25 Greatest Robots in Comics: Counting Down the Top Five!

25 Greatest Robots in Comics: #25-21 | #20-16 | #15-11 | #10-6 | #5-1 | Honorable Mentions

All week, we've sung the body electric in anticipation of today's U.S. release of Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Now, at last, it's time to see whom the Flashback Universe contributors have selected the five greatest robots in comics.

5 - Vision

First appearance: Avengers #57 (1969)

Oh Vision, you started out so cool and simple. You were built from the body of the original Human Torch and your mind was based off of the recorded brainwaves of Wonder Man. (Okay, maybe simple is a stretch, but it was sort of cool.)

However, over the years, your origin has become such a jumbled mess of retcons and revamps that an entire mini-series (Avengers Forever) had to be written to explain who you are. And while Avengers Forever contains some very fine parsing of the Marvel Universe and history by Kurt Busiek, its ultimate resolution for the Vision’s origins is less than satisfying. The quick version is this:

Immortus, the Absolute Master of Time, used the Forever Crystal to create a split in the timestream which allowed there to be TWO Human Torch androids in Professor Horton’s lab. One that Ultron took to build the Vision and one that was buried (and eventually revived by the West Coast Avengers.)

As explanations that try to meld two conflicting origins go, I would put this one in the Warm Milkshake category. It’s not insulting, but it won’t make anyone very happy either.

Honestly, fictional history aside, I’m a bit more interested in the Red Tornado/Vision connection. As well covered by the site ComicCoverage.typepad.com, there are a number of similarities between the two that make one wonder if they have a common inspiration.

Gardner Fox created the Red Tornado. Fox was no stranger to Android characters (having created Amazo years before) but one wonders what inspired him to include such a character in the JSA?

Over at Marvel, Roy Thomas wanted to revive the Golden Age Vision into the Avengers but Stan Lee wanted the new Avenger to be an android. What made Stan so adamant about adding an android character?

Going by the date (1968) here are some possible candidates:

Androids on Star Trek

• Dr Roger Korby, Andrea, Dr Brown, Ruk and the Kirk android in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (1966) [This is my high favorite as the android characters struggle with emotions in this episode.]
• The Norman, Alice, Herman, Barbara, Maizie, Annabelle and Trudy series androids and the Stella Mudd androids in the episode "I, Mudd" (1967)

Androids on Lost in Space

• Verda, a gynoid in the episodes "The Android Machine" (1966) and "Revolt of the Androids" (1967)  
• Raddion, a male android in the episode "The Dream Monster" (1966)  
• The IDAK Super Androids in the episode "Revolt of the Androids" (1967)  
• The Industro Mini Robots in the episode "The Mechanical Men" (1967)  
• The Xenian Androids in the episode "Kidnapped in Space" (1967)

I picked these shows as the robotic characters were specifically called Androids on the show AND they both were somewhat popular at the time. The term android had been around for a long time, but I feel some specific pop culture reference got Fox and Lee thinking on the same frequency at the same time. Another possibility, given the emphasis on cold, emotionless personality in both characters, is Spock as ComicsBeat.com suggests. That would point the finger at Star Trek as the inspiration for the character type.

If anyone has any further insights to this mystery, please feel free to chime in in the comments section down below!

— Jim

4 - Astro Boy

First appearance: Shonen Kobunsha Magazine (April 1952)

Astro Boy was originally a Japanese manga series created by Osamu Tezuka from 1952 to 1968. In 1963, the manga was adapted as an animated television series. It was this series that, when imported by NBC in 1963 brought the character to the attention of American fans.

In the series, Astro Boy is created by Doctor Tenma (or Dr. Astor Boyton in the English version), sold to a circus then rescued by the head of Ministry of Science by kindly Professor Ochanomizu. At the MoS, Astro Boy’s full superpowers are discovered: Super-strength, flight, laser eyes, super hearing, high IQ and a retractable machine gun. He uses his powers to fight crime and evil human hating robots.

While maybe not as popular now, the series has an enduring appeal. Over the course of time, the manga has sold 100 million copies and IGN named the 1960s series as the 86th best animated series, and called it the first popular anime TV series.

As to the series legacy, it’s hard not to see a some of Astro Boy’s influence in Big Hero Six.

