18 - Action Masters Meet Action Force / Bridge to Somewhere

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Credit for all G.I. Joe file cards to www.yojoe.com

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

MAINFRAME

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Joint Chief Technician, systems analyst
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance (as member of G.I. Joe / Action Force): Marvel's Transformers UK #208 ('Desperate Moves')
First appearance (as A.B.C.): Marvel's Transformers UK Annual 1989 ('Prime Bomb')
First appearance (as himself): The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"A program is only as good as its programmer."


Sergeant Blaine L. Parker, codenamed Mainframe, was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He enlisted in the Army Airborne at the age of seventeen and made it over to South-East Asia for the last year of hostilities, just in time to get his Combat Infantryman's Badge. He left the army to get his degree from M.I.T. and did a stint toiling in the antiseptic corridors of Silicon Valley making big bucks and fighting off boredom with a stick. Luckily the Marines were looking for a few good men with just his qualifications. The proper papers were signed, and Mainframe was back in uniform. In 1987, Mainframe joined G.I. Joe / Action Force and was sent to the Middle East with Dusty (Ronald W. Tadur, desert trooper from Las Vegas, Nevada) to locate a Cobra Terror Drome, whose signature had been picked up by spy satellites. During the course of the mission he reprogrammed a Cobra Firebat to strafe enemy troops. Later, after detecting a shuttle launched from Cobra Island, Mainframe was part of a team sent into space on board the space shuttle Defiant to defend U.S. satellites against a Cobra attack. Some time later, Mainframe worked on the U.S.S. Flagg as part of Hawk's operations team during the Joes' involvement in the Cobra civil war.



As summarised by TFWiki, A.B.C. was an advanced guidance computer created by the United States military. It was stolen from Rutter U.S. Military Base by the Combaticons and subsequently enhanced by Cybertronian technology. These enhancements unwittingly gave the computer some level of sentience. Scorponok programmed A.B.C. to guide a smart missile to zero in on Optimus Prime and destroy him. But the Autobot Getaway was captured by the Decepticons while this plan was being put together, and wound up being held in their orbiting spaceship. He was able to free himself and access A.B.C. Getaway interfaced with the computer on a direct machine-to-machine level, asking it to disarm the missile, only for the computer to coldly report that such a task was outside the scope of its programming. With the interface still active, Getaway's thoughts turned to how great and noble Prime was. The interface was brought to an end when Getaway was forced to flee in order to avoid being discovered outside his cell. Later, Optimus Prime, warned of the incoming missile, fled to an unpopulated area so as to not risk anyone's life but his own. The missile reached Optimus Prime, but didn't go off. Getaway guessed that his appeals to A.B.C. had an effect after all, and the computer took the initiative to disarm the device. Optimus Prime was sorry that the newly sentient computer did not have much longer to exist, as Scorponok would surely smash it when he found out that it caused his plan to fail.

When the Underbase-powered Starscream destroyed Scorponok's spaceship in early 1989, the Joes were sent up on a shuttle once again to search the wreckage and bring back any Decepticon technology that they found intact. Mainframe found A.B.C. still operational, and once he discovered from conversing with it that it was sentient and considered itself to be an ally of the Autobots rather than a Decepticon, he felt obliged to hand it over to the Autobot Micromasters now established in New York, who immediately sent it across the Space Bridge to Cybertron, where Emirate Xaaron had it installed in a no-frills generic Autobot body. They asked their new comrade what he wanted to be called, and he chose the name of his human computer programmer friend, Mainframe.

A walking, talking computer terminal, the Autobot Mainframe (formerly A.B.C.) would rather attack fourth order differential equations than Decepticons. Totally committed to his work, he viewed the Galactic conflict as an inconvenience to be tolerated rather than a struggle in which he must participate, but in the years immediately following his initiation as an Autobot he was often compelled to flex his intellectual muscle, when needed.

In 1991, following the battle with Unicron, it took the computer skills of the Autobot Mainframe to extract Emirate Xaaron's mind from the Primus system where it had been confined since Primus took over Xaaron's own body (and got it destroyed), installing it in a new body, in which form Xaaron would become known as Thunderclash. Mainframe himself also got an upgrade soon afterwards, by ingesting Nucleon and becoming an 'Action Master' Autobot. In 2021, Mainframe is now Joint Chief Technician with Skyfall on the Autobot Action Masters' Armoured Convoy, supported by Push-Button and Rad, and reporting to Base Commander Jackpot. The human Mainframe is now in his sixties and enjoying his retirement.

The pugnacious Push-Button was a semi-sentient Cybertronian drone, who was captured by the bounty-hunter Axer and served under the command of Gutcruncher until he was liberated and Matrixed by the human Katy Witwicky in the year 2014. Push-Button prefers the idea of converting into a self-propelled proton rifle and disintegrating Decepticons to his assigned task of debugging Mainframe's various programs. Mainframe also carries a 'vibro pulveriser' rifle.

FILE ENDS

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

KROK

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: 'Foot' soldier
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #76 ('Still Life')

"The road to conquest is best travelled one step at a time."


Chief Warrant Officer William S. Hardy, codenamed Wild Bill, was a helicopter pilot for G.I. Joe / Action Force. Amiable and slow-talking, he fancies himself as a country and western singer. Totally honest in personal dealings, he is not beyond spinning a tall tale for the amusement of comrades, such as regarding his true birthplace and country of origin. Born in either Brady, Texas or Hull, England, he served as a combat infantryman and participated in long-range reconnaissance patrol operations during the South-East Asian debacle. He re-enlisted for Flight Warrant Officer School and his talent led to him being assigned to G.I. Joe in 1983 to pilot the Dragonfly XH-1 assault copter. He has also been known to fly the Tomahawk heavy lift assault / troop carrier helicopter, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules troop transport plane and the Protectobot Blades, who saved his life in 1987 when his Dragonfly was shot down over London by one of the Megatrons.



Krok was a Decepticon 'foot' soldier affiliated to the war-lord Gutcruncher. Krok got his kicks from kicking. By taking a single stomping step, he was capable of creating a mini earthquake with a scaled reading of at least 7.0, and it was said that a blow from his automatic-powered foot could send an Autobot into orbit. Centuries of playing all-star mecha-soccer, a sadistic form of entertainment favoured by Gutcruncher's faction of Decepticons as a means of disposing of unwanted prisoners, earned Krok a terrible reputation among his fellow Cybertronians.

In the years leading up to the battle with Unicron, Krok was sometimes partnered with a semi-sentient drone, captured and reprogrammed by the bounty-hunter Axer and referred to as the Gatoraider. The Gatoraider used its vice-like jaws to crush any unfortunate being caught in the aftershocks of Krok's ground tremors, and converted into a powerful concussion cannon. Krok was also armed with an electro pulsator gun.

Together with Treadshot, Krok left Gutcruncher and joined Bludgeon's Decepticons in 1991. He drove a Neutro-Fusion Tank in the Battle of Klo, and succeeded in escaping the rout that followed the arrival of Optimus Prime and the Last Autobot. Soon afterwards, he was one of the team sent to Earth to retrieve the body of Megatron from the wreckage of the Ark, which was being guarded by G.I. Joe. Krok scattered the humans' ground forces with an earthquake that would have made Rumble proud, but came under fire from the Joes' air detail. Wild Bill blew Krok's arms off with two medium-range, air-to-surface, wire-guided 'Scorpion' anti-tank rockets and then cut him in half at the waist with aluminium-cased rounds from his Hughes XM-230 chain gun.

Bludgeon took the remains of both Krok and Megatron to Hydrus Four to receive the Nucleon treatment, which revived Krok just in time for him to participate in the final battle with the Autobots, and be impaled to death by Ramhorn.

Gatoraider was fully Matrixed in August 2018 but destroyed less than a fortnight later (along with Catgut, Fistfight and Wingthing) in pitched battle with the Quintessons.

In the year 2021, Wild Bill is retired from the U.S. military and runs a cowboy-themed live music bar in Hull.

(The Neutro-Fusion Tank is a high-impact battle tank armed with a fusion cannon, corrosive smoke shells, anti-aircraft photon machine guns and heat-seeking mechano-sensors. The tank converts into a ground-to-air, wire-guided missile launcher and a search-and-destroy jet throne.)

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[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

BANZAI-TRON

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Martial arts warrior, enforcer
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Unicron

"To the victor go the profits."



MacArthur S. Ito's Japanese father and Korean mother owned a grocery store in Watts, Los Angeles. Not accepted by either the Japanese or the Koreans because of his mixed ancestry, and too short to play basketball, he turned to martial arts - all martial arts. He became a ranking black belt in Tae Kwan Do, Go Ju Ryu, Southern Praying Mantis Kung-Fu, Tai Chi Sword, Zen Sword and Wing-Chun. He was working as a stunt man in Hollywood in 1986 when he was recruited for the G.I. Joe / Action Force team and became known by the codename Quick Kick.

A master of Crystalocution, the Cybertronian martial art of defeating an opponent by attacking his metal fracture points, the Decepticon Banzai-Tron usually reduced an enemy to spare parts in minutes before selling the remains on to Gutcruncher, for whom he was always willing to fight, provided he got paid. He was sometimes partnered with Razor-Sharp, a lethal titanium-piercing crab drone that could tear through just about any kind of metal obstacle or alternatively convert into a semi-automatic rifle that fired plasma energy projectiles, which exploded on contact. Banzai-Tron also carried a photon neutraliser rifle.

Banzai-Tron got excited by the prospect of learning a new world's worth of martial arts when contact between the Cybertronian and Earth-based Decepticons was established in 1986, and paid the Insecticon thief Chop Shop to spy on the humans' finest warriors and record their attire and fighting techniques for Banzai-Tron to assimilate. Banzai-Tron was particularly taken with the costume of the mutant Keniuchio Harada, better known as the Silver Samurai, and modified his own body accordingly, but Chop Shop heard that the best non-superpowered fighter out of all the humans was to be found in G.I. Joe, and so infiltrated the Pit to obtain the data Banzai-Tron so coveted. The Insecticon read Quick Kick's file card, was impressed by the long list of martial arts he was reputed to excel at, and assumed (wrongly) that Quick Kick was the great warrior hero he'd heard whispers of. He recorded Quick Kick in training and sent the information back to his client, who assumed (wrongly) that he would now be able to emulate the moves of the most skilled human martial-artist on Earth.

In 1987 Quick Kick and his team-mates Snow Job and Stalker spent several months in a Borovian gulag before being rescued by their fellow Joes. In 1991 Quick Kick was killed along with Breaker and Crazylegs whilst trying to escape from Trucial Abysmia in a stolen Cobra Rage tank.

Banzai-Tron got a power upgrade in 2014 when he voluntarily ingested Nucleon and became an Action Master. No-one could remember what he had transformed into anyway. His drone partner, Razor-Sharp, was fully Matrixed in August 2018. The perfect fighting team, Banzai-Tron and Razor-Sharp considered themselves to be the most highly skilled warriors on the planet Cybertron. With Nucleon flowing through his body and the martial arts skills of the magnificent Quick Kick, surely nobody could get the drop on Banzai-Tron!

He was, of course, wrong, as in the year 2021, through sheer bad luck, he (and Razor-Sharp) just happened to be standing on the exact spot Black Shadow had disappeared from when he was mass-displaced to Limbo by a time-travelling Autobot from the future, when the Pretender suddenly returned to this dimension. Two living beings cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and the results were messy, and mutually fatal.

Would Banzai-Tron have sensed the danger and avoided it if only he had assimilated the ninja skills of Snake-Eyes rather than the lesser techniques of Quick Kick?

Probably not.

FILE ENDS

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TREADSHOT

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Gunslinger
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #77 ('Exodus')

"A gun is only as good as the one who holds it!"


If ever there was someone in need of shooting, Treadshot was the one the Decepticons called upon to pull the trigger. Treadshot could outdraw and outshoot any robot this side of the Galaxy. And his occasional partner, the semi-sentient drone called Catgut, was more than willing to act as his weapon. A snarling, ferocious, four-legged beast, Catgut would eagerly transform into a powerful fusion-powered particle blaster with pulse demagnetiser attachment. Like Treadshot, Catgut always got a blast out of his job.

The Crimson Guard were the elite shock troops of the Cobra legions. All 'Siegies' had to be college graduates in addition to keeping themselves in top physical condition. The final stages of Crimson Guard training took place in the deepest recesses of Cobra's headquarters and were purported to involve an initiation too hideous for description. Crimson Guardsmen were too precious to be wasted on the conventional battlefield. Instead, Cobra Commander dispersed them all across the United States in deep cover, assuming normal appearances and lifestyles. You could never be certain whether that friendly new neighbour of yours might just have a red uniform hanging in his closet.

