Despite his incredible fighting skills, courage, and unmatched talent for improvisation on the battlefield, Ultra Magnus is not portrayed as a natural leader and displays discomfort if the Autobot Matrix of Leadership should ever find itself placed upon him.
Ultra Magnus is armed with missile launchers capable of hitting a target 30 miles away and transforms into a car carrier able to transport his fellow Autobot troops.
Leading the defense of the city when it came under the Decepticon attack, Magnus suddenly found himself commanding the entire Autobot army when Optimus Prime died after his fight with Megatron and passed the Matrix of Leadership to him despite his protestations.
They slipped through to the sorcerous other-dimensional realm of Menonia and were tricked into fighting on the Red Wizard's side, only to find out that he was the Quintesson criminal, who overthrew the Golden One.
When the galaxy became infected by the Hate Plague, Ultra Magnus was one of the first victims, and his calm, restrained soldier attitude was stripped away, leaving behind a raving, battle-hungry maniac who had a particular interest in destroying Rodimus Prime.
In Headmasters, Magnus was a supporting character for the early part of the series, once again in charge of Autobot City on Earth, taking a proactive role in the defense of the planet against the Decepticons when they re-emerged in 2011.
Whether this is due to his body being composed of external armor over his truck-cab exoskeleton (like the original toy and Dreamwave comic), or simply because of animator error, is open to fan interpretation.
The appearance of three more Autobots from the future, Hot Rod, Kup, and Blurr, gave Magnus his answer: the mass-displacement effect yielded by Galvatron's time travel had shunted Prime and the others into the limbo between dimensions.
Magnus, however, was too late to return for Operation: Volcano, but the plan was nullified when the intended Decepticon victims were called away by Megatron, but a parting shot took the life of the Wreckers' leader, Impactor.
Continuing their deeply bitter feud, Galvatron battled Ultra Magnus with help from the future Autobots, but in the end, the two leaders were entombed in volcanic lava.
The present-day Ultra Magnus would not have to face Galvatron again, but more terrifying threats were in store when he and the Sparklers returned to Cybertron and discovered that the city of Kalis had been overridden by hordes of zombie Transformers, reactivated by the renegade Autobot mad scientist, Flame.
Soon after, Magnus found himself involved in a grotesque illegal Gladiatorial game, and although he defeated his monstrous opponent and delivered a stirring speech to the crowd decrying their spectation of such a sport, his words failed to get through.
[3] Ultra Magnus from Dreamwave Productions' 21st-century re-imagining of the Generation One universe took the opportunity to indulge two contentious aspects of Ultra Magnus previously resigned to fan speculation: here, he was revealed to be Optimus Prime's "brother" in the Dreamwave continuity, and also hinted to be Dion, a childhood friend of Optimus Prime from the animated series, due to the name of a strike force he led.
Magnus' first chronological appearance was in The War Within: Age of Wrath miniseries, where he had united the splintered Autobot factions such as the Wreckers and Lightning Strike Coalition (who had struck out on their own following Optimus Prime and Megatron's disappearance in a Space Bridge accident) and managed to negotiate a settlement with the Decepticons and Ultracons.
Countdown confronts Ultra Magnus and Fortress Maximus and informs them that Operation: Containment, an attempt to prevent the Decepticon threat from spreading beyond Cybertron, has failed.
Unifying the Autobot and Decepticon factions, he appointed Ultra Magnus as his second-in-command, who led the attack on the Ark when they traveled to Earth and arrested Optimus Prime and Megatron as war criminals.
Ultra Magnus survived, however, and his inner robot emerged from his damaged larger form, teaming with Prime to stop Shockwave's plan to use the Matrix to access Vector Sigma.
In Transformers: Timelines volume 2 #2, "Games of Deception" this series Ultra Magnus leads a team of Autobots, which includes Elita One, Huffer, Snarl, Springer, Strongarm, Swoop and Tryanotron in pursuit of the Decepticon Bug Bite and his forces to Earth.
He and Perceptor saved a group of G. I Joes and Cobras from Shockwave's Decepticons, erecting a force field to protect them while they worked to repair the damage caused by Teletran-3, powered by Magnus' own strength.
As acting Autobot commander, Bumblebee attempts to persuade Ultra Magnus to abandon his law enforcement duties and take up the fight against the Decepticons that still remained on Earth.
Although Magnus remained a free agent, refusing to take orders from his brother, his animosity dwindled, and he frequently helped the Autobots by combining with Prime to battle the Predacons and Decepticons.
The character also made one appearance in Dreamwave Productions' Summer Special in a story presented as being in continuity with the animated series, which pitted him against Scourge, as both denied and debated their Autobot heritage and relation to Optimus Prime.
Although the Robots in Disguise incarnation of Ultra Magnus did not return to TV screens, his toy was re-released on the shelves of Sam's Club in 2003's parallel-universe-spanning Transformers: Universe line, slightly redecorated with bluish-black parts in place of his dark blue ones.
[9] The Energon version of Ultra Magnus, like all the recolorations of Armada toys featured in the early stages of the toyline, never appeared in the TV show or the Dreamwave comic.
He also serves as captain of the Iron Hope which was crewed by Bonecrusher, Grimlock, Ironhide, Knock Out, Overcast, Prowl, Quickstrike, RipTide, Skyblast, Smokescreen, Swoop, Wreckage and the Sky Scorcher Mini-Con Team.
During the war, Ultra Magnus commissioned Project Omega as a desperate measure to defeat the Decepticons, despite his regret that the Autobots were creating a series of living doomsday weapons.
Later, he helps Bulkhead, Wheeljack and Miko escape from the Predacon named Predaking before finding Ratchet, Bumblebee, and Raf at the Harbinger and meeting Agent Fowler and June Darby.
In Retribution his role is expanded when Alpha Trion is taken prisoner by Shockwave and experimented upon, prompting him to assemble several Wreckers along with Jetfire and Omega Supreme to liberate the captured Prime.
Ultra Magnus makes a cameo, along with Arcee and Bulkhead, in the Transformers: Robots in Disguise comic, secretly observing Bumblebee and his team fight a Decepticon bird named Flamefeather.
He along with Arcee and Bulkhead meet Team Bee during a conflict with Clipshade in issue 2 Ultra Magnus appears as a character in the Nintendo DS game Transformers: War for Cybertron - Autobots.