Prometheus Black


 * Prometheus Black is a human from the Transformers Animated continuity family.



Prometheus Black is an entrepreneur and business rival of Isaac Sumdac. Whereas Sumdac focuses on robotics, Black's expertise is in the area of biotechnology. However, his constant loss of business to Sumdac Systems has left Black bitter toward machines, especially the sentient kind. While attempting to develop a new corrosive that would melt Autobot armor, Black fell victim to a laboratory accident that transformed him into the supervillan Meltdown.

Driven quite frankly bonkers, Black was left able to secrete an acidic liquid that melts anything he touches, and which can be fired in jets from his palms. Unable to "turn off" his powers, Black constantly secretes acid, and must wear protective suits that allow him to walk about and manipulate objects without melting them.

He employs shrimp/giant and altogether biochemical freak Colossus Rhodes.

He also looks good in a pimp suit, which is the best superpower ever.

"Who better than the daughter of my arch-rival, the bane of my existence, the simpering fool who is unworthy to lick the mud off the heels of my platform-shoes—booga-looga-looga-looz—Professor Isaac Sumdac? Poetic, no?"

- Meltdown vents some spleen regarding Isaac Sumdac and then gets his funk on

Animated cartoon

 * Voice actor: Peter Stormare (English), Rainer Doering (German)

Prometheus Black's biotechnology business was highly successful because it played off the citizens of Detroit's fear of illegal immigrants robots stealing their jobs. Much of his money was made on makeovers of some of the city's less physically gifted individuals, but he finally staged a promotion aimed at getting himself a contract with the city's police force. Pitting the seemingly frail old man Colossus Rhodes against Bumblebee, he hoped to win the support of Captain Fanzone by showcasing the strength-inducing powers of his nano-technological steroids. Unfortunately, Rhodes proceeded to rampage out of control in the parking lot, convincing Fanzone to recommend canceling all of Black's contracts with the city, leaving Black financially ruined.



In the wake of the parking lot brawl, Black discovered a small piece of Bumblebee's armor, which had been knocked off during the fight, coated in the Autobot's hydraulic fluid. Seeking to prove the superiority of his bio-tech creations over the Autobots, he fused the fluid with his steroids, creating an acid that would melt Transformer armor. Black presented his findings to his venture capital backers' representative, Porter C. Powell, but Powell refused to supply him with any further money or test subjects. Enraged, Black smashed a rack of test tubes and beakers, scattering his acid across the laboratory. As the acid began eating through the counters and floor of the lab and alarms started blaring, Black inhaled the steroid-infused fumes as he staggered for the exit, and began to secrete acid through his pores.

Driven insane by the accident and now calling himself "Meltdown", Black donned a protective suit and decided to take his revenge on Sumdac, first by sabotaging a display of Sumdac's police drones. Not content with simply damaging his rival's reptuation, Meltdown next broke into Sumdac Tower, intended to do away with Sumdac permanently. Thankfully, Bumblebee was able to save Sumdac at the eleveth hour, and proceeded to lure Meltdown to the ground floor of the tower, where he was trapped in a force field by Ratchet.

When Meltdown next surfaced, he and Colossus Rhodes discovered the Dinobots' island, where Meltdown used his acidic powers to force the Dinobots into servitude. Additionally, Meltdown's encounter with the Autobots had left him thinking: if a robot could transform, why not a human being? Meltdown began concentrating on developing a "human transformer", but his early experiments (one involving his lawyer) were failures, and he decided to try again, this time with a child. He sent Swoop to kidnap Sari, Isaac's daughter, but Prowl, Bulkhead and Captain Fanzone's interference not only put a stop to his plan, but freed the Dinobots... whose first decision was to try and rend Meltdown limb from limb. Prowl gave him a choice: Dinobots or prison. Surprise, surprise, he chose prison.

Meltdown was visited in prison by Sari, who wanted him to help provide evidence she could use against his old business partner, Porter C. Powell. That discussion was fruitless, but a few minutes later, the Dinobots had a lot more success in breaking into the prison and kidnapping Meltdown at the behest of their new "friend", Blackarachnia. The shifty cyborg knew of Meltdown's genetic research and ordered him to cure her of her organic contamination.



Meltdown played along, explaining that he required a special genetic modifier from his old laboratory to successfully purge Blackarachnia's organic half. The device was retrieved by Grimlock and a blackmailed Optimus Prime, but as he strapped Blackarachnia down before beginning the process, Meltdown revealed that he would not be purging her organic half, but instead ridding her of her mechanical side, in his latest attempt to create an organic Transformer. Prime managed to disrupt the experiment and rescue Blackarachnia. During the scuffle, Meltdown was hit by a massive energy discharge from the genetic modifier, and his body was melted away into a completely liquid state, leaking out of his containment suit and draining through the floor. His remains were left behind by Optimus, who believed him be to be gone for good, but in reality, the villain was anything but. A short time later, his now-liquid body began reconstituting itself.

Trivia

 * Thus far, Meltdown is the only human villain to inflict grievous, often spark threatening injury to any of the main cast, as well as hold his own in a fight against them on a fairly even level. He nearly melted off Bulkhead's arm and almost off-lined Bumblebee in their first encounter, tormented the Dinobots into submission while critically injuring Bulkhead in their second , would have turned Blackarachnia into a  mutant  and might have killed Optimus if the genetic modifier hadn't liquified him in their third.