After being modified to shrink in size and transform into a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum pistol, Treadshot crossed the Space Bridge to Earth in 1988 to build upon a secret alliance being formed between Lord Zarak and Cobra Commander. Inspired by the Joey Slick / Megatron rampage of early 1986, Zarak ordered Treadshot to team up with a Crimson Guardsman who would embark upon a copy-cat crime spree up and down the East Coast, his strikes seemingly random but in actual fact carefully choreographed to draw attention away from various covert operations of both Cobra and Zarak's Z Foundation. The scheme proved highly successful, though it inevitably ended with the death of the Crimson Guardsman at the hands of a police SWAT team. The gunman's super-powerful, super-accurate pistol mysteriously vanished, and Treadshot was seen again shortly afterwards among Gutcruncher's Decepticons back on Cybertron.

Treadshot was injured in the battle with Unicron in 1991 and received a transfusion of Nucleon from Soundwave, which healed him and made him stronger but robbed him of the ability to transform. In the Battle of Klo he acted as team leader for the Decepticon forces on the planet's southern land mass, and had the upper hand over the first wave of Autobots who landed there, but when the reinforcements showed up he was pounced upon by Sky Lynx's puma module and met his end among the corpses of all the peaceful natives he had used for target practice prior to the Autobots' arrival.

Catgut was fully Matrixed in August 2018 but destroyed less than a fortnight later (along with Fistfight, Gatoraider and Wingthing) in pitched battle with the Quintessons.

Although Cobra was destroyed militarily by G.I. Joe with the assistance of the Avengers in 1995, the number of Crimson Guard Immortals surviving deep undercover may never be known.



FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

ROLLOUT

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Covert operations, intelligence operative
Sub-group: Action Master (or is he?)
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #77 ('Exodus')

"The greater the weapon, the greater the power!"


To a casual observer, Rollout is nothing more than a super-charged fighting machine with a rather inane motto, considered dangerous by many of his fellow Autobots because of his brash nature. But this is just a front. Rollout's true calling is the secret missions he carries out successfully that nobody ever gets to hear about - and that's the way he likes it.

Rollout is equipped with a turbo backpack that can propel him to any position on a battlefield in seconds. Unless you're watching very carefully, you won't see him move - he's just there, right where he needs to be. From 2014 onwards, he is also equipped with an electromagnetic rocket launcher that fires bursts of static electricity, shorting out enemy cerebral impulses. This launcher converts into Glitch, an all-terrain battle specialist who was previously a remote-controlled Decepticon drone but is now a fully Matrixed intelligence operative in his own right, armed with a medium-range stun laser and photon gun. Glitch often carries out covert demolitions in battle. What are covert demolitions, I hear you ask? They are demolitions that just seem to happen of their own accord. Referring you back to Rollout's motto, what is greater than a weapon that destroys its target without anyone ever realising it has been fired?

Courtney A. Krieger was born in Peoria, Illinois. She briefly worked as a high fashion model in Chicago and New York, but quickly grew disillusioned with modelling and enlisted in the military to put new direction in her life. She attended Armor School at Fort Knox and related tech schools where she became proficient in diesel mechanics and gas turbine technology, and a qualified expert with the LAW rocket, the Dragon anti-tank missile, the M-16 rifle and the M-1911A semi-automatic pistol. She was recruited to G.I. Joe / Action Force in 1983, initially as driver of the new Wolverine armoured missile carrier.

Cover Girl found that she had to work against her beauty to prove her worth to her narrow-minded male colleagues. She felt compelled to learn and master traditionally unfeminine disciplines. But seeing how her self-assurance and stunning good looks reduced most men to stuttering fools, General Hawk convinced her also to make full use those traits away from the battlefield, on covert undercover missions that other Joes could never hope to complete undetected.

When the Autobot-Decepticon war ended, Rollout was never officially listed amongst the Autobots who returned to Earth, and on paper, Cover Girl simply took an extended leave of absence to visit her sister in New York. But Cover Girl had no sister, and the bulldozer that demolished several apparently unconnected buildings during the course of 1992 had no driver. The humans from Earth and Nebulos who maintained the network of Lord Zarak's Z Foundation never knew who it was who comprehensively infilitrated and dismantled their pro-Decepticon criminal organisation. But in truth, it was Rollout and Cover Girl.

After the final military defeat of Cobra in 1995 by G.I. Joe and the Avengers, Cover Girl joined SHIELD as an instructor in covert demolitions, while Rollout returned to Cybertron, taking Nucleon and becoming an Action Master, which meant he could no longer transform. Officially.

FILE ENDS

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

SKYFALL

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Joint Chief Technician, weapons engineer
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"Flying is the ultimate freedom."


Skyfall can change anything from a construction crane to a can opener into a weapon in less time than it takes to plug in a phone jack, but even when he's battling on the ground, this former jet fighter has his head in the clouds, daydreaming about flying. Before he ingested Nucleon out of curiosity and lost the ability to transform - and then, tragically, proved incompatible with the new Nucleon that restored the power of transformation to the Dinobots and other Autobots - Skyfall turned into a Cybertronian jet fighter along the lines of Cloudburst and Cloudraker, and he misses it terribly.

Sergeant James J. Barney, codenamed Grand Slam (no relation to the Autobot), was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. He received his initial training in conventional artillery and graduated from Special Weapons School at the top of his class, also receiving specialised education at Artillery School and Advanced Tech School. He was already a qualified expert in electronics and the use and servicing of numerous weapons, including 'HAL' (Heavy Artillery Laser) when Colonel (later General) Hawk recruited him in 1982 to be one of the founding members of G.I. Joe.

When Primus teleported all the active Cybertron-born Transformers away from Earth to fight Unicron in 1991, the humans pillaged all the Autobots' and Decepticons' abandoned bases and got their hands on a lot of Cybertronian tech, and upon his return to Earth there was nothing Optimus Prime could do to put that genie back in the bottle, but he could assign technicians to help the humans avoid hurting themselves. Skyfall was assigned to G.I. Joe / Action Force to assist Grand Slam and his team in understanding the more dangerous of the Decepticon weapons of which they had taken possession. At the same time, Skyfall took the opportunity to be inspired by G.I. Joe's weapons and vehicles when creating weapons and vehicles for the Autobot Action Masters. If you look at Basher, Road Rocket and Vanguard and imagine them in army camouflage colours, you might be able to perceive their G.I. Joe origins. Except the Joes never wore their mobile field artillery pieces as hats.



After Skyfall returned to Cybertron, Grand Slam went on to play a leading role in the development of Earth's planetary defences against any future Decepticon (or other alien) invasion.

In 2014 Skyfall was partnered with the nagging robot rhino, Top-Heavy, who can transform into a radar-guided, triple-barrelled electro-pulse machine gun. He also carries a 'cloudburst cannon'.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

JACKPOT

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Base Commander, strategist
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Unicron

"You can't win if you don't play."



A boisterous, high-stakes do-gooder, Jackpot is able to turn any situation into a wager and usually win. In the year 1988, he bet a Decepticon prison guard that he could escape from the most fortified containment cell on Scorponok's spaceship without being noticed. That guard, the Terrorcon sentry Sinnertwin, went on to serve time in Jackpot's place, not because Jackpot escaped on his own like Getaway, but because a G.I. Joe / Action Force operative friendly to the Autobots had infiltrated the ship and was in secret radio contact with the captive Autobot strategist. Good luck is all part of Jackpot's programming!

Sergeant Shana M. O'Hara, codenamed Scarlett, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Scarlett's father and three brothers were martial arts instructors. She began her training at the age of nine and was awarded her first black belt at fifteen. She graduated from Advanced Infantry Training and Ranger School, also receiving specialised education at Covert Ops School, Marine Sniper School, Special Air Service School and Marine Tae Kwan Do Symposium. She was a qualified expert with numerous weapons, including the XK-1 power crossbow, throwing stars, garotte and ka-bar. She was as close to a ninja as you can get without actually being one, and could wipe the floor with Quick Kick without even trying. Colonel (later General) Hawk recruited her in 1982 to be one of the founding members of G.I. Joe.

After encountering her first Transformers in London in 1987 on assignment with G.I. Joe's European division, more commonly referred to as Action Force, Scarlett volunteered to investigate the extent of co-operation existing between the Decepticons and Cobra. She infiltrated Scorponok's spaceship and witnessed exploratory discussions taking place between Lord Zarak's Nebulan lieutenants and Cobra Commander's Crimson Guard Commanders, Tomax and Xamot. With the evidence in her possession and a lot of bonus intelligence, she broke the Autobot prisoner out of his holding cell before doing a HALO jump to return to Earth. Jackpot relied on his high endurance to survive an uncontrolled drop into the ocean. Scarlett told the Ark where to find him.

In his brief time on Earth, Jackpot transformed into a black Ferrari Testarossa, but he later opted to ingest Nucleon, boosting his strength and fighting skill at the expense of his vehicular disguise (and dropping his tech-specs speed rating from 7 down to 2). Sights, a former Decepticon drone, liberated, Matrixed and partnered with Jackpot in the year 2014, always has his sonar locked onto anything that can make Jackpot score big. Sights converts from a robot bird into a hand-held, self-propelled photon cannon. Jackpot also carries a heat-induced photon rifle.

In 2021, following Gripper's reassignment to Planet Beast and Nebulos, Jackpot took command of the mobile Autobot fort on Cybertron formed from the Action Masters' Armoured Convoy, the Attack Copter and Attack Cruiser piloted by Over-Run and Sprocket, the two exo-suit vehicles belonging to Circuit and Rumbler, and the Micromasters' Battlefield Headquarters, reporting directly to Thunderclash Prime.

(The Armoured Convoy is a trailer truck with communications, fuelling and offensive capabilities. It divides into an interceptor shuttle and fortified battle headquarters equipped with a multitude of defensive weaponry, including heat-seeking ballistic buzz bombs, a long-range photon cannon, a rapid-fire disintegration laser and double-barrelled pom-pom cannons.)

In 1993, thanks to Megatron not showing up (having died in 1991 in the Battle of Hydrus Four), Scarlett successfully completed her mission to fake her own defection to Cobra and was exfiltrated after months of secret information-gathering inside the terrorist organisation with her Department of Defense ally Dr Biggles-Jones. Following the military defeat of Cobra in 1995 and the disbanding of G.I. Joe / Action Force soon afterwards, Scarlett retired from active service and became a counter-intelligence instructor at SHIELD. She had a son with Snake-Eyes, Daniel, who began his training at an even younger age than Scarlett, studying under the ninja master Storm Shadow and going on to become leader of the Avengers' own Ninja Force.

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

RAD

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Aerospace engineer
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #76 ('Still Life')

"Think before you shoot, but shoot before you're shot!"


With more moves than an all-pro halfback, Rad is a clever, cool-headed daredevil, as adept at combating Decepticons as he is at calculating the coefficient of friction for a rocket booster.

In the year 1994, the faltering terrorist army Cobra made one last desperate play for supremacy, launching its 'Invader' space rockets, landing troops on Earth's Moon and forging an alliance with the last remnants of the malevolent Lunartix Empire. With Earth just beginning to forge its own tentative alliances with Cameron and Nebulos, the United Nations was determined that the forces of humanity should be the ones to reign in Cobra and their alien supporters, to demonstrate to their lost colony worlds that the civilised nations had full control of their own planet. But they requested Autobot assistance in kitting out G.I. Joe to undertake combat in the vacuum of space. Optimus Prime ordered Rad to help the humans develop star-fighters and, after early successes, an 'Armor-Bot' - essentially a variation of the Robot-Buster suit first developed by Wheeljack in 1986, capable of space flight.


With the aid of a combination of Autobot and Stark technology, the G.I. Joe Star Brigade led by General Clayton M. Abernathy (Hawk) routed the Cobra Blackstars, Astro-Vipers and B.A.A.T.s now operating in the asteroid belt and drove the few surviving Lunartix raiders out of Earth's Solar System.

In his brief time on Earth, Rad transformed into a motorcycle, but he later opted to ingest Nucleon, boosting his strength and fighting skill at the expense of his vehicular disguise (and dropping his tech-specs speed rating from 6 down to 2). Lionizer, a former Decepticon drone, liberated, Matrixed and partnered with Rad in the year 2014, is a roaring, raging bundle of overheated circuits who can change into an atom-smashing blaster at the drop of a microchip... unless Rad can cool his engines first. Rad is also armed with a thermal mortar gun.

