The Transformers: Windblade is a mini-series following up the events of The Transformers: Dark Cybertron and deals directly with the aftermath of it on Cybertron, starring the eponymous character Windblade. It's supposed to take place at the same time as its sister series The Transformers: Robots in Disguise and The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye.
The series is written by Mairghread Scott, and illustrated by Sarah "Fayren" Stone.
A sequel series also titled Windblade began in the 2015 event The Transformers: Combiner Wars and ran for 7 issues. It was relaunched in 2016 as The Transformers: Till All Are One.
It now has a character sheet and a recap page. Feel free to add to them.
The Transformers: Windblade provides examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Blurr was always a rather good-looking 'bot, but he comes across as a downright Pretty Boy in his scenes. Same goes for Windblade and Chromia themselves vis-a-vis their first appearance in The Transformers: Dark Cybertron under James Raiz.
- Adaptational Heroism: Knockout. He's still a self-aggrandizing vain jerk, but he's also a neutral instead of a Decepticon, and his medical expertise doesn't seem to delve into Mad Doctor style experimentation.
- An Arm and a Leg: Chromia loses an arm to Starscream.
- Appeal to Flattery: Starscream believed that best way to get Elita One to join the Council of Worlds is to appeal to her colony's warrior and survivalist aspects. However, he makes joining them sound ludicrously great that Elita One refuses to believe it's true.
- Arc Words: "Starscream cares for nothing and no one but himself". At first, Windblade is crushed by this revelation about Cybertron's new leader but later uses that exact same phrase to realize she can manipulate his ruthless self-interest to her advantage.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Implied to be why Waspinator agrees to help Windblade.Windblade: There's one thing everyone on Cybertron seems to be missing, its compassion.
- Big Damn Heroes: Chromia Sky-byte and Swindle all show up at the prison to set Windblade and the others free.
- Big "SHUT UP!": Starscream and Windblade deliver a simultaneous one to Rattrap after he tries snarking about Knock Out.
- Butt-Monkey: Invoked by Waspinator. He points out how everyone is out there to hurt him.Chromia: Why did you run?
Waspinator: You want to hurt Wazzpinator!
Windblade: Wait, why would we hurt you?
Waspinator: Everyone hurtzzz Wazzpinator! Right?
Windblade: (thinking) That... is really depressing. - The Cameo: Optimus, Ultra Magnus, Shockwave, Thunderclash and Nautica appear in flashbacks.
- Camera Abuse: We see some of the after affects of an explosion through Windblade's broken eye, with shattered lines over the panel, and all colors desaturated, but for the Energon.
- Canon Immigrant: The first appearance of a (
Word of God confirmed) G1 Knock Out as well as the first G1 appearance of fuzors Injector and Air Hammer. - Continuity Nod: We learn that Fizzle left the Lost Light crew during the six month Time Skip and he brings up his time aboard the ship.
- Cool Plane: Windblade transforms into a VTOL jet.
- Crisis of Faith: Ironhide is suffering through one due to Shockwave's scheme causing a contradiction with the future vision he received.
- Depending on the Artist: Dark Cybertron art had Windblade as being the tallest of the trio. Here, she's shorter than Chromia.
- Driving Question: Two:
- For Windblade: why is Starscream trying to kill her and why is Metroplex losing power?
- For Ironhide: how did Shockwave contradict the vision of the future he had?
- Early-Bird Cameo: Knock Out, Vanquish, and Fireshot show up in Windblade's vision when she mind-melds with Metroplex; all three of them received speaking roles in the second miniseries.
- Easily Forgiven: Chromia. She was the one behind the bombs and the blackouts.
- Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: Windblade at the hands of Rattrap in Issue 3.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Swindle and (Tall) Tankor both served with Starscream back in the war and even they think he's bad news.Swindle: (drunkenly) I mean, there's selling bots out, and there's selling bots out. You know what I mean?
