Circuit Breaker (G1)
| This article is about a girl who hates machines. For a girl who loves machines, see Sephie Beller. |
- Circuit Breaker is a human from the Marvel Comics portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Circuit Breaker is a villain whose pathological hatred of robots knows no bounds. She refuses to make the distinction between Autobot and Decepticon, blaming the Transformer race as a whole for the attack which left her crippled. As such, she is more likely to do harm to the Autobot cause than to be of assistance.
Circuit Breaker was genius Josie Beller. Hired by Blackrock Industries only a few years out of high school, she was responsible for designing the most advanced oil-drilling platform in the world. Despite her well-publicized technological achievements, Beller was humble; to her, it was merely part of her job. She continues to be extremely devoted to her employer, G.B. Blackrock.
But after being paralyzed during a Decepticon attack on the platform, she invented a uniform to enable her to walk again. Her computerized suit not only allows her to move, but grants her the power to shoot electricity, disrupt circuitry, and fly. This costume does not cover much of her body, but having the power to manipulate electricity gives a you a good defense against inappropriate catcalls.
Fiction
Marvel Comics continuity
After Josie Beller appeared on the news The New Order, her life took a tragic turn when the Decepticon Shockwave attacked the oil-drilling platform that the news report was showcasing. Beller, who was operating the defense systems, fired harpoons at Shockwave. As Shockwave reeled in pain, he yanked away from the rig, ripping out the harpoon launchers, which, as a chain reaction of debris fell through the construct, caused the electrical systems to malfunction. Josie Beller was electrocuted. This paralyzed her entirely from the neck down, other than the ability to use her right arm. The Worse of Two Evils!
Hospitalized, Beller blamed herself. She told Blackrock that she had failed him, and swore she would make it up to him. Blackrock tried to explain that Beller owed him nothing, but she would not listen to him. Her devotion was, perhaps, pathological. She hated robots, she hated what they did to Blackrock Industries, and she hated them for paralyzing her.
Blackrock sought to equip himself better against attacks from the Transformers. Soon, he planned to unveil a new secret weapon to the press, the Anti-Robot Photonic Multi-Cannon. Josie Beller broke into Blackrock's office and disrobed, revealing an electrical costume which allowed her to move again. She declared her name to now be Circuit Breaker. The next day, when Blackrock unveiled the Anti-Robot Photonic Multi-Cannon to the press, it had been sabotaged by Circuit Breaker. She wished for Blackrock to introduce her as the real weapon he had intended to announce all along. But then, the Decepticons Starscream and Frenzy arrived, intent on stealing the cannon, while Wheeljack and Jazz arrived to stop them. Circuit Breaker's hatred did not distinguish between Autobot and Decepticon and attacked both. However, as the Autobots refused to attack humans, both Jazz and Wheeljack suffered heavily from her electrical attacks. Blackrock pleaded to her, demanding she realize that not all robots were her enemy. She again refused to listen. In need of a recharge, she left, vowing to return to finish the job she started. DIS-Integrated Circuits!
Still fuming and wanting revenge on all Transformers, Circuit Breaker witnessed a girl playing with her friends fall through the ice. She used her power over electricity to melt the ice to get her out, but her heart had stopped. She defibrillated her heart using her powers, saving her life. But the adult present was unappreciative, calling her a freak and telling her to leave. This made her even more angry at the Transformers for causing her injuries. As she was flying away, she witnessed Jazz loose control on the icy roads which caused Buster to fall in the snow. Circuit Breaker thought Jazz was attacking Buster and came to his aid, destroying Jazz's gun and getting ready to finish him off. Buster pleaded with her to spare him since they were friends. Just then the clock struck twelve. Since it was now Christmas day, Circuit Breaker gave Jazz his second reprieve and flew off. Christmas Breaker!
The anti-Transformers military task force, RAAT, hired Circuit Breaker to head their agency. Their first triumph was capturing seven Autobots who had found themselves recently stranded on Earth. Circuit Breaker ordered their faces mounted on the walls of RAAT headquarters. Aerialbots over America! She analyzed footage of RAAT's victory with Walter Barnett, who praised her efficiency, but expressed doubts about the Transformers' intentions. As Barnett handed her a bonus check, Circuit Breaker refused, reminding him that she didn't do this for the money, but for revenge.
Later, Barnett showed her the news, which was reporting that a robot had lifted power lines off of the road to save humans. He hoped this would impress on her, but she refused to even consider the evidence; all this meant was that there was another robot to hunt. She and a team of RAAT helicopters found the target robot, an Autobot named Skids, on the run from the Stunticons. The Stunticons made short work of the helicopters, but Circuit Breaker was able to divert some of them with her electrical powers. Motormaster, however, was able to knock her out of the air by throwing a truck cab at her. Skids' human companion, Donny Finkleberg, ran to see if she was okay, but she pleaded for him to leave the battlefield lest he be hurt. When the Aerialbots arrived, and they and the Stunticons battled as the super robots Superion and Menasor, Circuit Breaker made her move. Despite Finkleberg's pleas that Superion was one of the good guys, Circuit Breaker fried Superion, putting him out of commission. Skids, Finkleberg, and the Stunticons fled, while RAAT took custody of their prize. Heavy Traffic!
