Miles Mayhem
From Transformers Wiki
- Miles Mayhem is a V.E.N.O.M.-aligned human from the Generation 1 continuity family.
General Miles "Mayhem" Manheim is a military man through and through. From his earliest days on "G.I. Joe" Colton's Adventure Team, Miles has developed a talent for spreading chaos, disruption, and destruction when the need arises. When the Transformers returned to Earth, poised to reignite their violent civil war, Miles had already begun to consolidate a military program of his own—the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. But just like the shapeshifting vehicles he pilots, notably the Switchblade, Manheim's affable façade conceals the mind of a brutal dictator willing to sacrifice innocent lives in pursuit of personal wealth and power.
To Miles Mayhem, the Autobots and Decepticons are both hostile alien threats to be eliminated with extreme prejudice, clearing the way so that he can reshape the Earth to align with his own ideals of power and stability.
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Fiction
Animated cartoon
Miles Mayhem could be selected as a playable character in the video game Ninja Gladiator. In the game's story, Mayhem was in charge of the "Vicious Evil Network of Mayem" [sic] and was deputized by the president to help defend Metro City from the Inhumanoids. AllSpark Almanac II
2005 IDW continuity
Miles Manheim grew up in a tough working-class Philadelphia neighborhood before eventually enlisting in the United States Army. There, he put his talents for espionage and black-ops to good use; his disregard for civilian lives or collateral damage in the pursuit of his goals made him an ideal fit for the ruthless Cold War military complex. His penchant for deliberately chaotic, disruptive tactics led his commanders to nickname him "Miles Mayhem." Miles Mayhem profile
Miles Manheim joined the Adventure Team alongside "G.I. Joe" Colton, and over the course of their escapades they encountered a holder of the Action Man title. Secret Raiders On one mission in the 1980s, the team travelled to Egypt in response to an emergency beacon sent by the missing Garrison Kreiger. There, they encountered an army of robotic mummies. While their super-powered assets Bulletman and Atomic Man fought off that menace Mayhem and Joe Colton headed deeper into the pyramid, where they encountered the Decepticon Soundwave and a mysterious Talisman. Though the Adventure Team managed to rescue Kreiger, secure the Talisman, and see off Soundwave, the mission marked the beginning of the end for the Adventure Team: faced with an increasing number of supernatural threats, ordinary humans like Miles and Joe couldn't keep up with the likes of the Atomic Man, who were better suited to face the rapidly changing world. The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb
A few years later, the Adventure Team took part in a battle to rescue Emil Burkhart from more IRON Troopers, but failed to rescue him in time. Atomic Man, stricken by his failure, struck up a partnership with Kreiger and disappeared. Power and Glory By 1994, Joe Colton had taken control and reshaped their team into "Adventure Force", who eventually stormed Kreiger's Project Ice Man bunker in Brasnya to rescue the missing Power. They arrived too late, and Power was assumed dead. When Eagles Scream At some point, Miles Mayhem would go on to try and kill Joe Colton in an incident that both men would remember as the "Dolphin's Bay incident", which led to the end of their friendship. A Little Bit of Mayhem
After the Adventure Force was finally mothballed, rumors swirled that Manheim had quietly assembled a cartel of illegal arms dealers to agitate unstable political regions. Miles soon became one of the youngest generals ever to serve in the armed forces, and supervised numerous classified operations.