- Expy: Chromia's appearance and personality are distinctly reminiscent of Prime Arcee, to the point where the upcoming Chromia toy is actually an extensive remould of the Prime Arcee toy.
- Eye Scream: After the Explosion we see the effects through Windblade's eyes which have a bunch of cracks, and her left eye is shut after the explosion implying it was at least partly smashed. Though by the end it's fixed up.
- Faceless Goons: Starscream's "badgeless" security forces.
- Foreshadowing:
- Some of Metroplex's ramblings turn out to be descriptions of the lost Cybertronian colonies.
- Chromia abandons her and Windblade's allies in the fight with the Terrorcons, prioritizing the safety of Windblade herself. This is an early hint that she doesn't mind sacrificing others for her boss's well being.
- Guile Hero: Windblade. Manages to convince Starscream to drop everything against them, including the fact that Chromia was this close of destroying Iacon, and instead cover everything up in exchange of him getting all the glory of, once Metroplex is in better shape, use his space bridge and bring in all the other cybertronian colonies spread in the universe. Right before that? She was about to be killed by Starscream himself.
- Good-Guy Bar: Carrying over from RID: Blurr's bar welcomes Autobots, former Decepticons and Neutrals they all get along, tell stories and complain about Starscream.
- Hand Wave: The explanation for female Transformers amounts to "their ancestors ended up on another world and they evolved differently" and the discussion of it drops there, continuing the franchise's tendency to use the
MST3K Mantra in regards to Transformers having gender. note Both the subject of their being female and the lack of a detailed explanation are lampshaded by Rattrap, who asks Chromia "what's up with you both being called 'she'" — getting "being completely ignored" as his only reply.Rattrap: Ooh-kkayyy. - Human Resources: The Transformers aboard Carcer keep their Titan alive by donating their body parts after they die.
- Hypocrite: Quite easy to miss. Windblade talks about respecting Starscream because he's in charge. In the same breath, she calls him and all politicians creeps. More poignant once you realize that cityspeakers are apparently subservient to figures of authority due to their roles as pretty much Titan maidens.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Essentially Chromia's defense for planting the bomb in the Acrolight District that killed three people. She believed that Windblade would be blamed for it and be driven from Cybertron where she would be forced to return to Caminus.
- Idiot Ball: It took 6 months for Windblade to try to figure out Starscream. This might be the result of the editiorial choice to have all 3 titles have a 6 month timeskip after the events of Dark Cybertron, thus probably making it more jarring than it should be.
- In Vino Veritas: Windblade buys a bunch of rounds for several 'Bots at Blurr's bar, getting all of them drunk in order to try to get more information regarding Starscream. What she finds terrifies her.Windblade: Starscream cares for nothing and no one but himself.
- It's All About Me: Starscream really comes across like this, but it's Starscream so you kind of expect it.
- Karma Houdini: Chromia. Sort of.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Finally hits her in 'Till all are one'
- Living Ship: The Titans set off millions of years ago to colonize other planets. By the present day, the vast majority of them have been damaged beyond repair, but Carcer and/or Tempo is still flying - albeit barely.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Windblade, Chromia and the barguys infiltrate the Metroplex "mine" to stop the Terrorcons.
- Lost Colony: Windblade and Chromia hail from one in the form of Caminus, a Metrotitan that crash-landed on another world millions of years ago with a hot spot inside it. It's also apparently in trouble. Issue #4 reveals that there are other lost colonies out there too that are descended from the crews of other Metrotitans.
- Mama Bear: Chromia to Windblade in a big way, to the point where protecting Windblade is her only priority, such as abandoning her Cybertronian allies in Starscream's secret mine because Windblade was in danger. Chromia is so focused on getting Windblade back to Caminus in one piece that she plants the Acrolight bomb, sabotaging Windblade's own mission so that she'll be forced to leave Cybertron and return home in one piece. She basically dismisses the deaths of three Cybertronians in the explosion as irrelevant when Windblade confronts her about it.
