See, that kind of behaviour suggests a psycho to me. I'm not sure if I meant to characterize Megatron clinically as a psychopath, but just for the fun of it, here's a checklist of traits associated with diagnosing psychopathy... fits pretty well, eh?

Though that could be Starscream too, or any number of other arch-villains really.

zmog

 

Again it was something of a backwater though. There were more cops in the Sparta Sheriff's office.

("They call me OPTIMUS Prime!") Sorry couldn't resist.  

Only 2 cops were killed, (and Pax was out on patrol) come to think of it,,,
there WERE more officers on duty in issue #22,,,, where did THEY go when the place got rolled?

So 2 officers and a captain get killed by "gang violence", another goes missing, (discovered later face up in a ditch) and the senate gets to go on TV and say "More MUST be done!". Taxes go up, Pax gets a statue, Whirl gets a bio-pic on Dateline ("What happend to officer Whirl?"), cops get the authority to bust more heads, (while subtly getting the message not to screw with the "certain" people), and the real criminal element gets to put the squeze on it's competition.

 

For a race that is virtually immortal, that could just be a trait of living that long in a wartime situation against people who have oppressed you.

 

No, that doesn't wash. One thing that Transformers authors have NEVER EVER DONE was to adequately devote attention to the way that Transformers' whole psyches would be radically different from our own due to the developmental demands of living over millions of years. Instead, their society and personalities are depicted as being only the most simplistic corollaries of our own contemporary types and lifestyles. Naturally, to really dig into this would result in making the characters too alien for us to relate to, and shift the perspective of the series considerably.

So I have to call shenanigans. Nobody gets to explain away awkward writing or character quirks by simply saying "well, they're immortal alien machines, so who knows how they think?"  

Megatron = Psychopath

Now, the question is... why is that a problem? Many scholars suspect that many of our most famous leaders and most charismatic success-stories might also have been psychopaths, from a clinical perspective. Apparently psychopaths statistically do better in competitive life situations. They are survivors of a sort. They have the traits and the amoral sensibilities to get ahead in this world we've created.

In essence, the Golden Age of Cybertron has been depicted as being not so entirely different than the world we live in today... so saying that this society MADE Megatron what he is, made him stronger by necessity, is not such a far-fetched idea.

zmog