— Jim

3 - Silver Age Robotman

First appearance: My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963)

Earlier in the countdown, we talked about the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (and their resident robot) reaching a smaller audience than the super-heroes published by Marvel and DC but having an enormous impact. It's something we could also say about the Doom Patrol, despite their adventures coming from within staid, conservative DC Comics itself. Sure, the DP graduated from a starring role in My Greatest Adventure to having that title renamed after them — but, by 1967, it had slowed to bi-monthly, then it became a reprint title after the main characters were killed off, and finally the series was canceled in 1968. The Doom Patrol appeared largely forgotten except for the valiant efforts of Paul Kupperberg to resurrect them in various forms. By the mid-'80s, Kupperberg managed to get a new version of the team into their own series for the first time in 20 years. DC has canceled and relaunched them numerous times since then, but rarely have they stayed gone long. The one constant in the Doom Patrol, whatever their form, is Cliff Steele — the Silver Age Robotman.

Let's not call him that, though. For one thing, he doesn't seem to like it. In Grant Morrison's game-changing run on Doom Patrol, asking people not to call him Robotman is Cliff's most often repeated line of dialogue. For another, it's rarely used in his Silver Age appearances. Brian Cronin of Comic Book Legends Revealed seems to think his original alias was Automaton, though I'm skeptical. As Cronin points out, he's called "Robot Man" or "Robotman" about as frequently as he is "Automaton," starting from the beginning of the DP stories. The main characters almost never use each other's super-heroic names, a point the plot of Doom Patrol #90 (September 1964) hinges on. My guess is writer Arnold Drake was merely giving characters something descriptive to call Cliff, especially those characters who didn't know him personally. Shouting "Robotman" or "Automaton" at him would be a bit like blurting out, "Hey, cripple!" or, "It's that gimp!"

Which brings us to the best reason of all not to call Cliff "Robotman": It's a bit of a slur. And that's saying something when you consider the Doom Patrol routinely describe themselves as "freaks."

Self-image is a big part of the Doom Patrol in all its incarnations, especially for Cliff. Over the years, his robot body changes frequently enough — usually with every relaunch — that he's become a stranger in his own metal skin. During the original 1960s run, he often finds himself losing limbs and torn apart (as do many robot characters in the name of shocking readers).  For Cliff, it doesn't stop there.  He also undergoes more unsettling transformations, from being rolled flat to melted down to having his legs twisted into a drill. He even has his physical identity usurped by Madame Rouge (a shape-shifting impostor) and by the Chief himself when he dons a Robotman-like suit. Grant Morrison has called him a whole-body amputee, a succinct appraisal that puts the focus back on the Doom Patrol members as representatives of the handicapped. In Morrison's first issue of Doom Patrol, February 1989's #19, artist Richard Case memorably depicts Cliff smashing his face against a brick wall as he explains that he doesn't experience touch or smell. That demonstration drives home the body issues that have always lurked in the subtext of Cliff's "freakishness" and establishes his robot body as less blessing-or-curse than prosthesis-or-prison.

Despite his internal struggles to hold onto an identity without a body to anchor it (or perhaps because of it), Cliff Steele remains one of the best-liked characters in the DC Universe, both in-story and by readers. We can attribute much of that to his everyman qualities. He's often the viewpoint character for the strange and confusing challenges the Doom Patrol face, and his lack of a fixed physical identity may make it easier for readers to imagine themselves in his place in the story. Though he was once white and male (and still is, in many ways), the physical elements that defined him thus are long gone, leaving behind a robotic shell any of us can project ourselves into as readers. Without skin, without sex organs, would those parts of our identity even matter any more? They certainly matter less to Cliff Steele (however much that may trouble him), and that allows us to imagine ourselves in his place, to identify with his unimaginable tragedy.

— Scott

2 - Golden Age Robotman

First appearance: Star Spangled Comics #7 (April 1942)

There have been many heroes to bear the name Robotman, but the first was Robert Crane, a character created by Jerry Siegel and Leo Nowak in 1942. While working with Chuck Grayson, his assistant, Crane is attacked and killed by bandits trying to steal his inventions. In an attempt to save Crane’s life, Chuck transplanted Crane’s brain into the body of a new robotic prototype they were working on. This surgery was successful, and Crane was able to live on in the body he called Robotman.

Two things of note here:

First, Robotman isn’t technically a robot. He’s a cyborg. However, that term wasn’t coined until 1960 by real life scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.

