Blackout (IDW)

The name or term "Blackout" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Blackout (disambiguation).

Blackout is a Decepticon from the Generation 1 continuity family.

The hyphen is silent.

Blackout is a large Decepticon with a military helicopter alt-mode. Armed with an onboard EMP generator, he excels at scrambling short-wave communications.

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

During the era of Zeta Prime, Blackout was part of a crowd protesting the death of Hefter. To Walk Among the Chosen

Beast Wars: Uprising

Surviving into the Grand Uprising era, Black-Out was a Builder who no longer had the energon resources necessary to transform. Instead, he remained in vehicle mode and operated as the personal helicopter for Games Administrator Eject.

When the Vehicons went wild, Black-Out's micro-EMP generator proved highly advantageous in clearing a path through the drones. Eject made peace with Lio Convoy to coordinate an attack on the Grand Mal, the control center for the Vehicons. The Mal was operational again, however, and its eye laser damaged Black-Out's flight systems. Eject manned the controls and managed to auger in through the very eye that shot them down. Lio Convoy and his crew escaped the crash, but Eject and Black-Out were consumed by the secondary explosions once they hit the inside of the battle station. Derailment

2019 IDW continuity

At some point, Blackout posed in a group photo with many Cybertronians, including Blast Off. Open Comms

Games

Transformers Roleplaying Game

Blackout invented a broadwave signal jammer, which allowed users to scramble the communications of any would-be eavesdroppers in a large area. The Great Energon Robbery

Notes

• In Beast Wars: Uprising, Transformers cannot share exactly the same name. Blackout is therefore distinguished using a hyphen as "Black-Out", coexisting with "Generation 1" "Blackout" and Armada "Black Out" and "Search".
• Beast Wars: Uprising Black-Out, while largely based on the movie incarnation of Blackout (with a gunmetal blue Earth-based heavy lift helicopter form), has the Animated Blackout's ability to generate EMP bursts. The 2019 IDW comics take this a step further, basing Blackout's design directly off of the Animated character.