Though Finkleberg liked the Autobots, he liked money more, and he turned Skids in to RAAT for a hefty $50,000 reward. Circuit Breaker dissected and examined the robots in her care in order to learn more about how to destroy them. By then, she had amassed thirteen robots, and she continued to hang their faces on her wall. Soon, Walter Barnett came to Circuit Breaker's lab to inform her of a wave of vandalism perpetrated by a pair of Decepticon Battlechargers. She, Finkleberg, and RAAT arrived at Washington Monument, in Washington, D.C., moments after it was vandalized, and she questioned a family there that believed that their son's actions had inspired the Decepticons. Suspecting that the Decepticons were following the family, she accompanied them to their next vacation spot, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her suspicions were correct, they encountered the Battlechargers there. Unfortunately, RAAT was forced to retreat due to the large number of people, and Circuit Breaker herself was hurt badly while protecting the vandalizing boy from falling debris.
Suffering a cracked rib and a mild concussion, Circuit Breaker was ordered to rest, but when she refused to listen, she was temporarily stripped of her command. Finkleberg, who was feeling guilty for having turned in Skids, convinced Circuit Breaker that the only way to stop the wave of vandalism was to team up with the captured Autobots. In exchange for their freedom, she assembled the thirteen Autobots into a mega robot which she controlled. Circuit Breaker and her robot suit fought the Battlechargers next to the Statue of Liberty in New York City, resulting in the Decepticons' defeat. (Though she wondered why her robot suit would use its arms to deflect shots away from her.) True to her word, she freed the thirteen Autobots, though this resulted in RAAT firing her. Once again she swore she would make the robots pay. Decepticon Graffiti!
Left to her own devices, Circuit Breaker silently stalked the Transformers from behind the scenes. Instead of parading around in her near-naked costume 24/7, she devised a wheelchair that housed her suit until it was necessary, and took to wearing a trenchcoat over her (presumably) naked body. From afar, she watched Sky Lynx return children to their parents, but the risk to civilians there was too high to get involved. Meanwhile, she had also taken an interest in Skullgrin, a ram-headed monster who had become a B-movie sensation. In order to learn more about the creature, she befriended actress Carissa Carr. She succeeded in putting on a sympathetic face and fell into the actress's confidence, and Carr permitted Circuit Breaker to intrude on the filming of her movies with Skullgrin. While filming a the Grand Canyon, Circuit Breaker observed Skullgrin revealing to Carr that he was actually a Decepticon robot, confirming Circuit Breaker's suspicions. She attacked Skullgrin, while the camera crew filmed the encounter. Skullgrin believed that Carr had betrayed his location to his attacker. Circuit Breaker was able to override Skullgrin's command over his own Pretender shell, turning it on him, but this resulted in Carr being in danger. As the cliffside collapsed under Carr, Circuit Breaker realized that if she continued fighting the Transformer and allowed Carr to die, she'd be no better than the Transformer who crippled her. Instead, she implored Skullgrin to save the actress, telling him that Carr had never betrayed his friendship. Despite this moment, Circuit Breaker quickly turned her powers back on Skullgrin once Carr was safe. Fortunately for everyone else, this battle had drained her powers, and she fled, but not before destroying the film crew's footage. Monstercon from Mars!
Circuit-Breaker approached Hector Dialonzo (AKA Dynamo), a superhuman with the power to draw energy from the Earth, after he wiped out the Air Strike Patrol; she hoped he would join her in a campaign against robots. By this point her mental state had deteriorated further, to the point she referred to Josie Beller as being "dead" and that she had been "built for" the task of destroying robots. She battled Starscream and clashed with Blackrock and his superhumans before Dialonzo decided he'd rather go with Blackrock than her. Blackrock then offered her a place on the team, guilty that he'd never truly reached out to her before and telling her she was becoming more emotionless than the robots. Rattled by the thought, she went off with them. The Human Factor!
