Monsterous

Monsterous is a Renegade combiner from both the GoBots and Aligned continuity families.

He did the mash. He did the Monsterous mash-up.

The monstrous Monsterous is not just a typo waiting to happen, he's Cy-Kill's newest trump card! This combiner is formed from a Predacons-turned-Renegades street gang, all with fearsome visages. Their members are:

• Fright Face, the cold calculating leader
• Heart Attack, armed with a cycloptic infarction beam
• South Claw, armed with a freeze ray
• Gore Jaw, armed with gruesome mandibles
• Fangs, coward capable of bypassing any security system
• Weird Wing, a creep who claims to have limited precognition allowing him to foresee the deaths of enemies

Fiction

Renegade Rhetoric

Fright Face and his gang of Predacons were known ruffians in the lawless Heap region of Axiom Nexus. They bit off more than they could chew when they attacked Cy-Kill and Warpath as the Renegades went about their illicit business; Cy-Kill dodged South Claw’s freeze ray, clogged up Gore Jaw’s maw, and dodged Heart Attack’s fire while deducing his weak spot, while Warpath took out Weird Wing in a brutal dogfight (and found where Fang was hiding).

Though Warpath wanted to destroy them, Cy-Kill had another idea. He challenged Fright Face to single combat, with the winner to pledge allegiance to the loser. Cy-Kill prevailed, and Fright Face honored the terms of the deal. Over time, Fight Face embraced the Renegade philosophy so much so that Cy-Kill gave his band the Puzzler upgrade to allow them to combine to form a new combiner: Monsterous!

Monsterous wielded a vast array of firepower, as while Cy-Kill preferred more subtle means it was always handy to have a big stick. Even so, he kept an eye on the Monsterous crew as their specific skills and temperament could easily prove a threat. He admitted to us that he was worried that Vamp and Scorp could be a bad influence on Monsterous if he got back home, creating “a Monster GoBot block beyond my control”.

Another time, we annoyed him so much he threatened to feed us to Gore Jaw.

Cy-Kill was eventually outed as the terrorist he never really denied being, prompting Cheetor and his security forces to attack. Cy-Kill counterattacked and sicced Monsterous on them, driving the OZSA back. The Renegades fled the current time period with the help of Gong, going to a time and place unknown to menace Guardians and Cybertronians alike! Renegade Rhetoric (1)

Cy-Kill and his new recruits arrived in his home universe, only to discover the Renegades under a decisive assault by the Guardians. Monsterous engaged Courageous just before the Guardian combiner could breach the Rogue Star's hull, soundly defeating the Guardian. He then went on to rampage through Guardian's Command Center fleet. Leader-1 maneuvered Cy-Kill into blasting Monsterous and forcing him to separate, allowing the Guardians to retreat.

The members of Monsterous menaced the Guardians several times, notably participating in the Combiner Wars on Quartex. Renegade Rhetoric (2)

Ask Vector Prime

Underneath an ammonia sea on Antares III, Monsterous tore Kup apart before being driven off by Hot Rod. Echoes and Fragments

Beast Wars: Uprising

Vector Prime reported that several GoBots from Gargent 984.08 Alpha escaped the Cataclysm by travelling to Primax 215.19 Epsilon and integrating themselves in with the local Predacons. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/05/14

The GoBots who composed Monsterous arrived on Cybertron some time after the crew calling themselves the "Antares Eight" along with Odd Ball. There was little love between the two groups, but the combiner team's mastery of Rebus technology made them useful to their allies. Cultural Appropriation

As part of the Eight's scheme to steal humanity's advanced technology, Cultural Appropriation, Monsterous broke into the Forever Vaults and stole the G-Virus, killing all present except for Cop-Tur, since the GoBots were uncertain whether he was their Cop-Tur or not. Micro-Aggressions

Some years later, as the Eight finally put their scheme into motion, they called in Odd Ball and the combiners, who soon arrived at the hyper-wave caster tower the Eight had seized, and formed Monsterous. The combiner proved easily able to deal with the Predacons who had gathered to stop the GoBots, but found itself opposed by another combiner, Devastator. The two fought, but Monsterous managed to gain an advantage over the Cybertronian, until its Maximal and Predacon allies began attacking as well. This distraction allowed Devastator to recover, hitting Monsterous hard enough to forcibly seperate him back into his components, who at Odd Ball's prompting fled. Devastator pursued them, but was unable to catch them. Cultural Appropriation

Notes

• Monsterous, like all of Cy-Kill's Axiom Nexus recruits, are GoBots toys which never made an appearance in the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon.
• The crew were all sold together as the Monsterous gift-pack. The individual Monsterous components were among the few GoBots to have on-package bios, which Ask Vector Prime nods to in their characterization.
• Vector Prime speculated that the "Renegade Rhetoric" iteration of South Claw originally hailed from the Uniend Cluster, based on a hastily painted-over insignia.
• The "Cataclysm" version of Monsterous is based on the design for Generation 1 Monstructor from IDW Publishing's 2005 comic continuity, with the head of Beast Wars Tripredacus. Christopher Colgin, who came up with the design, specifically noted that he intended to use Tripredacus's head as was drawn in Genesis: The Art of Transformers, and Monsterous is depicted as such on the Renegade Rhetoric mural. However, artist Josh Burcham, who drew the illustration featuring the Renegade combiner in "Cultural Appropriation", depicted him as having a more "robotic" version of Tripredacus's toy head.

External links

GBwiki has content relating to Monsterous. Mighty robots, mighty wiki!

• Monsterous at TFU.info