'But Archie was never more dangerous than when he was in danger'.

The cover of the LION Annual for 1979 shows Robot Archie in combat with a giant octopus...

A little disappointingly the robot only appears in 4 pages of an illustrated story in the annual itself, but the book does have a great Adam Eterno story so it's not all bad news.

Robot Maria by Simon Davis.

Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a masterpiece.
Considering the time it was made, 1927, its vision and design still stand out today. A bleak and doomed future in much the same way that Bladerunner was, and obviously a big influence on Ridley Scott's classic.

 And it had Maria, a robot who is transformed into a replica of a woman in order to bring chaos to a world on the edge of meltdown. It's a long film, certainly for the time, and quite a complex story considering the limitations of the film industry of the day.
The standout for me is the classic design of the robot.

Fabulous.
I first came across Simon Davis' work on the Sinister Dexter stories in the 2000AD and was intrigued to see how his water colour style would work on the Robot Maria ?
I was suitably impressed and happy with the end result.

The Iron Giant by David Hitchcock.

The Iron Giant was released back in 1999, and was directed by Brad Bird (who has gone on to make a lot of the excellent Pixar movies) and how now (sadly) moved into films starring real people, well, actors anyway.

I still find it hard to believe that The Iron Giant isn't listed on everyone's top 10 animated movies list, and even more surprising that a lot of people have never even seen it.

It has to be one of my favourite animated movies and I still smile at the Superman scene. This movie had it all, great characters, great story, great robot design and heart.
It was based in a book called The Iron Man written in 1968 by Ted Hughes and if memory serves, it keeps fairly closely to the overall plot.

David Hitchcock is one of those UK creators who really deserves to have made it big in the profession. He's created a number of UK Independent comic favourites and is an Eagle Award winner. Most of Dave's work plays back to Victorian times and he captures the mood so well with his pencil work. Dropping the Iron Giant into that time period works really well, as you can see.

Robot Archie by Shane Oakley.

I remember reading a few stories about Robot Archie when I was very young. It must have been in the pages of an issue or two of Lion that I first read about Professor C.R. Ritchie's robot. Built to be the world's most powerful mechanical man, I can't remember him ever coming across any other robots to prove himself against but I remember him fighting tigers and men with guns. 
On reading about Archie's history, I was surprised to find out that he couldn't speak when he first appeared (in 1952) and had to wait until 1966 when he was finally fitted with a voice box, he must have had plenty to say in the first issue that followed.
Robot Archie reappeared as Acid Archie in the fabulous Zenith (2000AD) by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell and again in Albion (by Alan Moore, Leah Moore, John Reppion and illustrated by the sublime Shane Oakley). It was great to see and read about Robot Archie again after so many years and nobody really messed with his design at all, which says alot about how memorable it is and how respected by British creators down the years. You don't mess with perfection as they say.
Shortly after reading Albion I bought a page with Archie centre stage (you'll notice a Cyberman in there as well, and I'll include cyborgs in my definition of robots for the purposes of this blog).

and also commissioned artist Shane Oakley to do me a commission, which has sat framed on my wall for a good number of years now and still makes me smile.