GALEN

 

Appearances:

Headmasters

#1-4  (Ring of Hate to Brothers in Armour)Love that shirt. On Nebulos, every day is an 80s sort of day.

 

US Transformers

#38 (Trial By Fire)

 

 

Quote:

"There will be no war today." From issue #1 of Headmasters.

 

 

Other Names:

For some unknown reason Galen is referred to as 'Kord' in a UK annual text story which basically summarises the Headmasters limited series, with some strange asides and edits.

 

 

Description:

Galen was a character created by Bob Budiansky, seemingly to fill space while Fortress Maximus was on Nebulos. 

 

You see the problem was that in the toy version of Fortress Maximus his head Transforms into a robot called Cerebros, whose head then Transforms into Spike Witwicky.  Spike was a long-running character from the cartoon series, based on the comic-book character Buster Witwicky. Unfortunately Spike wasn't in the comics at all when the Headmasters came along, and he CERTAINLY wasn't hanging about on Nebulos. So, when Fortress Maximus became a Headmaster on Nebulos he needed to have a stand-in Nebulan as his Headmaster companion. That stand in was Galen.

 

Of course Galen was promptly killed the moment the Headmasters came to Earth and joined the regular Transformers series. He was replaced by Spike Witwicky, who was brought into the comics series as 'Buster's older brother who was away at college". Why Spike didn't return when his father was kidnapped by Decepticons, or when his dear old dad almost died of a heart attack, or when his dad was getting over being hypnotised by a Car Wash is hard to say. Possibly he doesn't like his father.

 

Whatever the reason, Spike came along and joined the Transformers comics and Galen pretty much died in the process.

 

 

Minus his helmet, he looks like his head was transplanted from another toy.Biography:

Galen was born on the planet Nebulos. Nebulans are a race similar to humans in external appearance, but far more advanced in many ways. They lived a life of peace on their planet, with the weapons of war cast aside. Galen's job, as leader of the World Watchers, was to keep the peace and decide whether those weapons should ever be used.

 

When a group of giant alien robots (called Autobots) came to Nebulan, Galen was lobbied by Lord Zarak to bring those weapons out of storage and prepare for war. However Galen didn't agree with this approach. He believed that their first course of action should be to try and seek peace with these robots. That didn't work out, however, because Zarak arranged for the Autobot Blurr to seemingly attack the Nebulans (Zarak used magnetic rays to accomplish this). After that Galen had no choice but to revive the hidden weapons of war, and engage these Autobots in battle.

 

The first attack on the Autobots was the last. The Autobots retreated then surrendered to the Nebulans. To make their surrender final a group of Autobots even tore their own heads off and gave them to the Nebulans, as a sign. The rest of the Autobots handed their weapons over to Galen as well. Galen accepted this effort, and decided there should be peace between Nebulans and Autobots.

 

This peace was very short-lived because Lord Zarak simply did NOT want the Autobots on his planet. To try and get rid of them he invited the Autobots' long-term enemies, the Decepticons to Nebulos. The Decepticons (led by Scorponok) came to Nebulos not as saviours, but as conquerors. This pissed Zarak off a bit, but also left Galen in quite a spot of bother.

 

Galen realised that the only ones who could fight the Decepticons were the Autobots, however the Nebulan council wouldn't approve letting the Autobots have their weapons back. To solve his problem and drive out the Decepticon invaders, Galen and four of his men bonded with the five Autobots who had sacrificed their heads. The Nebulans were Bio-engineered so that they could, when wearing bulky armour, transform into the heads of the five Autobots. Galen became the head of Fortress Maximus.

 

This bonding process proved to boost the power of the Autobots to such an extent that the five of them were able to fight off the Decepticons (temporarily). It also appeased the Nebulan populace, because trusted Nebulans were in charge of the robots.

 

[On a side note: the weapons of war which Galen uncovered to use against the Autobots were not seen being used against the Decepticons, only city-defenses. It's possible that these vehicles and weapons of war WERE used against the Decepticons, but were destroyed easily by an opponent who actually fought back.]

