Look And Learn - 1969.

I came across this old Look And Learn Annual a little while ago, and decided to pick it up as it reminded me of my childhood. Living in a time where the future seemed so exciting, full of space flight and robots. The promise of Science Fiction becoming Science Fact. With no limitations.

I'm not sure that I ever owned this particular book, but the message was a common one of the 60s and 70s.
I was sure that I'd possess my own Robot, a mechanical servant to help me with my day to day chores. A bit like Will Robinson, but in a flat in Sydenham rather than on some exotic planet out there somewhere.

And then as I got older and I read books and watched films where the robots actually turn on their masters,  I accepted that it was probably for the best.
So, let the children of today take their turn. Let them see their dreams of robot servants turn to worry about robot masters.
I think it's a circle of life thing.

Marvin The Paranoid Android - Stephen Moore.

I met Stephen Moore at the Memorabilia and MCM event in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago. For me he will always be THE voice of Marvin and I still don;t get why they use Alan Rickman in the movie, but then again the movie wasn't as good as the TV show or the Radio shows, so I guess it's appropriate.

As you'd expect, Stephen Moore is a very genuinely nice bloke and only to happy to humour an old fan of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy for a few minutes.

The Terminator by Kev Crossley

I met Kev Crossley at a few conventions between 2000 and 2005, and really enjoyed his interpretation of classic robots. As he was always so ready and willing to turn out these great little convention sketches I decided it only fair to get a real, full on, commission piece.
I asked for his version of The Terminator, and that's what I got.

Wow.
Kev never disappoints.

The Juggernaut ... from Hurricane Annual 1968

I spotted a cover to a Hurricane Annual that rang memory bells and picking it up flicked through the pages to discover a story that I rang those memory bells a second time. It featured a massive robot, indeed a Juggernaut, from Planet Z.
This issue is only two years before that one, and the artwork is painted, and therefore the robot is not quite so detailed, but the basic ingredients are all there.

The story is pretty straight forward, as they always tended to be, with the military dictator being very definitely the bad guy, and the heroes, Doctor Dan Morgan and his assistant Joe Dodge, having no concerns when calling down the mighty Juggernaut from Planet Z to deal with him.

There is no mention of where exactly Planet Z is or why they should care to help, but it can't be that far away as the robot arrives pretty soon.
The nice twist here is that the robot's controls are taken over by the bad guys and so the Juggernaut starts to attack the soldiers of the tiny state of Alkazia.

And the tide is quickly turned.

I must say that I was a little shocked when...

General Zeb, the bad guy, was very quickly disposed of.
Still, it all turned out pretty well, the tiny state of Alkazia was returned to the happy province it had been, the Juggernaut had saved the day, the two heroes had (through the Juggernaut) saved the day and their reputations and the rare material called Alkazium (vital to the world's space rocket programmes) remained available for exploitation by the powers of the world.

There are strong similarities between this and the Robot Archie stories, the major difference (apart from the size of the robot) seeming to be that he is from a different planet. I wonder if other tales tell us more about Planet Z and its intentions towards the Earth.
It would be an interesting angle to take on this but I doubt it happened.

Robby The Robot by Ramon Perez.

At this year's Thought Bubble comic convention in Leeds, I came across Ramon Perez sat at a table busy working on a commission. I didn't recognize him and he didn't have his name visible anywhere. So I asked him who he was and what he'd worked on.
'Ramon Perez', he politely responded, 'I'm currently working on the X-Men and Wolverine but I also illustrated A Tale Of Sand'.
I actually have a copy of A Tale of Sand, it's based on a film script by Jim Henson that never saw a camera's lens. I remembered being struck by how fluid the artwork on that book was and so promptly asked him for a robot commission.
He asked what robot I wanted, and I said that I'd happily leave that up to him.
He suggested I come back tomorrow.
Which I did, and was pleased to collect the image of Robby the Robot, from the classic 1956 movie Forbidden Planet.

Very nice indeed.
When I collected this I took the opportunity to get Ramon to sign my copy of A Tale Of Sand, of course.

Kryten by Robert Llewellyn.

