Starscream (G1)/Marvel Comics continuity
He might have spent about a third its run asleep, but that didn't stop Starscream from being a big player in the Marvel Comics continuity!
Generation 1
Millions of years ago, on the troubled planet Cybertron, Starscream acted as the figurehead leader for the controlling dictators of the city-state of Vos. Following a botched attempt at igniting war between Iacon and Tarn, Vos itself went to war with Tarn, and both cities were destroyed by an exchange of photon missiles. The survivors of both cities—presumably including Starscream—were gathered together by the ex-gladiator Megatron, who used their bitterness towards Iacon to unite them under his control as the Decepticons. State Games
Four million years ago, Starscream was part of Megatron's attack raid on the Autobot Ark, which ended catastrophically when the ship crashed on Earth, knocking all aboard offline. In 1984, a volcanic eruption jarred the ship's computer back online, and it reactivated and rebuilt Starscream and all others aboard with new Earthly alternate modes. The Decepticons were quick to begin hostilities on this new world, and during a battle at a drive-thru movie theater, Starscream was sent fleeing when a dose of Cliffjumper's glass gas shattered his chassis. The Transformers
As the Decepticons sought new sources of fuel and power, Starscream attempted to undermine Megatron's decision to attack the Harrison Nuclear Power Plant by proposing that Buzzsaw scout it first. Seeing the wisdom in the idea, Megatron sent Ravage to do the job, and the effective strategies that the Decepticon leader formed based on the information retrieved reminded Starscream never to underestimate his commander's shrewdness. After the plant was seizing and its machinery use to construct a base of operations for the Decepticons, the villains attacked the auto repair shop of the Autobots' new human ally Sparkplug Witwicky, and Starscream abducted the human in order to pry from him the method he had created of converting earth fuels into a form Cybertronians could consume. Power Play!
While Sparkplug was put to work, Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp were dispatched to England to investigate a Cybertronian signal that was discovered to be emanating from an spaceship that had crashed there centuries before. Reports of this mission are contradictory, but at least one account identified Starscream as the killer of the ship's occupant, the Man of Iron. Man of Iron Returning to America, the three jets were then unleashed upon the human military forces who attempted a hopeless attack on the Decepticons' base. Under cover of the attack, however, the Autobots were able to rescue Sparkplug. Prisoner of War! Starscream was soon to advocate pursuit, but Megatron refused, preferring caution, and the frustrated Starscream immediately began plotting against him. Intending to rally the Decepticons behind him by attacking humans in order to orchestrate a confrontation between the Autobots and Decepticons, Starscream was caught monologuing by Ravage, and was forced to try and kill the spy in order to keep his plans secret. Both his attack and his attempt to murder Ravage met with failure, however, and when caught, Starscream demanded a trial-by-combat. He was pitted against Brawn and won, but was then shot down by a revenge-seeking Ravage, who blamed the Autobots. The Enemy Within!
Powered up using the fuel Sparkplug had created for them and readying for a renewed attack on the Ark, Starscream berated Megatron for allowing Sparkplug to have been rescued, since the human would likely have shared his fuel with the Autobots. A blast from Megatron's fusion cannon, along with the confirmation that Sparkplug had failed to convert fuel for the Autobots, led Starscream to meekly acquiesce to the attack plan. Battle ensuing, but just as the Decepticons appeared victorious, Starscream and the others doubled over in pain, victims of poisoned fuel courtesy of Sparkplug Witwicky. If not for the sudden appearance and intervention by the long-lost Shockwave, the Decepticons surely would have been defeated. The Last Stand Besting the weakened Autobots, Shockwave repaired Starscream and the others, The New Order establishing himself as leader by humiliating the weakened Megatron and parading him in front of Starscream and the Decepticons as a warning. The Worse of Two Evils!
Under Shockwave's command, the Decepticons seized control of one of human G.B. Blackrock's oil rigs, prompting the industrialist to build a super-weapon to fight back. Starscream convinced Shockwave to let him and Frenzy destroy the weapon to boost morale, intending to steal it and use it to destroy Shockwave and take command. Attacking the unveiling ceremony at the Blackrock speedway, the two Decepticons were confronted by the Autobots Jazz and Wheeljack and the robot-hating super-human Circuit Breaker, whose electrical powers caused Starscream to lose control of his jet-mode engines, forcing him to rely on robot mode flight as he dragged Frenzy's body away in retreat. DIS-Integrated Circuits!
