In the final panel of the final page of the final issue of Marvel's Transformers Generation 2 comic, there appeared a new character, one massive and towering in size despite being seated. He had no name, only a title - The Liege Maximo - and claimed to have been created as the equal, evil counterforce to the goodness of the first Prime, and to be the ancestor of all Decepticons. That single panel was his only official appearance, but given his ancient roots, it's no surprise Hasbro chose him to be one of the Thirteen Original Primes.
Liege Maximo is one of the 13 Primes said to be the first to be born on Cybertron, and he transforms from robot mode into an alien ship. His appearance is reminiscent of a demon, and he is said to be the most evil Prime. There are rumors that his existence is the progenitor that created the evil emotions of the Transformers, and it is said that his three Legion Darts contain all the toxins of the universe. The cannon on his left arm has the destructive power to wipe out an entire starfleet in an instant.
By the time the 2013 Covenant of Primus book codified
The Thirteen and what they stood for, the Liege Maximo's title (which basically means "the great king") had been misinterpretted as a name: he was no longer The Liege Maximo, he was just Liege (Miss Maximo if you're nasty). In keeping with the title of "great king," it would be like seeing the Latin epithet "Rex Magnus" and assuming it meant Mr. and Mrs. Magnus gave their baby the name Rex.
The single comic panel left a lot to the imagination. In fact, all it showed of this cliffhanger character was the head, chest, right hand, and knees, which means everything else about this robot mode had to be made up. And yet, one of existing features has been subject to a noteable reinterpretation: because he was a robot devil,
along the lines of Unicron, he was drawn with big, curved horns. This toy has taken the unbelievable tack of making the horns not part of the head, but instead features on some sort of odd, tall collar that rises up behind his (accurately) spiky head. When the Thirteen's personalities were being nailed down, those horns inspired Liege Maximo to be imagined as the group's Loki - old comicbook Loki, not sexy movie Loki. That is, he's more sinister than mischievous. And he has big horns. But not on this toy. On this toy has has a collar that merely looks like horns.
Also a new backpack with bigger horns stabbing up beyond his shoulders. Those weren't anything from the original art, obviously, and they're awkward at best on this toy (the backpack piece is even packaged separately), so why include them? Spoiler: they don't do the altmode any more favors than they do the robot mode. Plus, the way they connect to the toy is tenuous,
at best, meaning they'll often fall off when you're just holding the figure normally. Why include this new feature? It's ill-conceived. The spiky shoulderpads, which are based on a developmental sketch by Aaron Archer, also pop off the arms frustratingly easily (especially since they don't turn with the arms, but instead hinge above them). Maybe the idea is to be able to remove as much of the "non-comic" stuff as possible, if that's how you want your toy to be? It would certainly explain why his left arm can flip between a long-fingered hand, matching the right, or a cannon barrel, matching the art.
The comic showed King Bigly sitting in shadow, so his colors were a dark teal - you know, "night" colors. Obviously this was done so that, should by some miracle Generation 2 see a comeback, and this
plot thread was able to be picked up again, the creators could show him to be whatever color they wanted. However, modern versions interpret those colors as literally meaning he's green (which honestly does play right into his "Loki" thing, so it's okay), and that's what this toy delivers: light green on the chest, shins, and forearms, and dark green on the feet, hands, waist, and upper arms. There's some silver on his legs, and the spikes on top of his head, but all those detailed tubes on his abdomen are a metallic blue. For some reason, they've opted to use translucent red plastic for a few parts of the toy: the cannon-hand, the heels, and the boosters on the backpack. The eyes and chin are also red, but solid, so why use the translucent stuff elsewhere?
It shows up on his weapon, too.
All the Primes come with a signature artifact that's theoretically meant to be intrinsically linked with them. That works great for a character like Solus Prime, who is famous for her hammer, but it works less impressively for a character who appeared in one panel of one page of one issue and just sat in the dark. They couldn't give him a chair (though if you have the Studio Series 86 Starscream with the throne, Liege Maximo can sit on it nicely), so instead they gave him... a mistake.
After Marvel cancelled the G2 comic, writer Simon Furman released "Alignment," a text story that laid out where the story would have gone if he'd been allowed to continue it. That story included some illustrations by the team who's done the UK Transformers comics, including one of the Liege Maximo in a dynamic action pose.
Now, you have to remember, Liege Maximo as shown in the comic was huge: like, Primus is a planet and Unicron is a moon, but Liege Maximo is still a mountain. Range. A mountain range. Huge. So one of the illustrations in the book showed him launching three full-sized spaceships from his palm. That art was reprinted in an official source, but it lacked the story context of the character's size, so when the Binder of Revelation was putting the Thirteen together, the ships were interpretted as "darts." So this toy's artifact is the Liegian Darts (or "Leigian" Darts, if you translate the text on the box), with a gun to plug them into. They're sculpted to look like the three in the art, but they're molded in that translucent red plastic again, rather than being painted blue, yellow, and purple. The gun can be held in the robot's hand(s), or plugged into the wrist-cannon.
Liege Maximo is a Leader Class figure, and has a pretty pleasing conversion process. The figure's joints are pretty stiff, which does get annoying when changing modes, but the engineering is a lot of fun. Rotate the not-horns up, tip the head forward, fold the collar up, tuck the head into the torso and cover it with the collar thing, raise the shoulder pads, turn the forearms to the outsides, reverse the waist, hinge the entire torso back, lift the chest, hine the belt out to the sides, swing the arms into the center, move the panels from the side of the shins back, fold the feet in half, bend the legs up against the rest of the body, fold the gun in half and plug it into the heels, close the large panels over the top of the altmode, then lower the shoulder pads, the halves of the belt, and the giant backpack horns.
Again, the only thing the Liege Maximo did in the comics was sit in a chair, so we absolutely never saw an altmode. Like so many of the Age of the Primes Primes, he turns into an indeterminate Cyybertronian shuttle or something. A big, green, metal potato.
If it looks like anything, it looks like the big ships the Decepticons were flying around Chicago in Dark of the Moon - you remember, the ones that were a total knockoff of the Chitauri whale Hulk punches in the first Avengers movie? Those. Is that what Hasbro was going for? Couldn't say, but regardless, it's what they achieved. It is a cool ship, especially when compared to some of the junk we've gotten, and it certainly looks like something that might have been invented in G2.
Liege Maximo is an interesting footnote in Transformers history, the final character created during the original continuity's run (keeping in mind that Beast Wars only became part of the same continuity retroactively years later). And if not for being chosen as a member of the Thirteen, that's all he'd be today. And he'd certainly never have gotten a toy! Some of the design choices made to turn a one-panel appearance into a full action figure are strange, but this is still a decently fun Transformer.
-- 05/12/26
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