All Hail Shockwave

Among the best Transformers world-building came from the UK arm of Marvel Comics. Published weekly, rather than monthly, the title needed regular content injections, a task that usually fell to in-house writer Simon Furman. Since all the big name characters were off having US authored adventures, Furman specialised in beefing up mid-card players, turning them into dangerous wildcards that drifted in and out of extinction epics. Shockwave was a particular favourite of Furman's. In contrast to the servile chump presented in after-school TV show, Furman's Shockwave was a powerful, calculating bastard, always angling to usurp the de-facto Decepticon commander Megatron. That's the vibe I'm getting here in this latest shill for Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Shockwave as his own entity, neither Autobot nor Decepticon, pursuing his own agenda and crushing everything in his path. Disaster Year predicts a Prime / Megatron tag-team will be required to terminate this cycloptic Caesar.