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.
Dreamwave Generation 1 Comic
Shockwave was a major character in the Dreamwave Productions' 21st Century reimagining of G1. As a major player in the Decepticon army in Cybertron's past, he led the main attack on the Autobots' stronghold shortly after the appointment of Optimus Prime, and personally destroyed two guardian robots with one blast in spacegun mode. There was also tension between him and Starscream about who would lead the Decepticons after Megatron's supposed death, which eventually led to the creation of multiple splinter factions within both the Autobots and Decepticons. While Starscream created his own faction, the "Predacons," Shockwave led the Decepticons through the "Dark Ages" of Cybertron, during which his logic allowed him to put aside differences with Jetfire and the Autobots in order to defeat the greater evil of The Fallen. As the Dark Ages came to an end, Shockwave was ready to sign a peace treaty with Ratbat's Ultracons and the Autobots, but the return of Megatron trampled the plan, though the Quintesson-created clones he brought back to the planet with him greatly intrigued Shockwave.
Shockwave was left behind on Cybertron while Megatron's forces pursued Optimus Prime and were subsequently lost on Earth for four million years, and became Decepticon leader on the planet. He began experimenting with cloning, and through studies of Astrotrain and Blitzwing, began to conceive the idea of a Transformer with multiple alternate modes. Eventually, however, Shockwave and all the other Transformers on Cybertron succumbed to stasis as the planet's energy ran out, and it entered a hibernation phase known as the "Great Shutdown." During this period of inactivity, 3000 years ago, Unicron's herald Scourge located the planet, and reactivated Shockwave for study purposes. However, when Shockwave was attacked by a swarm of Sharkticons, Scourge intervened, and after saving him, was shot by Shockwave, who then proceeded to study him, learning much of the function and purpose of Transformers and Cybertron from the secrets within Scourge.
Shockwave steadily worked to restore Cybertron, reactivating it's population and solving their energy needs, ending the war and unifying the planet. He also continued his experiments into multiple transformations, yielding the unstable Duocons, and then successfully mastering the process with Triple Changers. Capturing Alpha Trion, Shockwave sought to unlock the full secrets of Vector Sigma, having already learned of the mysterious signifcance of Earth to the Transformer race. In preparation for the invasion of the planet, Shockwave subliminally influenced the population of Cybertron to become more violent, and prevented the return of Optimus Prime and Megatron aboard the Ark II by having a human agent blow it up.
In 2003, Shockwave made his move, heading to Earth with his Triple Changer troops and capturing Megatron and Optimus's forcing, planning to try the two leaders as war criminals. Megatron was jettisoned into space by Starscream, while Prime's escape from his clutches led him to fall in with a rebel group, and then to confront Shockwave himself, only to be defeated by the Decepticon, who ripped the Matrix from him. Using the Matrix to activate Vector Sigma, Shockwave downloaded the compressed contents of the mega-computer into his network, but before he had an opportunity to view the data, he was pulled into a battle with Ultra Magnus. In the course of the fight, the fuel line to his cannon was severed, and the resulting explosion destroyed his citadel and knocked him into a chasm.
While the rest of Cybertron believed Shockwave to be deceased, he had actually survived the explosion and gone underground in the wastelands of Cybertron with Astrotrain and Blitzwing, continuing his experimentation, resulting in Sixshot. Soon after, however, Megatron returned to Cybertron and bested Shockwave, taking him to Earth where he did the same to Starscream. But now, the three players were assembled, each knowing certain dark secrets of Cybertron's past... but unfortunately, Dreamwave's bankruptcy and subsequently closure at the start of 2005 means that currently, this story remains unresolved.