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[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

KICK-OFF

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Security expert, base defence
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"Draw courage from defeat and you gain more than you lose."



Kick-Off was a peaceful neutral Cybertronian who tried to keep his head down, mind his own business and avoid any trouble until he was grabbed one day by a Decepticon harvester unit and scheduled for termination in the Smelting Pool. While in the holding cells he caught the eye of Decepticon administrator Octus, who thought Kick-Off might possess fighting potential, and provisionally offered him a reprieve of sorts, duelling to the death in the arena for the entertainment of idle, bloodthirsty Decepticons. Over the following centuries, therefore, whilst remaining a captive, Kick-Off trained as a gladiator in the grease pits of Polyhex, where he grew to become a specialist in hand-to-hand combat without equal, as he was forced to fight - and sometimes kill - fellow Cybertronians and captive aliens for the amusement of his captors. He eventully escaped in 1986 in the confusion of the fall of Darkmount and promptly joined the Autobots, his engines overheating in anticipation of using his skills on those who once imprisoned him. "I want to show them what a good student I was," he would say, vengefully, to anyone who would listen. But his ardour was somewhat cooled in 1989 when his principal tormentors, Legonis, Octus and Seizer, were summarily executed by the Triggercons for promoting spectator sports over conquest.

One of Kick-Off's recurring rivals in the arena at Polyhex was Carcass, an alien destroyer from the planet Mirtonia in the failing Lunartix Empire, which had been severely degraded in recent centuries through conflict with various neighbours, including the Cybertronian Decepticons and Autobots such as Countdown and Sky Lynx. Leaving nothing but broken bones and smashed dwellings in his wake, Carcass was a born menace to the universe. He stomped through alien towns, destroying all that he could and making prisoners of any surviving inhabitants, until he found himself a prisoner of the Decepticon Skystalker. Carcass escaped Polyhex at the same time as Kick-Off and fled Cybertron to join the remnants of his Empire in a last alliance with Cobra. In 1995 he made the mistake of attacking a G.I. Joe Star Brigade outpost, equipped with Autobot and Stark defensive technology, and only narrowly escaping capture by ducking into an asteroid belt.

The Autobots re-engineered Kick-Off to transform into an off-road vehicle, and equipped him with a sonic blaster and a Turbo-Pack that allows him to fly at speeds of up to 450 miles per hour. The Turbo-Pack converts into an air-cooled, solar-powered flamethrower with heat beam attachment that Kick-Off can fire with pinpoint accuracy. Kick-Off found that he preferred flying to transforming, and in the early 1990s he opted to ingest Nucleon, boosting his strength and fighting skill at the expense of his vehicular mode (and dropping his tech-specs speed rating from 5 down to 2 - though his Turbo-Pack more than makes up for that).

In 1997 Kick-Off heard that Carcass had resurfaced on Grand Central Space Station. The Autobot felt somewhat responsible for the alien marauder's continued existence, having once shown him mercy in the arena, and determined to bring him to justice. Kick-Off tracked Carcass and the last of his Lunartix comrades across the Galaxy, always missing them, until in 2005 they vanished off his radar completely and he returned to Cybertron in frustration. He eventually learned that Carcass was dead, killed in October 2018 by the sword of Mojo's talent-hunter, Spiral, whilst resisting forcible recruitment to yet another gladiatorial contest.

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

SLICER

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Chief Enforcer, massive assault specialist
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Unicron

"Annihilation equals victory!"


Staff Sergeant (and then Warrant Officer) Dashiell (or David) R. Faireborn joined G.I. Joe in 1985 after grinding through Airborne School, Ranger School, Special Forces School and finally Flight Warrant Officers School, graduating from each with top honours. A thorough tactical planner, Flint drafted and personally led half a dozen rescue missions in hostile territories that for obvious reasons of security were never publicised, let alone admitted to. In the late 1980s, Flint commanded G.I. Joe's operations in the U.K., where it was known by its alternative, less nation-specific name, Action Force. Whenever posted in Europe, Flint adopted a British identity, his dossier stating his birthplace as Lincoln, England, as opposed to Wichita, Kansas, and his accent adapted accordingly.

Attack! Attack! Attack! Slicer has no other strategy. A most feared adversary who is cruel and unjust, even towards his own Decepticon peers, he is a hard Decepticon to deal with, possessing a short-fused temper. In the year 1989, when the Autobots' cordial relations with Earth's governments were in their infancy, Slicer's commanding officers decided to try their luck and see if they could fool the humans with the old Decepticon-posing-as-an-Autobot ploy and wipe out their top politicians, thus ruining or at least severely setting back the Autobot-human alliance. Slicer volunteered to be modified to look identical to the well-known Autobot Wheeljack, and take his place in an upcoming diplomatic mission to London. They succeeded in quietly taking out the real Wheeljack, but the double agent Counterpunch tipped the wink to the British, who substituted the Action Force team for the European political delegation, and when Slicer transformed from Lancia Stratos Turbo to robot mode, Flint and his chums were waiting and blasted him all the way back to Cybertron.

After being put back together again, Slicer promptly painted himself blue and gold and vowed never again to attempt a subtle approach to warfare. In 2014 he opted to ingest Nucleon, boosting his strength and fighting skill at the expense of his vehicular disguise. His Action Master assault vehicle converts into exo-suit armour and is designed to tear apart an enemy vehicle or robot in seconds with its rotating cutters. It is generally seen in the Decepticons' first line of attack, inflicting damage on everything and everyone.

Flint led G.I. Joe's ground troops in their final military victory over Cobra's Earth forces in 1995, fighting side by side with the Avengers, Black Widow, Captain America, Giant-Man, Hercules and Quicksilver.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

POWERFLASH

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Infantryman, base defence
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"There's no present like time!"


After receiving specialised education from Electronics School, Chemical School, and Covert Electronics, and qualifying as an expert in various weapons including the XMLR-1A shoulder-fired laser rifle, Anthony S. Gambello, codenamed Flash, was recruited by Colonel (later General) Hawk to be one of the original members of the G.I. Joe team. Methodical and persistent, Flash worked at night to complete his Master's degree in electronic engineering. He was highly skilled in many aspects of electronic technology and capable of carrying out complex repairs in the field. In later years, he was heavily involved in the training of new Joe recruits.

At the end of the year 1988, an Autobot named Powercrash, who transformed into the likeness of an F-4 Phantom jet, was assigned to pilot a Decepticon heavy transport to Earth, carrying on board a joint force of Wreckers and Mayhems intent on battling Galvatron and sending him back to the future. As per orders, the pilot stayed out of the fighting, but came under attack by Megatron and Ravage, who had set their set their hearts on stealing Powercrash's ship and heading back to Cybertron. Powercrash was left for dead, and should count himself lucky he didn't get sucked up into the Time Wars rift.

Scouring the scene of the disaster the following day, a G.I. Joe clean-up crew found odd pieces of various Transformers littering the ground, but only one largely intact robot body - that of Powercrash. Instinctively realising that the Autobot was nearing his final shutdown, Flash carried out emergency field repairs to save the robot's life, and was forced to replace destroyed parts of his personality/memory circuits to make him whole again. In his haste, he filled in the blanks in the Autobot's programming with an uncannily accurate description of Flash's first drill sergeant, an impatient stickler for obedience and discipline. When Flash had finished his repairs, Powercrash was now Powerflash (renamed in acknowledgement of his saviour), the perfect by-the-book soldier. Sort of.

A fast-talking, fast-moving bundle of over-heated circuits, Powerflash is constantly marching around, giving orders and drumming his metallic fingers on the nearest tabletop. Extremely punctual, he feels that all orders and military regulations must be followed to the letter, and is angered by the slightest sign of insubordination. After volunteering to become an Action Master in the early 1990s, Powerflash was paired up with Road Rocket, a tyre-squealing, high-speed menace with a maximum ground speed of Mach 1 and a convenient knack for always being on time. Matrixed in August 2018, Road Rocket is armed with high-velocity missiles that turn enemy robots into molten metal, and combines with Powerflash to form an overhead missile-launching system.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TAKE-OFF

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Aerial reconnaissance, enforcer
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Unicron

"There's nothing like dive-bombing Autobots from 60,000 feet!"



Born in Los Angeles, California, Jinx studied and competed in three forms of martial arts from the age of seven until she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Upon arriving in Japan for a vacation, she discovered that her family had been ninjas for generations and was officially initiated into the clan. She went to the Secret Mountain and studied the Seven Silent Forms with the Blind Master. When her training was complete, she was said to have the Eye That Pierces, the Iron Hand and the Heart That Waits. Jinx was recruited to the G.I. Joe team by Snake-Eyes in 1987.

In 1990 the Decepticons' human-led Z Foundation paired dozens of Cobra Techno-Vipers up with advanced Cybertronian scout drones equipped with neutron laser demagnetiser cannons, whose sole purpose was to drain the energy from power storage facilities and compress it into energon cubes for transport back to Cybertron. Working independently and at night, the Techno-Vipers guided these semi-sentient eagle-like machines to their targets, disrupting fuel and power supplies up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and enabling a number of covert Cobra operations to take place.

G.I. Joe's telecommunications expert, Dial-Tone, tracked the signal that was controlling one of the drone raiders back to the Techno-Viper who was guiding its movements, and Jinx moved in. She soon learnt that this Techno-Viper knew the location of one of his fellow Techno-Vipers. That Techno-Viper gave her a lead to where two of the others might be preparing to strike. Over the course of a single night, Jinx and her fellow ninja, Snake-Eyes, quietly took out 23 Techno-Vipers and their Decepticon drone equipment. Not one of them managed to send a distress signal back to headqurters before being silenced.

One of the drones survived and made it back to Cybertron, where the Decepticon war-lord Gutcruncher, furious at the poor return on his investment, had it thrown into his beast pits with the other lesser Cybertronian creatures captured by the bounty-hunter Axer. It was eventually returned to service, partnered with the Decepticon Take-Off, who longed to fly and could do so with the drone, Screech, attached to his body.

A fast-moving, fast-talking Decepticon, Take-Off could track incoming Autobot defenders from over 1,000 miles away. Although he transformed into a car prior to ingesting Nucleon in 2014, he believed that command of the sky always determined the outcome of any conflict. He was outfitted with a sonic boomer laser that could pummel rock into soft sand within milliseconds. Take-Off combined with Screech, who was eventually Matrixed in August 2018, to create a devastatingly superior flight machine with infra-red detection capabilities. In the year 2021, they flew ahead of their Action Master comrades to attack two time-travelling Autobot Lightformers, and were destroyed by the futuristic firepower of Deftwing's rotating-action missile launcher.

In 2021 Jinx's daughter Styletta is a member of the Avengers' own Ninja Force. The fate of Jinx herself remains highly classified.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

CHARGER

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Flamethrower, enforcer
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Unicron

"I have no need for friends, even less for enemies."



Charger was a hot-tempered Decepticon who frequently lost his cool over the smallest problems. Not too sociable, more of an introvert, he would only participate in an operation if he got something in return. He relished the smell of burnt titanium, and enjoyed melting enemies into pools of liquid metal. He was armed with a titanium shredder blaster and, after becoming an Action Master in 2014, combined with the one-horned robotic creature called Firebeast (a semi-sentient drone until he was Matrixed in August 2018) to form a near-unstoppable battle machine. Charger lazily copied his motto from the Dinobot flamethrower, Slag, prompting fellow Decepticons to joke that if he painted himself Dinobot colours he might have passed as Slag the Action Master.

A vicious Lunartix alien, Predacon (no relation to the Decepticon combining team) made his living by capturing wanted criminals and selling them back to the Galactic authorities. If the authorities refused to pay, Predacon would imprison them in his private alien zoo. This four-armed monster was loyal only to his tribal clan in the Badlands of the planet Trilenium, and was proud to wear its ancestral medallion, along with various Lunartix hieroglyphics etched into his arm guards.

In the late 1980s, Charger spent much of his spare time researching the possibility of harnessing the energy emitted from a burning meteor that had crashed down on one of Cybertron's moons, little realising that at its heart was a fearsome Firebug, who was wanted in three star systems for burning major cities to the ground. When Predacon arrived to apprehend the alien arsonist, Charger thought he had come to steal the energy source from the Decepticons, and much fighting ensued until the Firebug revealed herself and attacked them both. Charger and Predacon then joined forces to defeat their common foe, and the Lunartix bounty-hunter departed with his prisoner packed in flame-retardant foam. The experience inspired Charger to develop more ways to inflict high-temperature death on his enemies.

