CSBG Archive
I Love Ya But You’re Strange – Killer Robots Help Make You a Better Person
Every day this August I’ll be spotlighting strange but ultimately endearing comic stories, one a day (basically, we’re talking lots and lots of Silver Age comic books). Here is the archive of past installments of this feature.
Today we look at a story about a killer robot that has the type of ending that the Comics Code would just LOVE to see all comic book stories have…
In 1957′s Strange Tales #60, Christopher Rule drew a story (probably written by Stan Lee but I don’t know who for sure) about a man who insists that a scientist give him a robot as a toy for his son even though the robot is not totally finished. Well, taking the robot home early was a major mistake…
Doesn’t that ending seem insanely Bowdlerized? I mean, I know that that term does not apply because this issue was published as written, but boy, doesn’t it read like something a really inept censor would tack on? “No one dies, in fact, everyone just learns a lesson!”
9 Comments
Michael P
August 21, 2011 at 11:08 am
Meanwhile, the dog is put to sleep at the pound. Happy ending, everyone!
chad
August 21, 2011 at 2:27 pm
interesting that it took a crazed robot for the rich man and his spoiled rotten kid to learn to be better humans too bad the dog was the first to relize the evil of the robot.
Dean
August 21, 2011 at 6:38 pm
“On the contrary, Mr. Manning, With the results of this test run in hand, my next murderbot should be much more effective!”
Kerry Higgins
August 21, 2011 at 9:03 pm
Weird how eerily like Edward G. Robinson Manning looks. Also, maybe Manning should have unleashed his evil robot on his shrieking harpy of a wife first.
Travis Pelkie
August 22, 2011 at 1:13 am
“A toy robot?!”
Wow, I’ve never heard of Christopher Rule, either. That’s a weird, creepy robot.
“But the robot came back, the very next day, the robot came back, they thought he was a goner, but the robot came back, he just couldn’t stay awayyyyyy.”
I wonder if this was a tacked on happy ending for the Code. Or even a sort of commentary on sitcoms — weird stuff happens to the characters, but they all end up learning a lesson in love. Ahhh.
P. Boz
August 22, 2011 at 8:01 am
Man, that’s one irrepressible robot. Even when being crushed he’s smiling.
Fraser
May 27, 2012 at 8:56 am
I kept expecting the ending to be that the robot is actually doing good (“Look, the dog had been rabid all along” or something of the sort). As is … pretty bad. And the art’s awful–I could barely figure out there was a dog in those two panels.
SteveAsat
July 6, 2012 at 12:45 am
I’ll bet my responsometer we haven’t seen the last of Killbot. He’s got a score to settle with Big Red Truck, but after that it’s time to make the fleshbags suffer.
cest la change
February 17, 2013 at 12:50 pm
The dog being humped by the clockwork Pinocchio makes for a frightening panel.