Man of Iron (G1)

This article is about a character or concept that lacks a name, but has an official term or designation. For more information, see Help:Nameless.

This article is about the Autobot. For the multi-part comic story in which he appears, see Man of Iron (issue).

The Man of Iron is an Autobot from the Marvel portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Not a man and probably not made of iron.

Legend tells of a "man of iron" who has been appearing around Stansham Castle since at least the Middle Ages, to the terror and fascination of humans in the area. In truth, he's an Autobot searching for the lost Ark while his partner Navigator slumbers in their buried ship beneath the castle. He's a bit of a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later type, but if you ask him to go away nicely, he's been known to oblige.

Fiction

Marvel The Transformers comics

The Teddy Bear of Iron

An old English chronicle records that in the year 1017, as Godwin the Strongarm's forces had just battered down the main gate of Stansham Castle, the ground shook and a giant man of iron appeared amongst them. The soldiers were terrified, and their weapons did nothing against the apparition. The metal figure strode in the direction of a nearby abbey, firing warning shots at those who tried to follow him, until a priest put himself in his path and urged him to go back from whence he came. The figure turned and went off into Stanewood. As time passed, he was seen three times in total before the modern day, each occurrence preceded by an earth tremor.

The humans had no idea that he was an Autobot from Cybertron, and that within his ship beneath the castle, his partner Navigator was beaming out a signal meant to contact the missing Ark. For millions of years the signal had been broadcast, but it wasn't until the year 1984 that any of its intended recipients were awake to hear it. The Decepticons were the first to take action, with Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp flying over Stansham Castle and dropping a bomb-like probe. The Autobots, meanwhile, made clandestine contact with the son of the castle's curator. And the regional human military, spooked by mysterious jets having strafed the castle, led an investigation that ended up unearthing part of the buried ship. At first the ship's occupants stayed hidden, but then one afternoon a telltale earth tremor struck, and the humans saw their legendary man of iron arise from a hillside in an elevator mechanism. He fired at a military truck that happened to be driving right toward him, blowing it up as its occupants ran to safety.

You got soft, facing nothing but arrows and swords for a thousand years, son.

Then a Seeker suddenly appeared and barraged him with rockets, destroying him. This was followed by an all-out battle between numerous Autobots and Decepticons, ending with the Autobots victorious. Optimus Prime immediately ordered the buried ship's destruction, and Jazz dutifully vaporized it in a massive implosion, not realizing he was killing Navigator within. Man of Iron

Notes

• The Man of Iron and Navigator both share nearly identical character models, differentiated only by their heads. (The Man of Iron's head seems to be a simplified version of Jazz's head) Their robot forms are highly genericized, lacking any distinguishing features that would hint at what their alternate modes are, if any.
• The staggered colouring history makes the Man of Iron's killer difficult to identify. While the original art is black-and-white, the issue's cover is in colour, and it shows the Seeker in question to be Skywarp. This is supported by the in-story dialogue ('There's another one! It just seemed to appear from nowhere!'), suggesting use of his teleporting ability. When the story was reprinted in Collected Comics, however, the killer was coloured as Thundercracker, which resulted in a quiz question in a later UK annual that named him as the do'er of the deed (although the previous issue's cover showed that Thundercracker was the jet shot down by Bluestreak in the third installment). And as if things weren't confused enough already, when the story was recoloured again for the US reprint, the killer was depicted as Starscream!
• Thirty-four years after the Man of Iron's appearance in the Marvel comic, IDW published a one-shot that retconned him into being Fastlane and Navigator into being his clone brother Cloudraker.