When a Decepticon Civil War broke out in New Jersey and threatened to spread out into a place that actually mattered, New York City, the President of the United States called on Blackrock's "Neo-Knights" to quell the insurrection. ...All This and Civil War 2 At first Scorponok laughed at the efforts of these super-powered humans, but he quickly found himself overwhelmed first by Dynamo, then Rapture, and finally by Circuit Breaker herself. But as Scorponok was very important to Optimus Prime's attempts at reaching an Autobot/Decepticon alliance, he had assigned Nightbeat to keep the Decepticon leader safe. Nightbeat yelled at Circuit Breaker to stop killing Scorponok, and, as luck would have it, that happened just as Shockwave shot Circuit Breaker in the back. Though Nightbeat disavowed the blame, Circuit Breaker turned on him, believing again that there were no good robots or bad robots... just dead robots! After leaving a fried Nightbeat collapsed on the ground, she turned her efforts towards Optimus Prime. Blackrock's pleas for her to direct her rage elsewhere were useless, until he recognized Shockwave as the robot who had paralyzed Circuit Breaker in the first place. And, after he redirected her attention, so did Circuit Breaker. She hit Shockwave with everything she had and, out of power and out of consciousness, fell from the sky. Out of Time!
Thunderpunch carried her comatose body into the helicopter that brought them there, but before they could leave, the Neo-Knights and all Earthbound Transformers were all transported to the planet Cybertron by their creator Primus. This was a mistake, as their helicopter was in contact with Nightbeat's body, inadvertantly bringing them along for the ride. They stood and watched Primus speak to the Transformers about their cosmological history and how they must unite and defeat the Chaos-Bringer, Unicron. The Void!
Sure enough, Unicron arrived shortly thereafter, and the Neo-Knights fled best they could in the face of the planet-sized robot. Thunderpunch, who was carrying Circuit Breaker, noted that running wasn't solving anything. Instead, he felt they should be helping Circuit Breaker, who was having something of a nervous breakdown due to not only being on a planet full of robots but also up against one as large as Unicron. Thunderpunch believed that they would be best served helping Circuit Breaker to face her fears and redirect them properly.
As the Neo-Knights tried their best against Unicron, G.B. Blackrock tried to talk Circuit Breaker back into sanity, but instead she cried, whimpering that Unicron was "too big" and there were "too many." Having run out of other options, Blackrock slapped her across her face and told her the robots were laughing at her, hoping to make her lash out. Thankfully, it worked, and an enraged (more than usual) Circuit Breaker used her powers to set Unicron's circuits on fire. While the Dark God was distracted, Blackrock implored Optimus Prime to use this moment to end their nemesis once and for all: he'd just bought the Autobots a chance with Josie's sanity. As Optimus Prime reclaimed the Creation Matrix, Circuit Breaker's sanity and will gave out, and she fell comatose. On the Edge of Extinction!
Though Unicron was destroyed, the damage he inflicted on Cybertron was too great, and the Transformers readied transports to leave the planet. The Neo-Knights were put inside a storage box for shipping back home. Here, Blackrock did his best to apologize to Circuit Breaker for what he had done to her. Exodus! While the Neo-Knights would go on to have a quest for the Last Autobot alongside Optimus (stuck in the form of the Nebulan Hi-Q) and both saved the planet Vicious Circle! The Last Autobot? and helped in the Klo battle, Circuit-Breaker remained in a catatonic state.
And never recovered. The end! End of the Road!
Notes
- As well as being directly responsible for saving Cybertron from Unicron, Circuit Breaker is also directly and solely responsible for saving the entire Marvel universe from the Beyonder, in Secret Wars II. At the request of Bob Budiansky, she was published in that book before her debut in Transformers solely so Marvel Comics could claim ownership of the character[1]... or at least, she appeared as Circuit Breaker in Secret Wars II before Transformers, as Josie Beller she'd already turned up. "Circuit Breaker" is the trademark, so this probably makes sense for lawyers, but it gives us a headache.
- Writer Bob Budiansky is responsible for designing Circuit Breaker's costume. His original character design for her is published in Titan's Maximum Force collection. (The character design's circuitry pattern is very closely copied in the image at the top of this article.) It suggests either red or blue for her circuitry patterns and some kind of yellowish hair. She has blue eyes.
- Colorist Nel Yomtov's trouble keeping Josie's hair color consistent might be due to Budiansky's flexible character art notation. She starts out with bright red hair, changes to orange, then later appears platinum blonde, then back to orange!
- Somehow, Josie was going to have her mind fixed and become part of the Furman/WildmanTechno-X series, a reworked Neo-Knights in the early 90s. The series fell through, however.
- Titan Books earlier reprints had been able to use Circuit Breaker for a small fee, as nobody at Marvel was bothered at the time: after all, who'd want to read old Transformers comics, eh? Years later, Marvel figured out "many people" and it wasn't until Classic Transformers Volume 5 that IDW had the rights to reprint issues with Circuit Breaker in: before then, all stories featuring Circuit Breaker were replaced with text summaries.
- Shattered Glass has a technology-loving Sephie Beller. Don't tell Marvel!
Foreign names
- Portuguese: Disjuntora (Portugal comics), Rompe-Circuitos (Brazil comics)
External links
- Circuit Breaker at the (unofficial) Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
