Lancer

Lancer is an Autobot from the Generation 1 continuity family.

I'm the bad guy!

Lancer, back when she was impetuous and untested, was once one of Cybertron's most promising young scientists. She's thought about putting in an application at the Elite Guard, but she always gets too nervous.

Fiction

Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Transformers cartoon

Check out my shoulder!

Lancer is a member of the Female Autobots. She was holding a clipboard within the team's secret underground headquarters when Chromia and her team returned from their energy-stealing mission. Later, when their headquarters was located and destroyed, she and Greenlight freed Moonracer from the debris. Sticking with the rest of the team, she did her share in the fight against the Decepticons and could again later be seen manning a series of monitors in the team's new base. The Search for Alpha Trion

Wings Universe

Lancer was understudy to the archaeometrist, Glyph. She and her friend Greenlight worked with Glyph on an historical dig in Median alongside Flip Sides and Strika. When they uncovered some potentially life-threatening treasures, the historians requested support from the Elite Guard in case the Decepticons showed interest in their find. Lancer was thrilled at the idea, and eagerly made friends with the proud warriors who arrived to defend them. She joined Strika in working alongside the Elite Guard when the Decepticon Stormtroopers made their attempt to raid Median's dig. Lancer acted as a lure, drawing the Decepticons in through a hole in the fortifications, where the Elite Guard were waiting to ambush them.

The thrill of the situation faded for Lancer when Rage and Aquablast penetrated the inner perimeter and reached the spot where the other historians were hiding. Aquablast killed Glyph for being uncooperative and was about to kill Greenlight as well. Lancer was forced to shoot him in the back, killing an enemy in the line of duty.

Briefly shaken up by the incident, Lancer still chose to join the Elite Guard in pursuing Rage and the other Decepticons after they made off with the Heart of the Dragon. They managed to infiltrate the Metrotitan and survived battle with Brimstone, the Heart of the Dragon given life and form. After the mission concluded, Lancer returned to Strika and Greenlight, and together they planned a memorial service for the fallen Glyph. Flames of Yesterday

When the Autobots' current reserve of energies was dangerously low, Lancer joined her comrades still on Cybertron in stasis hibernation as an energy-saving measure. Battle Lines, Part 6

Generations Selects Special Comic

In 2050, Orthia was supporting the Selectors' revolution on Earth when she was attacked by Terrorcons. Blot's slime gun forced the combiner to separate back into Lancer and her teammates. Abominus comic 1

2005 IDW continuity

First appearance: The Transformers: Windblade vol. 2 #7

Comrade Napoleon Obsidian is always right!

A colonist forged aboard the spaceborne Titan Carcer, Lancer served under the command of Elita One. During a roll call, Lancer opted not to pay attention, instead focusing her attention (and hands) onto Greenlight. This earned the couple the mind-numbing job of guarding Carcer's Spacebridge. Greenlight complained that no one had come through the portal in weeks, and wasn't even sure that the two combatants who had briefly fallen through the Spacebridge were even Cybertronian. Lancer assured her that Obsidian had said they were, and he never lied. Proving Lancer correct, the Spacebridge activated! As she quickly radioed the ship's bridge, her partner, along with several of their shipmates, trained their weapons on the arriving 'bots. The Will of the Few

After Carcer's inhabitants had joined the Council of Worlds, many of them emigrated to Cybertron while Carcer himself was being repaired, Lancer among them. She and Greenlight were trying to enjoy a quiet drink together at Maccadam's when a drunk Decepticon began harassing them. After Lancer told him he wasn't making any sense, Greenlight stated that the couple were from Carcer, anyway, and that he should get lost. 07:00:00

Back aboard the ship, Lancer and Greenlight were loitering when Carcer's sensors picked up a horde of zombie Titans headed towards Cybertron; they promptly relayed the threat to Obsidian. Ping After Elita refused to transform Carcer into robot mode, Lancer and Greenlight exchanged guilty glances but ultimately remained loyal to the First. Desperate Times When the Cybertronian fleet tried to claim Carcer by force, Greenlight and Lancer remained in the control room, reporting everything to Obsidian, including the hull breach that had sealed itself suspiciously fast. Desperate Measures

When Windblade awoke Carcer, Cybertron learnt he was truly Vigilem, the Titan of Liege Maximo who had freed his master before dying. When Chromia was tasked to hunt down the rogue Prime, Greenlight and Lancer joined her aboard the Sabre. The Chosen One

However, soon after heading out, the trio came under attack from the Prime's Maximal enforcers, damaging their long range communications. By the time they'd repaired them, they were in G Nebula 89 as the Decepticon Vengeance Division squared off against Unicron. Despite their immense firepower, the Decepticon fleet failed to damage the Chaos Bringer, with Chromia ordering the ship back to Cybertron once Unicron teleported away. Stranger Eons When the trio returned, Unicron had now assumed a towering robot mode and sent the mutated DVD against the Autobot fleet defending the planet. Our Finest As Unicron began to tear into Cybertron, the Spectral Knights used the magic of the Talisman to teleport the planet's population to the safe haven of Earth, the fleet following shortly afterwards thanks to Elita One's sacrifice. Road's End