- Tragic Keepsake: It's reveal in later stories that she carved the name of the three cybertronians on the side of her head
- Manipulative Bastard: On par for the course with Starscream.
- Meaningful Name: Caminus was the name of Vulcan's Forge.
- Miko: Windblade, and other Cityspeakers like her, are basically shrine maidens for the Titans. She even states they alter their faces to look like Caminus'.
- Mind Meld: Windblade with Metroplex, which is how she's able to figure out that Chromia was the one setting up the blackouts to power up the space bridge.
- Mook Carryover: With Megatron gone the Terrorcons have moved to working under Starscream.
- Mundane Utility: Windblade uses her sword as a sort of torchlight in issue 1.
- Mythology Gag:
- Chromia gets flustered when Windblade jokes about telling Ironhide that Chromia thinks he's mopey, in an allusion to the fact that the two were a couple in the original cartoon.
- Starscream acts far more like his Transformers: Prime counterpart than G1 Starscream. Not surprising, given the writer of this series has also written episodes for that series.
- A car shows up in the final issue of the miniseries that has a suspicious resemblance to Knock Out of Transformers: Prime, and in the letters section Scott mentioned wanting to find a way to make him show up in IDW. Scott later outright identified the car as Knock Out over Tumblr.
- And he appears in person in the ongoing, along with his conjunx endura (basically "soulmate") who isn't named but looks almost exactly like TFP Breakdown.
- Other things viewed in Windblade's vision include a A Velocitron-like planet, Fuzors and Micromaster Combiners, which in the ongoing are shown with cameos including Jetstorm and Jetfire.
- Never My Fault: Starscream blames Windblade and her tardiness for why their negotiations with the Velocitronian delegates were a failure, even though she did way more work in trying to convince them that an alliance was a good thing. Though in this case the failure wasn't his fault either, the Velocitronians just weren't interested.
- Not Me This Time: Though they give her plenty of other trouble, neither Starscream nor Rattrap are responsible for the bomb that nearly killed Windblade.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Both Chromia and Windblade seem to think this of Starscream. Can't blame them.
- One-Steve Limit: All the best names may have been taken, but that doesn't mean some haven't been reused.
- There being 2 Tankors is referenced again. Windblade internally calls one Tall Tankor (the former Octane) and the other Fat Tankor (Beast Machines one).
- Knockout shows up here, and is the second person to hold that name, the first being Grit's buddy from Empire of Stone, the bot from G1 who originally had the name. Unlike the Tankors, the Knockouts have not met.
- Orcus on His Throne: When we first see Elita One, she's captaining her ship from a massive, spiky throne that's made out of Transformer body parts. When Windblade meets up with her in person, Elita claims that her chair was created from the bodies of Transformers who voluntarily gave up their body parts as a sacrifice to keep their Titan going, painting her in a better light. Her morals are still rather murky, and months later none of the Cybertronians are able to discern Elita's true intentions or if her story is true.
- Orwellian Retcon: Sorta. While not changing Arcee's troublesome origin story, it offers an alternative origin for female Cybertronians. It does however completely retcon the concept of Cybertronians as a One Gender/No Gender race that Simon Furman had pushed for the entirety of his run at IDW.
- Outside-Context Problem: With the conclusion of the Great War, Cybertron searches for other colonies to unite with their kin. What they don't know is that one colony is searching for them, and the armies of First march their way across space for their own little "reunion."
- Paparazzi: Circuit and Longtooth continually annoy people with their interviews and filming. This proves to be a double edged sword; they irritate and spy on people, but they also avoid being Strawman News Media by keeping Starscream under a magnifying glass.
- Plot Detour: Windblade and Chromia, knowing that Metroplex is having an outage, and if not corrected might lead to his death, decide to call it a day. With Chromia going to her quarters, and Windblade going to the bar. Might come off as an Idiot Ball. With the reveal in the final issue that Chromia planted the bomb, it turns out she suggested this on purpose.
