Cyclonus

Cyclonus is the name of two fictional characters from the various Transformers universes.

Transformers: Generation 1

Template:Transformers character The tech spec from the box art of the Cyclonus toy describes him as a compassionless Decepticon air warrior and saboteur. He has nuclear-powered turbine engines that can propel him at speeds of mach 2 and carries an oxidating laser that fuses an enemy robot's internal mechanisms. It makes no reference to the concept that he was built from another Decepticon by Unicron (as is his usual portrayal in fiction).

Animated series

In the year 2005, after an abortive attack on Autobot City, the evil Decepticons found it necessary to jettison excess mass from their craft to make it back to their homeworld of Cybertron. The injured and dying Decepticons, including the Decepticons' leader, Megatron, were chosen to be ejected into the void of space. When their bodies were recovered by the world-eater, Unicron, they were reborn as deadly new warriors in the service of the recreated Megatron, now known as Galvatron.

Although The Transformers: The Movie does not make it entirely clear who Cyclonus was in his previous incarnation, he is one of the new Decepticons created by Unicron using the body of either Skywarp or Bombshell. He is a being whose loyalty to Galvatron is so intense as to exclude most other emotions and interests from his mind. Dedicated to destruction in his leader’s name, Cyclonus transforms into a nuclear-powered multi-turbine-engine jet fighter, capable of space flight and able to expand in size to convey Galvatron. In robot mode, he wields an oxidating laser that fuses the internal mechanisms of its targets, and in vehicle mode is additionally armed with an incendiary bomb rack. Immediately following his creation, Cyclonus served as little more than Galvatron’s personal ship, carrying his leader to Starscream’s coronation, into the battle in Autobot City, and pursuing Autobots on the Planet of Junk, as well as attacking and crippling the shuttle carrying Hot Rod and Kup in the midst of it all. After the destruction of Unicron, however, when Galvatron was lost, Cyclonus came into his own, his loyalty to the Decepticons' absent leader shaping his character in different ways.

Disgusted with how far the leaderless Decepticons had fallen as they eked out a miserable existence on the barren world of Chaar, Cyclonus resolved to locate Galvatron, daring even to enter Unicron's deactivated, disembodied head and replaying its memory banks, tracing Galvatron to the world of Thrull. Unfortunately, once extricated from a pool of the planet's plasma-lava, Galvatron proved to have been driven insane from exposure to it and brutalized Cyclonus and Sweeps before being talked down and returned to his position as leader.

As 2006 settled in, Cyclonus was captured by a Quintesson scientist for study, along with Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar and Marissa Faireborn, but when the entire group was sucked through a black hole into a negative universe, they were forced to work together to escape; Cyclonus and Magnus developed a grudging respect for each other as warriors, but vowed that when they met again on the battlefield, it would be as enemies.

Some time later, outnumbered and fleeing from the Aerialbots, Cyclonus and Scourge took refuge inside a vortex, which transported them to the pacifistic, energy-rich planet of Paradron, which had been settled by Cybertronian refugees. Naturally, the duo immediately overthrew the planet and summoned Galvatron and the other Decepticons there; the plan was ultimately foiled by the Autobots, but at the cost of Paradron itself, which was destroyed.

Cyclonus later had his body possessed by the ghost of the deceased Decepticon air commander, Starscream, and went on to clash with Ultra Magnus again aboard the Autobot records asteroid with the fate of Daniel Witwicky in the balance.

When a group of Decepticons, tired of being beaten and abused by the deranged Galvatron, confronted Cyclonus and demanded that he do something about the situation, Cyclonus was so short on options that he accepted the advice of a Quintesson, and tricked Galvatron into accompanying him to the therapeutic mental institution on planet Torkulon. It pained Cyclonus to see his leader so demented as each attempted therapy met with failure, but when the Torkuli attempted to cure Galvatron by removing the damaged part of his mind, thereby leaving him a vegetable, Cyclonus sprang into action, only to be restrained. Patched into the sentient network of the planet, rather than be cured, Galvatron infected the world itself with his madness and freed himself, destroying the planet and decided to turn his attention back to fighting the Autobots, rather than dwell on Cyclonus's deception.

