“Ultimately, I serve only one master… Pure logic.”
Credit Shockwave – Transformers Spotlight
Shockwave is possibly the smartest and most powerful of the Decepticons. Shockwave operates on pure logic, which benefits Megatron greatly. Shockwave has on several occasions led the Decepticons though, he gave up his rule the first time back to Megatron when he made himself seem the more logical choice of leader.
Major Story Arcs
Marvel Comics
An exceptionally powerful and intelligent Decepticon with a penchant for cool, analytical thinking, Shockwave proved to be one of the most enduring and effective antagonists in Marvel’s TF comics.
Having journeyed to Earth as part of Megatron’s forces, Shockwave nevertheless avoided the crash that left the other Transformers inoperative for millions of years. Instead, he was waylaid and left trapped in a Savage Land tar pit by the Dinobots, although they accidentally trapped themselves alongside him. Following his accidental revival by an Autobot probe, he successfully ambushed and decimated the Autobots who had been exhausted in a victorious battle over the Decepticons. Having saved his comrades and vanquished their enemies, Shockwave used these victories to wrest control of the Decepticons from Megatron, and embarked upon a series of successful operations stealing energy resources and siphoning enough of the Creation Matrix’s power from a captive Optimus Prime to create the Constructicons.
When Prime was freed, he knocked Shockwave out of commission for several months, following which Shockwave and Megatron reluctantly agreed to a joint leadership of the Decepticons. However, after successfully destroying Optimus Prime, Megatron, suffering from an increasing paranoia that the Autobot leader still lived, blew up the Decepticon Space Bridge while still on it himself.
Shockwave then reigned as the uncontested leader for some time, until he was eventually bested in a battle in Earth’s orbit by Fortress Maximus. Badly damaged, he became unable to fly and fell to Earth burning up in the planet’s atmosphere.
Far later, Shockwave resurfaced, commanding a small rag-team of Decepticons, including Starscream, and with designs on leadership once more. Although he enjoyed some success with his initial sneak attack on Earth’s Decepticon headquarters and in his subsequent duel with current-leader Scorponok, the battle was interrupted by outside forces, and the entire Transformers race was spirited away to Cybertron. This was the doing of the Transformer’s creator Primus, who needed his creations to battle his ancient enemy Unicron.
Considering the battle with Unicron hopeless, Shockwave and Starscream stole an Autobot ship, the Ark and escaped towards Earth. This was to prove their undoing however, as an Autobot hidden aboard the ship deliberately destroyed its controls. Shockwave was not to escape the ship’s crash this time round, and he was rendered inoperative for the last time when it plummeted into the Earth once more.
IDW Publishing
Long ago, Shockwave had a battle with the dinobots over an energon cache, which Shockwave ultimately destroyed to prevent them from getting it. Much later, Shockwave had seen that Cybertron would eventually be depleted of all its resources and decided to do something about it without a care for anything other than survival. He soon starts a program called “regenesis”.
He decides to keep it quiet believing that no one will care much because of the war going on, so he proceeds with his plan by first filling special warheads with large amounts of raw energon and launches them into space towards distant planets with specific geological profiles. After the planets have been seeded, Shockwave waited as time passed and then travels to Earth, one of the seeded planets, knowing that the energon reaction must be regulated properly or it would spiral out of control. Though he knows that he can’t go back, and that Megatron will brand him a rogue, he doesn’t care. For he sees that resources will become very important in the war, and his work with regenesis will ensure that he controls the balance of power. However,
as Shockwave finishes his work on Earth, the Dinobots, who were up in Earth’s orbit spying on him, attack him for revenge for what he did long ago with the energon cache. Although it seemed as though the Dinobots had won, Shockwave then stops trying to think of logical battle plans and goes into a rage-like state and defeats them. Ultimately however, the weapons from the Dinobots’ ship, which Grimlock had activated prior to their attack against Shockwave, fire upon a nearby volcano and everyone is covered in molten lava, and Shockwave remains dormant for many years to come and is eventually discovered by archaeologists in Eureka, Nevada.
Powers and Abilities
Among the Decepticon, Shockwave’s great power is second only to Megatron and very few others. He possesses enough strength and power to lift nearly 2000 tons and can take on the Dinobots on his own. He is also incredibly durable, and only a few could hope to harm him. His total command of the electromagnetic spectrum allows him in his gun-ray mode, to emit a coruscating beam of energy in a wide variety of forms: high-energy explosive gamma rays, x-rays that allow him to see through almost anything, blinding visible light, super-hot infrared rays and radio waves that can either send messages or jam other radio signals are but a few of the weapons in Shockwave’s arsenal.
In Other Media
Film
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Shockwave appears in Transformers: Dark of the Moon and is voiced by Frank Welker. He is first seen in Chernobyl, attacking Optimus and a group of NEST soldiers with his pet driller. As he leaves, he has his driller expose a fuel cell from the Ark that had been hidden there. He later appears in the final battle in Chicago along with his driller. He uses his driller to tear down a building but it is killed by Optimus who he then shoots down. Later, a group of NEST soldiers and the Wreckers team up and ambush Shockwave, badly damaging him. Ultimately, he is killed by Optimus Prime, who then uses Shockwave’s cannon to shoot down the control pillar, halting the teleportation of Cybertron into Earth’s orbit.
Video Games
Transformers: Forged to Fight (2017) (Mobile)
Shockwave is a Tech Class playable character and enemy, he is a 2-4 star rank character.
Game Bio: Truly one of the most feared and powerful of all the Decepticons, Shockwave’s existence is driven solely by one thing – logic. Void of emotion, but teeming with strength and intelligence, he seeks only to advance circumstances to their logical conclusion…however grim that may be.
Shockwave was released on August 10th, 2017.