Miles Mayhem
- Miles Mayhem is a V.E.N.O.M.-aligned human from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
General Miles "Mayhem" Manheim is a military man through and through. From his earliest days on Joe Colton's Adventure Team, Miles has developed a talent for spreading chaos, disruption, and destruction when the need arises. When the Transformers returned to Earth, poised to reignite their violent civil war, Miles had already begun to consolidate a military program of his own—the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. But just like the shapeshifting vehicles he pilots, notably the Switchblade, Manheim's affable façade conceals the mind of a brutal dictator willing to sacrifice innocent lives in pursuit of personal wealth and power.
To Miles Mayhem, the Autobots and Decepticons are both hostile alien threats to be eliminated with extreme prejudice, clearing the way so that he can reshape the Earth to align with his own ideals of power and stability.
Fiction
Animated cartoon
Miles Mayhem could be selected as a playable character in the video game Ninja Gladiator. AllSpark Almanac II
IDW Generation 1 continuity
Miles Manheim grew up in a tough working-class Philadelphia neighborhood before eventually enlisting in the United States Army. There, he put his talents for espionage and black-ops to good use; his disregard for civilian lives or collateral damage in the pursuit of his goals made him an ideal fit for the ruthless Cold War military complex. Because of his abilities to disrupt and create conflict, his commanders eventually nicknamed him "Miles Mayhem." O Ship of State
Miles Manheim joined the Adventure Team alongside Joe Colton, and over the course of their escapades they encountered a holder of the Action Man title. Secret Raiders After the team was mothballed, rumors swirled that Manheim had quietly assembled a cartel of illegal arms dealers to agitate unstable political regions. Miles soon became one of the youngest generals ever to serve in the armed forces, and supervised numerous classified operations. Miles Mayhem profile in Revolution #3
At some point after the creation of the Earth Defense Command, Manheim participated in a joint project between the EDC, the Department of Defense, and DARPA on "Project Spectrum", an initiative aimed at creating anti-Transformer weaponry in the wake of the devastating Decepticon invasion. Fellow Spectrum researcher Cornelius Trakker was mysteriously murdered, so wasn't it convenient that Miles was right there to step up and take over? Shortly afterwards, he recruited Cornelius's delinquent son Matt Trakker into the operation at the behest of Cornelius's widow. O Ship of State
When Galvatron's splinter group of Decepticons returned to Earth to propose an alliance with the EDC, Manheim was present for their meeting at the South Pole, watching as Marissa Faireborn ratified the agreement. Secret Raiders
Following Optimus Prime's controversial choice to annex Earth into the Cybertronian Council of Worlds, Manheim met with Joe Colton and Scarlett to discuss plans for the future. He interjected during Colton's rant to point out Optimus had come back to save them from the Decepticons and help them rebuild, but he was pretty dismissive of G.I. Joe. Eventually Colton revealed Manheim was there because Ore-13 was going critical thanks to Transformer activity and was likely to devastate the planet, and he was hoping Manheim could reverse-engineer something to help them fight from a captive, still conscious Blitzwing. Secret Raiders Unbeknownst to the EDC, Mayhem had cut a side deal with an entirely different group of extraterrestrials -- the villainous shape-shifters known as the Dire Wraiths. In exchange for the Earth's ample supplies of Ore-13, which they would split between themselves and the extradimensional warlord known as Baron Karza, they would allow Mayhem dominion over the Earth. The New Colossus
As his investigations of his Cybertronian captive continued apace, Manheim took Scarlett on a tour of his growing enterprise beneath Governor's Island, where he introduced her to the operatives of his new Mobile Armored Strike Kommand and their shape-shifting vehicles perfected by studying Blitzwing's Triple Changer physiology. Miles wasn't particularly concerned for Blizwing's well-being, even when Scarlett wondered if his prisoner could feel pain. Believing that the Transformers were behind the recent explosion of Mount Olympus in Greece, Manheim ordered his team to mobilize in the hopes of catching the Cybertronians unaware when they inevitably returned to "the scene of the crime". The team got the jump on Kup and Aileron in a nearby city; behind the wheel of his new Switchblade, Miles was able to take out Kup while Aileron made a break for it. When Matt wondered why their targets weren't acting like the unfeeling machines they believed them to be, Miles revealed that the Transformers were living beings—and that M.A.S.K. was at war with these alien lifeforms. The Divine Source of Liberty
Back on Governor's Island, Mayhem and Trakker continued to debate whether or not the Transformers were truly alive. When Action Man breached the facility to figure out what was going on, Mayhem told Tracker to trust him the same way his father had, cough, cough, then oversaw the defense of his Cybertronian assets... including quietly instructing his underlings Sly Rax and Vanessa Warfield to make sure none of hte Joes found out about Kup. Action Man sprang Kup from his restraints and the two made a run for it, blowing Mayhem's secret to the Joes. Mayhem tried to go after Kup in the Switchblade, but broke off after Mainframe ran interference by calling down a low-power orbital strike to distract M.A.S.K. The Modern World
Soon after, G.I. Joe infiltrated Autobot City, but Mayhem ignored Snake-Eyes' distress call in favor of checking in with his alien collaborators. Trakker was left confused by the brief snippets of conversation that he'd overheard, but Mayhem simply instructed him to prepare the team for an all-out invasion. Once they'd arrived, Miles pressured Trakker into attacking the combiner Victorion, seconds before the Dire Wraiths arrived en masse and made a beeline for the Ore-13 beneath the city. With his allies empowered, Mayhem gloated about his evil plan to rule Earth to the other M.A.S.K. team members... only for Wraith leader Caleb Awan to smack him out of the sky after he had fulfilled his purpose. Mayhem wasn't out of the game yet, though, and used the Cybertronian technology within the Switchblade to activate Metrotitan's space bridge and summon Baron Karza, who transformed himself into a monstrous fusion of Cybertronian, Wraith, and Microspace technology. The New Colossus
Realizing that his allies had betrayed him, Mayhem -- an Earth patriot first and foremost -- opted to make a surprise sacrifice on the part of the human race by ramming the Switchblade into the Baron's gigantic body and freeing Optimus from its grasp. When the threat had passed, Matt Trakker discovered a note from Mayhem on the windshield of the Thunderhawk, revealing that Miles had staged his own death and was still at large with several traitorous V.E.N.O.M. operatives. Valley Forge
Notes
- Miles Mayhem was never an Adventure Team member in the M.A.S.K. toyline (nor in the Joe line). He was added to the crew by IDW in order to tie the M.A.S.K. comic to G.I. Joe and made into the IDW version of the Sea Adventurer figure.
- Prior to this, the only time Miles Mayhem was associated with the G.I. Joe franchise was in the bio card for Specialist Trakker, which stated that Mayhem's organization V.E.N.O.M. was in fact a sub-division of Cobra (which seems obvious in retrospect).[1]
- Mayhem was involved in the founding of M.A.S.K. and the murder of a Trakker in the 1980s comics.