I met Robert Llewellyn last weekend at the Thought Bubble comic convention in Leeds. His main reason for being there was to promote his books, yep, he's a science fiction writer when he's not on TV. He came across as a genuinely nice bloke, and I picked up a copy of the first in his trilogy of books,

It sounded an interesting concept where his trilogy explored the idea of what would happen if something significant in the world we know was the complete opposite.
Free with every copy of his book, but not the reason I bought it honest, was a signed photo of him as Kryten.

Still one of my favourite Sci-Fi characters.
(Note - you should check out Robert's blog... very interesting stuff).

RobotMan by Duncan Fegredo.

Robot Man is Clifford "Cliff" Steele a human mind in a robot body, and DC hero who is part of the strange superhero team that is Doom Patrol.He has appeared in all versions of the Doom Patrol comics, although his powers have varied a little along the way, and I'm not sure if his human brain wasn't replaced by a CPU at one point.
A great design though and a great character who had to constantly fight the depression that was caused by him living in a metal body.
Duncan Fegredo is one of the nicest comicbook artists on the Con circuit. He always seems to be enjoying himself, regardless of the daunting queue at his table, and his talent has recently landed him the job of bringing Hellboy to the comic page, which is the highest praise.
I got this quick convention sketch back in 2000.

CLANK !!

The Coffin by Mike Huddleston.

Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston produced a really interesting mini-series a while back called The Coffin.
Dr. Ashar Ahmad a brilliant but heartless scientist was intent on proving the physical existence of the soul, going as far as to create an impenetrable cybernetic skin that would trap the human soul after the body within has died - a walking coffin. As you might expect, a dying Ahmad ends up encased in one of his prototypes and then realizes how he'd wasted his life. Things go from bad to worse as The Coffin begins a desperate race to reclaim his technology from an evil corporate overlord and and the same time save the life of his estranged daughter.
I enjoyed the book and loved the design of The Coffin (who I guess you could argue isn't really a robot).
I was lucky enough to get out to the San Diego Comic Convention back in 2001 and got this convention commission sketch from Mike himself.

The Terminator... from StarBlazer No. 174.

StarBlazer was a Science Fiction version of Commando.
The same format, the same quality of story telling and artwork.

What StarBlazer had above Commando though was that it wasn't constrained by fact and historical events.
in Issue 174 (from 1986) then we had The Terminator, which was kind of a mix between Judge Dredd and Robocop.

There are some neat little ideas in here, and whilst the story is told in the typical way (these books did tend to spoon feed the reader a bit too much at times) it's a great little read.
It doesn't shy away from death, and the robot follows its programming to the letter. It announces the reason for the judgement and then carries it out. No messing.

Of course, as usual, humans are behind all the bad things that the robot does, he is after all 'only following his programming'. Marshal Skarr soon finds himself being hunted by the Terminator, his only crime really being that of 'getting in the way'.

It turns out that there's an alien invasion threat and human greed behind it all and Skarr saves the day, despite escaping almost certain death a few times on the way.

An interesting robot design. Almost as if he doesn't have a head, and 'Yes', The Terminator movie came out a couple of years before this saw print so they probably used the title to try to attract a few more readers, and made the robot look completely different to avoid a lawsuit or two.

Robot Archie uses, then loses, his head.

Robot Archie has two stories in the 1970 LION annual.

In the first we find the mechanical marvel in India and whilst wandering around a local bazaar, with Ted Ritchie and Kan Dale, the robot begins to experience problems with his balance.

It seems that a crystal that is his movement co-ordinator has worn out (maybe we all have these and they are effected by alcohol... just a thought). This crystal is a semi precious gem, which whilst not expensive is not going to be easy to find in India. So they all set off for the biggest jewellery firm in town.
And you just know something is going to go wrong.
Yep, just as they arrive robbers who have just hit the firm are making a quick exit.
Archie, being the hero that he is rushes off to catch them.

But his balance is off and he catches the tram instead of the crooks.