Predacon fought alongside Cobra in its brief space war with G.I. Joe's Star Brigade in 1994, and then alongside Reptilians from the planet Plun-darr in their battle with the Avengers and their Transformer allies in October 2018, following which he was killed resisting capture by Mojo's talent-hunter, Spiral.

In the year 2021, Charger and Firebeast were destroyed by the missiles of the time-travelling future Autobot Ironfist.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

RUMBLER

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Base defence
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance (as himself): The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon
First appearance (as member of G.I. Joe / Action Force): Right here

"A strong defence can crush any offence!"



Usually called into action in times of severe crisis, the Autobot Action Master named Rumbler (Sprocket's twin) is often part of the first line of defence against an enemy attack. His all-terrain vehicle converts into exo-suit armour shielded by ten inches of pure titanium, and is able to withstand repeated photon blasts while its rotating defence pounders smash through the attackers, a massive, roving repeller mauling down anything in its path.

Born in Raeford, North Carolina, Earl-Bob Swilley's future as a revenue agent was cut short by his propensity towards high-speed car chases through the piney woods in pursuit of moonshiners and tax stamp dodgers. After totalling seven government vehicles, it was thought to be in the best national interest for Rumbler to transfer to a branch of service equipped with sturdier vehicles and dedicated to the pursuit of individuals or organisations less inclined to sue the government. Upon joining G.I. Joe / Action Force, Swinney took great delight in declaring himself the human counterpart of his Autobot namesake (the original G.I. Joe Rumbler having changed his name to Armadillo).

It makes no difference whether you're talking about the Autobot Action Master or the G.I. Joe Crossfire driver, what you do is sling Rumbler and his all-terrain vehicle under a heavy-lift chopper (say, Lift-Ticket's Tomahawk or the Elite Action Master Windmill) and drop them on the run from twenty feet up, fifty miles behind enemy lines. Sort of like dropping a weasel in a hen-house. You know you're going to see some feathers fly.

FILE ENDS

[Philip Ayres]

Rumbler's First DEFINITE Appearance is GI Joe 80, but he may also be in 76

www.yojoe.com/comics/joe/joe80.shtml

www.yojoe.com/comics/joe/joe76.shtml

He's the Rolling Thunder driver in the comics instead of Armadillo, a name also used for a GI Joe tank..... and a Beast Wars basic

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jul 30, 2019 19:49:00 GMT Philip Ayres said:

Rumbler's First DEFINITE Appearance is GI Joe 80, but he may also be in 76

www.yojoe.com/comics/joe/joe80.shtml

www.yojoe.com/comics/joe/joe76.shtml

He's the Rolling Thunder driver in the comics instead of Armadillo, a name also used for a GI Joe tank..... and a Beast Wars basic

Thank you, Phil. I have investigated as to why the Wikis I consulted overlooked his comic appearance, and having consulted the IDW trade, the character in G.I. Joe #80 doesn't look anything like the toy character Rumbler ( www.yojoe.com/action/87/rumbler.shtml ). He looks exactly like Armadillo ( www.yojoe.com/action/88/armadillo.shtml ). No moustache, bright red trousers, bare upper arms, same helmet and armbands. The toy figure pages acknowledge Armadillo as being in #80 but not Rumbler. Basically they've named Armadillo incorrectly as Rumbler in the comic.

gijoe.fandom.com/wiki/Armadillo_(Makepeace) explains:

- Working names included Rumbler, Gila and Sand-Turtle.
- "Rumbler" was apparently the closest to being used, because that's what Armadillo was called every time he appeared in the comics. (Six issues between 1988 and 1991: #80, 81, 92, 99, 111, and 112.) Rumbler the Crossfire driver did not appear in the comic.

And as my profile of Rumbler draws on the toy bio of Rumbler (Crossfire driver) rather than Armadillo (Rolling Thunder driver), I'm minded to leave the first appearance as 'Right here'. But maybe add a line stating that Armadillo originally used the codename Rumbler...

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

CIRCUIT

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Messenger, scout
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"Whatever you do, keep rolling!"


A smooth-talking, fast-moving racer, Circuit speaks with the quick, easy banter of a used car salesman. He hates to do things for nothing, and is constantly looking to make a deal, even with his superiors. But he is sought after with a vengeance by both friends and enemies who have been victimised by his latest scam.

Lobotomaxx was a stellar explorer from Morus Sector 5 on the planet Zog. A friend to no-one, he hated humanoids and his fellow Lunartix aliens alike. Proud of his bounty-hunter reputation, he was known throughout the cosmos as one of the most merciless creatures ever hatched. His monstrous tail could disable enemies with one powerful whack, and seldom did prey escape a bite from his venomous fangs. Unfortunately for him, his intelligence was extremely limited, due to the loss of brain tissue suffered when the top of his head was sliced off during a laser-sabre duel with his Lunartix comrade, Predacon. This made him an easy target for Circuit's cunning Autobot-posing-as-a-Decepticon ploy in 1994, which involved Circuit painting himself to look exactly like the Decepticon bounty-hunter Axer and getting Lobotomaxx to reveal all the Lunartix Empire's battle plans ahead of their brief war with G.I. Joe's Star Brigade.

Since becoming an Action Master, Circuit drives an oversized Earthen F-1 race car equipped with an extendable wheelbase for taking turns at breakneck speeds and an invisibility screen for close-range covert operations. It converts into an agile, spring-suspension exo-suit armed with a devastating Gatling machine gun and a decelerator cannon that turns a high-speed enemy assault into a slow-moving crawl. The Autobots who constructed Circuit's car didn't quite appreciate the effort that the humans had put into making their race cars aerodynamic, for Circuit sits atop his vehicle rather than inside it, completely spoiling the streamlined effect - much like Action Master Thundercracker sitting astride his F-117 Nighthawk jet. With hindsight, they might have done better to build the Turbo Cycle and Turbo Racer originally envisaged for Prowl and Wheeljack when it looked like they would lose the ability to transform. But they didn't. They made Circuit's F-1 car instead.



(The Turbo Cycle would have been equipped with a hydro-injected rocket engine, dual missile launcher and titanium-belted tyres, and convert into a stationary battle emplacement armed with a rocket bomb launcher. The Turbo Racer was imagined to be the most versatile ground/air attack vehicle ever made. In car mode, its energon-injected, liquid-nitrogen-cooled engine would accelerate it from 0 to 250 miles per hour in just three seconds. It would be armed with a laser-strafer rifle and a rear-mounted cannon that fires shrapnel and incendiary projectiles, and instantly convert into a jet fighter armed with a nose-mounted proton missile launcher.)

Lobotomaxx fought alongside the Sharkticon Micromaster Gnecksnapper against Hooligan Jr, a murderous gladiator-in-training from the planet Mil-Wal, and the Stinger, a vicious cybernetic humanoid dragonfly from the planet Third Earth, in the 2018 Slaughter Arena tournament on Mojoverse Battle Station Zero... and lost.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

ACTION MASTER STARSCREAM

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Drone fighter
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: Stories from Grand Central Space Station: Action Master Thundercracker's Tale



Captain Brad J. Armbruster, better known as Ace, would rather fly than do anything else. During his high school years in Providence, Rhode Island, he worked after school and at weekends to pay for flying lessons. He spent one year flying pipelines in Alaska and two years stunt-flying for movies, then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at 22. Prior to joining G.I. Joe / Action Force in 1983, he served as a senior instructor in the Air Force's pilot combat training school, a qualified expert in the cockpit of F-5E, F-15, F-16 and XP-14F (modified F-14) fighter jets.

In 1984, Ace survived the bombing of U.S.A.F. Base: Oregon Four Alpha by Starscream, his own jet destroyed on the tarmac on the Decepticon Air Commander's first flyby. Ace lost a lot of good friends that day, and vowed to one day have his revenge. In 1988 he proved that Decepticons were not unbeatable in the air, when, in his XP-14F Skystriker, he led three unmodified F-14 Tomcats in battle against Cyclonus and Scourge, and, despite taking heavy losses, caused damage to the former and forced the two future Decepticons to withdraw with their tails between their legs. Then in 1990 Ace heard that Starscream had killed another pilot friend of his over Jacksonville, Florida.

Ace never got to face Starscream in aerial combat, as the Decepticon was destroyed when the Ark crashed to Earth in 1991, and G.I. Joe assisted in the recovery of his Nucleon-soaked remains and their permanent decommissioning. But Ace saw the shattered wings, and witnessed the dissection of the Decepticon's cerebral circuits, and revenge was sweet.

But that wasn't quite the end of Starscream's story. In the year 2019, some parts of Starscream, Skywarp, Thundercracker and Galvatron that had been left over when SHIELD constructed Action Master Thundercracker in 2008 were 'liberated' by the rogue Decepticon technician known as Backfire, who used them to create a new robot of his own - Action Master Starscream. This remote-controlled drone was armed with a modified null-ray rifle that bound its target in bands of energised steel, and rode a Turbo Jet, which was armed with a nose-mounted photon blaster and wing-mounted missile launchers, and equipped with twin turbo-fan boosters. The Turbo Jet (like Action Master Thundercracker's own Solo Mission Jet Plane) was constructed from Galvatron's remains and so impervious to most armaments, and converted into an air-powered battle chariot, equipped with a force-field and four-stage rocket launcher.

Action Master Thundercracker pursued Backfire and Action Master Starscream to Grand Central Space Station, where, following a brief battle in space, the two renegades - one living, one dead - got themselves eaten by the Mecannibals, and Action Master Thundercracker brought the Turbo Jet, with its precious Galvatronian metal, safely back to Earth.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

WINDMILL

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Base defence
Sub-group: Elite Action Master
First appearance (as himself): The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon
First appearance (as member of G.I. Joe / Action Force): Marvel's Transformers UK #295 ('Stiletto')

"Nothing is immune from my radar systems! Nothing!"



A specialist in air defence technology, Windmill designed and implemented the Autobot Action Masters' Armoured Convoy's radar system. His advanced kinetic intelligence and cyber-optic perception modem implants enable him to track enemy attack forces anywhere in the Galaxy (or so he says). Windmill feels a special dislike torwards Decepticons for obliterating his defence laboratory on Cybertron during the war. He enjoys the challenge of revamping discarded metallic substances to create new forms of laser weaponry, and, despite being powered by Nucleon, somehow remains able to convert into a high-impact, counter-strike helicopter.

Captain Edward J. Roth, codenamed Windmill, grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was a flight instructor at the Army Flight Warrant Officers School in Fort Rucker, and later flew experimental helicopter prototypes at the same facility for the Army Aviation Department Test Activity. He joined G.I. Joe / Action Force in 1988 as their Skystorm X-Wing Chopper pilot.

Autobot Windmill and G.I. Joe Windmill have never met. They just happen to have the same name.

Unused Pretender shell prototype:



FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

'OMEGA SPREEM'

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Defence base, ground assault
Sub-group: Elite Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #19 ('Command Performances')

"Unyielding resolve has no conqueror."



Omega Supreme is the ultimate defensive force. Although he has great strength, it is his even greater courage that truly distinguishes him. Against overwhelming odds, he will stand unwaveringly and fight with every last microchip of his mechanical being. In terms of strength, endurance and firepower, he is second only to Metroplex and, previously, Galvatron. A blow from one of his arms can shatter a mountainside. With his clawed arm he can lift 300,000 tons. The plasma blaster on his other arm can pulverise a solid 12-foot steel cube. The laser cannon mounted on his head can hit an object as small as a can at a distance of 50 miles. His armoured form is virtually impervious to all non-nuclear explosives and energy beam weapons. As well as repelling various Decepticon attacks upon the Ark in the period from 1986 to 1988, Omega Supreme also successfully defended it against an attack in 1987 by Cobra Rattlers, thwarting the terrorist organisation's attempt to acquire Cybertronian technology.