War for Cybertron Trilogy marketing material

Lancer was among those destined few chosen by Solus Prime to combine into Orthia. Siege Teletraan-1 Data Files

2019 IDW continuity

First appearance: Transformers #17

Lancer was an energon engineer who worked on the Winged Moon under Wheeljack's command. While investigating possible sabotage, she was present when Vigilem attacked and severed the Tether that connected the moon to Cybertron, which sent the moon itself spinning off into an unstable solar orbit. The Change In Your Nature Part Five While most other workers evacuated, Lancer stayed behind along with Wheeljack, Huffer, Gears, and Cosmos to try and save the station from falling into the sun. After first trying to the energon to use as a thruster, then manually attempting to reactivate the moon's controls with the help of their last shuttle, Lancer discovered the culprit responsible for sabotaging the moon as they passed through the Croaton Cloud—an infiltration trooper named Enemy. After an unsuccessful interrogation session, the team hit upon an unorthodox solution—by rigging the moon's wings with explosives and igniting the energon reserves, they were able to halt the moon's spin and push it out onto a wider vector of approach. However, their celebration was interrupted when Slipstream and her Decepticon contingent attacked, intent on stealing the moon's energon for themselves. Wheeljack: Orbital Decay

While Wheeljack went back to Cybertron to get help, the other engineers abandoned Enemy, barricaded themselves in the central control room, and rigged the access hatchways with jury-rigged booby-traps as they could, which kept their attackers on the back foot until Novastar's Autobots arrived to rescue them. While setting up more roadblocks, Enemy and Blackjack found them and chased them back to a side hatch. With no time left before the Decepticons overran their position, Lancer made the drastic decision to fight back by sacrificing the moon itself—by destabilizing the moon's artificial gravity system they created a tiny singularity that would ignite the remaining energon and blast their attackers away. The maneuver proved both effective and destructive; though the Decepticons retreated, the moon itself was now badly damaged and hurtling into deep space. Lancer and the other engineers boarded Sky Lynx to return to Cybertron, all except Cosmos: he intended to stay behind, and asked her to take a data packet to Blast Off so that he could join Cosmos. Moon

Lancer fell in with the Autobots, in exile at Crystal City due to Decepticon occupied Iacon. After Perceptor attempted an experiment to augment Jumpstream's teleporting powers, Lancer examined the prodigy when she returned from her trip. Somehow, Jumpstream was saturated with chronon particles, evidence that she transported through time as well as space with the upgrades. Test Flight II

Toys

Generations Selects

If you can't handle me at my orange and purple, then you don't deserve me at my, well, orange and purple.

• Autobot Lancer (Deluxe Class, 2019)
  • Series: War for Cybertron: Siege
  • ID number: WFC-GS05
  • Accessories: "JF-10 Gravitus Blaster", "C-50 Sonic Electro-Armor" Prime Armor/combiner hand, Prime Master gap filler/gun

• Known designers: AJ Piejko-Brown (packaging)

A Generations Selects accompaniment to Siege, Lancer is a redeco and head retool of Greenlight (herself a retooling of Power of the Primes Moonracer), transforming into a Cybertronic car. Lancer can also form an arm or leg for any Combiner Wars-style Combiner, with Siege online material branding her as part of Orthia.

She comes with a redeco of her mold-sister Novastar's gun, which can combine with Moonracer's gun (or Siege Lionizer/Dazzlestrike) to form a larger rifle that doesn't look too out of place in a combiner hand. She also comes with Prime Armor (originally belonging to Power of the Primes Jazz) with a place for a Prime Master, Enigma, or Matrix core that can transform into a hand for a combiner. This part has a piece that can fill the gap in the chest armor or be held as a gun.

Oddly, her instruction manual shows Greenlight in all of the illustrations.

This figure was found at retail in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan a day before being officially announced by Hasbro USA on their Facebook page.

The original iteration of this mold was also used to make Novastar, and was extensively retooled into Selects Tentakil and Scylla. Siege Chromia and Generations Selects Nightbird also reuse parts of the mold; specifically the wheels, thighs and hip ball joint sockets.

Notes

• Lancer was only known as the "unnamed orange Female Autobot" for a good 25 years until she was named in the Timelines text story, "Flames of Yesterday", as were a handful of other previously-unnamed female Autobots.
• The Club Udon special edition cover to G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers: The Art of War #2, which is dedicated to the ladies of the two brands, surprisingly features what appears to be Lancer with Greenlight's colors. This is the only instance during the 25 years between the airing of "The Search for Alpha Trion" and the publication of "Flames of Yesterday" that these characters have been referenced.
• Jesse Wittenrich noted on Twitter that he named Lancer after the heroine Atalanta from the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts and that the preliminary name concept was Atalancer.^[1]
• In the 2005-2018 IDW continuity, Lancer and Greenlight are a romantic couple, the first on-panel female couple shown in a Transformers story, though Proxima and Acceleron were the first mentioned.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Lancer (ランサー Ransā)

References