Laserbeak

Laserbeak is the Decepticons' eye in the sky and, on the evidence of the cartoon, one of the most consistently effective operatives Megatron ever fielded. He was the first of the cassette Transformers, and before the Ark ever left Cybertron it was Laserbeak who infiltrated Iacon and learned of the Autobot mission to seek new energy sources, triggering the Decepticon interception that stranded both crews on Earth for four million years. Practically everything that happens in the series proceeds from a Laserbeak intelligence report.

His on-screen record is remarkable for a background character. In "More Than Meets the Eye, Part 1" he is the first Decepticon to engage Autobots on Earth, chasing Hound and Cliffjumper and detaching one of his laser cannons to pursue Cliffjumper remotely while he runs Hound down. In "Divide and Conquer" he finds the wounded Optimus Prime and fires directly into his open chest cavity, worsening the damage badly enough that the Autobots' hunt for a replacement cosmotron becomes an emergency. In "A Prime Problem" he manages both to blast Optimus Prime and to shoot Starscream out of the air. And it is Laserbeak, spying on Moonbase One in the movie, who overhears Optimus Prime ordering the energon shipment that Megatron hijacks to attack Autobot City. He is arguably the single most productive Decepticon of the war.

He is also, by his own profile, a coward and a follower rather than a leader. His preferred position is perched on the shoulder of whoever currently leads the Decepticons, which the Marvel comics turn into a running visual shorthand for who actually holds command, and which reads equally as sound survival instinct: the leader's shoulder is the one place the leader cannot easily shoot.

Transforms into an audio cassette (a microcassette in toy form) small enough to be carried inside Soundwave's chest and slipped into human equipment, making him an ideal infiltrator and eavesdropper. In condor mode he flies quietly enough to roost unnoticed for extended surveillance and records everything he sees and hears for playback to Megatron. His backpack mounts two ruby-crystal-powered lasers that can be independently targeted and, in the cartoon, detached to pursue a target remotely; the profile identifies him as an interrogator who uses them to torture prisoners. He is also strong enough to carry another Transformer in flight, ferrying Starscream about on more than one occasion. His weaknesses are his ruby power supply, which depletes and leaves him effectively disarmed, his fragile airframe, and outright cowardice, reflected in a courage rating of 2.

• Soundwave: his carrier and commander, who deploys and recalls him; Laserbeak is the first and most-used of Soundwave's cassettes.
• Megatron: the leader whose shoulder he prefers to occupy, and whose plans are built on Laserbeak's reconnaissance more often than on anyone else's work.
• Ravage: his opposite number among the cassettes, the ground infiltrator to Laserbeak's aerial spy, frequently deployed on the same operations.
• Starscream: an odd working partnership, since Laserbeak repeatedly carries Starscream in flight even though he also shoots him down in "A Prime Problem".

Marvel makes Laserbeak's perching a formal plot device rather than a character quirk. When Megatron's disastrous attack on the Ark leaves only himself and a wounded Laserbeak alive, Laserbeak returns to base and lands on Shockwave's shoulder rather than Megatron's, publicly signalling the transfer of command; when Shockwave concedes, Laserbeak switches perches again. The same silent gesture marks Galvatron's takeover and then Megatron's restoration in "Target: 2006", and it is Laserbeak who digs Megatron out of the rubble afterward. Marvel also has him speak early on before quietly dropping the ability around the time Shockwave arrives, and gives him a stretch of undignified service under Decepticon occupation of the Blackrock plant, squawking, heating up the workers' pizzas and delivering recorded ultimatums to the military outside. Under Ratbat's command he becomes an enforcer for the fuel-hypnosis scheme. His comics career also ends definitively, which the cartoon's never does.

The cartoon never kills Laserbeak. His prominence simply fades after 2005: with Megatron reformatted into Galvatron he can no longer perch on his leader's shoulder, and Ratbat takes over most spy assignments. He is still active in season three, and in "Webworld" he is disaffected enough to side with Motormaster and Swindle's threatened mutiny against Galvatron, notable given his courage rating of 2. He survives the series without an on-screen death. In Marvel he meets a definite end, killed in Buenos Aires while part of the joint Autobot-Decepticon force confronting the Underbase-empowered Starscream in "Dark Star!".

• Laserbeak originated as a Takara Microchange "Micro Cassette Robo Condor", which is why his Japanese name is simply Condor; his preliminary Hasbro name was Slazer.
• The fiction depicts him as a standard audio cassette, but the toy is a microcassette, matching Soundwave's toy being a microcassette recorder rather than the stereo deck he is described as elsewhere.
• He was voiced by Frank Welker in the American cartoon, the same performer behind Megatron, Soundwave and Ravage.
• He was sold in the US and Europe as a carded two-pack with Frenzy, while Japan released him individually as Condor with a clear plastic tape case.
• Laserbeak and Ravage were part of the original Decepticon cast planned for the 2007 live-action film and were cut when Soundwave was dropped from that script.
• His habit of perching on the current leader is used deliberately in the Marvel comics as a visual signal of who is actually in command, switching from Megatron to Shockwave and back within a single scene.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• Speech: Marvel establishes he can talk and then quietly stops using it, while the cartoon keeps him to squawks and recorded playback throughout.
• Alt mode: fiction shows a standard audio cassette, the toy is a microcassette, and his pre-Earth cartoon form transformed into a cassette even though Soundwave's Cybertronian mode was a lamp-post rather than a tape player.
• Loyalty: the tech spec calls him utterly dependable, but the cartoon has him backing a mutiny against Galvatron in "Webworld", and Marvel repeatedly shows him switching allegiance to whoever is winning.
• Fate: killed by Underbase Starscream in Marvel, but alive and unaccounted for at the end of the cartoon.