Cyclonus (G1)

In the year 2005, after an abortive attack on Autobot City, the evil Decepticons found it necessary to jettison excess mass from their craft to make it back to their homeworld of Cybertron. The injured and dying Decepticons were chosen to be ejected into the void of space, including the commander, Megatron, but when their bodies were recovered by the world-eater, Unicron, they were reborn as deadly new warriors in the service of the recreated Megatron, now known as Galvatron.

Cyclonus was one of the new Decepticons created by Unicron, and a being whose loyalty to Galvatron and the Decepticon cause is so intense as to exclude most other emotions and interests from his mind. Dedicated to destruction in his leader’s name, Cyclonus transforms into a nuclear-powered multi-turbine-engine jet fighter, capable of space flight and able to expand in size to convey Galvatron. In robot mode, he wields an oxidating laser that fuses the internal mechanisms of its targets, and in vehicle mode is additionally armed with an incendiary bomb rack. Immediately following his creation, Cyclonus served as little more than Galvatron’s personal ship and attack dog, carrying his leader to Starscream’s coronation, into the battle in Autobot City and to the Planet of Junk attacking and crippling the shuttle of Hot Rod and Kup in the midst of it all. After the destruction of Unicron, however, when Galvatron was lost, Cyclonus came into his own, his loyalty to the Decepticons’ absent leader shaping his character in different ways.

Animated continuity
Voice actor: Roger C. Carmel, Jack Angel (US), Tomimichi Nishimura (Japan) ''Carmel frequently proved unable to keep any consistency with Cyclonus's voice from episode to episode, rising and falling in pitch and tone repeatedly. Following his death, Jack Angel took up the role for the final five episodes of the series.''

Disgusted with how far the leaderless Decepticons had fallen as they eked out a miserable existence on the barren world of Chaar, Cyclonus resolved to locate Galvatron, daring even to enter Unicron’s deactivated, disembodied head and replaying its memory banks, tracing Galvatron to the world of Thrull. Unfortunately, once extricated from a pool of the planet’s plasma-lava, Galvatron proved to have been driven insane from exposure to it and brutalised Cyclonus and Sweeps before being talked down and returned to his position as leader.

As 2006 settled in, Cyclonus was captured by a Quintesson scientist for study, along with Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar and Marissa Faireborn, but when the entire group was sucked through a black hole into a negative universe, they were forced to work together to escape; Cyclonus and Magnus developed a grudging respect for each other as warriors, but vowed that when they met again on the battlefield, it would be as enemies.

Some time later, outnumbered and fleeing from the Aerialbots, Cyclonus and Scourge took refuge inside a vortex, which transported them to the pacifistic, energy-rich planet of Paradron, which had been settled by Cybertronian refugees. Naturally, the duo immediately overthrew the planet and summoned Galvatron and the other Decepticons there; the plan was ultimately foiled by the Autobots, but at the cost of Paradron itself, which was destroyed. Cyclonus later had his body possessed by the ghost of the deceased Decepticon, Starscream, and went on to clash with Ultra Magnus again aboard the Autobot records asteroid with the fate of Daniel Witwicky in the balance.

When a group of Decepticons, tired of being beaten and abused by the deranged Galvatron, confronted Cyclonus and demanded that he do something about the situation, Cyclonus was so short on options that he accepted the advice of a Quintesson, and tricked Galvatron into accompanying him to the therapeutic mental institution on planet Torkulon. It pained Cyclonus to see his leader so demented as each attempted therapy met with failure, but when the Torkuli attempted to cure Galvatron by removing the damaged part of his mind, thereby leaving him a vegetable, Cyclonus sprang into action, only to be restrained. Patched into the sentient network of the planet, rather than be cured, Galvatron infected the world itself with his madness and freed himself, decimating the planet and decided to turn his attention back to fighting the Autobots, rather than dwell on Cyclonus’s deception.

Later, Cyclonus was among the Transformers turned into an energy vampire by the Trans-Organic Dweller, thrown to the beast by Galvatron to delay his own fate – though he hesitated for a moment before fleeing, almost repentant for his action. Later still, he, along with a group of Autobots and Quintessons, were transported into a region of space cordoned off by the Quintessons, landing on the planet Zamojin, where Cyclonus aided the Quintessons in acquiring Perceptor’s Universal Emulator, in order to repair their systems and return to normal space. When the Hate Plague swept the universe, Cyclonus was infected and took leadership of the afflicted Decepticons, hunting down Galvatron and tracking him and a group of Autobots into the depths of Chaar and infected scientist Jessica Morgan.

