bludgeon

Bludgeon is the name of several fictional characters in the Transformers universes.

Transformers: Generation 1

Transformers character
Bludgeon
Affiliation	Decepticon
Sub-Group	Pretender
Function	Electric warrior
Motto	"To know your own limits, you must first know your foe's limits."
Alternate Modes	Cybertronian tank (somewhat resembling an M1 Abrams)
Series	Transformers: Generation 1 Transformers: Robots in Disguise

Bludgeon's toy, produced in 1988, was part of Pretenders subline — a small Transformer that fits inside a larger shell. Bludgeon's outer shell resembles a human skeleton dressed in traditional Japanese samurai armor. The inner robot transformers into a green and red tank with a purple barrel. The barrel could be used as a hand weapon while the turret could be used as a shield for the outer shell. Bludgeon's biography listed him as a ferocious warrior who is skilled at the ancient Cybertronian martial art known as metallikato.

Marvel Comics

Bludgeon had a prominent role in the Marvel Transformers comic. He was initially part of a new incarnation of the Mayhem Attack Squad in the UK comics, and would later appear in smaller group with Stranglehold and Octopunch, tasked by Decepticon commander Thunderwing to kill the Autobot Classic Pretenders (Grimlock, Bumblebee and Jazz). He battled the Autobots at the center of Cybertron, being partially responsible for waking Primus and attracting Unicron's attention. After Thunderwing's death, Bludgeon joined up with the Earthbound Decepticons, and quickly became bodyguard to their leader Scorponok.

Following the battle with Unicron (and Scorponok's death), he found himself in a position of influence and worked his way into becoming a key member of the Autobot-Decepticon alliance. From here, he managed to become Decepticon leader and inspired them to turn away from the alliance and back towards conquest. He left the Autobots to die and invaded the peaceful world of Klo, causing a bloodbath, and when the Autobots tried to stop him, he ambushed and exterminated them. If not for the intervention of Optimus Prime and the Last Autobot, he'd have won the war in that single battle; instead, he had the Decepticons retreat to regroup.

He originally (and concurrently) appeared in the UK Earthforce stories, but their canonical placement is unknown and assumed by some fans to take place after U.S. #80. Here, he led a new version of the Mayhems in the assassination of renegade Decepticons Catilla and Carnivac for their joining the Autobot Survivors group. He personally killed Catilla and for that, Carnivac had a terrible revenge — getting Bludgeon captured by Autobots instead of killed, a humiliation to his warrior image so bad it was worse, to Bludgeon, than death. Recovering fast, he engaged in psychological warfare against his cell warden Inferno, staying completely silent and still to increasingly unnerve him to the point where he got sloppy; at that point, Bludgeon telekinetically had his sword escape from an ammo store and viciously wound Inferno, allowing the Mayhems to escape. They would later return, trying to kill Starscream and Soundwave for the bounty placed on their heads by Megatron and Shockwave.

In the 1991 UK Annual, Bludgeon appeared in the text story "Another Time and Place," a story intended to end the series on a more final note. He and his followers retrieved the mangled body of Megatron after the crash of the Ark and attempted to revive it with a new strain of Nucleon. His plan was thwarted by Optimus Prime and Grimlock, and Bludgeon was seemingly destroyed by a rewired construction droid. The story was seemingly ignored when Transformers: Generation 2 began years later, as things were restored to the status quo established before the text story, such as Megatron's fate, and when Megatron does return in the Generation 2 comics, Bludgeon does not welcome him but instead decries him as a fool who should have stayed dead.

Transformers: Generation 2

At the start of the series, the war was considered over and Bludgeon's Decepticons were thought gone. Instead, Bludgeon had used this long absence to regroup and rearm, creating a large planet-like spacecraft known as the Warworld, which functioned as a vessel for pirating resources throughout the galaxy. He then made a bid to lure Optimus Prime to Earth to steal the Autobot Creation Matrix so life could be granted to a new generation of Decepticon warriors. The plan involved a full-scale attack on Earth, killing millions, but unfortunately for Bludgeon, instead of Optimus he attracted Megatron, who wanted command of the Decepticons for himself once more. The two fought a brief duel and Bludgeon was killed, the skull head of his Pretender shell kept as a trophy aboard the Warworld. Megatron would go on to use Bludgeon's plan and warship, and would later consider aloud that he may have been too hasty to kill such a capable Decepticon.

