Plots
Verdus
In the first storyline, "Verdus" (also known as "The Robot Planet"), Slade is dispatched to a distant colony planet to solve the mystery of its vanished colonists. An act of sabotage on his space craft causes time dilation during the trip, meaning that Slade arrives at the planet restored to his early 20s while the ship's pilot, Kidd, is now a cynical talking baby. The colony world is populated entirely by robots. These robots, charged with terraforming the planet and preparing it for colonization, have been programmed by their initial creator, a wood-burning droid called Smokin' Joe, to believe that "humans are superior to robots in every way". By the time the first colonists arrive, however, the robots' strength and technology is so far advanced that this thesis no longer holds true, thus the Verdus robots deny the humanity of their masters. Colonists are imprisoned as "simulated humans" on arrival.
The robots adhere to a strict hierarchy, with the leader of Verdus, Big Brain, as Class 9 and all others below him. Civic and military leaders are Class 7, vending and repair droids Class 1 and all others in between. For unexplained reasons, there appears to be no Class 8. Partly for Big Brain's amusement, the robots have established a society that mimics the worst elements of Earth including celebrity culture and party politics. After Big Brain's malfunction a civil war erupts between the human-loyalist First Army and the "anti-hume", or Denialist, Second. The First Army, led by a cowardly general and designed by Gibson to resemble the British Tommies of the First World War, is annihilated. Slade resolves the problem by building a radio transmitter that destroys all the planet's Robots - including Slade's ally "Boots", the first robot to believe the duo are human. Slade and Kidd show little remorse for any of the robots, although Smokin' Joe is repaired and taken back to earth, where Slade receives the "World Medal of Honour".
The Day of the Droids
A second long-running story, "The Day of the Droids", followed. Back on Earth, Sam investigates a plot replacing key officials with lifelike robot doubles in his unspecified home city (which judging by various references is located somewhere in America). This is part of robot Mafia boss the God-Droid's plan to take over the city. Meanwhile, the Amalgamated Androids Union, led by a cocktail waiter robot called Molotov, is threatening to strike. Sam is joined by an idiot kit-built robot assistant, Hoagy, and, after a crack-down on smoking in IPC Comics, is given a Cuban robot cigar called Stogie, designed to help him cut down on nicotine. Ultimately Sam defeats the God-Droid with the aid of the East Side Androids American football team, but Molotov takes all the credit, and after saving the city Sam finds himself out of a job. Slade quits the city for pastures new, spending his meagre reward money on a ticket to Brit-Cit.
Brit Cit cases
In 1982, Wagner, now working with his co-writer Alan Grant, returned to the character after an absence from 2000 AD of nineteen months. Robo-Hunter became a semi-regular feature in the comic for the next two years, during which the now Brit Cit located Sam investigated, among other cases, a plot to sabotage the robotic England football team's World Cup campaign. Sam solved a very lucrative case and retired rich, but was eventually forced out of retirement after Hoagy and Stogie spent all his money. When the series ended in 1985, Sam was back where he started, aging and down on his luck. Hoagy was given his own short story in the 1984 2000 AD album.
Revival
2000 AD revived the character in 1991, written by newcomer Mark Millar, who had a different interpretation of the characters. Peter Hogan, who replaced Millar in 1993, returned the series to a more traditional interpretation. These episodes were illustrated by Rian Hughes. In 1995, Robo-Hunter was cancelled once again. A final, one-off episode appeared a year later.
Samantha Slade
In December 2003, Alan Grant and Ian Gibson reunited for a revival of the strip starring Sam's granddaughter, Samantha Slade, Hoagy and Stogie. As of September 2007, 2000 AD has presented 28 episodes of the revived series, comprising six short stories.
2000 AD is a weekly British science fiction-oriented comic magazine. As a comics anthology it serialises stories in each issue and was first published by IPC Magazines in 1977, the first issue dated 26 February. Since 2000 it has been published by Rebellion Developments.
R. Daneel Olivaw is a fictional robot created by Isaac Asimov. The "R" initial in his name stands for "Robot," a naming convention in Asimov's future society during Earth's early period of space colonization. Daneel is introduced in The Caves of Steel, a serialized story published in Galaxy magazine vol. 7 #1-3 from October to December 1953. The full story was published by Doubleday as a hardcover book in 1954.
