Ok so I am curious why everyone likes Overlord so much? I am wondering this because after watching Masterforce I came to realize about the character that 1. He/she is not even an actual Cybertronian. 2. He/she is both a man and a woman in a sense. 3. When being hit by Ginrai he/she literally screamed with a man/woman voice. 4. He/she gets his but handed to him at a constant rate. Those reasons right there are baffling to me as to why any transformers fan would place him as being super powerful. I also don't understand how as a transformers fan you would like a character who isn't even effectively a transformer but a Gundam piloted by humans? Why also was this character painted as so powerful in IDW if Masterforce is the only reference this characters personality and abilities can be drawn from? Please elaborate for me my fellow fans. Thank you.

 

He/ she is a nice change as a decepticon leader who cares for their troops. In fact that's how overlord's powermasters die. Protecting their troops and is killed for caring about them! Ironic thing is dreadwind and darkwing don't even care after they are killed protecting them!

Also most powermasters, targetmasters and the jr headmasters are humans piloting transformers! In masterforce they are living transformers and later grow into their own transformer from their human hosts.

 

Because he's a cool robot toy that turns into a cool jet and a cool tank and becomes a cool fortress.

 

He’s scary has a great toy In tr

 

I don't think Nick Roche really referred to Masterforce when writing Overlord for Last Stand of the Wreckers. Largely, I think it was just him (and James Roberts too) giving him a role and personality that would serve the story they were trying to tell, and since Last Stand is about the horrors of what a black ops team like the Wreckers would face, portraying the villain as a fanatical monster in every sense of the word was probably the most logical route to go.

 

I could take or leave the IDW characterization (and in fact prefer the basic premise proposed by the Euro G1 bios), for me he's just a cool design and fun toy concept.

 

Because he's a certified Bad Boy with luscious lips.

Masterforce likely wasn't a reference at all for IDW Overlord because for a long time for European fans the only piece of fiction that existed for him was the bio on his packaging. He was effectively a blank slate for Roche and Roberts to do whatever they wanted with him, so they turned him into an unstoppable monster with a penchant for a bit of the ol' ultra violence and some daddy issues.

 

Large toy that was never officially available at retail in the United States.

 

Overlord was one of the biggest toys (if not THE biggest) of the G1 era that Hasbro didn't sell in the United States, and so for many years (and still today) he remains one of the most difficult and expensive toys for American fans to get. He had no appearances in American fiction. He had a mystique grow up around him as the coolest toy you couldn't have, and Americans became desperate to see a spotlight thrown onto him. He was old and yet new and different at the same time.

Ninja'd by Nevermore!

 

Good to hear the opposing thoughts from you all, it's interesting to read every response was not aligned with my point of view haha, but also opened my eyes to others reasons others like the character.

 

I was always disappointed that Liege Maximo didn't turn out to be Overlord in the G2 comics.

Grimlock asked Jhiaxus if Liege Maximo was a person or a place. Overlord had a base mode and Liege is another word for Lord.

The blurb on the back of the European boxes portrayed Overlord as a new breed of Decepticon on the edge of known space which is how the G2 Cybertronians were portrayed.

Plus Liege Maximo's character model looked terrible.

 

I don’t know anything about Overlord beyond the IDW comics, and honestly- I didn’t think he was cool or badass or anything. He was just the villain of the week. His role could’ve been played by just about any generic high tier grunt.

 

Because he was in a really good, really nicely self-contained comic book story. People over-hyped what a good character he was and then other writers fell for that hype and he became an insufferable Mary Sue villain completely inferior to said original story.

 

only media I've seen Overlord in is the POTP's online mini series. Visually he looks cool and imposing and I love the duocon mechanic. Plus a name like Overlord just brings with it that arrogance that this guys not one to settle for second in command.

 

I can agree with this.

 

Overlord, the perfect mix of insane, cunning and badass.

 

This I completely agree with.

 

He really should have stayed dead after Under Cold Blue Stars. But no, Dying of the Light brought him back for...no real reason, really.

 

Last Stand was indeed a well-written, if bleak, story, and perhaps the most mature Transformers story (in terms of realism) to date. Sadly, like many other mature comic books (e.g., Watchmen) it also lead to a preponderance of violent scenes by less-skilled writers who assumed that the gore and high death count were what made it good.
Regarding Overlord, I don't really have any strong feelings about him, one way or the other. Although he's definitely scary, he suffers from a similar problem to the modern Joker: namely, that he quickly became an excuse for the writers to cram as much violence and gore into a story as possible. It seems like he's more of a plot device to show how "mature" the comic is, or how much danger the protagonists are in, than an actual character. "Ridiculously extreme sociopathy" combined with "near invincibility" almost always makes a character extremely one-note, because that sort of character usually doesn't care about much of anything. Even really evil characters like BW Megatron have goals and drives that the audience can, on some level, relate to (such as the desire to improve one's situation or an enjoyment of a nice bath with a rubber ducky). This doesn't make them redeemable or sympathetic, but it does make them interesting because it gives the audience a point of connection, however slight, with them. Characters like Overlord or the modern Joker, on the other hand, lack a clear goal or clear interests, beyond "cause as much suffering as possible for no reason at all". Since most people have never experienced a drive that really resembles this, the characters come across as more of a force of nature than as individuals. Thus, the audience has no way to connect to them, and no reason to care about them or what they do (except insofar as it affects the characters that they DO care about). After all, does anyone ever think of a tornado in a disaster story as an interesting character in its own right? Granted, Overlord IS obsessed with beating Megatron in a fight, and one could consider that his driving goal, but he spends so much of his time focusing on random, mostly unrelated things (e.g., wasting time rampaging through the Lost Light killing characters instead of leaving to go find Megatron immediately or sitting around at Garrus-9 torturing Autobots and unlucky Decepticons instead of chasing Megatron down) that it's hard to really consider it as such. For contrast, while G1 Megatron was a raving idiot with insane schemes and BW Megatron loved the long game, every action they took was fairly directly connected with their goals of conquest. It was clear that the desire for conquest and destruction of their enemies ruled their thoughts. If the comics hadn't gone out of their way to tell the reader that Overlord was obsessed with beating Megatron, most people would not have guessed it. For what's supposedly his driving goal, it's not very easy to tell that he cares all that much about it. Worse, it's entirely possible that he wants to beat Megatron in a fight because it means that there's no one he can't hurt....which would remove the point of connection that might otherwise be established. In short, IDW Overlord isn't a good character most of the time because he's not really a character...he's a plot device. How good of a plot device he is depends on the quality of the story and how well "dealer of horrible deaths" fits into that story.
I have not yet seen Super-God Masterforce (though I plan to rectify that soon, as I now have it on DVD), so I can't comment on the quality of that Overlord. That being said, he does have a great name and a great design.
I would like to give a big thank you to anyone who managed to get to this point!  

 

I see your points, I just believe that mixing humans and transformers together is a terrible idea and kind of ruined a lot of transformers for me personally. That being said humans as side characters (not hybrid/halfbreeds) like in G1 season 1 is completely acceptable.