At some point after the creation of the Earth Defense Command, Manheim participated in a joint project between the EDC, the DoD, and DARPA on "Project Spectrum", an initiative aimed at creating anti-Transformer weaponry in the wake of the devastating Decepticon invasion. Fellow Spectrum researcher Cornelius Trakker was mysteriously murdered, so wasn't it convenient that Miles was right there to step up and take over? Shortly afterwards, he recruited Cornelius's delinquent son Matt Trakker into the operation at the behest of Cornelius's widow. Miles Mayhem profile
When Galvatron's splinter group of Decepticons returned to Earth to propose an alliance with the EDC, Manheim was present for their meeting at the South Pole and watched as Marissa Faireborn ratified the agreement. Secret Raiders Unbeknownst to the EDC, Mayhem had cut a side deal with an entirely different group of extraterrestrials—the villainous shape-shifters known as the Dire Wraiths. In exchange for the Earth's ample supplies of Ore-13, which they would split between themselves and the extradimensional warlord Baron Karza, they would allow Mayhem dominion over the Earth. The New Colossus
Following Optimus Prime's controversial choice to annex Earth into the Cybertronian Council of Worlds, Manheim met with "Joe Colton" and Scarlett to discuss the history of Transformers on Earth and their plans for the future. He interjected during Colton's rant to point out Optimus had come back to save them from the Decepticons and help them rebuild, but he was pretty dismissive of G.I. Joe. Eventually Colton revealed Manheim was there because Ore-13 was going critical and was likely to devastate the planet, and he was hoping Manheim could reverse-engineer something to help them fight from a captive, still conscious Blitzwing. Secret Raiders
As his investigations of his Cybertronian captive continued apace, Manheim took Scarlett on a tour of his growing enterprise beneath Governor's Island, where he introduced her to the operatives of his new Mobile Armored Strike Kommand and their shape-shifting vehicles perfected by studying Blitzwing's Triple Changer physiology. Miles wasn't particularly concerned for Blitzwing's well-being, even when Scarlett wondered if his prisoner could feel pain. Believing that the Transformers were behind the recent explosion of Mount Olympus in Greece, Manheim ordered his team to mobilize in the hopes of catching the Cybertronians unaware when they inevitably returned to "the scene of the crime". The team got the jump on Kup and Aileron in a nearby city; behind the wheel of his new Switchblade, Miles was able to take out Kup while Aileron made a break for it. When Matt wondered why their targets weren't acting like the unfeeling machines they believed them to be, Miles revealed that the Transformers were living beings—and that M.A.S.K. was at war with these alien lifeforms. The Divine Source of Liberty
Back on Governor's Island, Mayhem and Trakker continued to debate whether or not the Transformers were truly alive. When Action Man breached the facility to figure out what was going on, Mayhem told Tracker to trust him the same way his father had, cough, cough, then oversaw the defense of his Cybertronian assets... including quietly instructing his underlings Sly Rax and Vanessa Warfield to make sure none of the Joes found out about Kup. Action Man sprang Kup from his restraints and the two made a run for it, blowing Mayhem's secret to the Joes. Mayhem tried to go after Kup in the Switchblade, but broke off after Mainframe ran interference by calling down a low-power orbital strike to distract M.A.S.K. The Modern World
Soon after, G.I. Joe infiltrated Autobot City, but Mayhem ignored Snake-Eyes' distress call in favor of checking in with his alien collaborators. Trakker was left confused by the brief snippets of conversation that he'd overheard, but Mayhem simply instructed him to prepare the team for an all-out invasion. Once they'd arrived, Miles pressured Trakker into attacking the combiner Victorion, seconds before the Dire Wraiths arrived en masse and made a beeline for the Ore-13 beneath the city. With his allies empowered, Mayhem gloated about his evil plan to rule Earth to the other M.A.S.K. team members... only for Wraith leader Caleb Awan to smack him out of the sky after he had fulfilled his purpose. Mayhem wasn't out of the game yet, though, and used the Cybertronian technology within the Switchblade to activate Metrotitan's spacebridge and summon Baron Karza, who transformed himself into a monstrous fusion of Cybertronian, Wraith, and Microspace technology. The New Colossus
Realizing that his allies had betrayed him, Mayhem–an Earth patriot first and foremost–opted to make a surprise sacrifice on the part of the human race by ramming the Switchblade into the Baron's gigantic body and freeing Optimus from its grasp. When the threat had passed, Matt Trakker discovered a note from Mayhem on the windshield of the Thunderhawk, revealing that Miles had staged his own death and was still at large. Valley Forge