The Ballad of Halo Jones is a science fiction comic strip written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson, with lettering by Steve Potter and Richard Starkings.
Ian Gibson is a British comic book artist, best known for his 1980s black-and-white work for 2000 AD, especially as the main artist on Robo-Hunter and The Ballad of Halo Jones, as well as his long run on Judge Dredd.
Tharg the Mighty or The Mighty One is the fictional editor of the British science fiction comic 2000 AD. The character was introduced on the cover of the first issue in 1977 and is one of only two characters to appear in almost every issue of the comic, the other being Judge Dredd. Tharg rarely appears in stories but strips involving him have been written by such notable writers as Alan Grant, Alan Moore and John Wagner, albeit usually credited to "TMO" – "The Mighty One".
ABC Warriors is a feature in the UK comic-book series 2000 AD written by Pat Mills. It first appeared in program (issue) 119 in 1979 and continues to run as of 2018. Art for the opening episodes was by Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Brett Ewins, and Brendan McCarthy, who among them designed the original seven members of the team. Since then, they have been illustrated primarily, though not exclusively, by Bryan Talbot, Simon Bisley, SMS, Kevin Walker, Henry Flint and Clint Langley. The A.B.C. Warriors are a team of war robots designed to withstand 'Atomic', 'Bacterial' and 'Chemical' warfare. They were built to take part in the long-running Volgan War, which Mills had described in several previous 2000 AD strips, including Invasion! and Ro-Busters. Each robot has a distinctive personality – often one programmed by its human creators – but each is more or less able to act with free will.
Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra was a Spanish comics artist who worked mainly in British comics. He is best known as the co-creator of Judge Dredd.
Ro-Busters is a British comic story that formed part of the original line-up of Starlord. Similar in premise to that of the Thunderbirds television series, it was created by writer Pat Mills and was drawn by Carlos Pino and Ian Kennedy initially, before Starlord's merger with 2000 AD. After the merger, Dave Gibbons, Kevin O'Neill and Mike McMahon were regular artists on the series, along with occasional contributions from Mike Dorey.
Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos, known in France as La Revanche des GoBots, is a Japanese anime television series produced by Ashi Productions. It ran on TV Tokyo from July 3, 1986, through May 28, 1987.
Peter Hogan is an English writer and comics writer, best known for Resident Alien, which he co-created with artist Steve Parkhouse. Hogan began his comics career as editor of cult British comic Revolver in 1990–1991, before working for 2000 AD, American comic book publishers Vertigo, America's Best Comics and Dark Horse Comics
Choudenshi Bioman is Toei Company's eighth installment in the Super Sentai metaseries. Its 51 episodes aired on TV Asahi from February 4, 1984, to January 26, 1985, replacing Kagaku Sentai Dynaman and was replaced by Dengeki Sentai Changeman with a movie being released during the show's initial run.
Anthony Williams is a Welsh comic book artist.
RoboCop is a 1994 cyberpunk television series based on the RoboCop franchise. It stars Richard Eden as the title character. Made to appeal primarily to children and young teenagers, it lacks the graphic violence of the original film RoboCop and its sequel RoboCop 2 and is more in line with the tone of RoboCop 3.
"Insane in the Mainframe" is the eleventh episode in the third season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 43rd episode of the series overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 8, 2001. The episode was written by Bill Odenkirk and directed by Peter Avanzino. In the episode, Fry and Bender are admitted to an insane asylum for robots after being charged for their roles in holding up a bank. Fry's attempts to convince the asylum's staff that he is a human fail; he is eventually made to believe that he is a robot, and is deemed "cured" and released from the asylum. After being released, the Planet Express crew try to make him rediscover his humanity; these attempts fail, until Fry bleeds and realizes he is in fact, human.
Machine Robo: Battle Hackers is a Japanese animated television series produced by Ashi Productions. It ran on TV Tokyo from June 3, 1987 through December 30, 1987.
Abelard Snazz was a fictional comics character, created by Alan Moore, and first illustrated by artist Steve Dillon. A super intelligent man, nicknamed "The Man With The Multi-Storey Mind", he appeared on the pages of British magazine 2000 AD.
Marvel Action Universe was a 1988–1991 weekly syndicated television block from Marvel Productions featuring animated adaptions of Dino-Riders and RoboCop, along with reruns of the 1981 Spider-Man cartoon and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
