Z is pretty difficult too.
For the Autobots we’ll go to the IDW comics and Zeta Prime. He was sort of the Senator Palpatine of
Autobots: a ruthless jerk who took over
and then set himself up as the unquestioned dictator.
 |
| Make Cybertron Great Again! |
Zeta Prime inherited the leadership from Sentinel Prime just
as Cybertron was facing an energon shortage and dissent from Megatron and his
Decepticon faction. So Zeta tried to
crush the upstart Decepticons with a new security force led by a dude named
Orion Pax. Remember him? The guy who became Optimus Prime? Yeah, him.
In the Autocracy miniseries, Zeta plans to drain Cybertronian slum
inhabitants of their energon to use it for his own purposes. (Repbulicans would really love this
guy!) When Orion Pax decides he’s not
comfortable with essentially killing thousands of Cybertronians, Zeta turns on
him.
Only by Orion Pax and Megatron uniting their forces are they
able to defeat Zeta Prime. Though then
Megatron betrays Orion and takes power for himself, proving to be just as bad.
There are of course no toys for Zeta Prime—yet. He hasn’t really appeared anywhere else,
though some people say one of the unnamed former Autobot leaders in the first
episodes of the third season of the old cartoon is named Zeta Prime, but that’s
not really official.
***
Zarak isn’t really much of a Transformer, at least not in
the US. He’s the Nebulon who became
Scorponok’s head. Despite that Scorponok
was about a foot tall, Zarak was the same size as every other Headmaster
Nebulon at the time. Scorponok had kind
of a football helmet that would surround Zarak then so he wouldn’t look quite
so disproportionate.
 |
| Zarak is the little purple-and-white dude |
In the TV show and the Marvel comic Zarak is the leader of a
group of evil Nebulons who decide for…reasons to make themselves the heads and
guns of Decepticons. It never really
makes a ton of sense in either the TV show or comic; it was a gimmick that was
better as a toy than a storytelling concept. In the Marvel US comic Scorponok was the leader of the Decepticons just before the final issues. He even "won" when Optimus Prime surrendered to him because Unicron was on the way and they needed to set aside their differences. Scorponok (and presumably Zarak) were killed by Unicron to buy time for Optimus and the Matrix to show up.
Anyway, in Japan Zarak becomes kind of synonymous with
Scorponok. There’s a “MegaZarak” and
“BlackZarak.”
In the IDW comics miniseries Monstrosity Scorponok leads the
Decepticons (briefly) but of course this is before the whole Headmasters thing
so Zarak is not around.
That does it for the A to Z Challenge (again). Maybe you learned something. Maybe not.
Whatever. I had some fun reliving
old and new memories about my fave childhood toys. So there.
3 comments:
It was fun. I don't read the comics very often so kinda cool to read about some of what's happening there and you covered lots of favorites, some lesser-known ones, and I know a few letters were kinda hard to find a good example. Thanks!
I learned quite a bit. Wish I would've known about these when my son was younger. He would've loved them. I mean, I knew about the movies, but didn't really know there was such a wide collection.
I also had a lot of fun with these posts. Many of my friends were big Transformers fans back in the day.
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