In 2007, Cyclonus participated in the massive Decepticon attack on Autobot City which culminated in the theft of the key to the Plasma Energy Chamber. When the chamber was then opened, the energy released blasted the key and a group of Autobots across the galaxy to the planet Nebulos, and Cyclonus and Scourge led a team of Decepticons in pursuit, attacking and capturing several of the Autobots. To battle them, the remaining Autobots combined with a group of Nebulon rebels into “Headmasters” and bested them in combat. Having learned of his fusion of Transformer and Nebulon, Hive, the evil ruling council of Nebulos, approached the Decepticons to repeat the process, but Cyclonus argued them down to taking the heads of only the animal-mode Decepticons, and merely the weapons of the others. Consequently, Cyclonus became a Targetmaster as his oxidating laser was converted into an exo-suit for the Hive member Nightstick, giving them enhanced targeting abilities and firepower. Reclaiming the chamber key with their superior powers, the Decepticons headed back to Cybertron aboard the giant robot Scorponok, where Cyclonus attempted to convince the disgusted Galvatron of the benefits of being bonded to the Nebulons. The Autobots soon arrived back on Cybertron and invaded Scorponok, only to be captured by the Decepticons, and almost executed by Cyclonus before being saved by Spike Witwicky and Fortress Maximus. The Decepticons’ plan was subsequently thwarted by Spike and the Nebulons, and they were sent spiralling off through space aboard Scorponok by a tendril of plasma energy.

Who is Cyclonus?
''When the injured Decepticons are transformed by Unicron, two identical Cyclonus robots are simultaneously created (as opposed to Scourge and the Sweeps, who were created one after the other in short order) – in the foreground, the Insecticon, Bombshell, becomes one, while in the background, Decepticon jet Skywarp becomes another. The dialogue which accompanies this scene claims that we are seeing “Cyclonus… and his armada.” But, clearly, one warrior does not make an armada – the line is, in fact, a carry over from the original script, in which Cyclonus was intended to have multiple identical duplicates, in the same way that Scourge had the Sweeps.

''However, the idea was apparently abandoned right after this scene – the second Cyclonus immediately disappears for the remainder of the film and is retroactively replaced with a third Sweep (although despite this, some fans choose not discount the existence of the second Cyclonus, and, somewhat irreverently, refer to him as a second character actually named “Armada”). The only other instances of duplicate Cyclonus robots are in Five Faces of Darkness, Part Five and The Quintesson Journal, but these examples are generally discounted by fans due to the episodes' infamously poor, error-riddled animation (though it could be argued that if Bombshell were Cyclonus, he could have retained his Insecticon cloning ability to create these extra copies of himself).

''But regardless of whether or not the second Cyclonus exists, the question remains – who became the one, true Cyclonus who appears in the series? Bombshell or Skywarp?

''Fans are split into two camps on the subject. Bombshell is favored by some for being in the foreground of the transformation scene, thereby intended by the animation to be Cyclonus, while Skywarp is preferred by others primarily because becoming an expendable Sweep seems an ill-fitting end for one of the original Decepticons. Other aspects of the argument make claims regarding the personalities of the characters; for example, Bombshell occasionally led the Insecticons (alternating with Shrapnel), while Skywarp was an unintelligent soldier, making the former more suited to being Cyclonus; conversely Skywarp was always loyal to Megatron, while the Insecticons never saw eye-to-eye with him, making Skywarp the better candidate (although as the Tokulon incident proved, even Cyclonus's loyalty could fluctuate). Ulimately, however, such arguments seem irrelevant, as Cyclonus never displays any inklings of his past life.

''To break the transformation down to its most basic components – assuming the second Cyclonus is retroactively replaced with a Sweep – what we see is: a blue jet (Thundercracker), a purple jet (Skywarp) and a trio of warriors (the Insecticons), who become a blue spacecraft (Scourge), a purple spacecraft (Cyclonus) and a trio of warriors (the Sweeps). In that regard, Skywarp seems the most likely candidate – indeed, the profiles included on the R4 and R2 DVD releases of Transformers: The Movie subscribe to this notion (but should, by no means, be taken as official).''