 

As the Autobots and Decepticons fought for Nebulos, more and more changes were made. The Decepticons forced Zarak and several of his men to submit to the Headmaster process. The Autobots developed Targetmasters, and the Decepticons followed. (In a Targetmaster the Nebulan companion changed into a Transformer's gun.) Eventually the Autobots intercepted a distress call from Earth (activated by Buster Witwicky) and decided, for the sake of Nebulos, to follow the distress call and take their war with them. Zarak, in a final burst of love for his home planet, actually ordered his men to follow.

 

Being forced to leave Nebulos had a strong affect on Galen. He realised that his life now was to be devoted to the unceasing Autobot/Decepticon war. To this end he had Fortress Maximus upgraded. The robot was doubled in size and armament, and had an extra head added, which could transform into the robot Cerebros. Galen could then in turn change into Cerebros's head.

 

When Galen wants to shake your hand, he's enthusiastic about it.Once on Earth, Galen found that there was no one at the place that the distress call came from (Grimlock had finally gotten the Ark out of the Volcano, and into orbit, leaving behind only some communications equipment), but a human and a toy car. The toy car, however, seemed to house the brain of an Autobot! This was Goldbug. They took Goldbug, then abandoned the human even though he needed their help. Galen said that searching for the Autobots who'd been at the site recently was their top priority.

 

Shortly after the Autobots left, the Decepticons arrived. They weren't as nice to Spike as the Autobots had been (and the Autobots definitely weren't all peaches and cream), so Spike pressed the distress call sender button, calling Fortress Maximus's Autobots back.

 

In the battle that followed, Fortress Maximus, Spike and Scorponok were split up from the main group. Galen was forced to give his own life to save Spike, and willingly passed on his responsibility as Fort Max's head to Spike.

 

When Mt. Saint Hillary exploded, the Autobots saw it as a fitting memorial to their lost leader.

 

 

Toy:

None, though it would be easy to make a Galen Kitbash, mind-bogglingly easy. Just take Fortress Maximus, remove his head and Transform it into Cerebros. Now take Cerebros' head and Transform it into Spike. Now call the Spike toy 'Galen' and BOOM you have a Galen kitbash! Wow!!

 

You could always buy a spare Spike head (that is if you already have Fortress Maximus) and call it Galen. However remember that sometimes Spike by himself can go for as much as 100 or 200 U.S. dollars on Transformers parts websites. Get your spare Spike at a flea market instead. That's my advice.

 

Of course the big problem with just calling your Spike "Galen" is that for most of the time Galen's Fortress Maximus didn't have a Cerebros unit. Fortress Maxmius's head transformed straight into Galen. There is a knock-off toy out there named Uranus 5-in-1 who can actually stand in most effectively as a Galen-Fort Max. This knock-off has a downsized Fort Max body, and lacks the Double-Headmaster feature of the real Fortress Maximus. Instead his head Transforms straight into a Spike-like robot. In other words this IS the Headmasters comic version of Fortress Maximus, WITH Galen! Look around for Uranus 5-in-1, with a little paint work he could make a welcome addition to your ever-growing Transformers collection. (Though I must warn you that he's an insanely low quality knock-off...)

 

 

Over All:

Galen is a neat character, who only exists because he was needed to fill a narrative 'space' in the comics. The seachange in the character which occurred between his appearance in the Headmasters mini-series and his one appearance in Transformers was a little annoying (though understandable).

 

Probably the strangest thing about the character is that (and I haven't mentioned this in everything above) he had a really good looking girlfriend (well, in a comic-book sort of way).

 

Okay, I know what you're saying here. Why is that so strange? After all, he IS human.

Yeah, maybe he is human, but how many humans in Transformers had girlfriends? Spike in the cartoon and another one in an alternate universe, Buster had one in the comics, Gort had a chick who got beaten up in a riot and... and? That's about it my friend. Stylor had all his concubines, and a couple of gangsters that have appeared had THEIR concubines.

 

Heck there was even an entire planet of Amazons once, none of whom had significant others. THEY got so desperate that their leader tried to hit on Cloudburst. I'm not exactly sure where all this is going, but some might think it explained a thing or two about all the Fleshlings in Transformers...

 

 

Galen and Llyra sitting in a tree... f... u... c... errr... nevermind.

 

 

 

[THE ARCHIVE] [MAIN PAGE]