Later, Cyclonus was among the Transformers turned into an energy vampire by the Trans-Organic Dweller, thrown to the beast by Galvatron to delay his own fate — though he hesitated for a moment before fleeing, almost repentant for his action.

Later still, he, along with a group of Autobots and Quintessons, were transported into a region of space cordoned off by the Quintessons, landing on the planet Zamojin, where Cyclonus aided the Quintessons in acquiring Perceptor's Universal Emulator, in order to repair their systems and return to normal space.

When the Hate Plague swept the Universe, Cyclonus was infected and took leadership of the afflicted Decepticons, hunting down Galvatron and tracking him and a group of Autobots into the depths of Chaar and infected scientist Jessica Morgan.

In 2007, Cyclonus participated in the massive Decepticon attack on Autobot City which culminated in the theft of the key to the Plasma Energy Chamber. When the chamber was then opened, the energy released blasted the key and a group of Autobots across the galaxy to the planet Nebulos, and Cyclonus and Scourge led a team of Decepticons in pursuit, attacking and capturing several of the Autobots. To battle them, the remaining Autobots joined with a group of Nebulan rebels to become "Headmasters" and bested them in combat. Having learned of this fusion of Transformer and Nebulan, the Hive, the evil ruling council of Nebulos, approached the Decepticons to repeat the process, but Cyclonus argued them down to taking the heads of only the animal-mode Decepticons, and merely the weapons of himself and the others. Consequently, Cyclonus became a Targetmaster as his oxidating laser was converted into an exo-suit for the Hive member Nightstick, giving them enhanced targeting abilities and firepower. Reclaiming the chamber key with their superior powers, the Decepticons headed back to Cybertron aboard the giant robot Scorponok, where Cyclonus attempted to convince the disgusted Galvatron of the benefits of being bonded to the Nebulans. The Autobots soon arrived back on Cybertron and invaded Scorponok, only to be captured by the Decepticons, and almost executed by Cyclonus before being saved by Spike Witwicky and Fortress Maximus. The Decepticons' plan was subsequently thwarted by Spike and the Nebulans, and they were sent spiralling off through space aboard Scorponok by a tendril of plasma energy.

In the movie and for the majority of the third season, Cyclonus was voiced by actor Roger C. Carmel, who frequently displayed an inability to maintain consistency with the character's voice, noticeably rising and dropping in pitch and tone from episode to episode. When Carmel died towards the end of the series, Jack Angel took over the role of Cyclonus for the final five episodes of the series.

Transformers: Headmasters

In Japan, Cyclonus was voiced by Tomomichi Nishimura, and continued to make token appearances in the Japanese-exclusive series, Transformers: Headmasters, where he and Scourge were re-written as comedic, bumbling henchmen. In Japan, the events of The Rebirth were ignored and Cyclonus never became a Targetmaster.

Identity crisis?

When the injured Decepticons are transformed by Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie, two identical Cyclonus robots are simultaneously created— in the foreground, the Insecticon Bombshell, becomes one, while in the background, Decepticon warrior Skywarp becomes another. The dialogue which accompanies this scene claims that we are seeing "Cyclonus, the warrior... and his armada," but one warrior does not make an armada —the line is, in fact, a carry over from the original script, in which Cyclonus was intended to have multiple identical duplicates under his command, in the same way that Scourge had the Sweeps. However, immediately after this scene, the second Cyclonus disappears, to be replaced with an additional Sweep, and (barring animation errors in episodes such as Five Faces of Darkness), does not return. This production error has long been a topic of fan debate and analysis—if the armada does not exist, then which of the two robots shown being transformed became the one, true Cyclonus? The question is essentially the result of fans' dissatisfaction over the asymmetry of the fates of Skywarp and Thundercracker (who became Scourge), and as a result, several fan-written profiles seen on DVD releases of the movie have stated that Skywarp became Cyclonus. Conversely, official adaptations and retellings of the movie, such as the comic book version published by IDW Publishing or descriptions of its events in the Transformers Fan Club prose story The Wreckers: Finale, have all adhered to the visuals of the original movie and identified Bombshell as Cyclonus and Skywarp as "the armada," offering different explanations for why the transformed Skywarp did not appear again. This take on events is also backed up by the Japanese "Masterpiece Skywarp" figure, which comes with a sticker declaring him to be an "Armada Decepticon".

