Robby The Robot by Ian Gibson.

Ian Gibson produced the first comic work that I ever read that had me wishing my life away. How long would I have to wait for the next issue of 2000AD and my next fix of Halo Jones ? Together with Alan Moore he made me realise that I was going to be into comics for a very long time.
I love the way Ian portrays women in comics, the strong characters but with very feminine physiques and without making them too top heavy (if you know what I mean).
When I came to ask Ian to do a Robot commission, it had to be something that had a female in it. I was torn between two ideas, Miranda and Robby the Robot on planet Altair-4, from Forbidden Planet or Robot Maria from Metropolis. In the end I went for both, but here's the first, Miranda and Robby.
Ian was an easy person to deal with and seemed genuinely interested, and set off to work his magic. A month or so passed and I'd heard nothing from Ian so I dropped him an email. Just a little friendly questioning type of thing. Ian was of course busy, as he should be, but was also having a few problems getting the thing to work right.
He was playing with the image whilst doing his other work, but informed me that it hadn't come together yet, or at least he wasn't happy with how it had come together so far.
After the commission had been completed I asked Ian if I could have the preparatory sketches, just so that I could see how the final image come to be. Here are a selection of the pages he sent me for you to look at...



I think Ian pretty quickly settled on Robby's look ...

I love the curves that make up Robby's body. Showing similarities to the Robby of the movie, and yet very different. Movie Robby had a problem walking, whereas Ian's version looks perfectly able to nip in front of Miranda and protect her from the soldiers sent to investigate her father's activities.

Once happy with Robby, Ian then works on Miranda...

working on the dynamics of the composition.

and the background, capturing the strange sky that instantly places the scene on a distant planet...

and then tightening up the characters...

until finally it all comes together, with the eye flowing from Miranda's outstretched had to that plaved on Robby's chest and across to Robby's own hand, as she hold him back from being perhaps a little over protective.

Using purple as the predominant colour is a great way to add to the feel of it all taking place on a different planet, and not our grey moon, and this is nicely offset by Miranda's green body suit.
What a fabulous image, and what a privilege to be able to leaf through all the preparatory sketches.
I'll leave you then with one last look at what might have been...

Ha ... humourous Robby ... great stuff.

Man or Machine ? Guardian article.

I came across this intereting article over at www.guardian.co.uk. Worth a read.

This week's image is a bag from the New York branch of Forbidden Planet. If you know who the artist is then let me know.

Hammerstein by Kev Walker.

The Hammersteins were developed by Howard Quartz's Ro-Busters corporation in the pages of 2000AD. Hammerstein, the best of these units, became the leader of the legendary ABC Warriors, a group of robots who continuously found themselves on seemingly suicide missions against impossible odds.
Hammerstein's success on the battlefield was largely down to the fact that he had been programmed with both emotions and a conscience (allowing him to distinguish between combatants and civilians). Whilst his right hammer-hand gives him his name, it's his head that is, to me, the most distinctive part of him. A great design.
His likeness was also used in the first Judge Dredd movie, the one with Silvester Stallone.
This great little Convention sketch is from the pencil of Kev Walker, one of a gresat line up of artists to have illustrated the character (created by Pat Mills).

I'm also fortunate enough to own this painted art page from Kev.

with an acetate layer over it to hold the text.

Looks like Hammerstein has seen better days.

Mr. Benn The Mechanic

I've been a fan of Mr. Benn probably longer than I've been a fan of robots.
I grew up watching his adventures on TV and was intrigued by the possibility that there actually were shops out there where you could buy adventures as readily as a costume.
Imagine my joy then at coming across a Pippin Annual today at a Vintage Fair in Stockport. Not only does it have 4 great Mr. Benn stories from the magical mind of David McKee but also one sees Mr. Benn take on the role of a Mechanic, and he has to fix a robot.
Mr. Benn and Robots in the same story.
Here's the page in all its glory.
Enjoy.

I did my own Mr. Benn cartoon a few years ago, if you're interested you can see it over on Strange Times.

The Adventure Annual - 1953

I came across this great looking cover recently in an old book store (on both counts, it was a store selling old books and the store itself was old) in Chester. The book itself has been through the wars a bit but who could resist buying something with a cover that impressive.

The robot has a surprisingly CGI look about it for something that was created back in 1953, and artist Denis McLoughlin does a really good job of both the colour cover and internal black and white pages, and even makes a typically human error with the number of eyes his robot has (as shown on the sampled panel at the top of the posting).
The story itself, by Colin McLoughlin, is typical of the time, a bad guy, the hero's girl needs to be saved, the solar system needs saving at the same time and it all resolves itself very nicely for all parties (except the bad guy of course).

The hero Swift Morgan had the feel of Dan Dare and Flash Gordon about him, and I found a little information about the book on the Dan Dare Info website which is nice.

I do love the feel of 1950's Science Fiction, and this story has it all.

Cylon by Michael Lark.

This is the classic Cylon design from the series that aired back in 1978 in a show called Battlestar Galactica. A favourite show of mine at the time, as it was set in a universe where man had created robots only to have them turn on their creator and almost wipe him out.
The more recent re-imagining of the show was actually a great improvement, although it let me down a bit in the end as it moved from hard science fiction into fantasy (by my definition) but I enjoyed the journey.
I came across Michael Lark's work in a comic called Terminal City which had some great robot design's littering an excellent tale by Dean Motter. His work is very gritty and fits the tales he illustrates particularly well, for me the peak being his run on Gotham Central which follows the police trying to stamp some kind of authority in Batman's Gotham City. But that said his run on Captain America was also great.
Michael visited the UK in 2006 and attended the Birmingham Comic Convention (BICCs), which sadly no longer takes place. I mentioned his commissioned Cylon image (which he did for me in 2005 through web contact) as he did a great convention sketch for me of one of the main robots from Terminal City (I'll post it up sometime soon), hopefully it made a nice change from Batman and Captain America.

C-3PO by Seth Fisher.

C-3PO is a protocol droid (the robots were all called droids, I don't remember hearing the term 'robot' at all), more of a talker than a fighter, designed to serve human beings (and probably a few other races), and is fluent in "over six million forms of communication", or do he says.
He is the comedy element in the movies and for me the highlight of the whole Star Wars series.
I first came across Seth Fisher's artwork on the DC graphic novel, Green Lantern : Willworld, and I was stunned by his ability to let his art just flow seemingly with a mind of its own.
In talking with Seth over email for this commission I got to know him a little, as much as such communication would allow. He chose the robot and the design himself, I just asked for a robot commission and left his mind to do its thing. This digitally coloured piece arrived before the inked page and I couldn't be more pleased with either.

It has a spiritual aspect that was important to Seth, who was living in Japan at the time and exploring the country and its culture.
Sadly Seth died not too long after this piece was finished. I only ever met him face to face at a San Diego Comic convention in 2001 (where he did me a quick Green Lantern sketch) and didn't mention this when he was doing the commission as I would have been one amongst a sea of similar fan-boy faces, but he was a genuinely nice person and a pleasure to talk with. A real loss.