Wild Weasel cut his teeth in the bush wars of South America and Africa in the late 1970s. His knowledge of close-support aircraft was wide and varied, ranging from jury-rigged civilian conversions to ultra state-of-the-art flying weapons platforms replete with laser-guided missiles and electronic countermeasure pods. A mouth injury inflicted by ground fire during a strafing run is rumoured to be the cause of the characteristic sibilance in his speech pattern. After being recruited by Cobra as their top Rattler pilot, Wild Weasel began a long-standing rivalry with his G.I. Joe opposite number, Ace, fighting each other to a standstill in the air and then, when their planes could fight no more, parting with a respectful salute. Wild Bill said, "He may be a back-shootin', low-down snake in the grass, but the boy can fly like nobody's business. You gotta respect the skunk for that!" In Cobra's attack on the Ark, the seven-barrelled anti-tank gun and air-to-ground missiles of Wild Weasel's Rattler failed to dent Omega Supreme's armour, and, while the pilot succeeded in evading the Autobot's return fire, his squadron took heavy losses in the battle, and Wild Weasel was forced to order the retreat.



The only weapons to which Omega Supreme has proven susceptible to date are Trypticon's sonic-scrambler mines and the power of the Underbase, which destroyed him in early 1989. Grimlock brought him back to life in 1991 with Nucleon, and he distinguished himself in the battle with Unicron, withstanding a direct blast of the plasma breath that proved fatal to the likes of Cloudburst and Scorponok, and doing relatively major damage to the Chaos-Bringer's 'other' foot. He assisted in the evacuation of Cybertron before joining the Battle of Klo, where he destroyed Cement-Head and Terror-Tread along with their cannon transport. In the Battle of Hydrus Four, the Nucleon freeze kicked in and Omega Supreme watched helplessly as Overlord overwhelmed Computron and Ultra Magnus, but finally he was freed from his chrysalis and emerged in his dazzling new Action Master body... which transformed!

Omega Supreme's Nucleon-born tank mode annihilated Overlord with its two plasma blasters and twin neutronic lasers. Elite Action Master 'Omega Spreem' (don't ask) was considerably faster than his former incarnation, and much better suited to offensive operations than the slow and plodding giant he had been. However, he had lost his crushing claw and the rocket module that allowed him to perform communication, military and transport operations in space. So he became the only Elite (i.e. transforming) Action Master to elect to take Nucleon II and revert to his original form. He returned to Earth to serve under Jetfire's command, where he remains ever ready to repulse any Decepticon or other alien attack upon the planet of his birth. In his spare time he has become skilled in the art of synthetic metallurgy, manipulating pre-solidified steel and titanium alloy into photon laser weaponry to bolster Earth's planetary defences.

Following the military defeat of Cobra in 1995, Wild Weasel and a number of his fellow officers (Major Bludd, Copperhead, Firefly and Scrap-Iron) remained unaccounted for until 2019 when, all now in their sixties and seventies, they turned up on Cybertron piloting fearsome mechanical Terrakors from the planet Skalorr - Terrakors that were utterly destroyed by the Technobots in ignorance of the frail flesh creatures encased within.

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[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TURBO MASTER

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Aerial marauder, enforcer
Sub-group: Elite Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"To control the sky is to control the ground!"



Some technological breakthroughs are dramatic and immediately obvious to outside observers - the Decepticons' first combining teams, the binary-bonding pioneered by Arcana and HiQ, Scorponok's Pretender process and Emirate Xaaron's Micromasters all being prime examples of this. But other advances happen behind the scenes, with little or no media spotlight. The improvements in compact jet turbine design of the late 1980s by both Autobot and Decepticon, as they assimilated technology from their G.I. Joe / Action Force and Cobra allies on Earth, would have gone completely unnoticed were it not for the fact that the Transformers embraced the Earthen word 'turbo' along with the associated engineering principles, resulting in a proliferation of 'Turbo'-prefixed names at the turn of the decade: Kick-Off's Turbo-Pack, Jazz's experimental Turbo Board, Prowl and Wheeljack's envisaged Turbo Cycle and Turbo Racer, the Autobot Turbomaster team, and Action Master Starscream's Turbo Jet. And there was the Decepticon aerial marauder who took a new name in celebration of the upgrade to his powerful jet engines - Turbo Master!

Turbo Master lives by the philosophy that supreme domination is only achieved by gaining absolute control of the sky. He stops at nothing to vanquish an enemy force. In the early years of the war he field-tested the Decepticons' laser weapons on Autobot vacation resorts, but he would also upset his fellow Decepticons by testing his stealth-hovering capabilities while his comrades were off-duty and trying to focus on games of high-stakes recreational gambling requiring intense concentration on the part of the players. He didn't care if he alienated his fellow warriors - he preferred to handle dangerous missions alone, his battle tactic being to strike the enemy hard and fast, sparing no-one. A heartless Decepticon who is never satisfied with victory, Turbo Master always strives for the complete and utter defeat of his adversary. Notwithstanding his 2014 Nucleon power boost, he converts into an overpowering, dual-propeller, vertical take-off plane armed with a neutronic laser cannon. In his Bruticus-inspired robot mode he rips through all opposition with his spinning, slashing wing-blades.

In the year 1994, Turbo Master secretly brokered an alliance between Cobra Commander and the Blackstar forces, a legion of mercenary pilots from the planet Cameron who considered space to be their natural habitat (and Cameron Space Control to be too rules-based and oppressive to permit them to achieve their full cosmic potential legally). These elite warriors displayed incredible agility in zero-gravity zones, climbed planetary craters with ease and instinctively avoided asteroid belts while engaged in stellar dogfights. Turbo Master had clashed with the Blackstars when serving under Skystalker in the Cybertronian Decepticons' space forces a decade earlier, and been amazed by their skill and resilience, which earned a Decepticon's respect and admiration for carbon based life-forms - a rare achievement indeed.

Few Earthlings ever saw a Blackstar up close, leading to rumours that they might not even be human. (They were, in fact, human - just not humans born on Earth.) Their leader, known only as Captain Blackstar, was also their best pilot. At the end of their brief, poorly judged space war with G.I. Joe's Star Brigade, Captain Blackstar fled Earth's Solar System with several high-ranking Cobra officers, a fugitive now wanted on every human-populated world. The Decepticons denied association with him and refused him sanctuary, and he was eventually killed by the Battle Beast called Crusty Crabhit while staking his life for glory and freedom in the 2019 Galaxy Kombat tournament on Derut Four.



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[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

DOUBLE PUNCH

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Desert vanguard, enforcer
Sub-group: Elite Action Master
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Nucleon

"Double the power means double the destruction!"



Marvin F. Hinton's dream was to be a gourmet chef. He was working as a bouncer to earn money to attend the Escoffier School in France when an army recruiter convinced him that the army could train him to cook. Roadblock joined, but found army menus and preparation techniques too appalling. A qualified expert with numerous firearms, the M-2 Browning heavy machine gun became his speciality. He was assigned to G.I. Joe / Action Force along with Acting First Sergeant Conrad S. Hauser (a.k.a. Duke) in 1984, and was still fighting at Duke's side a decade later, now a sergeant himself in G.I. Joe's Star Brigade.

Forged out of the most hardened metallic substance in Cybertron's remote desert region, Double Punch has been known to combat Guardian units in sandstorms with temperatures exceeding 65 degrees centigrade. Cunning and cynical, he has a ferocious temper that causes him to react violently to anything that crosses his path, and usually aligns with both sides in an argument just to advance his own position in the Decepticon ranks. Even after his 2014 Nucleon upgrade, Double Punch can convert into a fearsome, dual-clawed robotic scorpion, armed with a neutronic laser cannon, to perform his most diabolical schemes.

Double Punch's scorpion mode originally had a proper stinger tail. If you want to know what happened to it when the Decepticon had a run-in with Duke and Roadblock's unit in a desert in North Africa in 1988, you can get a rough idea by re-watching the early part of the first Michael Bay Transformers movie.

Retiring from the military in the late 1990s, Roadblock now runs his own steak and seafood restaurant in his home city of Biloxi, Mississippi.

FILE ENDS

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

ACTION MASTER MEGATRON (a.k.a. Overlord and Evil Roller)

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Faction Leader
Sub-groups: Minispy, Stunticon, Pseudo Action Master
First appearance (as Menasor's breastplate): Transformers UK #63 ('Second Generation')
First appearance (as Megatron): Transformers UK #261 ('Starting Over')

"I stand my ground... I accept any challenge... I am hungry for conflict."



A legend by nature of his existence, Overlord emerged as a new and deadly Decepticon anti-hero. He was one of 24 outlandishly named Decepticon troopers engineered to become Minispies. Around half of them defected to the Autobots. Overlord was the only Minispy to make it across the Space Bridge to Earth to join Megatron's Decepticons on Earth, and was re-engineered to become Motormaster's scout car and Menasor's breastplate. During his time as a Stunticon he defeated Optimus Prime's scout car, Roller, and appropriated his name.

Following a battle between the Stunticons and the mutant Magneto in the Savage Land, Roller/Overlord began making a study of mutant humans and forming secret alliances with them to call upon in the future if so needed. One of the first mutants with whom he struck up a relationship was the shapeshifter known as Zartan, who can alter his appearance at will to resemble just about anybody. In addition to his mutant powers, Zartan is also a ventriloquist, a linguist (over 20 languages and dialects), an acrobatic contortionist and a practitioner of several mystic martial arts. Very little is known of his background and origins, but most security agencies agree that he must have had European military academy training. Zartan was the only mutant known to be affiliated with Cobra, but had other contacts of his own in the mutant underworld, which he passed along to Roller/Overlord in return for information on the accursed Autobots who had become friendly with G.I. Joe / Action Force.

In 1989, when Megatron was blasted into interdimensional space with the Autobot Ratchet, the Decepticons Ravage and Soundwave transferred Overlord's brain into a new head for the body of the false Megatron originally created by Straxus. After its original head got blown off, the Megatron body was incapable of transforming and shrinking to gun mode (and therefore tends to be lazily referred to by historians as Action Master Megatron, despite there being no Nucleon involved), and obviously it couldn't draw on antimatter from a black hole, but after years stuck as a scout car, Overlord wasn't fussy.

Assuming Megatron's identity, Overlord led a group of Decepticons on Earth for several months before those who knew his secret grew disillusioned with his performance and engineered his downfall. He briefly left Earth, and so avoided being transported to Cybertron by Primus to battle Unicron. When he returned to Earth, he located Shockwave's underwater battle station complex. In return for recruiting two powerful human mutants, codenamed Giga and Mega, to act as his Powermaster partners, the Constructicons and Combaticons gave Overlord complete control of the battle station, and from that day on he ceased to exist as Action Master Megatron.

(Overlord was despatched to Klo where he was posted to the eastern land mass and destroyed twelve Autobots single-handedly before Bludgeon ordered the retreat. On Hydrus Four, Overlord's body was destroyed by Omega Supreme. The mutant Giga died in that battle. Mega escaped back to Earth and assisted the mutant rebel Fabian Cortez in the theft of a shuttle for the purpose of seeking out Magneto on Asteroid M. SHIELD agents interfered and Mega sacrificed herself to allow the shuttle to get away. All that remained of Overlord was a small grey open-top scout car. He sought out Trypticon on Cybertron, but Trypticon considered him a threat to the peace he now enjoyed and betrayed him to the Autobots. True to character, when the Motorvators finally had him cornered, Overlord denied them the satisfaction of taking him alive.)

Zartan is now in his seventies, not that you can tell it by looking at him. His mutant siblings, Zandar and Zarana, last sighted in 2018, are both presumed to be still alive and very dangerous.



FILE ENDS

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

ACTION MASTER DEVASTATOR

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Warrior
Sub-group: Pseudo Action Master
First appearance: Transformers UK #264 ('Desert Island Risks')


Scrap-Iron was a product designer for Destro's armaments company. He would carry out initial field testing on all new armour-piercing munitions and sub-munitions. His principal area of specialisation was remote-launched, laser-guided, rocket-propelled, piezoelectric-fused anti-tank weapons. These weapons were categorised beyond the 'smart' stage and were instead referred to by the nomenclature 'brilliant'. (That's state-of-the-art technical terminology.) Scrap-Iron was methodical and precise - imperfection in any form repelled him. Perhaps that explained why he wanted to blow up the world?

In the year 1990, Destro asked Scrap-Iron to try to build a Decepticon. Nothing fancy, it didn't have to transform or anything, just give me a giant Cybertronian robot warrior. So, on a small, remote island in the Bahamas, Scrap-Iron attempted to build his own Devastator. (Ironhide got confused - the Constructicons didn't lose the ability to combine. It was the Stunticons who lost the ability to combine, on account of Evil Roller now having become Action Master Megatron.)

Scrap-Iron had surrounded the partially constructed super-robot with a high-tech defence system that he was quite proud of, so you can imagine his dismay when he returned to the island to find his creation in ruins.

