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Home ¦ Reviews ¦ Robo-Hunter - Day of the Droids

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What to Expect: Relentless action and comedy as Sam Slade jumps from one robot frying pan into another, before finally landing in a giant robot fire. And a neat little haunted house murder mystery to round things off.

Review by Alex Frith
14th August 06

At its prime, 2000 AD doesn’t get much better than the adventures of Sam Slade. Crazed robots, constant shooting, cracking one-liners and a put-upon tough-guy hero. Wagner and Grant work effortlessly together to instil the series with a rich vein of humour that rarely falls flat, and there’s no-one who can give robots such a range of human emotions quite as delightfully as Ian Gibson.

With this team on board, it’s no surprise that each episode in this collection is a joy to read, with violence and comedy on every page. However, this doesn’t entirely add up to a satisfying epic. ‘Day of the Droids’ is one of those stories that is full of great bits but somehow ends up as a bit of a mess overall. That said, I must admit that I am particularly fond of it because it introduces Hoagy and Stogie, two of my favourite characters ever. Hoagy, the idiotic robot built from a kit, makes a perfect foil for Slade because he’s utterly oblivious to the constant steams of sardonic abuse hurled his way. Stogie, the nicotine-free cigar, is insanely violent without having the means to enact any violence himself. His joy at living out a vicarious life of danger and excitement through Sam is almost as touching as it is funny.

As Gavin Hanly points out in his ‘Verdus’ review, the beauty of Robohunter is the way that Slade falls in a spiral of ludicrous situations, and ‘Droids’ does not disappoint on this front. The Teeny Meks, Robotic Slades, abd a robot American football team all pop up out of nowhere to provide laugh out loud sequences and dialogue. Molotov and his Amalgamated Robots Union display perfect timing in harassing poor Slade, and milking yet more humour from the premise of robots with human problems and personality (A proto ‘Droid Life’, if you will). Sadly, the villain of the piece - Omerta the God-Droid - leaves me cold, and for once Gibson’s robot design seems a little too ordinary. Still, it’s a minor blip in an otherwise rollicking read, although as I’ve said, each individual episode is often much better than the whole thing.

So why does the story not quite work? Well, ‘Verdus’ was largely set in a self-contained world where clear rules were established and the whole thing made a sort of sense in itself. ‘Droids’ on the other hand finds Slade back on Earth in a sort of Mega-City. We don’t get a chance to establish how the city operates, or to see what a Robo-hunter’s place is in it, which at times leaves the story with rather large plot holes and head-scratchings as to how the city ends up in the position it does. Humans politicians are sort of in charge, but don’t seem able to control their robots in any way. No-one seems to have heard of the robot mafia, but someone must have built them.... This makes for hilarious situations, but doesn’t add up to a coherent whole, especially come the end of the tale. Perhaps it’s for this reason that Wagner and Grant opted to move Slade to Brit-Cit for his continuing adventures.

In the marvellous prologue to this second move, it’s quickly established that the citizens of Brit-Cit have managed to balance their economy such that robots do all the work (including the politics), while people queue up to collect their welfare cheques and go off on holiday. Now that makes sense. Cue a series of absurd and comedic adventures in which most humans except for Slade can be safely ignored.

This prologue leads straight into the ‘Beast of Blackheart Manor’ mystery adventure. It’s a deliberately English type of story, in a Sunday afternoon TV kind of way, with plenty of opportunity to mock English stereotypes. Much less madcap than ‘Droids’, but no less fun for that, as Slade gets to show off his casual wit that much more, and Hoagy finds a purpose. Gibson’s art is much more refined in Slade’s Brit-Cit outings, which gives the impression that he was rather rushed through the ‘Droids’ epic. The fluidity of his art gives each panel a real kinetic feel, making for a quick read. If you manage to pause, there are plenty of details to admire in his backgrounds, not least trying to spot all kinds of weird ideas for what our future selves might want to create in robot form…

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