I'd argue that Getaway is a "he who fights monsters" villain, going from launching a campaign to bring down Megatron to outright trying to kill the Lost Light for validation. I can't tell if he was right in killing Megatron, but he ended up utterly sociopathic.

 

Which is unfortunate.

I prefer the idea of him turning traitor/surrendering on Cybertron as a misdirect to buy time for Optimus Prime and the Autobots to escape on the Ark after he preemptively passes the Matrix of Leadership. Starscream thinks he forced Sentinel to turn over the Matrix to the Decepticons, creates a huge fanfare and ceremony for Megatron only for Sentinel to reveal an empty Matrix Chamber. Megatron kills Sentinel on the spot, chides Starscream for being an idiot and orders the Nemesis to be launched as they watch the Ark fire into the sky.

 

Sentinel Prime = pure traitor

 

...Pharma. For all his hate of Decepticons, I've seen nigh none on the Autobot side as potentially twisted and sadistic as him- the sheer lunacy to challenge Ratchet to a contest of "better physician" with the pretense of working on "half a bot"... and then vertically bisecting said bot? and that's only AFTER he reduced Ratchet to a head and his spark and casing. Then again, one could say IDW's StarSaber is in equal measures twisted and evil- a religious zealot in the extreme given free reign to snuff out those who don't believe as he does.

 

He's not an Autobot?

 

Impactor. The bastard lovechild of Ironhide, ambiguous Shockwave purple, and the harpoon of a whaling vessel.  

 

Can’t believe this conversation hasn’t mentioned IDW Prowl yet. While philosophically you can argue as to what is good and evil, ends justifying means etc, but in all Transformers fiction I’ve never seen something as reprehensible as the I/D chips. They’re the perfect encapsulation of everything Prowl stands for - a belief that he is the only right-thinking person and all others must behave as he wants them to or die. Literally.

THAT is evil.

 

There are only two acceptable answers, really.

 

Cliffjumper.

 

Whirl is one sadistic mother fucker in the IDW continuity.

 

Man, I wish there was a Flame toy.... 

 

Any Autobot from Shattered Glass? Any Autobot infected by the Hate Plague? The Beast? Autobot Megatron?

Oh, and Getaway can be up there, but just as you can't excuse Getaway because of Megatron, you can't forget we can't excuse Megatron because of Getaway. Like so much else of the end of MTMtE/LL, everything went off the rails at the end, and part of me wonders if OP put Megs on LL with the unmentioned though directly intended consequence that at least one of the Autobots would try to kill him.

 

Dang it, I was looking forward to being a cheeky bastard and saying "Megatron" but I was beaten to it.

 

Aside from, y'know, deliberately leaving Rodimus and the others at the mercy of the DJD, who, unlike Megtaron, are completely unremorseful in their ways, using Sunder to brainwash the crew to keep them in line, sacrificing crew members by reducing them to their life cords so Sunder could feast on their memories, and then proving his loyalty to the Grand Architect by turning the remaining crew members into sparkeaters in order to save his life. But hey, he didn't like having Megatron on board, so all of that is a-okay!

Remember, kids: It's wrong to even talk to the evil guy who says he's sorry for the things he's done, and in order to permanently get rid of him, it's perfectly acceptable to make deals with the evil guys who are not in the least sorry for anything they've done!

In the final issue of Lost Light, Megatron accepted his fate, whatever it may be (either eternal imprisonment in complete isolation or death; the reader never finds out), while Getaway died fighting Rodimus after having realized that his grand vision was just a delusion, and now figured he'd just kill as many of Rodimus's people as he could because why the hell not at this point.

How was he "not really wrong" again?

 

I don’t know if evil is the word I’d use but Whirl in the IDW comics was definitely on some other shit

 

In retrospect, that's super disturbing. Not really a fan of romance in transformers to begin with and stuff like that is why.

 

I think trying to kill Megatron is a bit of a grey area.
He killed 104.6 billion sentient beings over four million years, traumatizing his entire race and bringing it to near extinction. On the other hand he expressed guilt over his actions and showed a clear interest to redeem himself by saving as many lives as he can, leading to more people living in the future. While we can’t ignore the bad he did in the past we also can’t dismiss the good he did in the present or would have done in the future.

 

Zeta Prime and Nova Prime also come to mind.

And I kinda think that it should have been Repugnus to have taken Getaway's role in IDW1. Getaway's actions instead being done by Repugnus would have been completely in character for him.

 

That profile made him one of my favourite characters despite no series ever exploring the character. Reminds me of Sabretooth in the 90s X-Men cartoon.