Following the military defeat of Cobra in 1995, Scrap-Iron and a number of his fellow officers (Major Bludd, Copperhead, Firefly and Wild Weasel) remained unaccounted for until 2019 when, all now in their sixties and seventies, they turned up on Cybertron piloting fearsome mechanical Terrakors from the planet Skalorr - Terrakors that were utterly destroyed by the Technobots in ignorance of the frail flesh creatures encased within.

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

ACTION MASTER OPTIMUS PRIME

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Commander
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance (as Powermaster Optimus Prime): Marvel's Transformers #42 ('People Power')
First appearance (as himself): Marvel's Transformers #80 ('End of the Road')

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."


Philosopher, scholar, soldier, leader - Optimus Prime is all this and more. To peace-loving beings across the Galaxy, he is the living symbol of freedom, a true beacon of hope that shines against the forces of darkness. To his followers, Optimus Prime represents a bottomless well from which they draw courage and strength. And to the evil Decepticons, he was the one hero in the universe who could (and did) shatter their dreams of conquest.

But Action Master Optimus Prime wasn't the robot who resisted Megatron's original conquest of the planet Cybertron, commanded the Ark through Earth's Solar System's asteroid belt and passed the Creation Matrix on to Buster Witwicky. That Optimus Prime lives on as a lorry trailer and a floppy disk. Action Master Optimus Prime, created by the Last Autobot in 1991, was a Nucleon-soaked fusion of the Nebulan HiQ with elements of the original Optimus Prime. But there are few who can tell the difference.

G.I. Joe (a.k.a. Joseph B. Colton) graduated in 1960 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, receiving the highest possible honours. An expert marksman, he proved himself proficient with all modern weaponry. Recruited by Special Forces, he quickly distinguished himself as an outstanding Green Beret. In 1963, after Colton had participated in 'ultra' top secret combat operations and extensive tours of duty in trouble spots around the world, President John F. Kennedy selected him to create and command an ultimate freedom fighting force. Lieutenant Colton was issued the codename G.I. Joe and began to build his team with the toughest men and women the armed services could muster. The team assembled by Colonel (later General) Hawk in 1982 to battle Cobra, with close ties to the international Action Force that defeated Baron Ironblood's Red Shadows, was named G.I. Joe in honour of Colton's heroic achievements.

On the twelfth of August, 1991, the United Nations Security Council met in closed session, attended by G.B. Blackrock and Autobot Commander (Action Master) Optimus Prime, both newly arrived on Earth following an eight-month absence. Also in attendance was four-star General Joe Colton, representing the joint military forces of NATO, encompassing both G.I. Joe and SHIELD. The topic of the meeting was the security of the planet Earth against future Decepticon incursions. The minutes of the meeting remain classified as top secret, but on that day history was made.

Not long afterwards, following the Battle of Hydrus Four, Action Master Optimus Prime regained the ability to transform. In the year 2021, he has two combining trailers, is binary-bonded to the Asgardian Ginrai, and is known as Godmaster Optimus Prime. The original Optimus Prime continues to live in semi-retirement on Earth, a trailer and a floppy disk.

General Joe Colton is no longer with us.

FILE ENDS

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

ACTION MASTER SHOCKWAVE

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: N/A
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance (as member of G.I. Joe / Action Force): Marvel's G.I. Joe Special Missions #17
First and last appearance (as himself): Right here



Jason A. Faria from Dearborn, Michigan, was the youngest member of the Detroit Police Department SWAT team and the holder of two citations for bravery when he signed up for and was accepted by G.I. Joe / Action Force in 1988. When asked why he had left a promising career to work longer hours for less money, kicking down doors on better armed adversaries, Shockwave replied, "What, you think I do this for the money?"

When Bludgeon's Decepticons showed up on Earth in 1991 and began ransacking the Ark, they came under heavy attack by a recently arrived contingent of G.I. Joe / Action Force, who had been tasked with guarding the crashed spacecraft. Krok scattered the Joes' ground forces with an earthquake, but the Decepticons took fire from the Joes' air detail and sustained casualties. Inside the ship itself, the Joes, including Jason 'Shockwave' Faria, mounted a fierce defence, and with more reinforcements arriving the longer the battle continued, Bludgeon was forced to retreat with just one prize, the Nucleon-soaked body of the original Megatron.

The remains of the Decepticon Shockwave stayed in the hands of the humans, along with those of Starscream and Ratchet (the last of which they returned to the Autobots), and those of Fortress Maximus and Galvatron, which were surrendered by the civilian Spike Witwicky. The humans wisely allowed the Protectobot First Aid to supervise their eventual dismantling and analysis of the nuclear/antimatter power plants of Shockwave and Galvatron as part of the Decepticons' permanent decommissioning.

Thanks in part to G.I. Joe Shockwave, Decepticon Shockwave never lived to become an Action Master. In his brief time as a fully sentient being in 2018, before being destroyed in battle with the Quintessons, the former drone Fistfight (a loathsome terror droid who enjoyed dissecting late model cars when not blasting away in his long-range, laser-sighted lightning rifle mode) wondered what it would have been like to have met the legendary Decepticon Military Operations Commander.


FILE ENDS

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

BLASTER

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Chief of Communications
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance (as himself): Marvel's Transformers #17 ('The Smelting Pool')
First appearance (as member of G.I. Joe / Action Force): Marvel's Transformers UK #279 ('Cut and Freeze Dried')

"When the music is rockin', I'm rollin'."


The Autobot we know as Blaster likes to turn it up loud. If Blaster is involved, he makes his presence known. Despite being a moody loner with a clear dislike for authority figures, he is always in the forefront of any situation, forcefully expressing his views. And since crossing the Space Bridge to Earth in 1986, he has developed a special passion for rock'n'roll music. His ability to monitor radio transmissions has exposed him to many Earthen musical styles, all of which he finds interesting, but it is rock music - good, hard and loud - that really sparks his circuits. He'd much rather be lost in the sound of a searing guitar solo than fighting Evil Decepticons. However, when called upon, he will do what he must for the Autobot cause, albeit reluctantly. In combat, he routinely performs feats of courage and daring that would blow the fuses of most other robots.

G.I. Joe's Blaster - Sergeant Brian R. Davis, born in Panama City, Florida - built his first hovercraft at the age of thirteen using mail-order plans from the back of 'Popular Mechanics'. By his mid-teens, he was designing his own variations and looking for ways to fund the building of prototypes. Undaunted by the failure of hovercrafts to make much of an impact on the civilian market, he took his concepts to the most responsive consumer - the United States military. In late 1987, Blaster was assigned to G.I. Joe's 'Battleforce 2000', an elite unit of highly trained specialists entrusted with one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art prototypes. Their mission was to support G.I. Joe / Action Force and field-test experimental equipment under battlefield conditions. Blaster was the pilot of the team's Vindicator hovercraft, and in early 1989 he helped the Joes' Autobot allies fish the remains of his Cybertronian namesake out of New York's East River following their battle with the Underbase-powered Starscream.

In 1991 Battleforce 2000 was manoeuvring through an oil field when it was bombed by Cobra Commander, killing Blaster and all but one of his team-mates. Around the same time, Autobot Blaster, restored to life by Nucleon, was undergoing his transformation to become an Action Master. Unlike his vehicular and dinosaur brethren, but in common with the short-lived Decepticon Action Master Soundwave, Blaster considered losing the ability to turn into a little box a price worth paying in return for become stronger and faster in robot mode, so following the Battle of Hydrus Four he said thanks but no thanks to the offer of Nucleon II, and remains an Action Master to this day. He can detect signals with power outputs as weak as a millionth of a watt, and his ability to transmit radio signals up to 4,000 miles, combined with his natural charisma, makes him Jackpot's Chief of Communications, commanding Grand Slam, Ironworks and Raindance. His energon-powered Flight Pack can propel him at airborne speeds in excess of 120 miles per hour, and converts into a signal-jamming electro-scrambler gun, which emits powerful waves of electromagnetic energy that disrupt the operations of all but the most heavily shielded electrical devices. As an Action Master, Blaster also now carries a tractor beam electron gun.

Blaster will walk unwittingly into a trap for the promise of hearing some new tunes. Besides that and his lack of respect for the chain of command, his only other notable weakness is that radio static can have the effect of hampering his operation and even, if strong enough, knocking him out.

G.I. Joe Blaster was just as much a fan of loud rock'n'roll music as Autobot Blaster.

The other members of Battleforce 2000 were Avalanche (Sergeant Ian M. Costello, Dominator driver from Madawaska, Maine), Blocker (Sergeant David B. McCarthy, Eliminator driver from Boston, Massachusetts), Dee-Jay (Thomas R. Rossi III, comm-tech trooper from Providence, Rhode Island), Dodger (Sergeant First Class Richard Renwick, Marauder driver from South Bend, Indiana, and the team's sole survivor), Knockdown (Sergeant Blaine M. Gonsalves, Sky-Sweeper driver from San Francisco, California) and Maverick (Captain Thomas P. Kiley, Vector pilot from Ida Grove, Iowa). The Dominator, Eliminator, Marauder, Sky-Sweeper, Vector and Vindicator vehicles were capable of transforming and combining after a fashion to form the Battleforce 2000 'Future Fortress'.





FILE ENDS

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

GRIMLOCK: ONE OF OUR DINOBOTS IS MISSING



Action Master Grimlock refused to accompany Optimus Prime and the Neo-Knights to Earth after the Battle of Klo. When asked why, he said it was because the G.I. Joe team was expected to be present among the welcoming committee. When his fellow Dinobots asked him to elaborate, he said that stupid things happened to him whenever they were around him, but refused to provide any specific details. However, the following fragment of text salvaged from the Chronicles of Wheelie may shed some further light upon this mystery:

"The story so far, I hope that it sticks,
Follows directly from 'Ancient Relics'.
Centurion and Megs had been blown up or not,
But our story concerns our stunned Dinobot.
For while Flint and Blades saluted the dead
They should have been watching Grim's body instead.

"The Joes had loaded it onto a lorry,
For which they would soon be heartily sorry.
A Cobra man was at the wheel
And away with the Dinobot he did steal.
When they learnt that the truck had gone the wrong way
They began too late to perceive the foul play.

"The truck and Grimlock were long gone by now
And Action Force guessed the who and the how.
But they had no resources to do a full search
Leaving poor old Blades somewhat in the lurch.
Some Autobots would be happy to see Grimlock gone.
To some he was like a Decepticon.

"Blades didn't want to report back to the Ark.
He preferred to keep that lot in the dark.
But he called Inferno, a special one
Who had made some new friends on Cybertron.
A team was sent over to help with the hunt
And put an end to the Cobra stunt.

"Broadside and Hubcap watched from the seas,
Scanning all the police frequencies.
Whirl and Sandstorm joined Blades in the air.
Wild Bill was riding in Blades up there.
Roadbuster and Swerve joined Inferno for the ride
With Flint and Scarlett and Bazooka inside.

"They spread right out across London city.
If Grimlock was lost, 'twould be a pity.
For though he wasn't a tip-top boss
His Dinobot chums would feel the loss.
And while Blades didn't always think him right,
They shared the same tastes when it came to a fight.

"Meanwhile, Grimlock was having a dream
And the Baroness stood by with her team.
Cobra had incited a demonstration
To cause the Joes further consternation,
While unknown eyes watched from a roof.
Would their owners remain aloof?

"The driver of the truck had his target in view.
He hoped the Baroness would be there too.
But little did he guess, as he put on a spurt,
That he was about to be squashed in the dirt.
For Cobra's plan encountered a hiccup
As Grimlock decided 'twas time to wake up.

"I pause, gentle reader, at this point,
If it doesn't put noses out of joint,
And ask you to go back in time with me
Just a couple of years, as you shall see.
To understand what happens next,
We must go back. Don't be perplexed!

"There once was a small-time crook
Who found a strange gun in a brook.
It did all he could ask,
No matter the task.
That silly old gun in a brook.

"When Megatron landed on his head,
Instead of ending up quite dead,
Something broke inside his brain,
And until he was knocked all right again,
He would do anything that he was told
Which made Joey Slick feel quite bold.

"Back now in the present day,
You'll guess what I'm about to say.
This time it was Grimlock hit on the head,
And now he woke up just as I said.
But he could not control what he did.
He could only do what he was bid!

"A sign said, 'Go straight for Waterloo.'
Grimlock read it and realised he had to do
Just what it said. But too bad for the man
From Cobra who was heading for Barbican.
Grimlock stepped off causing the bad guy much pain,
As his truck flipped over on Chancery Lane.

