Shockwave (G1)
| The name or term "Shockwave" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Shockwave (disambiguation). |
| This article is about the Generation 1 Decepticon Shockwave/Shockblast. For the Energon Decepticon, see Shockblast (UT). |
Shockwave is a Decepticon in the Generation One universe. He was also briefly known as Shockblast.
Shockwave has been referred to as "a computer on legs." This is not far from the truth. Logic rules Shockwave's thought processes and is the source of his every inspiration. He sees emotions as a weakness and a distraction. His cold and calculating modus operandi is supported by his frightening and exceptionally powerful form.
Shockwave is possibly even more powerful than Megatron, who he appears to be loyal to. However, perhaps logic dictates that the time to replace Megatron's flawed, emotion-fueled rule has yet to occur.
Japanese name: Laserwave
French-Canadian name: Onde de Choc
Fiction
Generation 1 Cartoon
Voice Actor: Corey Burton (US), (Japan)
Shockwave was a highly ranked Decepticon during the G1 era. His alternate form was a large, flying laser gun. His alternate form is thought to be even stronger than Megatron's. Despite what his toy-bio says, he is also fanatically loyal to Megatron.
He typically oversees all the Decepticon activity on Cybertron, rarely leaving the planet. His keen scientific mind resulted in several incredible devices, including the Space Bridge and a time machine.
In his first apearance Shockwave had 2 hands, although this could be an animation error, some fans speculate that Shockwave lost his hand in a battle.
He may have survived the battle against Unicron but, if so, apparently lost face with Galvatron for losing Cyberton to the Autobots during the battle. He can be spotted in group shots in season three, but these shots are notorious for animation errors such as depicting combiner robots alongside component robots. Shockwave's post-season three status is up for speculation.
Marvel Comic
The Marvel comic book series, on the other hand, took Shockwave's original profile and ran with it, making him a force to be reckoned with. Here, Shockwave was part of the Decepticon unit that pursued the Ark, but he held back from actually attacking the craft, remaining on the Decepticons' own space cruiser and following the Ark down to prehistoric Earth when it crashed. His guidance systems disrupted by his travel through Earth's atmosphere, Shockwave touched down in Antarctica, specifically, in the Savage Land, whose dinosaur inhabitants the Ark used as a basis to reconstruct five Autobots to battle Shockwave. These "Dinobots" engaged Shockwave, but he overpowered them, trapping them in a tarpit. A last strike by the Dinobots before sinking into the pit saw them bury Shockwave under a landslide, where he remained for four million years.
In 1984, Shockwave was reawakened by an Autobot probe and quickly struck the weakened Autobots, who had just defeated Megatron's forces. Deactivating them all and stringing them up in the Ark, which he took for his own base, Shockwave brought the Decepticons back online to serve him, and was soon challenged for leadership by a wounded Megatron, who he soundly defeated and brought under his heel. As Decepticon commander, Shockwave commandeered the Blackrock Aerospace Plant, using its resources to construct new Transformers, which he then gave life using the Creation Matrix, siphoned from Optimus Prime. However, Prime was able to transfer the Matrix into Buster Witwicky's mind, preventing Shockwave from giving life to his newest creation, Jetfire. Shockwave instead programmed Jetfire to acquire Buster, but Buster was able to reprogram and give life to Jetfire and took Shockwave out of the game long enough to recover Optimus Prime's severed head. Prime then battled Shockwave and hurled him into a swamp.
Shockwave was able to extricate himself in short order, and attempted a series of failed plans, such as draining sonic energy from a rock concert and attempting to control Bumblebee. When Megatron resurfaced, he and Shockwave clashed again, but settled into a brief period of shared leadership until Shockwave fell victim to an Autobot trap, and saw the logic in Megatron's accusations of failure, ceding command to him. When Megatron began to descend into paranoid insanity after the death of Optimus Prime, Shockwave attempted to take advantage of the situation by arranging a staged attack by the Predacons. Megatron defeated them, but when Shockwave revealed that he had duplicated his mind to disc to guide the Predacons during their hunt, Megatron's deranged mind (accurately) began to believe that this was how Optimus Prime had survived. Desperate and insane, Megatron apparently killed himself by blowing up the spacebridge while he was on it, once again allowing Shockwave to take leadership. However, he soon faced various objections courtesy of Ratbat, the local Decepticon commander on Cybertron, who criticised his operations for being too fuel-inefficient. Arriving on Earth to oversee Shockwave's work, Ratbat encountered Buster Witwicky, who he captured and brought to the Decepticons' mobile island base. With the Autobot Headmasters in pursuit, Shockwave transformed the island into its rocket mode and blasted off, but in a space-bound battle with Fortress Maximus, Shockwave was defeated and sent hurtling into Earth's atmosphere, where he seemingly burned up.
Although this would be all that the US comics would see of Shockwave for some time, this was not the case for its sister title, the UK-based Transformers comic, which reprinted the American stories with their own original material intertwined. In previous UK stories, Shockwave had run afoul of the future Decepticon leader, Galvatron, who was attempting to disrupt his leadership in the present to ensure the loyalty of his army in the future. After his battle with Fortress Maximus, Shockwave was revealed to have survived his fall back to Earth and returned to the Decepticons' original castle base, where he had the Seacons acquire the body of what was apparently Megatron (but would, in actuality, be later revealed as a clone), which he brainwashed into doing his bidding in order to pit him against Galvatron. When he was visited by the other future Decepticons, Cyclonus and Scourge and learned that in their future, they would kill him, he unleashed Megatron upon them, who killed Cyclonus. Shockwave then turned Megatron upon Galvatron, but rather than destroy him, he saw a potential partner in Galvatron, and they teamed up to battle Autobots and Decepticons from both the present and future in the "Time Wars", as a rift in the space-time continuum bore down on them. Shockwave, however, had become a prisoner of his own logic - to seal the rift it was necessary to return Cyclonus's body to it, thereby saving everyone, including himself. A logical action. However, to do so would be to condemn himself to death in the future by Cyclonus and Scourge's hands. Illogical. Unable to cope with the paradox, Shockwave went insane, but was saved by Ravage, who pointed out that, equipped with knowledge of his death, he could prevent it. His mind restored, Shockwave returned Cyclonus's body to the rift, after Galvatron and Scourge were consumed by it, and sealed it shut with an X-ray blast. The day had been saved, but Optimus Prime promised him that the next time they met, it would be as enemies.
A short time later, Shockwave went on to make his return to the pages of the US comic, as he established a small splinter cell of Decepticons, consisting of himself, Starscream, Mindwipe, Triggerhappy, Ravage and Runamuck. Declaring civil war against the current Decepticon Earth commander, Scorponok, Shockwave battled him in New Jersey, only for the conflict to be interrupted when all the Transformers were transported back to Cybertron by their deity, Primus to battle Unicron. Awestruck by the chaos-bringer, even Shockwave's vast data-grid could not compute a logical course of action, and he and Starscream hijacked the Ark and fled the planet shortly after Unicron's defeat. However, the Dinobots had previously treated the Transformers stored in the Ark's stasis pods with the life-restoring fuel, Nucleon - and among those Transformers was the true Megatron, who battled with Galvatron, who had also stowed away on board the craft. In an attempt to break the cycle of violence that seemingly bound him and Megatron, Autobot medic Ratchet crashed the Ark into Earth. Shockwave was last seen in pain as Megatron and Galvatron advanced on him just before the ship crashed. His fate remains unknown, but as everyone save for Megatron was deactivated or destroyed in the crash, it is unlikely Shockwave survived.
