Robot Archie and the World of the Future

I was reading occasional issues of Lion around the period that this latest collection of Robot Archie  stories reprints. My seven-year-old self wasn't especially impressed by Archie's time travel shenanigans, which didn't compare well to the cross-time adventures of Tim Kelly and Doc Diamond, and the artwork by Solano Lopez on the latter was more dynamic than that of Ernest Kearon—I know now that Lopez had been drawing comics for longer than Kearon by a couple of years, but Kearon's artwork seems not to have evolved over time as much as some of his contemporaries. Some of his characters look as stiff as Archie.

But... and it's a big but... I found myself enjoying these stories as I was reading the book. Trying to follow a story based on isolated episodes may explain why 'Kelly's Eye' was so much better. I knew what was going on, and, looking back, my favourites in Lion included things like Zip Nolan, whose adventures were complete each week. Of the ongoing stories, Paddy Payne, another favourite, was being drawn by Joe Colquhoun, Frank Hampson was drawing Dan Dare (both were reprints, but I didn't know that at the time) and Solano Lopez was drawing 'Gargan', three impeccable artists whose work always impressed.

In the world of the future, humans have been at peace for thousands of years and have forgotten how to fight, so when an invasion force of Krulls arrives, Archie can defend only part of the city they have landed in. While he shows the inhabitants the basics of warfare and makes bows and arrows, more Krulls attack. Archie now thinks himself to be a Warlord and arms his followers with swords and other ancient weapons from museums to stave off the attacks.

Ted Cowan's storyline is filled with extraordinary images—a wave of 'tin cans' forms into a mechanical serpent that Archie is able to ride like a bucking bronco, an abandoned tropical island where cars seem to drive themselves, Archie piloting a World War I bomber... indeed, the third story in which Archie and his companions Ted Ritchie and Ken Dale land during the Great War is the best of the bunch, with Ernest Kearon's artwork coming alive ashe tackles tanks, planes, ships and submarines rather than the clunky science fictional hover-cars and ray-guns of previous tales.

There are two back-up stories, one from an annual and one from a later holiday special which pitched Archie against another of Ted Cowan's creations, The Spider. 

Read in full, you can't deny that the stories are entertaining. They're not the best Lion had to offer, but Archie is an icon and deserves his place in the pantheon of weird heroes that the Treasury of British Comics is unearthing.

Robot Archie and the World of the Future by E. George Cowan & Ernest Kearon.
Rebellion ISBN 978-183786554-3, 11 September 2025, 144pp, £16.99. Available via Amazon.