"So many signs! Which one to read?
Grimlock began to pick up speed.
It wasn't exactly what Cobra had planned
As Grimlock stomped along the Strand.
'To visit the Theatre Royal, turn right.'
The audience there would be in for a fright.

"Hubcap picked up an increase in chatter
And knew that something was the matter.
A robot dinosaur had brought the house down
And was now heading west into China Town.
He told his friends in the air and below
That Grimlock was sighted just south of Soho.

"This came as bad news to Commander Roadbuster.
In fact, it left him in quite a fluster.
The news to him was rather unpleasant
As he and his group were at Mornington Crescent.
A false clue had led them past Regent's Park
But the trail had run cold leaving them in the dark.

"'Eat in Covent Garden,' said one sign
So Grimlock felt obliged to dine.
The food on offer was not to his taste
But he couldn't allow it to go to waste.
He followed a sign to Leicester Square
But what to do next, when he got there?

"'Run for your life!' cried human voices,
But this left him with too many choices.
'Go back where you came from!' yelled an old man,
So he did a U-turn and eastwards he ran.
A sign sent him southwards down Charing Cross Road
Obedient to all but the Green Cross Code.

"'Never fear,' said Blades, who was carrying Wild Bill.
'If the ground troops can't reach him, we surely will.'
But before they could fly to his last known location
Grimlock had come upon Charing Cross Station.
'Go underground,' said a fateful sign.
And Grimlock was now on the Northern Line.

"'Blades to Roadbuster - he's coming your way!
Intercept him at Euston and we'll be okay!'
'They'll fail!' cried Scarlett. 'Listen to me.
Brute force won't lead us to victory.
Drop a rope to the roof of Penderel's Oak
To pick up our assets - this is no joke!'

"Sure enough, on the roof of a fine public house,
Two ninja Joes waited, as quiet as a mouse.
Sandstorm lowered a line and brought them on board
While a mile to the west, a Dinobot roared.
A sign said, 'Watch this musical,' and Grim had to obey,
But how could he? The performance had finished for the day!

"Before Grimlock got mad and smashed Oxford Street,
Sandstorm descended to about sixty feet.
On his skids were poised both Jinx and Snake-Eyes,
Ready for action - I tell you no lies.
Cobra wished the Wreckers and Grimlock to fight,
But these ninjas believed in skill over might.

"Snake-Eyes was awesome, Snake-Eyes was cool.
If you mess with Snake-Eyes, you're a damned fool.
He was G.I. Joe's Batman, Action Force's Bond.
You couldn't outsmart him - he couldn't be conned.
He knew what to do, he knew how to win,
He'd stop Grimlock's rampage and bring him back in.

"What Jinx and Snake-Eyes did was as follows:
They jumped on his-"

At this point the text becomes corrupted and unreadable. But as London still stands, and all concerned survived, we have to assume they were successful in halting the malfunctioning Dinobot.
___

Snake-Eyes was tempered on the anvil of life until he was as dangerous as a razor-edged sword flailing in the dark. The G.I. Joe / Action Force team sheathed that sword and harnessed its deadly energy. They would sometimes forget that even within the safety of its scabbard, the blade retains its cutting edge. Snake-Eyes served in long-range reconnaissance patrols in South-East Asia. He left the service to study mystic martial arts with the same ninja family that produced Storm Shadow. He was living an ascetic existence alone in the High Sierras with a pet wolf named Timber when Colonel (later General) Hawk found him and recruited him to be one of the founding members of G.I. Joe.

Action Master Grimlock was partnered with a combat-ready anti-tank cannon that fires concentrated bursts of flaming metal and converts into a long-range mortar launcher with a range of 50 miles.

FILE ENDS

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

SNARL

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Desert warrior
Sub-groups: Dinobot, Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #4 ('The Last Stand')

"Only in battle is there true happiness."



Snarl is the only Transformer to have become an Action Master twice - first, in 1991 when Grimlock pumped him full of Nucleon ahead of the great battle with Unicron, then again, in 2018, after 26 years of living with his brain trapped in the body of a real Stegosaurus, when Tyrannitron pointed out to Snarl's fellow Dinobots that the Nucleon-soaked circuits of Starscream, the one and only Transformer who was a compatible donor for Snarl's medical condition, remained alive and active in the body of Action Master Thundercracker. They prevailed upon Action Master Thundercracker to help them return Snarl to a robot body, and the Nucleon saw to it that his new form was strong and fast... and incapable of transforming. But the humanoid robot form didn't suit life in the Savage Land with Slag, Sludge, Swoop and Tyrannitron, so once again Snarl took a treatment of Nucleon II to unlock his transformation circuits.

The Interrogator's past was shrouded in mystery. Was he the notorious former head of security for a deposed Third World dictator? A renegade clinical psychologist? Or an Internal Revenue Service investigator? Nobody knows for sure, but what they do know is that the Interrogator could siphon information out of even the most obstinate prisoner simply by talking to him. Not only was he known for his intimidating interrogation techniques, but he was also an impeccable helicopter pilot. He could fly through a Siberian blizzard with his eyes closed and still arrive at Cobra headquarters ahead of schedule.

More than three decades on from his first sighting in the ranks of Cobra, back around the time of the creation of the first Serpentor, the Interrogator flew his Battle Copter into the Savage Land to extract information from the Dinobots about the security arrangements for the birth of the new Matrix-bearer. But his technique had an effect on Snarl quite different from that observed in human subjects. The Interrogator's voice instilled in Snarl an overwhelming desire to step on him. Snarl wracked his brain for a reason why he shouldn't indulge his desire, but could find none. The human was wearing a Cobra uniform, his voice was incredibly annoying, they were in a part of the Earth where no human laws applied, and Snarl had never signed up to the Autobot Code. So he stepped on him, and that was the end of the Interrogator.

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

PROWL AND WHEELJACK

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Chief Military Strategist and City Commander (Prowl), Chief Mechanical Engineer and Director of Technology (Wheeljack)
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #1

"Logic is the ultimate weapon." (Prowl)

"Never do what your enemy expects you to do." (Wheeljack)


Prowl and Wheeljack never became Action Masters. They took a treatment of Nucleon II after the Battle of Hydrus Four, before the freeze had time to take hold. And so Wheeljack never got round to building that Turbo Cycle and Turbo Racer. But when they were members of Grimlock's Earthforce in 1990 they liaised now and again with G.I. Joe / Action Force, just to keep the humans from worrying too much about the gigantic base Wheeljack was building in the vicinity of Churchill, Canada.

Jack S. Morelli of Eugene, Oregon, built his own crystal set when he was ten. By fourteen he was part of a C.B. net, and had his own ham station by the time he was sixteen. Dial-Tone made all his own equipment, buying parts with quarters earned bagging groceries. He saw the army as a means to furthering his education in his chosen field and quickly found that instead of a stepping stone, it was a goal in itself. Manning a radio in the field wasn't just passing time - it was a job with a purpose. And he'd never dreamt he would one day be having a two-way conversation with extra-terrestrial life-forms on his radio - even if those extra-terrestrials were calling him from Canada.

When Jack Morelli retired as Dial-Tone, his little sister Jill took his place.



FILE ENDS

Credit for all G.I. Joe file cards to www.yojoe.com

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Credit for all G.I. Joe file cards to www.yojoe.com

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

BOMBSHELL AND SOUNDWAVE

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Psychological warfare and intelligence (Bombshell), communications (Soundwave)
Sub-groups: Insecticon and Mayhem Attack Squad (Bombshell), Action Masters (both)
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #17 ('The Smelting Pool') (Bombshell), Marvel's Transformers #1 (Soundwave)

"The mind is my playpen." (Bombshell)

"Cries and screams are music to my ears." (Soundwave)



Totally ruthless and utterly devoid of conscience, Cobra Commander wanted nothing less than to completely dominate the world through terrorism, social tyranny, and economic slavery. He was basically an ingenious hustler and junk-bond salesman with visions of grandeur, who, by using his cash, charisma and criminal skills to revive the fortunes of a small American town called Springfield, built up legions of Cobra Vipers, together with a small air force and navy. From Springfield, Cobra's agents spread throughout the world, overturning or subverting unstable governments to establish criminal networks and profitable arms trades. Cobra became a significant international threat, its High Command consisting of Cobra Commander's most skilled lieutenants, which included Zartan, Baroness Anastasia DeCobray, Scottish arms dealer James McCullen Destro and Australian mercenary Major Sebastian Bludd.

Most dictators and would-be Napoleon types are hampered by the need to pretend that they are pursuing a noble and just cause. Cobra Commander didn't have that problem. He was in it for the money and the power, and if anybody else was interested in those things, they could just pick up an assault rifle and get in line behind him.

Evil Roller's initial dealings with Zartan led to more substantial overtures of friendship being made by Cobra towards the main Decepticon army on Earth. Bombshell and Soundwave picked up on them and saw the potential to use Cobra to advance the Decepticon cause - and their own personal interests. However, Lord Zarak beat them to it by establishing an alliance between Cobra and his Z Foundation soon after coming to Earth, leading to the infamous Treadshot killings of 1988. But the Earthen Decepticons were briefly united under Scorponok's leadership in 1989, and Bombshell and Soundwave (who recovered speedily from his Underbase-sustained injuries) were quick to use their mind-reading and mind-control abilities to get their claws - and agents - into both those human criminal organisations. When Soundwave and Ravage put Roller/Overlord into the body of Straxus's Megatron clone and attempted to use him to wrest control of the Decepticons from the too-human Scorponok in 1990, Cobra Commander - back from the dead, and back in control of his terrorist empire - provided the materials and manpower that they needed to build 'Action Master' Megatron's spider-shaped mobile headquarters in the Louisiana Bayous - in return for Decepticon technology to assist in Cobra's struggle with G.I. Joe, naturally.

Both Bombshell and Soundwave played an important role, and suffered life-threatening injuries, in the battle with Unicron, but were restored to life on the battlefield with an unnecessarily large dose of Nucleon. It was at this point, as they both became Action Masters, that their paths diverged forever. Bombshell accepted the Autobot-Decepticon truce and left Cybertron with his fellow Insecticons, returning in 2018 to aid in the war against Skyquake, following which he took a course of Nucleon II, regained the ability to transform and was partnered with a former drone named Needler. Soundwave, on the other hand, perhaps drunk with the feeling of invincibility that came with becoming an Action Master, joined Bludgeon in his acts of genocide on Klo, and forfeited his right to amnesty for his past crimes. In the Battle of Hydrus Four, the Autobot Action Masters, Bumblebee, Inferno, Jazz, Sideswipe and Tracks, showed him no mercy.

Cobra was defeated by G.I. Joe's Star Brigade in space in 1994, and then by the combined forces of the Joes and the Avengers on the ground in 1995, and ceased to exist openly from that time onwards. No-one knows exactly when, or if, Cobra Commander met his end.

In his brief time as a fully sentient being in 2018, before being destroyed in battle with the Quintessons, the former drone Wingthing (a loyal but lethal bird robot who transformed into a metal-piercing concussion cannon) wondered what it would have been like to have met the legendary Decepticon communicator, Soundwave.



(Needler and Scorpulator were originally semi-sentient Decepticon drones that conducted attacks without reason or warning, ripping their victims to scrap metal with their armour-crushing pincers and razor-sharp claws. However, in August 2018 they were Matrixed and given full sentience, making them altogether more thoughtful, complex characters. Needler is armed with flame-throwing turbo blasters and combines with his partner, usually Bombshell, to form an interactive bodysuit with intelligent weapons systems. Scorpulator's tail shoots twin pulse laser beams, and he transforms into an acid spray gun, occasionally wielded by Devastator.)

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INFERNO

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Search and rescue
Sub-groups: Survivor, Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers UK #30 ('Decepticon Dam-Busters')

"Where there's smoke, there's me."


"The hotter things get, the better I like it!" When Inferno says this, he's not merely referring to fires. His love for combat increases with its intensity as well, a fact appreciated by both friend and foe alike. Although his primary role is search and rescue, performing it usually takes him into the heat of battle where he is often distracted into participating. In vehicular mode, Inferno has all the capabilities of a normal Earth fire truck. In robot mode, his strength is among the greatest of the Autobots. His ceramic-plated armoured skin makes him resistant to temperatures of up to 8,000 degrees centigrade. His extinguisher rifle not only shoots a stream of flame-suppressing foam, but can also stop beams of various types of electromagnetic radiation with its own energy-damping beam. By detaching his hands, he can use his forearms to launch short-range surface-to-air missiles.