Over the next few months, Mayhem busied himself with adventures of his own, battling the rogue forces of M.A.S.K. When the real Joe Colton returned as "Baron Ironblood," Miles Mayhem was one of the first villains he recruited into his new endeavor: a genocidal invasion of Cybertron designed to poison the planet's core, using the corrosive energies of the Talisman. In spite of their rocky history, Mayhem—still engrossed in his reverse-engineering of Blitzwing's physiology—agreed to this new partnership. A Little Bit of Mayhem The two tracked down Karza's ex-suitor Shazraella, promising her dominion of what remained of Cybertron after their attack. Hitting the Big Time
Following a confrontation in Buenos Aires, Colton successfully liberated the Talisman from G.B. Blackrock's Onyx facility and returned it to Count van Rani's Iron Castle. Mayhem was in attendance as Colton told his assembled troops that now was the time to strike. Ghost in the Machine
By piggybacking their M.A.S.S. Device on Metrotitan's Spacebridge after Optimus Prime and his team departed for Cybertron, the villains were able to smuggle themselves and their hardware to Cybertron, concealing themselves inside nonsentient robots disguised as Cybertronian civilians using Mayhem's M.A.S.K. technology. First Strike #2
Implanting themselves in the Transformer capital of Iacon, the villains made themselves known shortly after the official ceremony to commemorate Earth's joining of the Council of Worlds began. First Strike #1 While Doctor Mindbender masqueraded as Baron Ironblood to coordinate the surface attack, First Strike #3 Mayhem ferried the real Colton towards the bowels of Metroplex using his new Outlaw vehicle. The team reunited with Shazraella, who had Enerchanged with a Cybertronian to transport the Talisman to its final destination. First Strike #2
Their passage was not as smooth as Colton had hoped; as they placed sound dampeners to throw Soundwave off their trail, Mayhem and Kreiger publicly voiced their distrust at Shazraella, prompting her to trigger and eliminate some of Metroplex's internal defenses as a show of force. As they rappelled down a pipe, Miles voiced his disapproval of Scarlett's attempts to track them down, which caused Storm Shadow to cut his rope and send him falling to the ground. Though unharmed, his outrage at his humiliation fell on deaf ears, and Colton simply told him to get up and stop annoying everyone. First Strike #3
With Scarlett's team closing in, Colton's group rigged some booby traps to slow her down. This meant that they had yet to leave Metroplex's interior, allowing the Titan to find them and allow Ironhide and Sunstreaker to track them down. First Strike #4 Only a few hundred meters away from Vector Sigma, the planet began attacking the team with its natural defense systems, forcing them to dodge bolts of energy and ravenous Insecticon swarms; this latter threat would have almost eaten Mayhem if not for Colton's intervention. After finally reaching the core of Cybertron, the group found that the heroes had already beaten them to their objective. First Strike #5
Mayhem found himself up against Lady Jaye and Roadblock before Elita One and the other members of the Council of Worlds arrived, intending to arrest both sides. Krieger took advantage of the melee to enact his true goal; activating the Talisman prematurely to seize control of Cybertron's energon, he revealed himself as the Prysmosian wizard Merklynn, creating the city of New Prysmos while gloating that he had successfully played Colton and the Iron Ring for fools. Using his magic, Merklynn teleported everyone back to Iacon, and Mayhem's blusterous defiance was quickly silenced by the sight of Elita One's blaster. In short order, the defeated villains were marched through Iacon and subsequently imprisoned. First Strike #6
At some point over the next few months, the prisoners were extradited from Cybertron to Earth, and remained incarcerated until after the destruction of Cybertron at the hands of Unicron. As the planet-eater arrived over Earth, Mayhem was one of the many heroes and villains gathered inside Trypticon to plan a counterattack. Assembly Mayhem and Sly Rax wound up in Venice along with van Rani and Doctor X, where Mayhem had a spirited argument with the former about the usefulness of Sly Rax's Piranha when it came to defeating the hordes of invading Maximals. Ceremony
When Worlds Collide
Miles Mayhem was one of the many characters who joined in the battle for the Matrix of Leadership. When Worlds Collide
Notes
- Miles Mayhem was never an Adventure Team member in the M.A.S.K. toyline (nor in the Joe line). He was added to the crew by IDW in order to tie the M.A.S.K. comic to G.I. Joe and made into the IDW version of the Sea Adventurer figure. Prior to this, the only time Miles Mayhem was associated with the G.I. Joe franchise was in the bio card for Specialist Trakker, which stated that Mayhem's organization V.E.N.O.M. was in fact a sub-division of Cobra.[1]
- Mayhem was involved in the founding of M.A.S.K. and the murder of a Trakker in the 1980s comics.
References
- ↑ "Joining forces with the G.I. JOE team, the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand (M.A.S.K.) team battles V.E.N.O.M. (Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem), the unit COBRA formed to construct its own converting vehicles."—G.I. Joe Specialist Trakker bio card, 2008
External links
- Miles Mayhem at the IDW Hasbro Wiki