- Promoted to Love Interest: While in Transformers: Prime Knock Out and Breakdown had a Villainous Friendship, here Knock Out, and the Canon Immigrant version of the Prime Breakdown are Conjux Endura.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Windblade and Chromia tag-up with Blurr and the bar-goers to stop The Terrorcons mining Metroplex.
- Red Herring: Rattrap must be the bad guy, and pulling a Starscream on Starscream himself, right? Turns out he wasn't and even Starscream seems dissapointed that wasn't the case.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni:
- Windblade being Red, Chromia being Blue. They're even colored that way
- From what we've seen of them, the Tankors appear to be this, "Fat" Tankor being the Red and "Tall" Tankor being the Blue.
- The Scapegoat:
- Starscream tells Windblade outright that if things don't get fixed, he will make sure the populace knows it's her fault.
- Chromia planted the Acrolight bomb in the hopes that Windblade would be blamed for it and be forced to leave Cybertron and return to Caminus in one piece.
- Scenery Porn: Fayren's art is just gorgeous.
- Sequel Hook: The final issue of the first miniseries ends with Windblade getting glimpses of other Transformer colonies out there in the cosmos: a world reminiscent of Velocitron, a world of Micromaster Combiners, and a world of beast-formers, with Windblade offering to repair Metroplex's space bridge so that Starscream can reach out to the other lost colonies to bring them home. That's exactly what happens in the sequel miniseries... although it doesn't quite go as planned.
- Shame If Something Happened: Starscream's thinly veiled threats towards Windblade.
- Shield Bash: Chromia slams Waspinator with her shield when Waspy, expecting the usual reception, tries to cut and run.
- Ship Tease:
- Chromia and Ironhide; see the entry for Mythology Gag.
- Sparkstalker and Lightbright, from trading barbs at each other, to flirting at Blurr's.
- Single-Minded Twins: Vanquish and Fireshot are twins from the colony planet of Devisiun, a world where every Transformer is born with a twin sibling.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Fizzle thinks he's famous because he used to be part of the Lost Light's crew.
- Strawman News Media: Averted, much like Blaster's media pre-war, the post-war news crew doesn't seem to have a political agenda beyond keeping the people both informed and entertained. Though unlike Blaster the current government is powerful enough to censor them.
- Those Two Guys:
- The two Tankors, Tall Tankor (Also known as Octane) and Fat Tankor (Beast Machines Tankor).
- Circuit and Longtooth.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Windblade is friendly, or at least civil, towards Waspinator... Which is such a change from how everyone else treats him that he's initially a bit confused by it.
- Transplant: Numerous, especially from The Transformers: Robots in Disguise as the series has moved to Earth, leaving much of its cast on Cybertron for this series. There are also those who left the Lost Light to stay on planet.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Played with, he's managed to get the public under his control to an extent, though there are still numerous people in every faction who doubt him. As RID showed, keeping up the appearance is very difficult and Starscream always has to watch himself. In Issue 2, Windblade goes public with her concerns to Circuit and Longtooth once she has found evidence of something going on inside Metroplex.
- Weapon Specialization:
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Starscream features a pair of retractable wrist mounted swords.
- Chromia sports a poleaxe.
- Cool Sword: Windblade manifests an energon scimitar.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Windblade. She didn't even imagine that Starscream could be a bad person before having it told to her face — and the realisation utterly shocks her.
- The Worf Effect: Slug, member of the Dinobots and one of the biggest characters is taken down by both Rippersnapper and Starscream to show how powerful they are.
- Your Size May Vary:
- The Metrotitans
- When Windblade and co meet Navitas, as Delta, he's the size of a spaceship on the outside, but inside he's a massive city. The racing rink the characters go to visit (and the city has 4 total) is bigger than the entirety of the Titan we saw on the outside.