After Shockwave and Megatron both went missing, Soundwave assumed command, rejecting Starscream's leadership aspirations by labelling him a guileless, tactless "missile with a mouth". These insults nothwithstanding, Starscream still proved pivotal in Soundwave's plan to capture Bumblebee, cutting off the Autobot scout's escape. Optimus Prime was subsequently challenged to fight his way through the Decepticons to rescue him, and althought Starscream loudly boasted of being a "leader killer", his resolved was lost when he faced Optimus Prime alone, and he was quickly defeated. Crisis of Command!
Returning to the Blackrock Industries oil rig, Starscream and his fellow jets soon found their makeshift base surrounded by government forces, leaving them trapped for weeks. Shockwave returned to help them make their getaway, and charged them using a power siphon he had built during his absence to convert sound energy from a Brick Springstern concert into energon cubes, but they were bested in the attempt by Bumblebee and a group of new Autobot recruits. Rock and Roll-Out! Soon after, Shockwave determined to brainwash Bumblebee and add him to the Decepticon ranks, and Starscream agree, joining him and the other Decepticons in relentlessly hunting the small Autobot when he was alone. It wasn't until human authorities and the Autobots arrived to rescue Bumblebee did the Decepticons abandon their hunt. Plight of the Bumblebee!
Starscream was among the Decepticons who joined Megatron on a mission to the space bridge to welcome reinforcements from Cybertron, only to discover that Autobots had arrived over the bridge instead. Before they could attack, Megatron was alerted to an Autobot raid on the Decepticons' base, but rather than return to aid in the defense, Megatron instead ordered an assault on the underguarded Ark. Unfortunately for the Decepticons, they had no reckoned with the newest Autobot, Omega Supreme, who deactivated almost all the Decepticons present, Starscream included. Command Performances!
The Autobots recovered the bodies of Starscream and the other deactivated Decepticons and placed them in life support capsules within the Ark, holding them imprisoned in stasis. Not long afterward, the Autobots were plunged into a state of disarray by the violent arrival of the enigmatic time-travelling Decepticon, Galvatron, and Grapple was in such a rush to depart the medical bay and attend a mission briefing that he failed to notice an alert signifying the malfunction of Starscream's capsule. Starscream awoke and punched his way out of the capsule, and proceeded to steal out of the medical area and listen in on the Autobots' briefing. He was shocked to overhear that the Autobots had teamed up with Megatron to defeat Galvatron, and Starscream immediately decided to sneak off to join forces with this powerhouse from the future. Galvatron went along with Starscream's toadying, as the irony amused him; Galvatron was, in fact, a recreated future incarnation of Megatron, and would go on to kill Starscream twenty years in the future! When Galvatron and his men faced Megatron once again, Starscream shot Megatron in the back, but had to be stopped short of killing him by Galvatron himself, who knocked Starscream unconscious in order to secure his own future existence. Starscream's body was placed back into its stasis capsule by the future Autobots Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr, who then tricked Galvatron into returning to the future through a complicated plan that involved painting Skywarp to look like Starscream, and then duping Galvatron into destroying him. After killing "Starscream", Galvatron rationalized that he must have travelled back to a parallel timeline, since Starscream was not supposed to die until 2006, and returned to the future with his men. Target: 2006
Rather than do the smart thing and return Starscream the Ark, the future Autobots rather unwisely left his capsule lying in the middle of a field. As happenstance would have it, Starscream lay there, undisturbed, until he awoke at Christmas the following year. Desolate, he wished he could go home again, and was in mid-mope when he was chanced upon by a a human who sought to inform him of the meaning of Christmas. Urged to help a busload of elderly humans who had become stuck in a snowdrift, Starscream wanted to know what would be in it for him. As Starscream debated this good deed, he was suddenly attacked by Streetwise, who suspected him to be up to his usual do-baddery. After a brief battle, the human intervened to chastise Streetwise, and Starscream proceeded to show up the Protectobot by saving the bus, purely out of spite. Stargazing
Starscream quickly ingratiated himself with Ratbat and became the manager and public face of Club Con, a human island resort that covered their attempt to uncover subterranean information on the legendary Underbase. Club Con! When a pair of Autobot audio and video tapes recording the loss of the Underbase were found, Starscream convinced Ratbat to let him watch the tapes with him. In the "Realvision" playback, he witnessed a young Optimus Prime thwart Megatron's early attempts to possess the Underbase by shooting the legendary database into space. The Flames of Boltax! Starscream then set about a chain of systematic betrayals in order to gain access to that power. He set loose Buster Witwicky, whom the Decepticons had been holding prisoner, with equipment that would lure the Autobots to the Decepticon's Antarctic base. The ensuing battle served to distract his fellow Decepticons as he then stole a ship from Scorponok to look for the Underbase. Cold War!