Marvel Comics

Cyclonus's appearances in the US Marvel Comics Transformers series were minimal - in his first appearance during the Headmasters mini-series, he and Scourge were presented as being under Scorponok's command, who then became Targetmasters along with the others on Nebulos. (Before becoming a Targetmaster, Cyclonus was frequently illustrated as looking like Fracas -- whose animation model was switched with Nightstick's in The Rebirth. Despite this, his spacefighter mode was always the same.) One of his most prominent actions during this period was to ambush the Autobot Headmasters in the Fortess of Despair alongside the other Decepticon Targetmasters. The Decepticons captured Highbrow, planning to use him to perfect their own Headmaster process. The plan failed when Highbrow forced Scorponok to flee. (Transformers UK 130-131)

Later, Cyclonus appeared again when readers were offered a glimpse into an alternate future world of 2009, where he was indeed a creation of Unicron, and where Cybertron had been destroyed, and Galvatron ruled Earth. In this future world, Cyclonus failed to stop an Autobot/human rebel invasion of the main Decepticon base, and, enraged by this failure, Galvatron destroyed his servant.

In the United Kingdom's Transformers comic, additional original stories created to expand on the US continuity added more to Cyclonus's story. In order to free himself from the limitations of writing about the same cast of characters as the American creative team, writer Simon Furman cannibalised the most popular elements of The Transformers: The Movie, and began to write new stories based around its characters, often intersecting them with the present day through the use of time travel. In the first of such stories, Galvatron, Scourge and Cyclonus travelled back in time to 1986, from a point in the middle of the movie, as part of a plan to free themselves from Unicron's control by constructing a massive cannon that will destroy him in their home time of 2006 (the setting for the movie in the comics, based on early production material for the movie itself, before the date was amended to 2005). The three Unicronian Decepticons proved themselves almost invincible in the face of the Autobots attacks, but were finally defeated when Galvatron was duped into believing he was trapped in a temporal paradox, and returned to his own time to live out the remaining events of the movie. During this story, Furman's misinterpretation of the movie summary he had read (having not yet actually seen the feature), which referenced the fading "life spark" of a Decepticon, led to Cyclonus actually claiming he had been rebuilt from a Decepticon named "Life Spark".

Events diverged from the cartoon's storyline, however, when, following the destruction of Unicron, Galvatron transported himself back in time to 1987, leaving Cyclonus and Scourge in the future, under Shockwave's command. The duo were attacked by Death's Head, who was seeking the bounty on Galvatron's head, and Cyclonus revealed Galvatron's whereabouts to him.

Later, Shockwave hired Death's Head to kill Rodimus Prime, but Cyclonus and Scourge interfered with the job as they sought to kill Rodimus first, in order to reclaim their lost standing amongst the Decepticons. This did not please Death's Head, and consequently, he willingly accepted a contract from Rodimus to hunt down Cyclonus and Scourge, eventually tracking them down to the Planet of Junk as 2008 dawned. Before he could finish the job, however, all three of them fell under the mind-controlling influence of Unicron, whose disembodied head had survived the destruction of his body and had landed on the planet, where he was having the native Junkions construct a new body for him. Under Unicron's control, Cyclonus and Scourge killed Shockwave and became Decepticon leaders, reigniting the stalemated Cybertronian war to a furious degree to cover Unicron's actions. Death's Head, however, was able to fight the mind control and work with the Autobots' long enough to stop the chaos-bringer's plan. As explosions destroyed Unicron, Death's Head tackled Cyclonus and Scourge, pushing them through a time portal Unicron had built, promising to kill them another time.

