Thursday, July 05, 2018

Can't judge a book by its cover...


...particularly a Fleetway/Quality reprint title. I hadda re-read this one since I didn't think there was even a woman in it! (There is, but oh, just barely.) From 1991, Cybercrush: Robots in Revolt #3, featuring Ro-Busters, "Wheels of Terror!" from 2000 AD and Starlord #90, written by Pat Mills, art by Kevin O'Neill; "Just Routine," from 2000 AD and Starlord #91, written by Pat Mills, art by Dave Gibbons; and Robo-Hunter, "Verdus, part 4" (I think!) from 2000 AD #79, written by John Wagner as "T.B. Grover," art by Ian Gibson.

This reprint title had a pretty set cover formula of metal, babes, and/or metal babes; despite having interiors of old British adventure strips that were about as sexy as a ham sandwich! This issue featured another war story from Ro-Busters' Hammer-Stein and his glory days during the Vogon War. Despite a robot lead and another squadron member who thought he was a plane due to a nerve gas attack, it's a fairly straightforward war comic.

Next, another chapter of Sam Slade on the planet Verdus. The robots were killing all humans, as they sometimes do, but thought they were still obeying humans: most of them had never even seen a human, so didn't know what one was supposed to look like, and whenever one did see a human they thought it was a disguised "sim" robot and killed it! The robots, by and large, were about as dim as the average human: amusingly, at one point Slade 'disguises' himself as a forklift robot with a couple tongs and a license plate, since most saw the number and just assumed.

Looking it up, looks like DC did a perfectly nice collection of Verdus, so I could probably just get that instead of piecing it together from multiple reprint titles! Quality/Fleetway had previously reprinted Sam Slade, Robo-Hunter in it's own book, so this was the second time they reprinted this story? And it's killing me to realize, I know I have the last issue of his series (possibly written by Mark Millar?) and I'll have to find it for year-end...

2 comments:

SallyP said...

Wow...for amminute there, I thought they had miscolored Guy Gardner's hair, because that is just where my mind automatically goes.

H said...

Finally, something I know about! I've been a big 2000 AD fan for some time now and Ro-Busters is one of their best. It's a shame there's not much Ro-Jaws in that issue. He's just a great character.

Thankfully, the Mark Millar Robo-Hunter never got reprinted here but it was actually the third time they'd reprinted that story (for my money, the best Sam Slade stories came later on but before Mark Millar's).

And yeah, the US reprint covers tend to be pretty out there.