Second, Robotman was not the first cyborg character in comics. He is predated by the Centaur character Iron Skull, who appeared in Amazing Man Comics 5 in 1939.

Be that as it may, I believe the reason Robotman is ranked so high here on our survey beating out other Golden Age robots like Bozo, Mr. Atom and Dynamic Man (all personal favorites of mine) is because he appeared in the 50’s in the pages of Detective Comics and then again during the Bronze Age in a few 100 Page Giants.

On top of all that, Golden Age salvage expert Roy Thomas brought the character back in the pages of All-Star Squadron where he served as a team member for many issues.

He was even involved in the first meeting of what would one day become the Justice League of America…

…but this first meeting/mission was suppressed from public knowledge. (Justice League of America 144).

As I mentioned, Roy Thomas makes great use of the character all during his All-Star Squadron run during the 80’s starting with issue 1 (1982) and culminating in a full issue origin story in issue 63 (1985).

At the same time, the current status of Robotman is revealed in DC Comics Presents 31 (1981) in a backup feature Whatever Happened to Robotman? It’s revealed that Robotman has been trapped underground for 20 years, in suspended animation. A sudden boost of energy awakens him into the modern era.

Where he discovers his old lab assistant Chuck Grayson, who was suffering from an incurable brain disease, bequeathed his body to Crane so he could regain his humanity. With his humanity restored, he doesn’t make many more appearances in the modern DC Universe aside from a few cameos in Geoff Johns’ Stars and STRIPE (which was in itself a tip of the hat to the old Star Spangled Comics both heroes used to appear in).

One of the cooler things about Robotman was how often he was getting dismantled or blown apart in his stories, and yet would keep on working. It was nothing to see him separated from his arms or legs and still kicking crime’s ass.

I suppose it's unlikely that we will ever see a modern day revival of the Robert Crane Robotman (as more readers today are familiar with the Doom Patrol character with the same name), but comics (and comics writers) are unpredictable when it comes to nostalgia. There might be a few more Golden Age Robotman stories still to be revealed.

— Jim

1 - Ultron

Yes, Ultron.

Go ahead and call us biased by the imminent premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron if you must, but when we passed around our list of candidates for this countdown, his name kept coming up. Everyone ranked him near the top of their personal lists. Talk to anyone who reads comics, and you'll find they have an Ultron story. Or at least an Ultron moment. Jim's mentioned mine as one reason he asked me join his blogging collective, so I'm going to share it with you.

Before I do, let me point you to this great recap of Ultron's evolution through the years and to Trey Causey's indispensable short list of the best Ultron stories and where to find them reprinted.

When I was a kid, before there were comics stores in area and a couple of years out from discovering conventions and mail order, back issues may well have not existed. Comics were a rolling target, a perpetual now — the way television used to work. If you missed an issue and weren't lucky enough to have a friend who'd picked it up, you were never going to read it. (That's why Marvel Comics did so much recapping, kids! It's not just that Matt Murdock loves to tell the story of how he was blinded as a child.) In that world, stories published before you started reading a title were a bit exotic. With no internet and few fanzines, you couldn't even read synopses, so you had to glean what you could from footnotes and in-story references. Some things you got the gist of and didn't worry much about. The Hulk had been an Avenger briefly, the FF didn't always wear costumes — that sort of thing. Other things came up frequently enough, in such reverent tones, even a child could tell they were significant. Ultron was one of those things. Like the great blizzard before you were born or when you lived in a different city as a baby. You knew these things happened (in an academic way, at least) and were always fascinated by them, but you never expected them to happen to you in the present day.

I was nine years old when I read my first Ultron story in Marvel Two-in-One #92 (featuring two other robots who made our countdown!). I'd been reading Marvel Super Action sporadically, absorbing its classic '60s and '70s Avengers tales, but I'd never read an actual Ultron story. I knew Hank Pym had created him, knew he'd picked up an adamantium body along the way, and knew he was a top-tier Avengers baddie who grinned like a murderous jack-o-lantern through his various schemes. I also knew he'd been destroyed. Gone, done, in the past. Not coming back. Because that's how you think comics work when you're nine.