Cyclonus and Scourge were hurled into the past of Cybertron by the portal, where they came under the command of Scorponok, and went on to go to Nebulos and become Targetmasters, then travelling to present-day Earth. Once there, they sought out Galvatron, no longer willing to serve him, instead demanding that he hand over his time travel device so that they could return to the future and their position as Decepticon leaders. The confrontation was disrupted by the sudden appearance of the Autobot commando squad, the Wreckers, who drew the ensuing battle away from the human settlement it was taking place in by professing to have stolen Galvatron's time jump mechanism, when in reality, the Decepticon no longer even had it for them to take.

Having met with failure again, Cyclonus and Scourge decided to cut their losses and team up with Shockwave's present-day Earth-based Decepticon forces. At this point in time, the comic book personalities of Scourge and Cyclonus had been well-established, and distinctly different from the cartoon - here, Scourge was the intelligent, scheming brains of the duo, while Cyclonus was the dull-witted brawn, and that personality trait remained as strong as ever when Cyclonus accidentally let slip that they would kill Shockwave in the future. Wanting to ensure his continued existence, Shockwave unleashed a brainwashed Megatron clone upon the two. Seized by the clone, Cyclonus's Targetmaster partner, Nightstick, was crushed, and as Cyclonus begged Scourge for help, his companion fled to save his own life and Cyclonus's head was torn from his body, killing him outright.

Cyclonus and Scourge's displacement into the past had circumvented the normal mass-replacement method used by time-travel, and had hence unbalanced the space-time continuum, causing a rift to appear in the fabric of space and time. Cyclonus's death, twenty years before he was even created, proved to be the final straw, accelerating the rift, which soon threatened to consume Earth and Cybertron. Realising that the only way to stop it was to return himself, Galvatron and Cyclonus to their original time, Scourge attempted to recover Cyclonus's body from Shockwave, only to be attacked by the deranged Decepticon, who had lost his mind due to the illogical nature of the situation, and had strung Cyclonus's remains up like a twisted trophy. Ravage, however, was able to bring back Shockwave's sanity enough for him to deposit Cyclonus's remains after Galvatron and Scourge, and then seal it with an x-ray blast.

Dreamwave Productions

Sidestepping the issue of who became Cyclonus, Dreamwave Productions' 21st Century re-imagining of the Generation One universe presented Scourge and he to be not simply reconstructed Decepticons, but creations of Unicron built within pods inside the chaos-bringer's body, constructed from the remnants of matter he ingested in his ongoing consumption of planets. Although Scourge played a larger role in events, Cyclonus's appearance was brief – he was simply shown smashing his way out of his pod after Unicron consumed the planet Lithone in the wake of his reactivation.

Cyclonus received two separate biography pages in Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye profile books, the first for his original form and the second for him as a Targetmaster. The biography contradicts his original tech specs, stating that he can reach mach 5, and is capable of interplanetary travel.

Devil's Due Publishing

In the Second G.I. Joe vs the Transformers crossover from Devil's Due Publishing Cyclonus and Scourge would appear as Shockwave's bodyguards. They were eventually destroyed after Cobra Commander activated a booby-trap within Starscream, destroying him and all others within reach. Unlike most Generation One incarnations of the character these versions do not appear to be linked in any way to Unicron.

3H Enterprises

First appearing in the pages of the convention’s exclusive comic book The Wreckers in 2001, Cyclonus was made available as an actual toy the following year exclusive to BotCon 2002, as his story continued through the 2002 and 2003 comics.

