|
| “ | Death comes to he who crosses me. | „ |
| ~ Dirge |
Dirge is one of the many Decepticon seekers present in the Transformers franchise. A master of using fear as a weapon, Dirge is a morose, brooding, and unlucky figure, and it has almost become a "running gag" for the fearmongering Decepticon to either be killed or defeated easily. However, despite his deaths and wounds, Dirge always somehow comes back.
History[]
Dirge was one of the several generic Decepticons that blindly followed Megatron, but despite Dirge's loyalty, he and the coneheads was somewhat incompetent. He was first seen in Dinobot Island, participating on a raid on Dinobot Island, where he was eventually chewed on and thrown bodily by a time-lost Tyrannosaurus rex. Dirge was seen as part of Megatron's personal guard, and was also briefly involved in an aborted air strike to seize the Negavator, and was present for the next raid on the Negavator's holding pen. Once Red Alert rigged the Negavator to explode, however, Dirge led his fellow Seekers in retreat, against Megatron's direct orders.
In the two-parter Megatron's Master Plan, Dirge, Thrust and Ramjet were led by Starscream on a raid on a solar energy facility in Central City. However, this was a front for Shawn Berger's attempt to take down the Decepticons with his private army. While his army failed, the aid of the Autobots turned the tide. Dirge was blasted by Tracks, and was saved when Thrust and Ramjet defeated Tracks. Later, when Megatron proposed an alliance with Berger as part of a scheme to discredit the Autobots, Dirge escorted Berger home so that the human could cosider the offer. When Berger agreed, Dirge was one of the key players in Megatron's staged videos to tarnish the Autobots' reputation. Later, after the Autobots were successfully vilified in the public eye and exiled to deep space, the Seekers turned on the people of Central City, opening fire in the middle of the streets. Although Dirge and the Seekers fared well against an attack by the Air Force, the eventual return of the Autobots proved to be more than the Decepticons could handle.
Dirg's bad luck and incompetence was seen in Hoist Goes Hollywood, where he was ordered to transport an unknown invention stolen from Wheeljack's lab on Cybertron to their home base, and ended up crashing in a swamp and temporarily deactivating due to its weight, prompting the other coneheads to save him. In The Key to Vector Sigma, Dirge and the coneheads tried and failed to capture a convoy of superfuel, inspiring Megatron to create the Stunticons.
In The Movie, Dirge and the Coneheads, or Seekers who looked like them were eaten by Unicron. However, Dirge and the others were seen throughout season 3, and Dirge turned up in Carbombya, hiding with Ramjet amongst President Fakkadi's air force. Fakkadi denied their presence to the Autobots, but Outback psyched the two Decepticons out by walking around the airfield with what he claimed was a "Decepticon detector." When the coneheads tried to escape, Outback used a smoke grenade to make them crash, then tore the location of Chaar out of them with his steely gaze. The two hapless Decepticons somehow escaped Autobot captivity, though. They later participated in a full-scale assault on Cybertron and chose to strafe Ultra Magnus—who dispatched them both with well-timed punches that sent them careening into buildings.
Marvel Comics[]
Dirge first appeared in Issue #17 of the Marvel US title, among the Decepticons serving Straxus on Cybertron. He was involved in a failed attempt to capture Blaster after he had infiltrated the Decepticons' citadel and gained information on the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth. In the UK-exclusive story "Target: 2006", Dirge led a group of Decepticons on a mission to capture the Autobot resistant leader Emirate Xaaron. They were forced to abort the mission after Megatron summoned reinforcements to Earth, not realising they had been about to be ambushed by the Autobots.
By Issue #21, Dirge and the other Coneheads had joined up with Megatron's Earth Decepticons. They performed aerial cover for his attempt to harness the power of a dam, battling the Aerialbots, but were forced to retreat. In the UK-exclusive story "The Gift", Dirge and Kickback acted as guards for Soundwave while he sent a message to Cybertron. Dirge took down Trailbreaker, giving Soundwave time to complete the message.
In the G.I.Joe and the Transformers miniseries, Dirge acted as one of the main henchmen to Megatron (and later Shockwave alongside Bombshell in their attempt to gain control of the new Power Station Alpha. After the Decepticons formed an alliance with Cobra, Dirge joined them in attacking the Autobots but was destroyed when Serpentor jammed his missile launchers, causing him to explode. (Since the series was ignored in the Marvel UK storyline, he would make one more appearance in "Salvage", helping to retrieve a deactivated Megatron.)
The post-movie version of Dirge appeared in "Space Pirates" as part of the attack force put together by Soundwave to assault the Autobot base on Cybertron, who instead ended up fighting the Quintessons. He also made one appearance in Marvel UK's Earthforce storyline, in "Divide and Conquer", as part of the Decepticon force who joined Soundwave in attacking the Earthforce base as a distraction while Starscream attempted to hijack an oil tanker.
Transformers Animated[]
After Starscream went rogue and became an immortal loner waging war on his former leader, Megatron, he used his supernatural spark to construct a small army of clones with fragments of personalities of him. As every clone had the personality of an exaggerated Starscream trait, Dirge's was greed. But Dirge was never appeared in the series and as Megatron destroys all Starscream's Clones in Endgame Part 1, Dirge was destroyed too (as he was an inert Clone).
Cyberverse[]
- Main article: Dirge (Cyberverse)
