Appearances:
WARMONGER
Note: Pictures of Warmonger appear courtesy of here
Appearances:
UK Transformers
#226 (Aspects of Evil: Megatron)
Quote:
"I-I... I cannot! Matrix forgive me... I just..."
Alt-Mode:
Unsure, but almost definitely some sort of jet based on his alt-mode features in robot mode.
Description:
Warmonger was another of a handful of
'deep cover' agents in the UK comics. He's also one of my favourites, probably
because of the story he was used in.
Warmonger was a classic hi-then-die character. He was there one moment, and dead
the next. In fact, he didn't get any dialogue until he was going to die! The use
of Warmonger allowed Furman to randomly kill of a character, but meant that some
of the 'mystery' of the story was lost. It was painfully obvious that the
'traitor' in the story was Warmonger. However, I'm getting ahead of myself.
This story was part of 'Aspects of Evil' a future-story. However this was a
flashback set in 1990. It's unlikely that these events happened in regular UK/US
continuity, but instead were a part of the 'Earthforce' continuity.
Biography:
Warmonger was a deep-cover agent for the
Autobots, who was hidden amongst the Decepticon ranks. He'd spent months
carefully infiltrating the Decepticons under Megatron's command. However, when
Hot Rod, Kup and Blur were captured by Megatron, Warmonger almost blew his cover
by freeing them. This was his first big mistake.
Hot Rod was recaptured despite Warmonger's efforts, and Megatron was mad! Megs
narrowed the list of suspects down to four; Warmonger, Stranglehold, Bludgeon
and Octopunch.
To discover who was the traitor Megs picked on Bludgeon, saying he was the
traitor, and forced all of the others to hunt him down. Octopunch and
Stranglehold failed, but Warmonger caught Bludgeon from behind.
This was when Warmonger made his second BIG mistake. Warmonger found he couldn't
kill in cold blood to save himself, and Megatron promptly blasted him into atoms
for it! His Autobot code of honour had killed him, and flushed out the traitor
just as Megs had planned!
Tech Specs/TFU:
Hard to say. Warmonger almost looks like a Skyraider-jet and it's possible he'd have standard Skyraider-jet physical stats. Probably a high speed, mid-to-high firepower and reasonable strength. Another stat that would probably be fairly high would be intelligence. After all he did infiltrate the Decepticon ranks. You'd have to be pretty... then again, he also did some rather STUPID things which blew his cover. Who said you had to be smart to be a spy?
Toy:
Warmonger would have made a fairly good
Skyraider-jet. Apart from the cockpit on the chest thing he had all the features of
a Skyraider-jet. Of course one of the conehead variety. Allowances for him TFing
into a kind of high-tech jet would let him TF almost exactly like a Skyraider.
Even if he wasn't a Skyraider, Warmonger had just the right mix of robot and
alt-mode features to almost fool you into believing he was a real Transformer.
He LOOKED like a Transformer. If his head had been designed a bit better I'm
sure there would have been plenty of kids writing in wondering where the
Warmonger toys were!!
Punch/Counterpunch not withstanding, I'd really LOVE to see a deep-cover spy toy
of some sort. That would be rather cool.
Over All:
Warmonger was one of the types of obscures I love. He was a deep cover spy. Probably because Hasbro didn't want to blur the edges too much, we never saw a real deep-cover spy character in the toy-based cast.
The only one even close was Punch/Counterpunch, and he wasn't portrayed in that way. He wasn't a deep-cover spy, he was a character with two faces who played on both sides. A double agent... not a careful, calculating spy. Not to mention how terribly he was portrayed in the infamous 'Rebirth'.
Attempts were made
to make Punch/Counterpunch into a deep-cover agent in the Japanese cartoon
(apparently). But there's just no way a regular character (especially not one
like Punch/Counterpunch) could take up this role effectively.
Warmonger himself... well he's stupid. I mean surely if you were a deep-cover
spy you'd HAVE to get used to doing Decepticon things (like killing people) and
hurting people who are innocent. Letting the Autobot prisoners free was...
well... entirely stupid.
Despite this, I like Warmonger. Again, probably because I rather like the story
he appears in.