Upon finding the ancient database, Starscream began absorbing its power but was unable to finish the task as he was blasted by Ratbat's ship, piloted by a temporary Autobot/Decepticon alliance. However, while the light of the Underbase had only shone on Starscream for a moment, that moment had been enough to fill him with its awesome power, and the now-cosmically-powered Air Commander survived the attack. Growing to monumental proportions, Starscream hurled his ship at Ratbat's craft, and promptly headed for Earth with the intention of proving his power by destroying New York, Tokyo and Buenos Aires. The Autobots and Decepticons traveled to those locations to try and stop Starscream, but they ultimately failed, as a massive amount of the Transformers active on Earth were badly damaged and incapacitated by Starscream's Underbase-powered rampage. Starscream only stopped after intercepting a radio transmission between Fortress Maximus and Optimus Prime, and realized that the great Autobot leader was elsewhere, plotting against him. Starscream fled back out into space to find Prime, and rediscovered the Underbase. Starscream attempted to finish absorbing its power, only to have the absolute knowledge overwhelm him, which resulted in his destruction. Dark Star
Starscream's corpse crashed in South America, but the Decepticon still clung to some semblance of life, as his shattered husk was reanimated by the residual energy of the Underbase that still saturated it, and driven by Starscream's own murderous impulses into an insane rampage. After nearly killing Susan Hoffman and her Assistants, the zombie-like Starscream was confronted by Dreadwind and Darkwing, who had been sent by Megatron to recover Starscream's body, and the Autobot Triggerbots. Triggerbot Backstreet was able to appeal to the fraction of the Underbase that was still within Starscream and convinced it to try and regain control of itself, but as soon as it did, Dreadwind and Darkwing had their Powermaster partners Hi-Test and Throttle siphon all the Underbase's remaining power from the walking cadaver. Starscream's corpse returned to being an inanimate pile of scrap, which the pair quickly collected. Race with the Devil
Starscream's remains were delivered to Megatron in his Cybertronian base, who kidnapped Ratchet and forced him to rebuild Starscream with a powerful Pretender shell. The Resurrection Gambit! After the shell had finished healing the body inside, Megatron sent the resurrected, supposedly mind-wiped Starscream to Earth, where he attacked in the middle of a tense meeting between the forces of Scorponok and Optimus Prime. All the Familiar Faces!
Starscream's new form was powerful, but what gave him his true edge was how much he spooked his victims. He was believed to be a ghost, an invincible force of revenge, and most of Scorponok's troops quickly fled the battlefield. It wasn't until Hot Rod manned up and shot their attacker did they realize that this was no ghost at all, but rather a physical being that could feel pain and be destroyed. This was further sold by Starscream's sudden display of cowardice: Ratchet had arranged for Starscream's true personality to eventually surface, and Hot Rod's blast had knocked it free. Completely outmatched, Starscream surrendered and begged Scorponok for forgiveness. Skin Deep
Although permitted to join Scorponok's Decepticons, Starscream began to wallow in self-pity, believing that all the other Decepticons considered him a joke for his many failed takeover attempts and defeats. His self-esteem crumbled every time the other Decepticons refused to speak to him or spoke about him behind his back. In reality, the other Decepticons were terribly frightened of Starscream (thanks to that whole Underbase thing) and were avoiding him so they wouldn't be killed. Starscream sulked about it for a while until he defeated and captured a few Autobots and his confidence began to return. Fallen Star!
