Abraham Dante - Transformers Wiki

Abraham Dante is a human Headmaster from the 2005 IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Abraham Dante is officially the CEO of Epsilon Holdings, a front company for the fairly dastardly mustache-twirling organization known as the Machination. As their leader, Dante has a vested interest in obtaining Cybertronian technology and reverse-engineering it.

Dante's nature varies. In some universes, he is an organic human; in others, he is a robotic Cybertronian known as just Dante.

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

A police officer investigating the death of a man in the desert reported to Dante that their agent Stoker was dead. Infiltration #2 Soon afterward, two of the visitors began a heavy-handed "clean up" operation by destroying all traces of Stoker's investigation, so Dante called in Drake to move up their plans to procure one of the visitors. Infiltration #4 Serving under a shadowy mechanoid, Dante reported on the progress resulting from the abduction of Sunstreaker and Hunter O'Nion. He was especially pleased to relate that the conspiracy theorist had taken the Headmaster implantation process like a trooper. When the mechanoid expressed his lack of patience over the slow progress, Dante reminded it that they must proceed carefully to avoid setbacks. Escalation #5 Later, he showed the mechanoid the results of Hunter's upgrade, which pleased the machine. When Hunter asked what the Machination wanted with him, Dante stated that the young man had served his purpose, but supposed he could be reconditioned to be part of their new world order. Escalation #6

After the first batch of Headmasters proved to be a rousing success, Dante underwent the process himself, binary bonding with his Cybertronian master. The human commented that he had a new lease on life, perhaps implying that he was terminally ill prior to the process. Combined, Scorponok lived again! Devastation #2 Devastation #6

Dante/Scorponok, now fully merged barring some pronoun trouble, planted a mole named Kloss into Skywatch who inserted a virus into Grimlock, freeing him from Skywatch's control. When Grimlock escaped, Dante combined with Scorponok and met Grimlock with an offer of an alliance for world conquest. Grimlock refused and they battled, with Grimlock losing. Before he could be killed, Grimlock teleported away to his still-functional ship. Dante later planned to take control of the other Dynobots and use them to destroy Grimlock. Spotlight: Grimlock

Once his agents had ensured Skywatch had reprogrammed the Dynobots (reprogramming he could remotely control) and an army of Sunstreaker clones had been built, Dante arranged for Grimlock to be orbital-bounced to Fallon, Nevada. Maximum Dinobots #1

When Skywatch turned up with the Dynobots, Dante ensured a massive, destructive fight took place, all a set-up so Skywatch would be discredited and his Headmasters could "save the day"... intending his puppet companies would get all the lucrative anti-Transformer defense contracts from a panicked US government. While his attempt to exploit the Dynobots' internal divides failed, he did get to beat Hot Rod half to death and yell a lot. Maximum Dinobots #2

When Scorponok's control of the Dynobots was lost, he sent in an army of Headmasters to annihilate everyone. They may have succeeded if not for the timely arrival of the Monsterbots. This bemused Hot Rod, and Scorponok ordered him terminated, but Hot Rod managed to set his guards ablaze and escape the compound. Maximum Dinobots #3

As Hot Rod broke out, Sunstreaker broke in to find his real head. He was caught by Scorponok though, who blasted him through the chest, but Hunter was able to escape. Before he could be found by Scorponok, the Monsterbots began blasting the compound, taking out the defenses. Scorponok ordered a recall of all Headmasters to attack the Dynobots, but Hunter was able to sever the connection of Sunstreaker's head, disabling all the Headmasters. A furious Scorponok began to take revenge but was thrown into battle with Shockwave, who wanted the same thing. Maximum Dinobots #4

Due to Dante's fear, Scorponok's overall effectiveness was reduced by 0.3%, enough for Shockwave to eventually gain the upper hand but he allowed Scorponok to retreat gracefully. Scorponok caught Hot Rod trying to sever the connection with his real head, so he thought he'd take out his frustrations by squeezing the life out of the Autobot. The timely arrival of the Dynobots prevented that, and Swoop severed the connection himself, rendering Scorponok helpless. Just then, Ultra Magnus arrived, responding to an S.O.S. from Hot Rod. He wouldn't allow Scorponok to be killed, but took him into custody. He also ordered the Machination stripped and all technology removed. Dante's condition after the separation is not known. Maximum Dinobots #5

Even years after the merger had been severed, a trace of Dante's brain patterns remained in Scorponok's neural net. As a result of this, the Magnificence, capable of scanning the brainwaves of every Cybertronian and choosing whether or not to answer, was unable to ignore any question posed by Scorponok. Kill All 'Cons

Beast Wars: Uprising

Dante was a Cyberdroid native to the colony world of Rebirth. When Galvatron's forces arrived on the small planet in the wake of the Scouring of Nebulos, Dante was inspired by their rhetoric and joined the Decepticons. Supported by the Malignus insurgency, they overthrew the tyrannical Optimus oligarchy that had ruled their planet. A Brush With Infamy–Prologue Derailment

By the time that the Autobots arrived to liberate the occupied planet, Dante had been binary-bonded into the towering Decepticon superweapon MegaZarak alongside Zarak and Caliburn, replacing Fausto Borx. As MegaZarak's head, he helped to supervise the defense of their planet from the Autobot incursion, even toppling Fortress Maximus—a moment that he would later look back on as his finest hour. A Brush With Infamy–Prologue Derailment

As the Great War drew to a close, Dante found himself ousted from his position in the Decepticon military in favor of Fausto Borx's grandson, a fact that he deeply resented. After the war with his homeworld destroyed by the Human Confederacy, and the Builder Assembly in control of the dying planet, Dante drifted from job to job before finally finding a new role as a vollyblast athlete in the Games. Derailment

By the time of the Grand Uprising, he had risen to become captain of the Corumcan Corruptors vollyblast team. Upon hearing the news that the Builder Assembly had ruled that Cyberdroids from Master could not participate in the Maximal/Predacon Games and had to play in the Micro Division, Dante said it was "about time". Broken Windshields

Six years later, the Grand Uprising had spread to Iacon and Dante returned to duty to fight the Resistance as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent them from taking the High Pavilion alongside Caliburn. Old resentments came to the surface and the two began squabbling with each other, leaving them open to the Resistance grenade that killed them both. Derailment

Ask Vector Prime

Vector Prime noted that Primax iterations of Caliburn often followed the lead of the Cyberdroid Dante. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/21

Notes

• As opposed to the Sunstreaker clone Headmasters, whose agents transform fully into their robots' heads, Dante appears to only transform into a portion of Scorponok's head, and is fitted with bionic limbs to make up for the increased size, as seen in Maximum Dinobots #1.
• For Last Stand of the Wreckers, there was an idea that Abraham Dante was living in a cell on Garrus-9 and Shockwave was going to rip Scorponok's consciousness out of Dante and put it back into Scorponok's body. When Scorpy was dropped from Last Stand, so was Dante.^[1]
• Ask Vector Prime noted in a jokey answer that, somewhere in the Multiverse, Lord Zarak's name was instead Dante.
• Dante's appearance in "Derailment" appears to be based on Scorponok's Japanese character model, distinct from Lord Zarak's American character model, most notably in the chest detailing.

References