In addition to his original characteristics and weapons, Cyclonus is now equipped with bleedback receptors in his fists that allow him to draw strength from his enemies attacks. Exploiting Megatron's attempts to implant his spark within a Vehicon body, Cyclonus retained his own mind and set out to fulfil his Decepticon heritage alongside the other renegade Vehicons, Skywarp and Rotorbolt. As the rag-tag group of Autobots known as the Wreckers attempted to flee Cybertron, but found their way to their spaceship barred by Vehicon drones, the trio came to their aid, joining the team and departing Cybertron with them. When the Wreckers then acquired a mysterious energy-generating crystal named the "Divine Light", Cyclonus killed the Maximal Packrat and stole it, fleeing in order to deliver it to his true master, Cryotek.

After the publication of the third issue of The Wreckers, 3H Enterprises lost the rights to the Transformers license. As a result, it seems unlikely that any future issues of The Wreckers will be published, meaning that the story of Cyclonus will go untold. Notably, the writers of the comic apparently subscribe to the notion that Bombshell became Cyclonus, as Skywarp is shown to co-exist with him. This is apparently due to the fact that the artist, Dan Khanna, believes that it was Bombshell who became Cyclonus. (See Identity Crisis above).

Fun Publications

Rodimus and Cyclonus appeared together in the story Wreckers: Finale Part 2 by the Transformers Collectors Club in 2007. During the invasion of Cybertron Cyclonus and Rodimus came to final blows, fighting each other to a stand-still. Both severely wounded, Cyclonus was about to kill Rodimus when the Predacon Rotorbolt arrived and killed Cyclonus for betraying him.

IDW Publishing

Cyclonus made his IDW Publishing debut in his own Spotlight issue, the first part of The Transformers: Revelation. This Cyclonus, like the IDW version of Galvatron, was not a recreated Decepticon but a member of the original Ark's crew turned undead by exposure to the Dead Universe.

Sent by Nemesis Prime to activate the Nega-Core, Cyclonus instead detoured to Cybertron, becoming enraged by the catackysm that had befallen his planet. He took out his anger on the nearest source - Hound's crew of Autobots. With his undead nature rendering him unkillable, they were very quickly in trouble. Cyclonus was eventually driven off by Ultra Magnus; realising he had been diverted too long, he fled to set up his real mission. He activated the Nega-Core, but was reluctant to activate its guardian. However, when the Autobots attacked, he had no choice and summoned it - Thunderwing. As it distracted them, Cyclonus made his escape, followed by one of Magnus' drones.

Toys

• Generation 1 Cyclonus (1986)

Taking the place of the Seekers from the first two years in the toy line were Cyclonus and Scourge.

Cyclonus, like the other new characters created for 1986's The Transformers: The Movie, was designed for animation first, and had his toy and comic book incarnation created based on these designs. However, as with the other characters, these two versions of the character were based on an earlier design, most notably featuring folded back wings, while his animation model underwent further modifications before being finalized. The earlier design was also erroneously used in a few instances in the animated series (most notably in Starscream's Ghost, and The Rebirth).

• Targetmaster Cyclonus (1987)

A remold of the original Cyclonus made to accommodate his new Targetmaster partner.

• BotCon Cyclonus (2002)

Cyclonus made a comeback at the Transformers fan convention, BotCon, in the form of an exclusive redeco of the Ultra-size Beast Machines Jetstorm figure.

Unicron Trilogy

For the Cyclonus of Transformers: Armada, Transformers: Energon and Transformers: Cybertron who eventually became Snow Cat: see Cyclonus/Snow Cat (Transformers)

Shattered Glass

Template:Transformers character This Cyclonus is an alternate version good of the Generation 1 character from the BotCon exclusive "Shattered Glass" comic, in which the Decepticons are on the side of good and the Autobots on the side of evil. Presumably like all Decepticons of his world, he is heroic and opposed to the evil Autobots.

External links

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