It's a comic characters of yesteryear thread. This time we're looking at those two android leviathans of weird British adventure comics.
The Steel Commando was this robot the British built in the second world war. He was indestructible and could pick up tanks and throw them around and stuff. Any Steel Commando story I've ever seen was rather dull - an endless succession of "Blimey! The Steel Commando has been hit at point blank range by an 88mm shell! Surely he can't survive that - oh, he can" type moments. You also got the impression the Steel Commando wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. I suppose AI wasn't as developed back then.
Robot Archie, on the other hand, appeared in more contemporary stories, travelling the world and having adventures. He said things like "Bzzt" a lot, but he certainly fancied himself as a dapper and debonair playboy among robots. And he was incredibly vain - whenever he did anything he would say something like "Bzzzzt - I bet the Steel Commando wouldn't have been able to do that!". In later years he took to travelling through time and space in a TARDIS rip-off that looked like a giant chess piece, and latterly guest starred in Morrison-Yeowell's "Zenith", having memorably gone all acid house (he had "Speed Speed Ecstasy" and loads of smileys painted onto him and kept saying "Bzzzt - Acieeeed! Bzzzt").
They were both oldschool made of wrought iron robots - none of this moulded plastic shite.
And obviously Robot Archie is the coolest.
― DV, Wednesday, 20 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)