Embedded Files
Ravage: one of the oldest Decepticons known to history, and equally one of the deadliest. His loyalty unquestionable, his sly cunning infallible, his sexiness unsurpassed. Depending on which version you consider canon, Ravage was either silent and feral or suave and chatty, but either way, he was one of the best - and best-known - of Soundwave's Cassettecons and Megatron's top spies and saboteurs, though his legacy is far older. Originally, he was one of two bodyguards to the ancient Autobot Overlords immediately prior to the Cybertronian Civil War, alongside his fellow Mini-Cassette Nightstalker, but he turned on his charge and his partner by letting the last - and enfeebled - Overlord die of energon deficiency after peace talks between two warring city-states went sour, rendering Nightstalker's sacrifice to protect them from enemy forces moot. Ever since, he had become Megatron's right-hand bot, his devotion to the mechanical maniac unwavering up until the Autobot's victory in the Great War. Afterwards, he was contronted alongside fellow Cassettecons Laserbeak and Buzzsaw by the supposedly destroyed Predacon Decepticon Divebomb, who offered to rebuild them in new bodies if they join him in his new Predacon faction. Although he agreed, Ravage would eventually grow disillusioned with his work under Divebomb's command, and would subsequently leave to offer his services to the current Predacon ruling body, the Tripredacus Council. His natural aptitude for camouflage and subterfuge made him a perfect covert operative, which came in handy for what would become his last mission: track down the Predacon fugitive Megatron, and terminate him and any other witnesses, before he could utilize the data on the Golden Disk he stole for his own nefarious ends. Working with the Maximals stranded on prehistoric Earth with his target, along with Tripredacus spy Tarantulas, Ravage actually managed to capture Megatron, until Megatron revealed his trump card: a fragment of the then-destroyed Golden Disk with a message from the original Megatron, asking for help from any Transformers still loyal to him to use the then-in development Transwarp technology for some plot. His loyalty in his past commander reinvigorated, Ravage switched sides yet again, and died via an explosion in his stealth ship set by Rattrap as he attacked the Maximal base.But this wasn't the last we hear from our favorite mechanical panther: In the Binaltech storyline (which may or may not have an impact on the current, canonical timeline), the black box of Ravage's ship (with his personality engrams written onto it) was found by human scientists about a decade before he officially woke up on the Ark, and dubbed it "Schrodinger's Box" (based on the experiment of putting a live cat inside a box with a radioactive isotope, and the quandry of whether or not the cat is still alive or dead before the box is opened to check, thus being both at the same time), before they were able to make contact with the personality inside. In exchange for future Ravage's foresight, the scientists agreed to make him a new body (using a fake Binaltech project and a Chevrolet Corvette template), and kidnapped 'present' Ravage (who had somehow become captured by the US military) to provide a 'spark' for the personality to truly 'live'. Unfortunately for the scientists, the new Ravage broke his promise and killed them, then - learning that his actions in the Beast Wars did NOT change the outcome of the war - set out to rectify that oversight.
First, he sabotaged many of the Autobots' supply trains, then rebuilt the Decepticon Chronosphere and trapped Megatron and his troop in a time loop. The reason behind this? He knows that the Chaos Bringer Unicron was on his way, and with Megatron missing, the Autobots would regain control of Cybertron and have to face the giant planet-eater alone. With their forces weakened in the ensuing battle, he could bring Megatron back (still sane, instead of the insane Galvatron he would have become in the normal timeline), and the Decepticons would then trounce the remaining Autobots and claim total control of the universe. So the Decepticons wouldn't be totally leaderless in Megatron's absence, he rebuilt Shockwave in a new body, and allowed him to take over. The plan was actually working quite well, until one pesky time-sensitive Autobot, Overdrive, felt the time warps created by Ravage's tamperings and helped capture him before he could do any more damage. Unfortunately, by that time, Unicron was already spoted within Cybertron's solar system, so while Optimus went off to use the Matrix of Leadership to take the Dark God down, the rest of the Autobots initiated "Operation: Distant Thunder" - sending one Autobot's memory engrams of Ravage's plans back in time to a point before his interference, in hopes that their future selves would be better prepared when Ravage DID start fucking up the space-time continuum. In an ironic twist, Ravage's plan both worked and didn't work; the Autobots were successful in "Operation: Distant Thunder", causing history to be reverted back to how it should be, but a mysterious black Optimus robot came in and plucked the Ravage-altered timeline away and separated it so it could continue - apparently, the Binaltech-modified Transformers have a destiny far greater than they realize, which undermines Ravage's original plan but must ensure that it succeeds for it to come to pass. After this, Ravage's fate is unknown, but it IS known that he was rebuilt in yet another Binaltech/Alternators body, this time a more appropriate body (that of a Jaguar XK with a more animaloid body, instead of the humanoid one his original body had). When and how this happened is anyone's guess, if it's even integrated into the Binaltech story (right now, it's an Alternators exclusive; Alternators being the American version of the toyline which, unlike Binaltech, has no storyline to it).
