Daniel Klonowski

Daniel Klonowski is a human from the 2005 IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Daniel Klonowski is a Skywatch lieutenant working under Colonel Gordon Horiuchi. He feels that Skywatch's desire to capture all Transformers is wrong and wants to reveal the Autobots as the good guys they are. Unlike his superior, he is uncomfortable with treating the Autobots like slaves.

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

Following the Decepticons' retreat from New York City, Klonowski was among the troops who searched the ruined city for any Transformer stragglers. He discussed the alien robots with his comrade Lopez, who had heard that the car robots were actually good, while the plane robots were bad. Klonowski didn't believe him, as he had personally seen a robot made out of construction vehicles destroy the Manhattan Bridge. When Lopez pressed the issue, he gave it some thought and figured that car disguises were even worse, since you could at least see an F-15 or an excavator coming. Hidden

Three years later, Klonowski had been promoted to lieutenant, and he supported Colonel Horiuchi as he secretly tried to convince the car robots to ally themselves with Skywatch. He opened a container of Skywatch badges for the Autobots to use and later helped Horiuchi use Cliffjumper's badge to incapacitate him. The Hanging Sword When they failed to do the same to Bumblebee a while later, Klonowski told the colonel that just pressing the button over and over wouldn't magically make it work. Ratchet explained that the badge was broken, and Klonowski added that the Autobot was probably correct, since he was a mechanic. The Impossible Knot

On the way to replace Bumblebee's badge, Klonowski reported to Horiuchi that the plan wasn't going well: People loyal to their cause were dropping one by one, and the Autobots were not appreciating their incapacitating badges. Klonowski was assigned to replace the badge, and in the process, he noticed that the unresponsive Bumblebee had apparently acquired a license plate and some rust since they last met. This got him thinking, especially when the new badge didn't seem to work either, but he shrugged it off and returned to base. As he listened in on the Autobots' conversations a while later, Klonowski's suspicions were raised again: Not only were the Autobots suddenly enthusiastic about capturing their own brethren for Skywatch, Ratchet also replied to a question that was seemingly never asked. Klonowski began investigating by searching for hidden messages in the Autobots' internal transmissions, and he discovered several encrypted text messages. From these, he learned that the "Bumblebee" he had interacted with earlier was a fake, and that the real Bumblebee was out trying to deactivate the Skywatch badges. While initially horrified that the Autobots were ruining their plan, Klonowski soon got intrigued by Bumblebee's messages, which showed that he was honestly concerned about having to trick and betray someone in order to reach his goal. The Gift Horse

As he watched the messages, Klonowski learned that Skywarp had the same target as Bumblebee, namely Sanjay Bharwaney, who owned a control panel for the badges. He quickly grabbed some weapons and went to their aid, only to find Bumblebee trying to save Bharwaney and his daughter from the Decepticon. He injured Skywarp with a bazooka before getting the Bharwaneys to safety, then watched as Bumblebee sacrificed himself in order to finish the Decepticon off. In the aftermath, Klonowski took responsibility for the whole mess at Skywatch and was subsequently fired. He didn't really mind, though, since he had gotten a nice cash reward from Horiuchi and other higher-ups for taking the heat off of them. He shared all this news with Ratchet at the Autobot base, but left before the repaired Bumblebee showed up. Wings of Wax

Notes

• Klonowski is named after a friend of writer Zander Cannon.
• In his original appearance in "Hidden", Klonowski was apparently not a lieutenant yet, as he was seen being commanded by a sergeant. It's unknown what his rank was back then, though.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Klonowski (クロノウスキー Kuronousukī)