When I saw Ultron staring out at me from the drug-store rack on that Two-in-One cover, I was hypnotized by him, as surely Tony Stark and Jarvis had been. I bought that issue and devoured it one page at a time, not flipping ahead lest I spoil the suspense. Ultron had programmed Jocasta to resurrect him! He was back, and the Avengers had no idea, because it had happened in Marvel Two-in-One! Even the FF didn't know, because, you know, it had happened in Marvel Two-in-One! The only heroes standing in his way at the end of this issue were the Thing, Machine Man, and Jocasta. No Thor! No Iron Man!

As the weeks ticked by, I became increasingly convinced the Thing would die in Marvel Two-in-One #93. My kid-brain couldn't see any way around it. "Well," I thought, "at least I'll be here for the death of one of the Fantastic Four. I won't have to read idly along as Reed Richards recalls that significant event happening 'some months ago' and follow the asterisk down to the footnote. I'll know. I'll have been there." (At 41, I've lived through the deaths of too many of the Fantastic Four.)

Four weeks passed. Or maybe it was five. Either way, I knew it was time for the second part of that Ultron story, and I was determined not to miss it. The church in my small town was having a youth program that week, so I spent the morning in a Bible class, my heart filled with dread and anticipation. I'd looked at the situation from every possible angle, and still I saw no way out for the heroes. My mom picked me up and took me to the local drug store, where the new issue of Two-in-One waited to relieve me of my anxiety. I read it as carefully as I had the first part, taking in Ultron's villainous majesty, reassured that I was indeed reading a real, true, authentic, canonical story of one of the Avengers' greatest foes of yesteryear. (He recalled past plots. With footnotes! You can't get any more legit than that.) When I reached the climax and Machine Man (!) defeated Ultron by reaching into his mouth and yanking out his robotic innards (!!), I was floored. I hadn't seen that coming. His iconic open maw had been his undoing. His defeat had been staring me in the face the whole month — honestly, since before I was born!

Even at nine, I knew he wouldn't be defeated that way again. I was also starting to get the feeling he'd be back, that I'd get to read more Ultron stories — that he could be recurring for me, just as he had been for those older readers who wrote in to letters pages and occasionally mentioned him. But even if he didn't come back, the way Ultron was defeated satisfied me. It paid off on the visual I'd found so compelling and powerful since I'd first seen him in flashback. What might have been an anticlimax ended up as a resolution.

Let's hope Avengers: Age of Ultron pays off on our collective anticipation, even if that pay-off isn't as bombastic as our imaginations have built it up to be. I'm confident it will, if only because it features Ultron.

— Scott

---

So there you have 'em — our picks for the greatest robots ever to grace the pages of comic books, stretching from an era when the term robot had barely been invented to the present day, where robots are a fact of everyday life.  Did we leave anyone out?  Rank anyone too high (or too low)?

25 Greatest Robots in Comics: Counting Down #15-11

25 Greatest Robots in Comics: #25-21 | #20-16 | #15-11 | #10-6 | #5-1 | Honorable Mentions

Continuing our ongoing celebration of the best robots to grace the pages of comic books, here is our third entry in the series.

15 - Amazo

First appearance: Brave and the Bold #30 (June 1960)

Created by Gardner Fox in 1960, Amazo is one of those rare Justice League villains who predates the actual Justice League of America comic. Created by Professor Ivo, Amazo has the omega-level power of being able to duplicate any hero he comes in contact with. In his first appearance, he defeats the League from the onset, but by the end of the issue, he’s beaten and becomes an addition to the JLA’s trophy room. During the Silver and Bronze Age, he’ll make several appearances (often as a tool to help the heroes regain their lost superpowers), but as time moves on, he proves to be less popular with writers.

Check this out. Despite being a perfect villain to bring out for a DC team comic, here’s a list of comics that NEVER featured Amazo:

• Giffen/Dematies JLA
• Grant Morrison JLA (though he does show up on Aztek! And Mark Millar uses him in JLA 27)
• Batman and the Outsiders
• Teen Titans
• JL Europe
• Byrne’s run on Superman
• Legion of Superheroes
• All-Star Comics
• Infinity Inc.

It’s a bit surprising to me that a character with such powers never gets used in any of the above titles. All I can think is that older writers had a hard time wrapping their minds around how to tell a proper superhero fight! comic with Amazo. Prior to the modern age, villains were typically defeated by the heroes out thinking them (or rather whatever gimmick they happened to be using at the time.) When a writer creates said gimmick (like say, Captain Cold’s new Igloo Prison) then the writer most likely has a built in solution to the new gimmick. However, with villains like Amazo, the Super-Skrull and the Super-Adaptoid, the writer has to do a lot more work to come up with a solution that allows the heroes to out think their opponent.

