Nebulon

Nebulon, also known as Nebulos, is a planet in the fictional Transformers Universes.

Nebulon is a somewhat Earth-like planet far away from both Earth and Cybertron, and is the home to a humanoid race known as the Nebulans.

The planet and its inhabitants were first introduced as the back story for Hasbro's new Headmaster and Targetmaster toys, later expanded by the Powermaster toys. These toys are robots that transform into vehicles or animals, and include Nebulan sidekicks that transform into the robot's head, into a weapon, or into the vehicle's engine.

The toys themselves never expanded on Nebulon or its inhabitants, but both the TV show (in its fourth and final season) and the Marvel Comics comic book did, with drastically different, mutually inconsistent versions.

US cartoon

In the TV series, the Transformers arrived on Nebulos in the three-part episode "The Rebirth", which was the pilot episode of the fourth season, and the last episode ever produced in the USA. The Autobots' spaceship was plunged to Nebulos accidentally by a gigantic power surge from the Plasma Energy Chamber, and the Decepticons followed them.

The TV show version of Nebulos is a hostile, dying world, where a group of eleven rulers known as "The Hive" controls the entire world from an underground city, abusing their power for their personal pleasure and oppressing the workers with various mechanical devices controlled by their minds.

Upon seeing the Autobots, the Nebulon workers mistook them for machines controlled by The Hive, and imprisoned them, later to destroy them. However, an attack by the Decepticons convinced the workers that the Autobots were good guys, and so they were released and allied themselves with the workers. The Decepticons did the same with the members of The Hive.

In the TV show, the Nebulons were shown to be green-skinned.

Marvel comics

In the comic book, Fortress Maximus had grown weary of the civil war on Cybertron, and led a group of Autobots in search of a new planet where they could live in peace. They settled on Nebulon, but the Decepticons followed them.

The comic book version of Nebulon is an idyllic, peaceful world where war has long since been discontinued and all weapons have been locked away. It is governed by a council of peers.

The arrival of the Transformers scared the Nebulans, and they were forced to hold an emergency council meeting to deal with these strange new creatures. The Autobots wanted to live in peace with the Nebulans, but the Decepticons wanted to conquer them and kill the Autobots, so the Autobot-Decepticon civil war restarted on Nebulon. Both sides allied themselves with Nebulans, the Autobots generally with common people who had become familiar with them and did not see them as a threat, and the Decepticons generally with criminals or corrupt politicians.

The Nebulans, fearing the Transformers' civil war would plunge their own world back into war, finally banished the Transformers and their Nebulan sidekicks back into space, where they finally arrived on Earth.

In the comic book, the Nebulans were shown to have flesh-coloured skin, just like humans.

In the comics the Nebulans became power sources for the transformers as the Nebulans had more or less renounced the use of energy/technology. Upon arriving on the planet the transformers started to run out of energon and could not replenish.

IDW Publishing

The Nebulans have appeared once more in IDW Publishing's new continuity, in . Their planet was attacked by Thunderwing as part of an unholy pact to rejuvenate Cybertron. Despite the best efforts of the local Decepticon cell (led by Dreadwind and Darkwing) much of the planet was devastated. It also appeared chronologically earlier in the issue on Ultra Magnus, where Scorponok was already seen to be developing the Headmaster process.