The crooks make their escape and the even worse news is that the jeweller doesn't have the gem required to repair Archie (and you were thinking that he'd say the robbers just took the only one he had didn't you). But fear not, The Mad Maharajah has one. He sounds like the kind of person who would be only too happy to help, from behind his 'high walls' (as he never leaves the palace).

A short trip, avoiding a booby trap, being shot at, minor elephant crushing and head butting a heavy wooden door sees Archie behind the walls and chasing down an escaping helicopter (yep, it appears that The Mad Maharajah didn't get rich by lots of hard work (maybe not so mad after all then)).

Except that The Mad Maharajah had in fact died years before and the criminals had just moved in and pretended that he was still around, spending without a care.

In the second story, this time illustrated text rather than full blown comic pages, we see Archie pit his abilities again 'Head Hunters'.

In this tale the three get attacked by a tribe of head hunters, who manage to steal the transmitter that controls Archie before beating a hasty retreat back into the jungle. The heroes then allow themselves to get separated and finally catch up with Archie to find him having his head unscrewed by the Head Hunters.

It all looks pretty bleak for them all until Professor Zing turns up and saves the day. Why the Head Hunters had never removed the Prof's head is a mystery that is neither questioned nor answered, leading me to suspect him of being some evil matermind or somesuch, but I guess I may never know.

 

Maria by Kev Crossley.

Kev Crossley was a regular of the comic convention scene, and may well still be, I tend not to get too much time to wander these days. He does these really angular sketches and I was intrigued with what he'd do with Maria.

Amazing. I'd love to see Kev's interpretation of the whole movie in comic book form...

One-Eye by Dave West.

I thought I'd put something a little different up here for this posting. A while back I started playing around with paper mache and found objects (or rather objects that I salvaged from broken household appliances and the like).

One of the results was One-Eye, who I used as a table display at Comic Conventions.

As you can see, a bit of silver paint certainly helps to bring all the bits together.

But I liked to make it possible to still be able to read some of the words from the electronics books that I used to make him.
Good fun but it took a lot longer to make that I can fit in these days.

Robot Maria by Matt Boyce

Maria just has to one of the best robot designs ever created.
She has stood the test of time and influenced so many that followed her, notably C-3PO being one of the most famous, and I really enjoy seeing artist's interpretation of such a classic.

Matt Boyce appeared on the comic scene a while back now. A very funny, very genuine bloke who produced a couple of mini-comics, contributed to a couple of independent UK anthologies and then just stepped away from the comic creating world. A real shame. I do see Matt about once a year or so, he pops up at what seems to be a random Comic Convention (although I'm sure there will be a pattern), and we chat.
He did this sketch for me at a Convention when he was 'doing his comic book thing' and asked me to scan and email it to him so that he could colour it.
I jumped at the chance and got this great little image back.

Fabulous.

Terminator by Garry Brown.

Well, as Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to resurrect his acting career (I use the term loosely) with his return to the role that made his a household name, I thought it appropriate to have a Terminator commission up here.
I watched the Terminator films as they came out but lost interest with the third and didn't bother with the fourth until the DVD was cheap. They really need to do something fresh if they are going to capture my interest again.

Garry Brown did some work for the earlier Accent UK anthologies and I knew from the offset that he'd do well in the industry. Since those days he's gone on to work for the major companies and at the moment is illustrating The Massive for Dark Horse.
As you can see, he does great black and white images.

Steel Commando.

Also appearing in the 1976 LION Annual is a story about the Steel Commando.
More Beano than Lion, this character is a World War II secret weapon put under the control of Lance Corporal Ernie 'Excused Boots' Bates. What could possibly go wrong ?

You can tell what sort of story you're going to get when you discover that the man who created the robot is called Professor Brayne.

and it starts to play out in this story as a short circuit causes the Steel Commando to go 'loopy' whenever anyone says 'Blockhead'.
This 8 page story sees Bates and the Steel Commando go behind enemy lines in to try to get hold of an important map. They come across the German's own robot, which for some reason is used as a butler rather than a soldier, and there's a nice toouch when the Steel Commando is disguised as the robot Butler in order to get closer to the German command.

Not my cup of tea but it is a robot, so it's not all bad.