Now, the heroes could have just overpowered Amazo in an battle royale, but you don’t really start seeing that type of storytelling come into vogue until the late 1990s. It’s really not until the advent of Warren Ellis’ The Authority and Mark Millar’s Ultimates that modern writers start using a more cinematic approach to superhero comics and the battles become more widescreen in nature. As it would so happen, Amazo has made almost as many appearances since 1999 as he had in the entire Bronze Age.

Most recently, he’s appeared in the pages of Geoff Johns’ New 52 Justice League in the Amazo Virus storyline (though I think that storyline is about a computer virus that infects people than an actual epic throwdown with Amazo).

Will we ever get a real event level storyline with Amazo? Only time will tell.

— Jim

14 - NoMan

First appearance: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (November 1965)

NoMan even managed to score his

own mini-series spin-off.  In the '60s,

that sort of thing didn't happen.

The Velvet Underground's first album suffered poor distribution and lousy sales upon its initial release but went on to become one of the most influential albums in pop music. Grappling with this irony, Brian Eno famously said in 1982, "I think everyone who bought one ... started a band!" You could almost say the same for the short-lived mid-'60s independent super-hero title The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Mind you, no one would have called it an "independent" book back then. The Marvel-DC super-hero oligopoly didn't yet exist. In fact, those publishers bringing back super-heroes after a period of relative absence with Justice League of America and Fantastic Four is what inspired Tower Comics to launch T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Well, that, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the James Bond film Thunderball. Though it may sound like an opportunist cash-in, the brief 20-issue run of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents written by Len Brown and drawn by Wally Wood went on to become one of the most influential titles of the Silver Age.

Most of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents are equipped with high-tech gadgets left behind by a deceased U.N. scientist, Professor Jennings. NoMan, however, stands out from the rest of the team. The only T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent responsible for his own powers, he IS both a high-tech gadget and a deceased U.N. scientist. To cheat death, Dr. Anthony Dunn had invented an android body into which he could transfer his consciousness. When his physical body dies, he lives on in the android form of NoMan. If T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were a Marvel or DC title, that might be the sum of NoMan's super-hero high concept. Brown and Wood, however, extend the conceit to its natural next step, surmising that any scientist with the knowledge and resources to build one android body would have the knowledge and resources to mass-produce them — which Dunn does. As NoMan, he sheds bodies with an abandon that almost qualifies as its own super power. The in-story effect is a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent who "dies" again and again, often just to escape traps.

Government waste, super-hero style.

Although the original 20-issue run is beloved, keeping up with the dozen or so abortive attempts to resurrect the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents since the '60s can be exhausting. In most incarnations, though, it's NoMan — still alive and keeping the flame of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves burning, who drives the action of recruiting new agents and assembling new teams.

— Scott

13 - Spider-Slayer(s)

First appearance: Amazing Spider-Man #25 (June 1965)

The first robotic Spider-Slayer was created by Spencer Smythe with financial support by J. Jonah Jameson. While this robot would fail in its task, Jameson would commission Smythe to build several more Spider-Slayers, all with the promise of being an improvement over the last version. Alas, each of these new models would fail as well. Eventually, after years of working with highly unstable materials to build his robots, Smythe would succumb to the effects of radiation poisoning, a fate he blamed on Jameson. In 1976 (Amazing Spider-Man 162), Jameson would enlist another scientist, Dr. Marla Madison to build new Spider-Slayers. While her Slayer was no more effective than its predecessors, but the project wasn't a total failure for Jameson as he fell in love with Marla and would eventually marry her.

Dr. Marla Madison, future wife of J. Jonah Jameson

The Spider-Slayer concept sat dormant for years after this until Alistair Smythe, the son of Spencer, arrived on the scene in 1985 (Amazing Spider-Man annual).  Smythe's approach was quite a bit different from his fathers and led to interesting variations on the theme in a six-part storyline called Invasion of the Spider-Slayers:

Most recently, Alistair's designs favored a more exo-suit approach with him controlling the Spider-Slayer. Combining Spider-Slayer technology with Mandroid suits, Alistair created an Anti-Spider Squad.  Unfortunately, despite these fresh new approaches, Alistair was no more successful than his father and was killed by Superior Spider-man in Superior Spider-Man 13.