In the short-lived U.K. Generation 2 comic, Bludgeon personally led an attack on London and did manage to attract Optimus Prime's attention but was defeated when the two fought.

Dreamwave Productions

Dreamwave comics Bludgeon.

Bludgeon appeared in the first volume of Dreamwave Productions' Transformers: The War Within series. Bludgeon was recruited as a Decepticon under the leadership of Megatron in his war against the Autobots on the planet Cybertron. When Shockwave led the Decepticon attack on the Autobot capitol of Iacon, Bludgeon was part of the strike force along with Astrotrain, Blitzwing, Brawl, Chopshop, Dirge, Frenzy, Octane, Onslaught, Ramjet, Tantrum, Venom and Vortex.

When Megatron and Autobot leader Optimus Prime disappeared in an accident with a space bridge, the Autobot and Decepticon forces splintered into smaller factions. Bludgeon became leader of the Chaos Trinity, which was comprised of himself, Bugly and Mindwipe. The Chaos Trinity was devoted to expanding its members knowledge of the mystic arts. The Chaos Trinity acted as master manipulators, tricking others into doing their work for them. For instance, when Shockwave's faction developed Trypticon, the Chaos Trinity tipped off the Autobots under Prowl where it was being tested.

Bludgeon and his Chaos Trinity.

The Chaos Trinity came into the service of the Fallen, an ancient Transformer who betrayed Primus and was now an agent of Unicron. The Fallen promised to expand their mystic powers in return for their loyalty, after threatening to kill them if they didn't join him.

Attacking a meeting between Jetfire and Shockwave, hypnotizing the former and incapacitating the latter, they were then beaten by Grimlock, who arrived because he believed that Jetfire was betraying them. However, this was all part of a bigger set-up by the Fallen, who easily defeated the Dinobot leader. Then, after battling the Protectobots and kidnapping Hot Spot, the Trinity took him to the Fallen for an arcane ritual, but they were attacked by Shockwave's Decepticons. Bludgeon fled, but was blasted by a teleporting Skywarp. He did not appear again in the G1 comics. It is interesting to note that Bludgeon was not so willing to take orders, questioning the Fallen on several occasions.

Transformers: Armada

Bludgeon would not only appear in the War Within comic, but also in its sister title, Transformers: Armada. In this separate reality, the incarnation of Bludgeon (now in his traditional Pretender shell) was one of the Heralds of Unicron, from a different dimension, sent to cause destruction prior to Unicron's arrival alongside his fellow heralds, Dirge, Thunderwing, Scourge and their leader, Galvatron (all characters from the G1 universe, though their names are not mentioned and are not the versions from the Generation One Dreamwave comics).

While Galvatron confronted Armada Megatron at the Autobot base, the rest of the Heralds took over the Decepticon base on Cybertron. Scourge, Dirge and Thunderwing, activating all the Space Bridge Portals, left Bludgeon to guard their arrival portal in the Decepticon base and departed for Earth. A team of Autobots led by Jetfire would then arrive to investigate, with Bludgeon stalking them from the shadows, killing and wounding several. Eventually locating him with searchlights, Jetfire destroyed his shell, although the inner robot escaped. Attacking Jetfire again in tank mode, Bludgeon and the other Decepticons were destroyed when Jetfire detonated a store of explosives.

IDW Publishing

Bludgeon's first chronological appearance in the new IDW Publishing continuity was in The Transformers: Spotlight issue on Shockwave, where he was assigned to investigate the missing Decepticon's lab.^[1] Bludgeon became increasingly obsessed with the Regenesis program, a project Shockwave had initiated to seed worlds with new caches of more powerful Energon. At some point, Bludgeon recovered the dormant hulk of Thunderwing (who had nearly devastated Cybertron years before), and began to realize he could use the Energon that Shockwave had seeded to revive him — unaware he was being spied upon by Soundwave. After heading to Earth and using human facsimiles to harvest the Ultra Energon, Soundwave confronted him. When Bludgeon revealed the truth, Soundwave attempted to stop him — but was blasted into stasis lock (in his cassette player mode) with a weapon from Shockwave's lab and left to die as Mount St. Helens erupted.^[2]