Headmasters cartoon
Cyclonus and Scourge continued to make token appearances when the new Headmaster warriors arrived to dominate the Cybertonian war, but their intelligences seemed to markedly decrease until they were little more than cackling, bumbling henchmen - for example, during the attack on Planet Beast, Cyclonus attempted to drop a rock on Rodimus Prime, but accidentally clobbered Galvatron instead, and ran away yelping in fear. Later, when Sixshot attempted to extort energy from six countries using each of his six modes, the duo completely botched his scheme when they failed to realise that he was behind it and attacked him with Trypticon.

Marvel Comics continuity
Cyclonus's appearances in the US Marvel Comics Transformers series were minimal - in his first appearance during the Headmasters'' mini-series, he and Scourge were presented as being ordinary, present-day Transformers under Scorponok's command, who then became Targetmasters along with the others on Nebulos. Later, Cyclonus appeared again when readers were offered a glimpse into an alternate future world of 2009, where he was indeed a creation of Unicron, and where Cybertron had been destroyed, and Galvatron ruled Earth. In this future world, Cyclonus failed to stop an Autobot/human rebel invasion of the main Decepticon base, and, enraged by this failure, Galvatron destroyed his servant. Across the Atlantic, however, in the United Kingdom’s exclusive Transformers comic, additional original stories created to expand on the US continuity added much, much more to Cyclonus’s story. In order to free himself from the limitations of writing about the same cast of characters as the American creative team, writer Simon Furman cannibalised the most popular elements of Transformers: The Movie, and began to write new stories based around its characters, often intersecting them with the present day through the use of time travel.''

Following Unicron's consumption of Cybertron's moons, Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge travelled back in time to 1986 as part of a plan to free themselves from Unicron's control by constructing a massive cannon that will destroy him in their home time of 2006 (the setting for the movie in the comics, based on early production material for the movie itself, before the date was amended to 2005). The three Unicronian Decepticons proved themselves almost invincible in the face of the Autobots attacks, but were finally defeated when Galvatron was duped into believing he was trapped in a temporal paradox, and returned to his own time to live out the remaining events of the movie.

Amusingly, during this story, Furman’s misinterpretation of the movie summary he had read (having not yet actually seen the feature), which referenced the fading “life spark” of a Decepticon, led to Cyclonus actually claiming he had been rebuilt from a Decepticon named “Life Spark.”

Following the destruction of Unicron at the hands of Rodimus Prime and the Matrix, Galvatron transported himself back in time to 1987, leaving Cyclonus and Scourge in the future, under Shockwave’s command. The duo were attacked by the freelance peace-keeping agent, Death's Head, who was seeking the bounty on Galvatron’s head, and Cyclonus revealed Galvatron’s whereabouts to him. Later, Shockwave hired Death’s Head to kill Rodimus Prime, but Cyclonus and Scourge interfered with the job as they sought to kill Rodimus first, in order to reclaim their lost standing amongst the Decepticons. This did not best please Death’s Head, and consequently, he willingly accepted a contract from Rodimus to hunt down Cyclonus and Scourge, eventually tracking them down to the Planet of Junk as 2008 dawned. Before he could finish the job, however, all three of them fell under the mind-controlling influence of Unicron, whose disembodied head had survived the destruction of his body and had landed on the planet, where he was having the native Junkions constructed a new body for him. Under Unicron's control, Cyclonus and Scourge killed Shockwave and became Decepticon leaders, reigniting the stalemated Cybertronian war to a furious degree to cover Unicron's actions. Death's Head, however, was able to fight the mind control and work with the Autobots' long enough to stop the chaos-bringer's plan. As explosions destroyed Unicron, Death's Head tackled Cyclonus and Scourge, pushing them through a time portal Unicron had built, promising to kill them another time.

This particular event helped to bring in line the UK comics' portrayal of the characters as Unicron-created future Decepticons with the US series use of them as modern-day characters, as Cyclonus and Scourge were hurled into the past of Cybertron by the portal, where they came under the command of Scorponok, and went on to go to Nebulos and become Targetmasters. then travelling to present day Earth.