Of course, that's just one possible future for the ol' sexy-puss, and not the only one where he was revived. Sometime after his 'death' in the Agenda trilogy, depending on which version you follow (and assuming they are mutually exclusive and not part of the same continuity), Ravage was reborn not once but TWICE, both using more or less the same body structure. First, shortly after his 'death', by his replacement Magmatron, who found his spark undamaged and installed it into a blank protoform, reformatting it into what would eventually be known to toy collectors as his Tripredacus Agent bod (a repaint of Transmetal 2 Cheetor in Ravage's colors), though without an alt mode; he just stood on his hind legs like a werecat. As his first assignment, he hunted down a band of Maximals lead by Razorbeast, a warthog that Magmatron had forced to convert most of the remaining intact protoforms found into Predacons loyal to him, but secretly created his own band of Maximals to help him escape. Ravage, having caught up to the group, was on the verge of defeating them with his own army until additional Maximal reinforcements arrived, defeating his team and forcing him into a retreat back into the forest. It was this version that also revealed that maybe Ravage was not as loyal to Megs as we had been lead to believe, and that his primary concern is and always had been himself. His other reincarnation was sometime after the Beast Wars cartoon, and was instigated by an undead Tarantulas, again using his spark to be revived in his Tripredacus Agent body (though this time with a robot mode). The remnants of his original body were used by the Vok to create Transmetal Tigatron (who, with Airrazor, was kidnapped by the Vok and fused to become Tigerhawk, but died and had his spark defused... it's all complicated, so trust me on this one), who was Ravage's chief enemy during this time. Unfortunately, the comic that this incarnation was in never got to finish, so we dunno what happened to him afterwards.There's other incarnations of Ravage, as well, though none of them are quite as good as the original: In the Japan-only Beast Wars Metals manga, the Ravage that appears in the Beast Wars series is considered the son of (more than likely) the original G1 Ravage, who was depicted as the McDonald's Beast Wars figure Panther. There was also two wholly metallic drone versions of Ravage in Transformers Energon, known as Battle Ravage and Command Ravage, who were once under the command of the Alpha Quintesson, before they were commandeered by Megatron. And then there's "Black Panther Man". Just....don't ask about him, alright? Just don't. Seriously, don't. Ye will go mad at the very comprehension of him. Finally, as a sort of joke, someone in the Hasbro department came up with a "Shattered Glass" version of Ravage in the form of a white jaguar that embodies the lolcat meme. I wish I could say I was joking, but I'm not. For those of you who don't know, Shattered Glass was originally a joke series that took advantage of the "mirror universe" cliche, creating an alternate universe where the Evil Autobots are fighting against the Heroic Decepticons, and everyone's personalities are switched from what they were normally (for instance, Optimus Prime is a homicidal maniac, while Starscream is a loyal commander to a passionately peaceful Megatron). And don't get me started on Bayformer Ravage; he looks almost nothing like a jaguar, and the only reason why I'm going to buy his figure is because he's painted black and cobalt (unlike the stark silver that he is in the movies), and he at least has the classic Ravage thigh rockets.
So, why is he an anthro god, to me? Well, Ravage just exudes awesomeness. His Beast Wars body is incredibly easy on the eyes, and his growly Slavic accent is fairly pleasing to the ears. He's just one big hunky, suave Beast Warrior, James Bond as a villain. I can also see him seducing the likes of Cheetor or Silverbolt or even Rattrap, to get what he wanted; he's Garr-gay, in other words, smooth as silk without coming off as flamey. He is truly one of the coolest Transformers I've ever laid eyes on, which is why I shelled out nearly $100 for his Japanese toy, and plan on eventually commissioning several pics of him.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse