Afterburn

Afterburn is an awesome dude working for the Autobots in the Transformers Animated continuity family.

"What a guy!"

A ward of the Elite Guard and a Special Ops man, Afterburn is a highly skilled and highly confident soldier with a sleek off-road car form. A born leader, a quick thinker, a nice guy and capable of laying the smackdown with his agility and fireblasts, he's got a PhD in Being Handsome And Wonderful.

Fiction

Titan Magazines

At the Academy, he was nicknamed "Squeak-Clean Afterburn" (no, really) because he is so fantastic he is always clean and shiny. He came top in his class in Anti-Virus Diagnosis and Nano-Virus class. Ratchet & Grimlock Are DEAD? He went on to join the Elite Guard and was eventually dispatched to Earth by Ultra Magnus to join Optimus Prime's team; Magnus intended for Afterburn to learn skills and knowledge from them, so that their successes could be replicated on other worlds.

He arrived in the middle of a battle between the Autobots and fashion disaster Quake-Maker. He saved Optimus, won Sari's heart and Bumblebee's admiration, quickly took control of the Autobots, and just as quickly worked out and exploited Quake-Maker's weakness. Because he rules. (Optimus got ignored on the sidelines and got a rock in the face)

Everyone loved him and everyone in the Autobase is now his best bud! Burnout

He was part of a mission to Dinobot Island when Snarl and Swoop went berserk, due to his virus knowledge. He effortlessly took control of the mission and came up with the strategy that won the day; he identified the Rage virus and how to neutralise it; and he even put up with Ratchet faking his death without being annoyed! What an awesome dude! (Bumblebee got made to look bad and was deliberately put down several times, and had big sad puppy-dog eyes) Ratchet & Grimlock Are DEAD?

Later, he attended a basketball game with Bulkhead, Prowl and Sari, until he picked up a police alert of major traffic chaos - leading to a battle with the villain Crossroads, who had taken control of Detroit's robots! Rather kindly, Afterburn let Prowl save the day while he relaxed by providing covering fire. Afterwards, he leaned on a wall and smirked slightly while warning everyone that Decepticons were cunning and could strike at any time. What a nice guy he is to remind us of this, and it totally didn't look dodgy! Crossroads!

HOLY SHIT Afterburn was secretly reporting to Megatron and was a bad guy all along! Jesus! Divebomb!

Notes

• Originally, Afterburn was going to be Animated Sideswipe. However, when Titan released a preview image of the character, the online response to this Iron-Man-crossed-with-a-duck-monster-thing was so overwhelmingly negative that the preview was soon pulled <ref>http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/animated-8/titan-uk-transformers-animated-comic-original-character-sideswipe-in-color-165967/ Reaction to Animated "Sideswipe" thread at TFW2005.com]</ref> and when the comic was released two weeks later, Sideswipe had ever-so-conspicuously become "Afterburn".

• Afterburn's Autobrand can either broadcast holographically recorded messages or holographically display long-range communications; it's not clear which he's doing at the end of #1.

• He was in "Special Ops" work, so that's why no one's ever heard of him. Including Derrick Wyatt.<ref>Derrick Wyatt blog response - "I wasn't involved at all. I hadn't seen it, or even heard they were doing it until it showed up on all the fan sites in the past few days."</ref>

• Everyone who didn't see his betrayal coming, raise their hand. Yeah, we thought so.

References

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