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Ro-Busters
started out as a simple Thunderbirds style disaster
story. In 2178, billionaire businessman Howard Quartz
assembled a team of cheap, second-hand and, above all,
expendable robots to tackle disaster situations that were too
dangerous for human involvement. Quartz was known as Mr. Ten
Percent as he had most of his organic body replaced with a
sophisticated, chrome-covered, robot body. The only part of
Quartz to survive was his brain, but this was still enough to
have himself legally classified as human.
The
two main protagonists of the disaster squad were Ro-Jaws and
Hammerstein, a feeble pun on the names of the two classic
musical writers. Ro-Jaws was a FRED-2L sewage robot, dismissed
from service because of his faulty obedience circuits, which
allowed him a somewhat colourful use of language. Hammerstein
was a Rover-built war robot and a veteran of the Volgan war.
The two met at 'Flash' Harry Lowder's Robomart but were sent
for destruction as they were taking up valuable showroom
space. Quartz intervened, buying all Lowder's surplus stock
cheaply to reduce his own running costs.
Ro-Busters
worked from their Devil's Island headquarters, but were able
to tackle disasters in all environments thanks to their
sophisticated Preying Mantis craft, a modular vessel equipped
to handle almost all eventualities. This was just as well,
during the Starlord run, Ro-Busters were sent from the depths
of the ocean to outer space. The stories included: The North
Sea Tunnel, The Preying Mantis, Midpoint, The Ritz Space
Hotel, Farnborough Droid Show, Massacre on the Moon and The
Taxman Cometh.
Ro-Busters
continued in 2000AD and Starlord for a long and
successful run. Mills wrote only three of the Starlord
strips, but returned to his creation post-merger. Back story
was added with Ro-Jaws' origin tale, and Hammerstein's war
memoirs. As with all of his stories, Mills incorporated several political aspects
into Ro-Busters. Eventually the robots made a bid
for freedom from slavery, after Quartz decided to shut down the
business, with Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein helping their colleagues
flee to the Planet of Free Robots. Although Ro-Busters
itself was finished, Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein presented their
own letters page for a few months, and there were a selection
of short stories entitled Ro-Jaws' Robo-Tales.
Hammerstein lived to fight again in the ABC Warriors.
Originally set at the conclusion of the Volgan war, this strip
became embroiled in Mills' massive continuity arc, returning
in Nemesis the Warlock and eventually resuming as
ABC Warriors, but now set in the far future, allowing for
the return (and unexplained departure once again) of Ro-Jaws.
Unusually,
Ro-Busters is one of Mills' only creations he has ever
allowed to be written by other writers, although this interlude
was short lived. O'Neill never drew the strip he co-created in
the pages of Starlord, but did provide a poster. The
characters can still be seen in 2000AD today, under
Mills' close supervision.
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