot City, generally regarded as animation errors rather than canon survival. In Marvel continuity he survives to the end of the run before disappearing in the Ark's final crash.

• Shockwave is one of the few early G1 characters not derived from Takara's Diaclone or Micro Change lines. The mould came from ToyCo, and near-identical non-Transformers versions were sold in 1985 as the grey 'Astro Magnum' and as a Radio Shack exclusive called 'Galactic Man', which collectors nickname 'Shackwave'.
• He appeared in the 1984 cartoon episodes a full year before he had a toy; the figure was not released until 1985.
• Corey Burton based the voice on David Warner, specifically Warner's performance as Sark in Tron. Burton later voiced Sark himself in Kingdom Hearts II.
• The Japanese dub renamed him Laserwave and rewrote him completely, replacing the monotone logician with a loud, raspy, short-tempered old soldier.
• G1 Shockwave toys turn up as set dressing in the MacGyver season five episode 'The Black Corsage', used as props in a shooting-gallery game.
• The original toy's rubber hose, which carries the wiring for its light and sound electronics between torso and arm, is notoriously prone to dry rot, a well-known collector hazard.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• Whether Shockwave dies in the 1986 movie: scripted and included in IDW's adaptation, but cut from the film itself, leaving his cartoon fate formally unresolved.
• Season three background appearances of the Shockwave model are usually dismissed as reused animation, but some fans read them as evidence he survived.
• His loyalty is the single sharpest cartoon-versus-comic contradiction in G1: unwavering subordinate on screen, repeat usurper on the page.
• The toy bio's hint that logic may one day require him to replace Megatron is followed by Marvel and ignored entirely by the cartoon.
• Whether his alt mode is a handgun or a Cybertronian jet is left ambiguous by the toy's own packaging and has never been settled.