Starscream was a source of dissension among the Decepticons, who were angry with Scorponok for letting him back in. Primal Scream—and it was pretty dumb, as Starscream tried to capture the mutant Dynamo and use him as a Powermaster so he could challenge Scorponok. He failed, but was then approached by Shockwave, believed to be dead at the time, with the proposition of declaring war on Scorponok and taking leadership for themselves. The Human Factor! Naturally viewing Shockwave as a stepping stone to claiming sole power, Starscream agreed and helped pressgang Triggerhappy and Mindwipe into their group. Eye of the Storm After strategizing in Shockwave's sub-oceanic staging base, they launched their attack on Scorponok's New Jersey base, levelling it from above. Surrender! Starscream was first into the wreckage to dig out and finish off any survivors, but he had the bad luck of coming upon Scorponok first, who crushed his leg and took him out of the fight. ...All This and Civil War 2 The intervention of the human superhero team the Neo-Knights ended the conflict, Out of Time! after which all Transformers present were teleported to Cybertron by Primus in advance of the coming of Unicron. The Void!
When Unicron appeared, Starscream and Shockwave opted for the better part of valor, leaving the rest of their armies to take up the fight. On the Edge of Extinction! Although the chaos-bringer was defeated, mysterious tremors began to tear Cybertron apart, so the pair set about repairing the Ark Still Life! and used it to escape the planet. Exodus! Partway into their journey, the sudden appearance of life signals on the supposedly deserted ship prompted Starscream to investigate, and he was horrified to discover that Megatron was on board, having been in a life-support pod. Starscream immediately prostrated himself before his original leader, but Shockwave ordered him away to check the other pods while he dealt with Megatron. Starscream discovered that Ratchet had also awoken and thought the fight would be an easy one, but his callous jokes about the enjoyment he would derive from killing the medic earned him a merciless pummelling. Starscream attempted to shoot Ratchet in the back, but the Autobot doctor jostled his shot, deliberately causing the detonation of a tank of Nucleon. The explosion caused enough of a chain reaction to send the Ark into a crash-landing on Earth. A Savage Circle
Earthforce
In an alternate series of events, Starscream and Shockwave's army grew much larger, and their main competition was not Scorponok, but a revived Megatron and his group of Decepticons. As Shockwave's second-in-command, Starscream had few responsibilities, and even less power. The final indignity came when he was assigned to mere monitor duty at their undersea base. Still, even that ignoble assignment presented an opportunity, as Starscream caught Megatron's spies, the Insecticons, trying to tune in to Shockwave's war room. After incapacitating the bugs, Starscream surprised them by offering to let them go free, if they would report back to Megatron that Shockwave would be alone at a certain spot the next day, ensuring that Megatron would go out to battle him alone. Bugged! With the trap baited, Starscream contacted his opposite number, Megatron's second-in-command Soundwave, and proposed an alliance. Soundwave had already been playing both sides by feeding information to him, and so the two of them conspired to join the Decepticon factions under their joint rule. Sure enough, after Megatron and Shockwave's private battle came under Autobot fire (Autobots who had been anonymously tipped off by Starscream), they radioed their respective bases only to hear that the Decepticons no longer considered the two of them leaders. Internal Affairs!
Starscream's first major action as Decepticon leader was the ol' "bait and switch"—sending Soundwave and a Decepticon strike force to keep the Autobots busy at their Earthbase, while he personally attended to stealing a supply of oil from a tanker in the Gulf of Mexico. It seemed, however, that Starscream's plan hadn't accounted for Earthforce's newest recruits: the Survivors. A quick 1-2-3 by Carnivac, Skids and Inferno took the fight out of Starscream, and so he retreated, radioing his troops to do the same. Divide and Conquer!
