This is one of a number of contentious, often discussed but never resolved G1 Transformer continuity issues. I’m going to put down what I believe to be true.
Every 80s kid and his mother knows that Cyclonus and Scourge were reformatted from dying Decepticons by Unicron. The question is: who became Cyclonus and who became Scourge?
Thundercracker became the ‘main’ Scourge, leader of the Sweeps; this much is clear from Transformers: The Movie (1986). There is not much controversy here.
Bombshell and Skywarp were both shown to be reformatted as Cyclonus in TFTM (1986). However, right after that and for every cartoon episode after the movie, there was only ever one Cyclonus. Thus begging the question of who exactly became this Cyclonus, seeing that one of them obviously disappeared.
Reformatting of Cyclonus [pictures from Unicron.com]
Picture 2 shows Bombshell in the foreground and Skywarp in the background
The theory that Bombshell (foreground) became Cyclonus and Skywarp (in the background) became a being called ‘Armada’ is largely disregarded by the TF community as having no merit.
Marvel Comic adaptation [1986]
Shows just one Scourge and one Cyclonus with some unidentified silhouettes in the background. Does not address the issue.
TFTM script [1986]
“ON CYCLONUS (NEW DECEPTICON WITH PLANE TRANSFORM ABILITY).
CYCLONUS is CREATED and then his "armada" of similar, but smaller and similarly colored and clad creatures are formed.
UNICRON: Cyclonus, the warrior...and his armada.....”
That is all the script tells us. Absolutely nothing about who becomes who.
Transformers: The Animated Movie (2007) by IDW publishing [2007]
Bob Budiansky, the father of most G1 Transformer names, character profiles and Tech Specs, wrote all four issues. If there is one person that could
authoritatively conclude this issue one way or another, it is Bob, one of the key creative talents behind the original Transformer profiles and stories. This is the perfect opportunity to set the Cyclonus record straight but sadly no move was made to clarify Cyclonus’ reformatting. Don Figueroa drew the reformatting scene as an almost exact reproduction of TFTM (1986), that is with Bombshell and Skywarp being reformatted into 2 Cyclonus’.
I draw 2 conclusions: (1) Bob and Don wanted to leave well enough alone and not tackle the issue; or (2) Bob did decide that Bombshell should become Cyclonus though this is arguable because if he had consciously wanted to establish that fact, he would have instructed Don to leave Skywarp becoming Cyclonus out of the background.
General TF community thoughts
Based on information deduced from fan forums, I feel the TF community is divided on this issue, with both sides of the fence being quite evenly populated.
I, myself,
believe that Skywarp is undoubtedly the Decepticon who was reformatted into Cyclonus.
Next:
My reasons for who became Cyclonus