Overall, comic readers have been treated to a wide variation of Spider-Slayers (about 20 in all):

While considered an antiquated gimmick by some readers, I actually like the Spider-Slayers as I think they have a huge advantage over other opponents for Spider-man. For one thing, they constantly change and improve. Let’s face it, the first dozen or so battles with the Scorpion are pretty much all the same. He, like a lot of villains, has one shtick and he sticks to it. Not so for the Spider-Slayers. They can be revamped to look and behave any way the writer/artist wants them to. Didn’t like the mecha-Spider version? No problem! Here’s a giant robot version!

Though, I must confess a fondness for the classic Steve Ditko Spider-Slayer. Some things never go out of style.

— Jim

12 - Superman Robots

First appearance: World’s Finest #42 (1949)

Pinning down the first appearance of a Superman robot is a bit tough. The DC Wikia page suggests the first one was a robot created by Superboy named Friday (after the character in Robinson Crusoe.) Whereas Supermanica Wikia points to World's Finest 42 as the first appearance of a Superman robot. Because the DC Wikia page doesn’t specify which issue of Superboy the robot named Friday shows up, I can’t really verify that claim, but I was able to read the World’s Finest, which first appeared September 1949.

During the ’50s, due to the restrictions placed on comics by the Comics Code Authority and shrinking comic sales, DC Comics tended to publish stories that emphasized fantastic and sensational situations involving their heroes.

It was in such stories that the Superman Robots really found their niche. Initially, they were used to trick villains, as in World’s Finest 42, when a Superman Robot (SR) is used to convince aliens from Uranus into believing all earthlings are robots. Sometimes they were substitutes for the Man of Steel when he was away in space as in Jimmy Olsen 55, where Superman gives Jimmy Olsen a SR to divert a runaway planet on a crash course with Earth.

As the years continued, the robots would be relegated to more mundane duties such as scanning visitors in the Fortress of Solitude, filling in for Clark Kent to fool Lois Lane, or picking up stray Kryptonite when necessary. During this time, the robots tended to reside either in Clark’s closet or the Fortress of Solitude. Also, they grow in power with each appearance to the point by 1960, Superman declares they possess all his powers. (Except they are not invulnerable.)

 

By 1961, Superman Robots are shown acting on their own volition using sophisticated artificial intelligence and self-awareness. This brings about some interesting conundrums:

• The robots often address Superman as Master. Yet if they truly possess self-awareness, doesn’t this put Superman in oppressive role as a robot-slave owner?
• Because the robots are programmed to only do good deeds, would they recognize this suppression of free will?
• When Superman turns them off, do they resent this time in isolation? Are they even aware of it?

Unfortunately, such questions were never explored and as a result, by the 70’s, the robots came to be seen as a story cop out. So much so, that in 1971, Superman retires all robots because air pollution is causing them to act erratically in World’s Finest 202, Vengeance of the Tomb-Thing! There is one final story from 1985 with a Superman robot who was reprogrammed to act as a host to visitors in the Fortress of Solitude, but he ends up getting destroyed by the Superman Revenge Squad in Superman 414.

With that, the Superman Robots were shuffled off into the realm of the Pre-Crisis universe. (Along with a lot of other cool stuff, but that’s a rant for another day.)

— Jim

11 - Red Tornado

First appearance: Justice League of America #64 (August 1968) ... and (sorta) Mystery in Space #61 (August 1960)

Remember what we said about the massive influence of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents a couple of entries back? Well, three years after NoMan debuted, both Marvel and DC elected to have android members join their premier super-teams — at almost exactly the same time. The Red Tornado first appeared in the August 1968 issue of Justice League of America with the Vision following hot on his trail in the October issue of Avengers. The similarities between the two could fill an interesting blog post on their own. (In fact, here's one.) Rather than puzzle over the yin-yang nature of the Big Two's team-player androids, let's look at what makes the Red Tornado unique.

Good plan, Tommy O.  Solid.

