This article is a featured article, and considered to be one of the most informative on this wiki.
- Marissa is a human in the Generation One continuity family.
When it comes to dating robots, she's a Viking.
Captain Marissa Faireborn is an officer in the Earth Defense Command. Tough and headstrong, she performs her duties with strict military professionalism. She may be small and squishy, but she sure knows how to use a knife. Even the Decepticons respect her as a proper adversary.
Also, she's great at surfboarding.
Fiction[]
American cartoon continuity[]
- Voice actor: Susan Blu (US), Komiya Kazue (Japan)
After the destruction of Unicron in 2005, the peace that followed in the next year was soon interrupted by the return of Galvatron. In the midst of this Decepticon uprising, Blurr and Wheelie were stranded on Jupiter's moon Io while safeguarding Metroplex's transformation cog. Marissa Faireborn was sent to retrieve the two and their cargo, but alien lipoles native to Io destroyed her spacecraft, stranding her as well. Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4 Sky Lynx eventually arrived to rescue them and fend off an attack by the monstrous combiner Predaking. Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5
Tricked by a holographic representation of her father, Marissa was kidnapped by a spacefaring Quintesson scientist. Also captured were Ultra Magnus, Cyclonus, and Wreck-Gar. She and the other prisoners rebelled, but not before their vessel hurtled through a black hole and into another universe. This made them all different colors, but despite this setback, they were able to return home unharmed. The Killing Jar
The inspiration for Kiss Players.
Another Quintesson experiment, one intended to alter the past to benefit themselves, sent unstable chronal energy across the universe. This caused Marissa to temporarily age-regress into an infant.
"You like me because I'm a scoundrel."
Marissa had a short affair with smuggler Dirk Manus, who was attempting to transport a highly-experimental molecular recreator to the Quintessons. Though their feelings were mutual, he was merely using her trust to help pull off a heist. Marissa discovered his scheme, and with the Technobots' help (and some double-crossing by Manus) foiled the Quintessons' plans. Though Manus got away from the authorities, she had switched his booty with mimic dust. Despite losing a fortune, Dirk was amused and impressed at Marissa's doublecross. Money Is Everything
Later, Marissa attempted to console a depressed Rodimus Prime during a visit to Japan, when they were suddenly attacked by Dead End and Wildrider. Rodimus was run off the road, and before Marissa could come to his aid, the Decepticons had escaped with the Matrix of Leadership. The Burden Hardest to Bear
Japanese G1 continuity[]
Kiss Players continuity[]
Marissa buys MISB because she wants a GERM FREE toy.
Voice actor: Lyrian (Japan)
In 2006, Marissa Faireborn was a 20-year-old American woman from New York, where as a child she had met and become friends with Shao-Shao Li, who developed an extremely strong attachment to her. The young Marissa resented her military father, and when she was once rescued by Optimus Prime, she quickly came to view the Autobot leader as both a father figure and more. Ten years later, she joined a (possibly all-female) commando resistance movement and attempted to steal Prime's corpse from the Earth Defense Command. When the rest of her strike team was taken by surprise and slaughtered, Marissa elected herself as the backup plan.
She quickly sliced the clothes off the Kiss Players who stood in her way, but was briefly incapacitated when struck from behind by a Kremzeek bullet fired by a nearby Autrooper. Hurling her knife through the air, she cut open Prime's trailer and discovered his body...only to see the Autrooper summarily eject its Kiss Player partner and begin to fuse with the Autobot's corpse.
I'm telling you. She's Krillin in drag.
Marissa kissed Prime, fusing with him and triggering a transformation that restored him to life and converted his body into a new Dodge SRT-10 form. Traveling together as a couple, the two battled Legion creatures while eluding both the E.D.C. and Hot Rod, who believed Prime to be an impostor.
While a fugitive, Marissa wore various skull-themed accessories. As part of their tendency to rename one another's possessions, Optimus Prime dubbed the triple-skull design on her shirt "The Three Skull Brothers." An accomplished knife fighter, Marissa sometimes carried several blades, at least one of which was sharp enough to slice through reinforced metal when hurled through the air.
Marissa considered Optimus Prime to be her boyfriend (didn't she know Prime already had a girlfriend? One that was his own kind no less), and often merged with him to share her knife-wielding skills by kissing him. She was also a professional surfer.
No, seriously.
(Note: Early previews of the series implied Marissa to be a current or former E.D.C. member. However, the actual development of the story has not indicated this, and the E.D.C. logo on her shirt in early images has been replaced with the set of three eyepatch-wearing skulls referenced above.)
The jokes just write themselves.
In the wake of the final battle against the E.D.C., Marissa, Shaoshao and Atari Hitotonari formed a singing idol group called the "Kiss Players" together with the cassette Transformers Glit, Sundor and Rosanna. As they performed at the Brave Maximus Fortress stop of their world tour in Scramble City in 2007, the Sparkbots Star Dust, Angela and Zangetsu appeared and instructed the three humans to kiss them. Complying, they were teleported to Sherman Dam in the year 1985, just in time to witness a historic battle.