Sometime later, returning to the Decepticon base in the Louisiana bayous, Starscream suddenly found himself fighting for his life against several mismatched bounty hunters and mercenaries. Believing his co-commander Soundwave must have been responsible for the contract, Starscream stormed back to their headquarters to confront him. Assassins He wasted no words in confronting his "treacherous" partner, but fortunately Soundwave had had the foresight to prerecord an explanation. While trading blows and dodging laser fire in person, Soundwave's recording outlined how the situation was clearly a set-up to make them fight each other. Fortunately, Starscream believed him. Unfortunately, Bludgeon and the Mayhem Attack Squad stormed in at that moment, having been paid by the true contractors, Megatron and Shockwave, to eliminate anyone left standing. External Forces! The two Decepticons would have been overwhelmed if they hadn't received aid from an unlikely source: Earthforce. It seemed the Dinobot Snarl was dying of Corrodia Gravis, a wasting disease which required an energy transfer from a compatible Transformer, and Starscream fit the bill. After driving off Megatron, Shockwave and the Mayhems, Starscream made a deal with Earthforce to help Snarl in exchange for their aid against any future uprising by the former Decepticon leaders. The Lesser Evil!
Soon afterwards, Starscream and Soundwave engaged in Project: Smear, a campaign to ruin the Autobots' good name among the humans, and ensure they received no additional aid in the war. A straight-forward attempt to brainwash Superion into wrecking a human settlement didn't pan out, Inside Story! so a more subtle plan was engineered. Starscream had Bombshell use his cerebro-shells to subvert the will of a human reporter, Irwin Spoon, and compel him to write a story bashing the Autobots and portraying them as kidnappers, or worse. End of the Road!
Generation 2
Starscream was deactivated by the Ark's crash to Earth and remained offline for several years. Eventually, Megatron, who had survived the impact and spent the time repairing the ship and now required troops to stage his comeback, grudgingly elected to repair and reactivate him, questioning his good judgement in the process. All or Nothing! Rescued from the destruction of the Ark at the hands of Fortress Maximus and back in one piece, Starscream flew Megatron to a confrontation with current Decepticon leader Bludgeon, Tales of Earth, Part One but wisely kept out of the battle for leadership, instead betting Fangry five triliters of evergon resin that Megatron would win. Unsurprisingly, Starscream won the bet. Tales of Earth, Part Two Although back in command, Megatron continued to enact the late Bludgeon's last plan, attacking Earth in order to drawn out Optimus Prime. Starscream joined the Decepticons in assaulting Washington, D.C., jovially chatting all the way through, and radioed to Megatron when Prime appeared on the scene. Starscream then watched as Megatron defeated Prime and tore the Creation Matrix from him. The Gathering Darkness
Starscream was among the Decepticons who raided Tykos to steal its Rheanimum, where he grew increasingly aware of the fact that his usefulness to Megatron was rapidly coming to an end. Following the success of the mission, the Decepticons were attacked by Jhiaxus's Cybertronian Empire, but Megatron ignored Starscream's plea for retreat. New Dawn To combat this new threat, Megatron allied the Decepticons with the Autobots, a move that was the last straw for Starscream. Escalation! Stealing away, he approached Jhiaxus and led his army to the allied Autobot/Decepticon forces at Autobase Earth in return to the promise of an eminent position in his empire. Swarm
This, of course, was also a feint: while the three factions were battling, Starscream led a small squad of Cybertronians to seize of the Decepticons' Warworld, where he used the Creation Matrix to fuse himself with the giant ship, transforming it and himself into a living weapon. Total War! As Optimus Prime and Megatron entered the possessed ship to try and stop him, Starscream exhibited a startling control over the physical nature of the vessel, turning the Warworld into an ever-shifting maze of horrors to torment the two leaders. Dark Shadows! Starscream was soon to find, however, that merging with the Matrix cut both ways: when Jhiaxus turned his fleet against the Earth, Starscream was suddenly compelled to protect the planet, and was horrified to discover that the inherent purity of the Matrix was prompting him to be "good". Tales of Earth, Part Eight Unable to override the heroic compulsions and with no desire to be a hero, let alone a dead one, Starscream returned the Matrix to Optimus and reverted to normal. Fortunately, he was able to avoid any major repercussions for his deceit thanks to the arrival of a much larger threat in the form of the Swarm. Megatron put Starscream to work loading the Rheanimum into a shuttle so it could be distributed among the Autobots and Decepticons to protect them from the Swarm's destructive touch, after which, he left him on the Warworld. Starscream then used a tractor beam to rescue Prime from the Swarm and gave him a cannister of Rheanimum before departing for parts unknown, reflecting that his final actions had been highly uncharacteristic and worrying that the Matrix might have done him some permanent damage. A Rage in Heaven!
