ComicScene Review: RoboHunter Planet of the Robots

RoboHunter Planet of the Robots is out now.

I understood this was the coloured version of the story by John Wagner, Ian Gibson and Jose Ferrer from Eagle Comics but it was a pleasant surprise to see the covers of the five issue series in here too.

Eagle Comics was were I first read this story, being a latecomer to 2000AD, and I loved it. Gibsons lines weren’t as clean cut with large expressive panels as his later RoboHunter work. Instead it is a little more war comic/European art in style, and this obviously made colouring this work a little hard. It remains smudgey in places.

RoboHunter was a favourite strip in 2000AD. I’d read it first, even before Dredd. It lost its way in later stories and had an atrocious revamp by Mark Millar (I think) and Casanovas (I also think) could never replace Gibson as THE RoboHunter artist.

I can’t help thinking I was about ten years old when this came out and the content is full of subversive humour. No one is safe – Parliament, military and church all get a good kicking. I’m not sure ten year olds today would get this kind of content in Regened. But hey, we were the generation who didn’t listen when we were told to have only one (rather than three) people on our Chopper bike seat, didn’t wear safety helmets as we did wheelies down the back lane and dealing with our mental health issues was done by having to cope with devastation when our favourite comic merged into another title!

I particularly like that Kidd would use the word snut, knowing full well it would be the new swear word down on the school playground the Monday after that issue of 2000AD came out.

There is a reason, I’m sure, why these 40+ year stories still remain classics and as fresh to read today for adults and kids as they did back then.

Hogie and Stogie are missing from these instalments but do arrive later after the (spoilers) demise of Cutie. However Hogie is in an extra strip which I believe originally appeared in a 2000AD Annual.

Good, to, that Ian Gibson is being recognised all over again as a remarkable comic book artist. Like Campbell, Gibbons and Lloyd before him his Halo Jones art made books by Alan Moore exceed far more than they would have otherwise. It is good to see it is Gibsons work on the front cover of the new Halo Jones volume, advertised here in RoboHunter, as it should be.

If you don’t have either book then buy them now. You will love them.