I remember reading the original Headmaster series and Fortress Maximus was the man in charge. I remember him being tall but not huge. I also remember him being smart. He gave this whole speech about escaping the circle of war. It was very deep.

Now I see him in toys and cartoons and he's as big as Metroplex and as smart as the Hulk.

What happened?

 

I can't remember a time that he's been presented as dumb. Maybe a tad monosyllabic, sure. Not dumb.

 

He's almost always been a cityformer... G1, Headmasters, RID01 all had him as a ginormous Transformer

 

I don't recall him ever being dumb in any of the fiction I've seen or read...

Super simplified version: In the comics, his body was rebuilt so that a normal sized Transformer (Cerebros) would act as his head. He was bigger than the average Transformer but wasn't a Citybot. He was in no way, shape or form depicted as being dumb at any point in the comics.

In IDW it's kind of the same idea, minus being a headmaster and not being as large.

In the G1 Cartoon series conclusion, he was a rebuilt Nebulan city...so that's why he's a city bot. And he didn't have any characterization beyond a few words so we don't really know what his intelligence was.

 

those are both the same character from the same continuity, if you mean cartoon G1.

marvel G1 and IDW are the only places where he's been just big and not a cityformer.

 

He was never really dumb to begin with.

You might like IDW Fort Max, though he's a lot smaller but he's got his own story and everything. He's a badass with PTSD.

 

the g1 cartoon and the headmaster cartoon are not the same continuity

 

Fortress Maximus was original a citybot toy, by far the largest one they ever made at two feet tall until Generations Metroplex was released.

Marvel Comics opted remove the whole citybot thing and simply made him into a big guy that led a faction of Autobots. Later in the story he was rebuilt into a larger form (a way to shoehorn Cerebros into the story). He was never portrayed as a lunkhead.

In the 80s Sunbow cartoon, he was literally just a enormous body built by Spike and Cerebros to combat the enormous Skorponok. He didn't say much due to being on screen for about 2 whole minutes (if that) and because he wasn't really alive. Those were the final few episodes of the original Transformers cartoon.

Meanwhile, after Season 3 of the cartoon, Takara diverged from Hasbro and ran their own story. It was called Headmasters and focused mainly on the four original Headmaster characters. They flew around in a huge ship called the Battleship Maximus, run by an Autobot named Fortress (Takara's name for the Cerebros component). He would transform into the head of the the transformed ship, forming Fortress Maximus.

Years later, Takara did a new series called Car Robots (the original Robots In Disguise series). Brave Maximus (Fortress Maximus in the Western translation) was a mostly mindless citybot that was rather integral to the overall plot of the series.

Finally, IDW's take on Fortress Maxmimus was as a fairly big and powerful (think Grimlock size & strength) character that operated as the warden of a maximum security prison run by the Autobots called Garrus 9. He did not turn into a base or battleship or a head; he turns into a tracked tank-type vehicle.

It appears that Titans Return will tie into the IDW comics and find Fortress Maximus becoming the head of a Metroplex-esque giant Titan.

I think that covers all the major depictions of the character (sometimes lack of character).

 

What happened? You expected him to be exactly the same in every continuity, thats what  

 

Different versions of G1 have different versions of characters. As others stated, the original cartoon was where he was first a city-former, and not really alive. Him being so big does make sense, his toy turning into a city and all. The cartoon had many differences from the comics, like Soundwave being computer-like, and Shockwave being loyal to Megatron.

 

Oh this kind sir gets it. Through and through.

 

Yes, sorry, monosyllabic would probably have been a better description

 

No. I was assuming (apparently incorrectly) that he changed to being a cityformer into all continuity, including G1. And I was just wondering when that happened. Because I remember him being Prime-like height at the start of the Headmaster series and I remember him being rebuilt to a height slightly larger but still small enough to get in a fist fight with Galavatron.

 

Thanks!

 

he was a cityformer in the g1 cartoon and toyline

 

Yes they are. Rebirth was replaced with headmasters toon  

 

You are misremembering.

He was always a cityformer in the cartoons, but NEVER dumb as the Hulk. He always retained his intelligence. He wasn't even monosyllabic in G1. Not sure where you got that from.

 

no they are not
the japans g1 cartoons have their own continuity separate from the hasbro g1 cartoon

 

And to follow on from that, the Sunbow cartoon in North America ended with Season four which was just the three episodes of The Rebirth. Instead of that Japan continued the story with a wholly different story that diverged significantly from what was going on in the West.

They have have started with the same continuity but they definitely became two distinct storylines.

 

By G1 I mean the original Marvel comics