Classics
Through unknown means, Starscream was able to escape the Ark before the ship crash-landed in the Arctic. Venturing out of his own, Starscream soon found himself at a total loss: with no troops to command, he found that he lacked the ability to accomplish anything without a leader to organize things for him. He fell off the grid, eventually resurfacing years later after news reached him that Megatron had also re-emerged on Earth. Left genuinely humbled by his experiences, Starscream simply walked up to the front of the Decepticon base in the remains of the Ark and begged to be allowed entrance, which Megatron permitted. However, once he was upgraded into a new body and feeling himself again, Starscream soon fell back into his old scheming patterns, albeit with much greater patience than before. Now that he had Megatron to reunite the Decepticons, Starscream would bide his time until all their enemies were destroyed, and then he would make his move. Classics Starscream profile
When Megatron returned to the Ark with a mysterious new Decepticon named Landquake, who claimed to have come from another dimension, Starscream dismissed his story as lies, earning a backhand from the his leader. Soon after, the Decepticons departed to investigate a mysterious new energy signal, and Starscream led the attack against the human forces who got in their way. Crossing Over, Part 2 When the Autobots arrived to join the flight, Starscream and Jetfire engaged in a dogfight; Starscream called on Ramjet for help, but he was busy following other orders. Crossing Over: Part 6
Not long after the battle's end, Starscream surreptitiously took Skywarp and Ramjet to meet with a squad of new Decepticon arrivals on Earth—representatives from the larger Decepticon army operating out in space under the command of Bludgeon—with a view to forming an alliance with the rival group against Megatron. Unfortunately, their leader Bug Bite proved to be as duplicitous as him: when they were distracted by the discover that Mirage had been spying on them, Starscream and his fellow jets were tagged with cerebro-shells that put them under Bug Bite's control. At his new master's command, Starscream led Bug Bite and his men back to the Ark, where he turned them on Megatron until Autobot intervention jammed the cerebro-shells and set them free. Games of Deception
When Megatron prepared his final strike against Bludgeon, he sent out three warships to menace the skeletal warrior, commanded by Starscream, Thundercracker and Octane. Somewhat reluctantly, Starscream did nothing but languish in his command chair in space above Bludgeon's headquarters, as the Seacons acted on Megatron's order to betray and eliminate Bludgeon from within. Starscream just waited for Astrotrain and Soundwave to inform him the deed was done, and the Decepticons below were surrendering and powering down their weapons. A bit cleaner than he would've liked it, but Starscream still had to admire Megatron's skill at deception. At Fight's End
Regeneration One
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[[Image:Battle sled loose ends 2.jpg|thumb|left|200px]WHEEE!!!!!]
Twenty-one years after Starscream had been taken offline by the second Ark crash, he was once again drafted into Megatron's service as part of his zombie army. Unlike the other mindless conscripts—most of whom were Starscream's victims during the Underbase saga—Megatron allowed him to retain a sliver of individuality within him so that he would always suffer the knowledge of his diminished position, though he was at least allowed to ride on the back of the battle sled. Loose Ends, Part 2
Notes
- For the first half of the American Marvel Comics series, Starscream's chest was colored dark blue, versus the red seen on the toy and in the cartoon. The apparent reason for this discrepancy is hinted at in animated segments in early commercial footage (see right), where Starscream's chest and forearms are black. Lack of color depth in comic books at the time required black to be represented by dark blue. Starscream's "true" colors began appearing in the American Marvel Comics when he made his return in issue 47, "Club Con!"