Gabriel A. Kelly, a.k.a. Barbecue, was born in Boston, Massachusetts. If he hadn't joined the G.I. Joe team, he would have been the seventh Kelly in his direct line in the Boston fire department. But his love for his job as a fireman was not based on family loyalty or even a more general sense of duty - he simply liked riding on the back of the truck with the wind in his face, sirens wailing, lights flashing and bells clanging. Being allowed to knock down doors and smash windows with his axe was just the icing on the cake. Barbecue spoke fluent Italian and could pass himself off as a native of that country. He possessed a fake passport certifying him to be one Gabriel A. Garibaldi, born in Naples, which gave him an advantage when carrying out European operations as a member of Action Force.

Kurt Schnurr, a.k.a. Airtight, born either in New Haven, Connecticut, or Munich, West Germany, was the kid who could hold his breath the longest. He was also the kid who had the largest collection of plastic dinosaurs on the block. He was a weird kid who grew up to be an even stranger adult. It takes a mighty weird person to walk into a cloud of toxic gas strong enough to fell a mutant weight-lifter cockroach wearing a protective suit built under contract for the government by the lowest bidder.

Inferno first crossed paths with Barbecue and Airtight in the aftermath of Grimlock's battle with one of the Megatrons in London in 1987, a mission on which, unusually for a fireman, Barbecue was seen wielding a portable flamethrower, which he used initially against the Protectobot Blades, thinking him to be an enemy.



When all the Cybertronian Transformers on Earth were teleported back to their homeworld by Primus, Barbecue and Airtight were among the G.I. Joe team sent into the Autobots' abandoned Earthbase near Churchill in Canada, to secure the four Stunticon prisoners incarcerated within (a fatal development for those concerned, as falling into the humans' hands was a death sentence for Decepticons at this point in time). Meanwhile, Bumblebee, Inferno and Jazz had all been blasted out of the sky by Unicron. Their lives were saved by a major dose of Nucleon, which quickly deprived them of the ability to transform, in return for an increase in strength, speed and endurance. The trio accompanied Optimus Prime to Earth in their Action Master forms after the Battle of Klo, and met with representatives of G.I. Joe / Action Force. They felt naked without the ability to transform into their former Earth disguises, and when Nucleon II became available later that year, they were among the first to snap it up.

Barbecue, Airtight and Inferno were all in the World Trade Center in September 2001 when the towers collapsed. Inferno survived. Barbecue and Airtight did not.

When he became an Action Master, Inferno's equipment was enhanced by the addition of a magna-blast gun and a Hydro-Pack, which converts into a high-pressure cannon capable of shooting any liquid substance, from water to corrosive acid.

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JAZZ

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Special operations, saboteur, events promoter (music)
Sub-groups: Pretender, Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #1

"Do it with style or don't bother doing it."


James McCullen Destro XXIV is Laird of the Castle Destro in the Scottish Highlands. The Destro clan has designed and sold weapons for centuries, and Destro is the faceless power behind their present-day incarnation, MARS (Military Armament Research Syndicate), a state-of-the-art weapons manufacturer and one of the largest multinational corporations in the world. To Destro, war is man's most natural state, and he maintains a luxurious lifestyle around the world, providing high-tech arms to any side able to meet his price, inciting war where it does not exist without hesitation in order to further his personal fortune. He wears a silver (or occasionally gold) metal mask (a family tradition) and has been known to enter battle himself, either for Cobra - he was their major weapons supplier on and off for over a decade - or against it, depending on which seemed better for business at any given time. Destro always respected the G.I. Joe team for their combat skills and expertise, but initially abhored them for wasting such skills in the cause of peace. For years, he was totally dedicated to seeing them undermined, subverted, or destroyed, but in the end his sense of warrior's honour drew him to their side when they freed him and his beloved Baroness from Cobra Commander's mental control at the conclusion of the 1994 war in space, and he fought beside Hawk, Flint and their Avenger allies in the last open battle with Cobra's land forces in 1995.

Jazz prefers cruising down Bourbon Street in New Orleans or double-parking outside a cellar club in Greenwich Village, soaking up the local sounds, to involving himself in matters of war, but as one of the Autobots' most highly skilled operatives, he agreed to spend a portion of his post-war life teaching the humans to defend themselves against extra-terrestrial threats. Having taken Nucleon II to regain his ability to disguise himself as a Porsche 935 Turbo, Jazz kept the Turbo Board (essentially a rocket-powered skateboard that converts into a dazzling destabiliser electromagnetiser gun) given to him by Wheeljack during his brief time as an Action Master, and in due course traded in his original Pretender shell for the ability to phase into a more convincing human form (the first non-white human Pretender, in fact).

Jazz was deeply troubled to find himself working alongside a man like Destro, whose livelihood depended on selling weapons of war, but the alternative was to walk out the door and leave the humans with inadequate defences against Decepticons and other alien aggressors, or worse, to misuse the technology they had obtained from ransacking the numerous bases established on Earth by the Autobots and Decepticons during the 1980s and destroy themselves. SHIELD had seen fit to employ Destro, Tony Stark and others to dissect Shockwave, Galvatron, the Seacons, the Stunticons, the Terrorcons, the Air Strike Patrol and all the other Decepticons they had captured and terminated, and use the technology to create new and improved Centurion units, Robot-Buster exo-suits, Road-Jammer devices and Circuit-Breaker costumes, and they asked Jazz to train their soldiers how to fight. Jazz contained his distaste for war and reluctantly consented to do as they asked, but resolved to teach his pupils not only how to fight but how not to, interspersing his lessons on inter-species combat and Galactic geo-politics with the values and wisdom of Optimus Prime and the Autobot Code.

Destro watched, and listened.

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FACT-FILE INTERFACE

SLUDGE AND SWOOP

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Jungle warrior and demolitions (Sludge), bombardier (Swoop)
Sub-groups: Dinobots, Action Masters
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #4 ('The Last Stand')

"Stomp your enemy, crush him under your feet." (Sludge)

"Fear can hit targets unreachable to bullets." (Swoop)



Given that Prowl, Shockwave and Wheeljack never actually became Action Masters, it is somewhat unfair that they had Action Master toys made of them, while Sludge and Swoop did not, but such is life.

BATs (Battle Android Troopers) were considered to be the perfect Cobra troopers. They never questioned orders, complained about the chow, shirked duty, or surrendered. They required no leave-time, sick-pay, or benefits of any kind, and they were cheap and easy to replace. On the other hand, BATs did not react very well to changes in field conditions, nor did they discriminate between targets. They would shoot at anything that moved, be it friend, foe or animal. They also had an unfortunate tendency to burst into flame when hit from behind.

The Dinobots loved fighting BATs.



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BUMBLEBEE

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Espionage Director, Buster's car
Sub-groups: Pretender, Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #1

"The least likely can be the most dangerous."


The twins Tomax and Xamot served with the Foreign Legion paras in Algeria, then honed their mercenary skills in the bush wars of Africa and South America, but they were too smart to be soldiers forever, so they went to Zurich and became bankers. There they quickly found the ins and outs of international finance to be too haphazard for their tastes. They preferred a situation they could control. Cobra was willing to give them access to that control, and so they went on to command legions - legions who wore three-piece suits and fought their battles in executive board rooms. These, then, were the most fearsome of Cobra's agents. They didn't fight with steel and claw, backed with muscle and honest sweat. They chased you with paper, wounded you with your own laws and killed you with the money you loaned them.

When it became apparent that the children of Buster and Jessie Witwicky carried the lost power of the Creation Matrix, Bluestreak and Bumblebee volunteered to watch over the family, serving as their cars. Bumblebee kept the Heli-Pack he had been given by Wheeljack during his time as an Action Master, and also exchanged his Pretender shell for the ability to phase into the likeness of a normal-sized human. But none of these assets were of any help in 2008 when the Crimson Guard Commanders, Tomax and Xamot, came at them with Road-Jammer technology, immobilising the two Autobots and abducting the boy Matrix-bearer, Jacko, together with his parents. In the end, it was Jacko's sixteen-year-old sister, Katy, who single-handedly captured the Cobra twins and brought her family safely home.

Bumblebee's turbo-powered Heli-Pack has a flying range of 1,200 miles. It can act as a drone on reconnaissance missions, transmitting pictures back to Bumblebee. It has a maximum speed of 280 miles per hour, and can convert into a high-powered air rifle with astral exploder rifle attachment.



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SIDESWIPE

Allegiance: Cameron Space Control
Functions: Warrior, Space Marine
Sub-groups: Action Master, Powermaster
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #1

"I don't break rules, I bend them - a lot."



Like General Hawk, Rock'n'Roll (Craig S. McConnel from Malibu, California) served with the G.I. Joe team from its inception to its disbanding, and during that time was constantly updating his equipment and skills. When he heard in 1994 that Duke was recruiting members for the Star Brigade force, Rock'n'Roll jumped at the chance to fight in space and be outfitted with the latest in battle armour technology. No other Star Brigade member used his bio-integrated, robotic battle armour quite like Rock'n'Roll. He braved laser fire, jumped on live grenades, and even chased Cobra Battle Armoured Android Troopers right into the sun to capture them (and to toast an occasional marshmallow on the end of his laser rifle).

Just as the Pretender process was refined after the war ended to allow Autobots to shrink to human size, so the Powermaster process was also improved, to enable a Powermaster human to interface with and provide a power boost to any Autobot, whilst avoiding the unwanted permanent merging of life-forms that eventually claimed the individual identities of HiQ, Rev and Lube. Missing the extra strength and speed he had enjoyed during his brief time as an Action Master (though never regretting his decision to reclaim his ability to transform into a red Lamborghini Countach), Sideswipe was the first Autobot to volunteer for trials of the new Powermaster process - and Rock'n'Roll was the first human.

The trials were successful, and now both Sideswipe and Sunstreaker serve as Powermaster warriors for the human-Autobot alliance overseen by Cameron Space Control. In the last two decades they have had many human partners, some now dead, others very much alive and kicking. Rock'n'Roll currently serves the Cameron Space Marines as a training instructor for prospective Powermaster engines.

(Vanguard is a mobile, armoured, double-barrelled tank, Matrixed in August 2018, who gives his partner, usually Sideswipe, cover fire when fighting it out with intergalactic menaces. Vanguard combines with his partner to form an interactive bodysuit with intelligent weapons systems.)

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TRACKS

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Warrior, gentleman of leisure
Sub-group: Action Master
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #14 ('Rock and Roll Out')

"Looking good is what life is all about."



According to her Pentagon file, Alison R. Hart-Burnett, a.k.a. Lady Jaye, was born in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. She graduated from Bryn Mawr and did her graduate work at Trinity College in Dublin where she acquired the faint Gaelic lilt that adorns her speech. An accomplished actress and mime as well as a studied linguist, she can easily pass as a native in France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Germany, Afghanistan, Spain and Portugal. (Indeed, her official Action Force dossier lists her place of birth as Cork in Ireland.) Lady Jaye is Airborne and Ranger qualified, graduated from Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, and is a qualified expert with the M-16 rifle, the M-1911A semi-automatic pistol and the reflex crossbow.

In early 1991, Inferno was giving Lady Jaye a grand tour of the Autobots' Earthbase in Churchill, Canada, while simultaneously monitoring a joint Autobot / G.I. Joe rescue operation currently in progress involving Broadside, Carnivac, Skids and Springer, when Primus, without so much as a by-your-leave, teleported all of them (except Skids) back to Cybertron to fight Unicron. Lady Jaye stood stunned for a whole minute before snapping out of it and running to check if the four Stunticon prisoners she had just been shown were still in their cells. They were. She then wasted no time in radioing headquarters to request that a recovery team be sent in immediately to secure the unattended Decepticons... and the Automated Construction Unit Inferno had shown her in Earthbase's Body Shop, which appeared to be capable of mass-producing, on demand, robot bodies that could transform into flying Corvette Stingrays. She wanted to be riding in one of those the next time she went into battle against Cobra. Maybe they could paint theirs red, to distinguish them from the original Autobot?

(The armoured vehicular Autobot Basher, Matrixed in August 2018, is equipped with infra-red scanners, remote-controlled surveillance cameras, heat-seeking missiles and laser beam trip-wires for short-range covert operations. Basher combines with his partner, usually Tracks, to form an interactive bodysuit with intelligent weapons systems.)

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