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.