Flint would be so proud.
At Angela's behest, Marissa kissed the Sparkbot to transform her and rode the flying lion to Optimus Prime as he prepared to battle his enemy Megatron atop the dam. Angela ordered Marissa to kiss the Autobot leader, and when she did, a fragment of the Allspark emerged from his chest. Invisible to her future partner and obliged to return to her own time, Marissa regretted that she could not stay and try to avert Prime's deadly fate-to-come.
The Kiss Players traveled from past to future, collecting Allspark fragments along the way. Their adventures eventually led them to the planet Quintessa, where even the power of Moe, despite transforming Marissa into a sailor-suited bunny girl, was not enough to spare them from the Quintesson judge's verdict of "not guilty." Fortunately, Optimus Prime and Goldbug came to their accidental rescue, and the Kiss Players' voyage continued.
After Marissa and her friends returned to the present day, she chose to enlist in the reconstructed E.D.C.
Dreamwave Generation One comics continuity[]
She covers up better than her mom.
As Bumper and Warpath attempted to haul the deactivated bodies of Jazz, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Windcharger, and Wheeljack out of an Oregon lake, they were arrested by Commander Marissa Faireborn and a legion of EDC troops. The Omega Effect After taking them into custody, Faireborn recruited Jazz, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, and Bumper to accompany her and the EDC Night Force to San Desto.
Oh, BURN! Jazz likes GIRLS!
A sweep of the town uncovered no sign of its inhabitants. Marissa established a good rapport with Jazz, and instructed her troops to follow his orders as they would hers. Soon enough, they were attacked by an army of Insecticon clones, who decimated the EDC troops and captured Bumper. Jazz and Marissa managed to escape to a garage, where they found a veritable abattoir of human and bovine remains. The Insecticons tracked them down, forcing them to flee into a subterranean egg chamber, which Jazz promptly torched. This prompted an attack from an enraged Shrapnel, but Sideswipe and Sunstreaker managed to cover Jazz and Marissa's escape back to the surface. Once there, they were confronted with more Insecticon clones and the cerebro-shell-controlled human citizens of San Desto. While the Autobots were unwilling to risk killing the helpless thralls, Marissa waded into the army with fists flying. Further bloodshed was prevented, however, when Bumper took out Bombshell, neutralizing both clones and slaves. Infestation Extermination Back at EDC headquarters, Marissa saw Jazz and the rest of the Autobots off. Lost and Found
As a result of Marissa and Jazz's shared battle experience, their strong mutual respect may have blossomed into a romantic attraction. This was outwardly obvious enough to inspire Sideswipe to refer to Marissa as Jazz's girlfriend.
Sometime later, Faireborne was chewed out by her superior over the loss of Night Force. Despite her objections, he ordered her to reactivate Project: Centurion. The Route of All Evil
Toys[]
Kiss Players[]
- Convoy x Melissa (Kiss Players, 2006)
EDC Casual Fridays; Note: She's supposed to be 20 YEARS OLD
- Available only as part of the headliner Kiss Players set, Marissa's first-ever toy is a soft-plastic PVC figurine with a permanent pucker, designed mainly to sit demurely on the robot-mode shoulder of her partner Convoy. Unlike the previous human-partner PVCs from the Binaltech Asterisk line, Marissa is pre-posed in a sitting position, and while she can be used to ride inside Convoy's vehicle-mode driver/passenger compartment, her hands cannot go on the steering wheel. An optional lower body piece, stand and arms give her a leaning pose, but she cannot stand up straight. She comes with a surfboard (that she really can't use) that becomes a sword for Convoy or can separate into a pair of long serrated knives. The set also comes with a CD containing the first 5 episodes of the Kiss Players radio drama and a new 10-minute audio story directed by series designer Yūki Ōshima.
- This set was originally intended for release in the Binaltech Asterisk line as "Black Convoy meets Marissa", but was cancelled due to low sales of the previous toys before it was even officially solicited. How much difference there is between the planned Asterisk version of Marissa and the final Kiss Players version is currently unknown. (Although it could be assumed she was likely originally wearing some pants.)
Notes[]
- Although Marissa's father has long been accepted to be the G.I. Joe member Flint (aka Dashiell Faireborn), there were no statements as to the identity of her mother until recently. In an interview on the Sony BMG re-release of The Transformers: The Movie, former Transformers writer and story editor Flint Dille confirmed fellow G.I. Joe member Lady Jaye as Marissa's mother.
- However, realistically, this would pose a problem: Marissa would have been conceived in 1985 and born in 1986 (being 20 years old in 2006). This would have been during the height of Flint and Lady Jaye's adventures against Cobra, the initial development of their blossoming relationship, which began at this time, and would cause a serious conflict with the Sunbow continuity.
- In the Dreamwave comics continuity, Marissa was the granddaughter of the heretofore unseen Nathaniel Faireborn, who was the founder of the EDC in that timeline.