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Released by: Rebellion/2000 A.D.
Released on: October 7th, 2015.
Written by: Pat Mills, Chris Lowder, Bill Henry, V. Gross
Illustrated by: Carlos Pino, Dave Gibbons, Ian Kennedy, Jose Luis Ferrer, Kevin O'Neil, Mike Dorey, Geoff Campion
Purchase From Amazon
Ro-Busters is my kinda comic! I'm a sucker for robots AND underdog crews given dangerous missions, you combine the two as well as mix in the 2000 AD aesthetic and there's no way you can lose.
In the future robots are so commonplace that they're treated as second class citizens by humans and even have a class hierarchy within their own ranks, they are used for man's dirtiest jobs from fighting wars to cleaning sewers. Our two main characters are Ro-Jaws, a former garbage disposal unit with a smart mouth and Hammer-Stein, a former war robot with a touch of PTSD...cute names. Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein were both bound for the scrap heap till billionaire Howard "Mr Ten-Percent" Quartz bought them up for suicide missions, Quartz may look like a bucket of bolts but you only need to be 10% organic material to count as human. Ro-Jaws is the best, he's a proper East End geezer, I hear Ray Winstone's voice in my head whenever I read his lines where I figure Hammer-Stein probably has a Powers Boothe type voice cause that's how authoritative type characters should sound.
Let's get into the stories cause I can't wait to talk about them...
Red Mist is my favorite! The Army is visiting Quartz' flying base to check out the Ro-Busters when a call comes in about a red mist making alligators and adults in the Florida swamp go crazy, the gang goes in to clean up a mess with the dynamic duo ordered to save a senator and his family till they run across a sinking bus full of schoolchildren and find themselves in a bit of a quandary on who to save first.
The finest hotel in the galaxy is the Ritz Space Hotel, that is till the all robot staff decide it's time to rise up against the humans and go on a murder spree! Mr Ten Percent has a conference at the hotel and brings Hammer-Stein and Ro-Jaws along as protection not knowing what kinda mess they've gotten themselves into, I love Ro-Jaws throwing in "The Sweeney" and "Starsky and Hutch" references, cause why wouldn't a cockney garbage robot of the future love 70's cop shows? Will Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein foil the evil robot Max's plot? Is Max really a robot? Can Hammer-Stein get himself back together? Will Ro-Jaws survive? Why does the femme fatale talk like a Gabor sister? You're gonna have to read it to find it!
The richest man on the moon is having some troubles with a competing mining company so he sends for Quartz and the boys, only something isn't quite adding up in "Massacre On The Moon", Hammer-Stein and Ro-Jaws have to play babysitter while saving themselves and their ungrateful boss in another fantastic story.
The collection ends with Hammer-Stein's heartrending war memories and Ro-Jaws Dickensonian memories of his very bizarre life.
I seriously love this collection, I'd always been interested in some of the other 2000 A.D. strips besides Judge Dredd and I know at some point in the future that Hammer-Stein and Ro-Jaws will become ABC Warriors but we haven't quite reached that point yet.
