- Spike Witwicky is an Autobot-allied human in the Generation 1 continuity family.
And people complain about Rad?
Spike Witwicky is the oldest (and sometimes only) son of Sparkplug Witwicky.
Spike, like most Witwickys, has a tendancy to form close bonds to the Autobts and become one of their main human allies.
Fiction
Animated continuity
- Voice Actor: Corey Burton (US), Show Hayami → Masashi Ebara (Japan)
In 1984, Spike was a 14-year-old adolescent working with his father Sparkplug on an oil rig when the Decepticons attacked. After the Autobots rescued them, they volunteered to become their native guides to planet Earth.
Spike had many adventures with the Autobots, taking part in just about everything they did on Earth for at least the next few years. He became especially close friends with the little Autobot Bumblebee. In the course of these adventures he met Carly an impetuous prodigy and MIT graduate. Despite being (much) smarter than him, older than him (she could drive) and hotter than him, Carly displayed a noticeable affection for the somewhat-dim Spike. They mated and produced offspring.
Spike is BACK! ...and BLACK!
As an adult in the distant year 2005, Spike was stationed with Bumblebee on one of the Autobot's secret moonbases. He had a bit of a potty-mouth about being eaten by the monster-planet Unicron but was saved from its belly by his afforementioned offspring. Later, when the Autobots had regained control of the planet, he become Earth's ambassador or something. Marooned on the distant planet Nebulos he became a Headmaster partner to Cerebros and single handedly rebuilt an ancient city into a giant transformer. He polished up good.
Headmasters Cartoon
Uh, disregard that last sentence and add in some misogyny.
Marvel Comics continuity
Generation 1
(Note: Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.)
Spike Witwicky was away at college for the first few years of the Autobot/Decepticon war on Earth until he returned home to find his younger brother Buster kidnapped by the Decepticons. Spike soon became the binary-bond partner to the Headmaster Fortress Maximus, after Fortress Maximus' first partner, Galen, was killed in a battle with the Deception Scorponok.
Thereafter he struggled with balancing his responsibillities to his family with those to the Autobots. Once Buster was rescued, and with Optimus Prime returned to life to take his place as Autobot leader, Spike went into retirement, mothballing poor Max. This retirement wouldn't last however as it was interupted, first by a pair of Deceptioon Pretenders, then by the crash of the Ark and a raving Galvatron. Through the course of these conflicts Spike learned that the binary bonding he had undergone with Maximus was far deeper and more permanent than he'd believed. Fortress Maximus was always there with him in his head, always a part of him. After his battle with Galvatron he seemed to have made peace with his connection to Fortress Maximus and his role as (perhaps) the last Autobot protector of Earth.
In 2009, jheri curls return with a vengeance. Just you wait.
White jumpsuits were so 2006.
In an alternate timeline in the year 2009, Decepticons had built a machine to destroy Earth while a space-time anomaly was eating entire planets. After Rodimus Prime orchestrated a plan to travel twenty years back in time to the source of the anomaly, Spike Witwicky and his son Daniel accused Rodimus of shirking his responsibilities towards Earth and guilted Rodimus into allotting more troops to help destroy the Decepticons' machine.
In another alternate timeline in the year 2009, Spike Witwicky was part of a very small Autobot/human resistance movement in a world where Galvatron II's Decepticons controlled North America. The handful of Autobots who remained alive despaired and were on the cusp of giving up, but Spike and Lisa (who shared growing feelings for each other) guilted them into one last suicidal attack on Decepticon headquarters in New York before the rest of the world could unleash a nuclear holocaust onto America at midnight. Though there were several casualties, Spike managed to hoist an American flag on the Decepticon stronghold on live television, a symbolic measure which prompted the end of the planned nuclear strike. Before Galvatron II could respond, the Decepticon despot was abducted by Hook, Line, and Sinker into another timeline.
Generation 2
Now the jumpsuit's in BROWN?
Spike followed up on the now Megatron-controlled Ark, which he'd apparently stuffed Fortress Maximus aboard and then abandoned after his battle with Galvatron (great job protecting Earth there, "Last Autbot").
He reunited with Max and together they... um sort of stopped Megatron (well, delayed him a little... maybe) by throwing themselves into the ship's antimatter core.
He blowed up real good.
Dreamwave comics continuity
It's to be assumed that Spike and his father, Sparkplug, met the Autobots early on in their time on Earth (in a similar fashion as Spike and Sparkplug did in the cartoon, or Buster and Sparkplug did in the Marvel Comics). Spike definitely had a younger brother named Buster (like in the Marvel comics), yet it was Spike who formed a close friendship with Bumblebee (like in the cartoon, rather than missing out on the first few years of the Witwicky family's interaction with the Transformers while engaging in drinking orgies at college, like he did in the Marvel comics). The exact details of the Witwicky's early years as the Autobots' human associates are therefore not known.
Somewhere in the time after 1984, Spike married Carly, who then gave birth to Spike's son, Daniel. After the explosion of the Ark II in 1999, which caused the death of Spike's father Sparkplug, Spike tried to leave his involvement with the Transformers behind and settled down with his wife and son in Cleveland, Ohio, trying to live a new life as a normal family. The newfound peace wouldn't last for long, though, as Spike was soon recruited by a shady military official named General Hallo seeking his help in reviving Optimus Prime, whose body his men had recently found in the Arctic. Spike, who had been entrusted by Prime with a fragment of the Matrix, used that fragent to bring Prime back to life.
Prime subsequently used the Matrix to revive and assemble a group of his Autobots, which he would then lead against Megatron's Decepticons. Meanwhile, Spike was imprisoned by General Hallo, who had double motives behind reviving the Autobots and even tried to kill them by bombing them. With the help of Larry, the World's Most Resourceful Janitor, Spike was able to escape his cell and uncover Hallo's sinister schemes, but not in time to stop him from launching a nuclear strike against the Autobots which was ultimately averted when Superion sacrificed his life in order to make it detonate before it could reach its target.
Following these events, Spike once again returned to his family and tried to leave his past with the Transformers behind. A few months later, though, his old friend Bumblebee, who had just decided to quit the Autobot army following a fierce battle against Sunstorm, showed up by his house. Spike, frustrated that the Autobots refused to leave him alone, hurled a few nasty insults against his old buddy before changing his mind and joining him on a men's night out in the city. The follow-up scene of Carly shouting at Spike singing drinking songs with Bumblebee was never published due to the untimely faltering of Dreamwave.
Devil's Due G.I. Joe vs the Transformers continuity
In response to the forming of the terrorist organization Cobra and its commandeered Transformers, the United States government assembled a strike team dubbed G.I. Joe. Spike Witwicky (codename Spike) was listed on the roster, but was never seen. G.I. Joe vs the Transformers, Part 2
(Oddly, Spike Witwicky's was the only name of a military specialist on the roster which was not ordered last name, first name.)
Trivia
- Spike and Buster were both derived from the same "young male human friend" character in early backstory material. For more on the name variation see Butch Witwicky.
Toys
Generation 1
- Fortress Maximus with Spike (Headmaster, 1987)
- Spike was a Headmaster figure who came with Fortress Maximus. Gray and blue, he transformed into Cerebros' head, who then in turn became Fortress Maximus' head. Although the tech specs referred to 'the Nebulan leader, Spike', most assume it was supposed to represent the character from TV, making this the first Transformers toy of an Earth human.
Heroes of Cybertron
- Autobot Espionage Team
- PVC figures of Spike and Bumblebee came sold together as "Autobot Espionage Team." (At this point, Hasbro did not have the trademark rights to Bumblebee's name.) The two came packaged with HOC Fortress Maximus' right leg.