Saturday I mentioned the new Decepticon leader Galvatron
from the 1986 movie and today is the new Autobot leader Rodimus Prime, who
started out as Hot Rod. Like Galvatron he was introduced in the 1986 movie and
like Galvatron he had a famous voice behind him: Judd Nelson, who at least at
the time was famous thanks to those “brat pack” movies. Going along with his
name, Hot Rod was young and impetuous, which caused big problems when he
interfered with the battle royale between Megatron and Optimus Prime, leading
to Optimus being killed.
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| Hot Rod |
After that Hot Rod, Kup, and the Dinobots crashed on the
planet Quintessa, where after a phony “trial” they had to fight off a bunch of
Sharkticons before escaping to the planet of Junk where Hot Rod successfully
negotiated peace between Autobots and Junkions, enlisting their help to fight
Unicron. After being lost inside Unicron, Hot Rod fought Galvatron and took the
Autobot Matrix, upon which he became Rodimus Prime, who is slightly bigger and
more powerful.
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| Rodimus Prime |
In three episodes in the third season of the TV show Rodimus
becomes Hot Rod again. Once when they found a zombie Optimus Prime in a
floating mausoleum and he unwisely gave Optimus the Matrix. Another when he
crashed in a battle with two Stunticons and the Matrix popped out. The last
time was in “The Return of Optimus Prime,” where a “hate plague” infected
everyone—including Rodimus—and Optimus took the Matrix from him to open it and
save the day. From then on he was Hot Rod; in the “Rebirth” miniseries he
became one of the Targetmasters.
In the third series of toys, there was both a Hot Rod figure
and Rodimus Prime figure. The Rodimus figure was kind of lame. It was taller
but sort of puny, with an RV-like trailer that became a gun platform. The next
year there was a Hot Rod Targetmaster figure, which was just the same figure
with a gun that turned into a little guy.
There have been reissues of both Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime
and even one just called “Rodimus.” Originally Hot Rod was supposed to be
called Hot Rodimus, which sounded pretty terrible.
Hot Rod didn’t appear in the Marvel comics—at least the US
ones—until Generation 2 and even then he didn’t do a whole lot. In the IDW
comics, Hot Rod becomes just Rodimus with half of the Autobot Matrix. After the
Great War ends, he seizes upon the idea of finding the “Knights of Cybertron”
and assembles a crew to search for it. While he’s an enthusiastic and
charismatic leader, Rodimus is brash and prone to flitting from one interest to
another. In the prequel miniseries Autocracy, Hot Rod is a freedom fighter for a Cybertronian city but when the evil Zeta Prime threatens to drain everyone's energon in the city, he blows the entire city up instead.
In the IDW Transformers vs. GI JOE miniseries, Rodimus is
dethroned and becomes known as Hot Rod because he spends his time transporting
radioactive fuel rods—get it? After a confrontation with Blaster he retakes
command of the Autobots and helps lead them and GI JOE to victory.
Rodimus Prime has always gotten kind of a bum rap; his lack
of popularity compared to Optimus Prime prompted the return of Optimus. Much
like it’s hard for replacement superheroes to live up to the original (Reign of
the Supermen, Azrael Batman, Superior Spider-Man, etc.) it was almost
impossible for Rodimus to live up to Optimus’s popularity.
***
One of the last of the original combing teams was the
Terrorcons, led by Hun-Grrr, or Hun-Gurr. He formed the torso of Abominus and
transformed into a white, two-headed dragon. All of the Terrorcons were
monsters and there was a smaller, yellow two-headed dragon too. None of them
were all that bright, pretty much on par with the Dinobots.
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| Hun-Grrr |
Hun-Grrr and the Terrorcons made into the last few episodes
of the third season of the TV show. They were usually up against their
counterparts the Technobots, who formed the far smarter Computron. They never
really made it into the Marvel comic book. They did appear in the IDW prequel
comics Monstrosity and Primacy, though they didn’t combine at the time.
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| Abominus |
In recent years there was a Hun-Grrr and Abominus set of Transformers Prime Beast Hunters toys but the Terrorcons were not part of the Combiner Wars series despite that their rivals the Technobots were.
1 comment:
Didn't like they made Rodimus Prime a whiny bitch on the series after the movie...he really did get the short straw. I like the end of the movie where Hot Rod becomes Rodimus Prime and smacks Galvatron down and kills Unicron...that's the Rodimus Prime they needed to keep writing, but they pussified him. :(
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