Travelling to Earth with Scorponok's forces, they sought out Galvatron, no longer willing to serve him, instead demanding that he hand over his time travel device so that they could return to the future and their position as Decepticon leaders. The confrontation was disrupted by the sudden appearance of the Autobot commando squad, the Wreckers, who drew the ensuing battle away from the human settlement it was taking place in by professing to have stolen Galvatron's time jump mechanism, when in reality, the Decepticon no longer even had it for them to take.

Having met with failure again, Cyclonus and Scourge decided to cut their losses and team up with Shockwave's present-day Earth-based Decepticon forces. At this point in time, the comic book personalities of Scourge and Cyclonus had been well-established, and distinctly different from the cartoon - here, Scourge was the intelligent, scheming brains of the duo, while Cyclonus was the dull-witted brawn, and that personality trait remained as strong as ever when Cyclonus accidentally let slip that they would kill Shockwave in the future. Naturally wanting to ensure his continued existence, Shockwave unleashed a brainwashed Megatron clone upon the two. Seized by the clone, Cyclonus’s Targetmaster partner, Nightstick, was crushed, and as Cyclonus begged Scourge for help, his companion fled to save his own life and Cyclonus’s head was torn from his body, killing him outright.

Cyclonus and Scourge’s displacement into the past had circumvented the normal mass-replacement method used by time-travel, and had hence unbalanced the space-time continuum, causing a rift to appear in the fabric of space and time. Cyclonus’s death, twenty years before he was even created, proved to be the final straw, accelerating the rift, which soon threatened to consume Earth and Cybertron. Realising that the only way to stop it was to return himself, Galvatron and Cyclonus to their original time, Scourge attempted to recover Cyclonus’s body from Shockwave, only to be attacked by the deranged Decepticon, who had lost his mind due to the illogical nature of the situation, and had strung Cyclonus’s remains up like a twisted trophy. Ravage, however, was able to bring Shockwave back sanity enough for him to deposit Cyclonus’s remains after Galvatron and Scourge, and then seal it with an x-ray blast.

3H Wreckers comics continuity
Despite Megatron's attempts to implant his spark within a Vehicon body, Cyclonus retained his own mind and set out to fulfil his Decepticon heritage alongside the other renegade Vehicons, Skywarp and Rotorbolt. As the rag-tag group of Autobots known as the Wreckers attempted to flee Cybertron, but found their way to their spaceship barred by Vehicon drones, the trio came to their aid, joining the team and departing Cybertron with them. When the Wreckers then acquired a mysterious energy-generating crystal named the "Divine Light", Cyclonus killed the Maximal Packrat and stole it, fleeing in order to deliver it to his true master, Cryotek.

Notably, the writers of the comic apparently subscribe to the notion that Bombshell became Cyclonus, as Skywarp is shown to coexist with him.

Dreamwave Comics continuity
In this universe, Cyclonus and Scourge are not simply reconstructed Decepticons, but creations of Unicron built within pods inside the chaos-bringer’s body, constructed from the remnants of matter he ingested in his ongoing consumption of planets. Although Scourge played a larger role in events, Cyclonus’s appearance was brief – he was simply shown smashing his way out of his pod after Unicron consumed the planet Lithone in the wake of his reactivation.

Future stories would have brought Cyclonus to the fore as he attacked the base of the Earth Defence Command in order to retrieve Scourge, who was being held there.

Generation 1

 * Cyclonus (1986)
 * Japanese ID number: D-70

Cyclonus, like the other new characters created for Transformers: The Movie, was designed for animation first, and had his toy based on these designs. However, as with the other characters, the toy was based on an earlier design, most notably featuring folded back wings, while his animation model underwent further modifications before being finalised. The earlier design was the basis for the Marvel Comics version of the character, and also erroneously appeared in a few instances in the animated series.

Cyclonus's fist holes were widened to accomodate his Nebulon partner, Nightstick, who replaced his previous handgun. This version of the toy was not released in Japan.
 * Targetmaster Cyclonus (1987)

Universe

 * Cyclonus (2002)

A redeco of Beast Machines Ultra Jetstorm in Cyclonus's purple colours, available exclusively at BotCon 2002.

Merchandise
A PVC figurine of Cyclonus was part of the eighth act of Takara's Super Collection Figure series in 2002; it was later released as part of the third wave of Hasbro's Heroes of Cybertron line in 2003, with it's pointed edges rounded off for safety. In May 2005, Hard Hero released a Cyclonus bust.