Bludgeon's plan came full circle in The Transformers: Stormbringer, as he and his followers kidnapped Jetfire and the Technobots, hoping to dissect them and use their parts to replicate the same grafting process that created Thunderwing, giving them their own Pretender Shells. Hacking into the monster's mind Bludgeon implanted a subconscious suggestion for Thunderwing to seek out and destroy entire planets, believing their sacrifice would enable Cybertron to be reborn, before unleashing the monster on Nebulos. However, their plans were stopped by the Wreckers, who took out his cult. In desperation, Bludgeon underwent the grafting process only to find out, far too late, that the shell hadn't been neuro-aligned; the psychic backlash destroyed his mind. While Bludgeon's fate was not detailed in the Spotlight issue on Galvatron, which acted as a sequel of sorts to Stormbringer, writer Simon Furman has indicated that he will appear again at some point [1].

Bludgeon, as well as his whole group, have completely different robot forms to their toys and bear resemblance to the toys' Pretender Shells. His face and helmet bear some similarity to the original Pretender shell, although Bludgeon appears to be missing the lower half of his face and his circuits are exposed. His Pretender shell bears a heavy resemblance to the toy but has been redesigned as if Bludgeon was a Mega-Pretender capable of transforming into a tank, with tank tracks and shoulder turrets clearly visible.

Devil's Due Publishing

Bludgeon would also appear in the fourth G.I Joe vs the Transformers crossover from Devil's Due Publishing. Little is known about this incarnation of Bludgeon, save that, in his pre-Pretender form, he attempted to kill Optimus Prime shortly after he had received the Matrix. Later, Bludgeon and the future Monster Pretenders came to Earth to exploit it, but were shot down by the Chinese. To save themselves, Bludgeon made a deal with the snake cult Cobra-La, gaining his traditional Pretender shell in the process. Bludgeon first stopped Joe Colton's Adventure team and captured Colton himself, killing one of his companions in the process. Later, when a Matrix-afflicted Hawk led Optimus Prime to Tibet to uncover Cobra-La's location, Bludgeon squared off against the Autobot leader, nearly killing him due to his Armour secreting metal-eating acid (an ability noted in Bludgeon's original toy tech spec). Prime was saved by Hawk, and the two fled with Flint into the mountains — only to be chased down by Bludgeon and a group of Cobra-La troopers. Bludgeon again engaged Prime, but lost focus when Prime ripped open his shell to reveal the inner robot. Plummeting off a ravine, Prime attempted to saved him, but Bludgeon realized that if Prime saved him, it would be a betrayal of his philosophy of death and destruction. Using his metal-eating slime to cause Prime to lose his grip, Bludgeon plummeted to his doom laughing.

Transformers: Robots in Disguise

The name Bludgeon was used on a yellow repaint of Hero Megatron, originally from the Generation 2 toy line. Though he may well be a separate character (as he did not appear in any comics or television series and Hasbro did not release any story for him other than he is part of a Destructicon sub-group), he is painted yellow and silver (the primary colors of Bludgeon's Pretender shell) and even has red eye paint across his nose to create the illusion of a "visor" like Bludgeon's original robot mode, leading many to believe he is meant to be a homage to the G1 character.

The Robots in Disguise character of Bludgeon is unofficially considered part of the Transformers: Universe line. He was planned to be made part of the fiction for the Universe, like most non-show repaints from the toy line, by the Transformers: Collectors Club, but they only produced concept art for a biography page before they went under.

Transformers: Robot Masters

Robots in Disguise Bludgeon was remolded into Reverse Convoy for the Transformers: Robot Masters line.

Transformers: Cybertron

Bludgeon received an extremely unusual reference in the Cyber Key info (found on Hasbro's website) for the Transformers: Cybertron character Backstop. The info indicated that Bludgeon and Banzai-Tron had been the ones to teach Backstop the art of being a martial warrior.

References

Donate to Wikimedia