There's no more retconned character in the DC stable (excepting, of course, Hawkman). Reddy's back story began shifting the moment we met him, when he showed up on the Justice Society's doorstep claiming to be the original, Golden Age Red Tornado. This claim doesn't wash with the JSA, who show him an image of the original hero, a non-powered woman named "Ma" Hunkel who wore a pail on her head. This new Tornado is puzzled and upset, even moreso when he removes his helmet/mask to discover there's no face beneath it. This being a Silver Age JLA/JSA team-up, no one gets a chance to spend much time on the mystery of the Red Tornado before both teams are drawn into a universes-spanning battle with scientist Thomas Oscar Morrow ("T. O. Morrow," see) and the predictive supercomputer he uses to spy on future technology and replicate it in the present day. It turns out the new Red Tornado is a creation of Morrow's, built using future technology and intended to infiltrate the JSA. (It's an odd plan, to say the the least, given that the JSA know the original Red Tornado. Morrow may have come out better if he'd shown up on their doorstep himself claiming to be Dr. Mid-Nite. Dressed as Batman.) After betraying Morrow and saving both teams, the Red Tornado joins the Justice Society, giving them a proper Silver Age Red Tornado.

The Overeager Tornado.

For a while, anyway. The new character proved popular enough in the annual JLA/JSA crossovers that JLA writer Len Wein finally brought him over to Earth-1 in 1973 to join the League. On Earth-2, Reddy had been a perpetual outcast, feeling ostracized and untrusted by a team whose acceptance he was too eager to earn. Perhaps his was a consequence of making only a couple of appearances a year and being crowded out in those by the massive cast of two super-teams. Revisiting them today, it's tempting to see a generational difference between the treatment Red Tornado receives from the 1940s heroes of the Justice Society and the (then late-)1960s heroes of the Justice League. Are the older, more traditional JSAers less willing to embrace an android than the younger, hipper JLAers? Red Tornado is certainly a stand-in for outsiders of any kind, and it's not hard to imagine, say, a black newcomer getting different treatment from different generations of heroes in the 1960s. Or a gay or transgender hire at a young company fitting in more easily than at a grayer company in the real world of today.

For a while, Red Tornado enjoyed something akin to a status quo. He was a member of the JLA in good standing who adopted a human identity, complete with a face, and used it to meet a nice single mom with whom he embarked on a relationship. That all fell apart in the '80s, beginning with an ambitious retcon of the Tornado's origins by Gerry Conway. T. O. Morrow returns — a sure sign you'll end the story scratching your head over his motivations, powers, and sometimes how many of him there actually are — to kick off a story revealing that the Red Tornado android is actually inhabited by the spirit of an Adam Strange villain named Ulthoon, the Tornado Tyrant from a 1960 issue of Mystery in Space — who went on to reform and appear as the Tornado Champion in an early issue of JLA, #17 (February 1963).

The first appearances of the Tornado Tyrant and the Tornado Champion.
Not especially robotic.

By the mid-'80s, DC was toying with the idea of turning Red Tornado into a villain, enlisting Kurt Busiek to lay the groundwork in a four-issue mini-series before changing their mind and destroying him (twice, inexplicably) during Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Without a robot body, Red Tornado went on to become a wind spirit, a living tornado who threatened environmental vengeance whenever he showed up in DC titles of the late '80s and early '90s. Leveraging the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, Cary Bates in Captain Atom and John Ostrander in Firestorm recast him as a wind elemental of the planet Earth, doing away with his Ranagarian back story. Professor Ivo replaces T. O. Morrow as Reddy's creator in the new history. I suspect T. O. Morrow stories were too painfully nonsensical for post-Crisis writers to bear. He eventually got a new robotic body and spent time alongside Primal Force and Young Justice before finally settling in as a background placeholder in various modern incarnations of the Justice League.

During his occasional absences, Red Tornado inspired a couple of legacy characters who joined the Justice League in quick succession.  The first, Tomorrow Woman, was built by T. O. Morrow to infiltrate the League in 1997's JLA #5 by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter.  Unlike Reddy, she didn't survive her betrayal of Morrow.  The second, a new version of Hourman from the 853rd century, made his debut in the Morrison-driven DC One Million and spun out into a tragically brief ongoing series in the early 2000s.  Like Reddy, Hourman wrestled with issues of loneliness and alienation as he learned what it meant to be human.  Since Hourman's demise, Red Tornado himself has returned to headline his own ongoing series, even picking up a family of sorts in the form of robotic siblings Red Torpedo and Red Volcano.

— Scott