The title character in
Magnus, Robot Fighter, 4000 AD and
Magnus: Robot Fighter, comic book series produced by
Gold Key and
Valiant Comics respectively. Magnus first appeared in Magnus, Robot Fighter, 4000 AD #1, February 1963.
1963 was a great year for
comic books.
Stan Lee was cranking out amazing new heroes at
Marvel,
DC was busy remarketing its
Golden Age characters, and together they began to dominate the comic book
industry.
Gold Key Comics was in the business of translating popular movies and television shows, like
the Jetsons, into comic book form, but saw an opportunity for a
new direction. Editor
Craig Chase began to look for a new concept and he found it together with
Russ Manning, an artist/writer working on other Gold Key licensed titles. The duo developed Magnus as a futuristic
freedom fighter, struggling to save mankind from vicious
robots in the year
4000. It was groundbreaking for several reasons.
The
science fiction comic was a victim of the
Comic Code Authority, largely because of the "
space girl imperiled by slobbering sexually threatening
alien"
meme. By bringing a scifi comic back into the
fray, Gold Key resurrected the
niche previously filled by the likes of
Flash Gordon and
Buck Rogers. The concept of a vision of a
possible future, filled with fantastic robots and massive cities thrilled
young readers. They had no other
contemporary example of this kind of work. The series also featured Manning's
fantastic art. Beautifully
painted covers, a
rarity at the time, along with sprawling vistas of
North Am, the giant futuristic city Magnus called home, drew in readers at an amazing
rate. Manning had a clean, clear
touch to his art that appealed to the masses.
The series quickly became the best selling
original title produced by Gold Key. It even outsold DC's
Superman at one point. During the
heyday of superhero comics, Magnus did very
well. Manning's run ended with issue 21 in February, 1968.
Dan Spiegle and
Paul Norris each did a few issues, after which the series went into
reprints, published sporadically. The final issue, #46 was released in January, 1977.
The Magnus of the Gold Key series was an
orphan hero, like
Tarzan before him, who was raised
apart from society by a caring robot called
1A. Young Magnus became a perfect
specimen of
humanity, trained in deadly martial arts and strong enough to tear up
steel robots barehanded. Magnus responded to the cries of a future society that had become overly dependent on robots, some of which had turned
evil. 1A implanted a device that allowed Magnus to hear
robot communications and he took his
crusade to the streets of North Am, a city state that sprawled over most of the
continent. For 46 issues, Magnus
fought for man and ripped up evil robots in
exciting new ways. However, the end of this series was not the end of the hero.
Comic book characters belonging to
Western Printing, which owned the Gold Key
imprint, were acquired by a new start-up company called
Valiant.
Valiant, later renamed
Acclaim Comics, re-released Magnus in May 1991 in
Magnus: Robot Fighter #1. Gambling on a hero that very few people had heard of, Valiant hit the
jackpot, and they used the Magnus title to
reintroduce other Gold Key licenses, like
Solar, Man of the Atom and
Turok, Son of Stone. The heroes of the 1960s were revived and revisioned for the 1990s.
Jim Shooter, then head of Valiant, made Magnus's world less black and white in terms of
moral values. The robots that Magnus freely smashed in the 1960s became robots that developed
free will in the 1990s. This freedom from human
slavery is the danger against which Magnus fights, becoming a kind of
dark,
pro-slavery Luddite. The free robots also have a new edge, becoming
homicidal energy vampires, feeding on their former human masters. The edgy 90s Magnus walked the
tightrope between
zealot and
savior, and became a great
hit with readers. Magnus: Robot Fighter ran for ran for 64 issues. The last issue came out in February 1996, just prior to the
legal limbo that
Acclaim Comics fell into in the late 1990s. When or if he will see print again is anyone's guess.
http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/charapp.asp?i=156&n=Magnus
http://www.toonopedia.com/magnus.htm