Hammerstein (robot)
Encyclopedia
Hammerstein is a fictional
robot
created by Pat Mills
who first appeared in 1978 as a member of Ro-Busters
in the British comic Starlord
but is best known as the leader of the ABC Warriors
in 2000AD
.
. Hammerstein's right hand is a hammer that is used in hand to hand combat while on the back of his left he has a missile launcher. There are tank tracks on his feet to aid mobility. Hammerstein also has two sockets in his waist to attach auxiliary arms but he finds these embarrassing. During combat operations his head has a grim human like face but after he was decommissioned this was replaced with 'civilian' head that features a single square 'eye'.
were running low and they wanted to seize the Volgan's oil reserves. To do this they created expendable robot soldiers - ABC Warriors - designed to wage war across any terrain in any kind of combat, atomic, bacterial or chemical. The first of their number were called Hammersteins. Developed by Howard Quartz's Ro-Busters
corporation, they first saw use at Fishguard
in 2009, leading the Allied liberation of the United Kingdom.
The first two models were failures. The Mk I robot was an effective killer but could not recognise civilians. When controlled remotely by human soldiers in 2009, the Volgans seized control of them and caused them to turn on the Allied forces, driving them back across Wales and causing the American public to protest the use of war-robots. Thousands of Hammersteins were destroyed for fear of Volgan reprogramming. The later Mk II was given an artificial intelligence and moral values, but that caused it to become a pacifist. The Mk III was given artificial values and emotions such as patriotism, believing the enemy is always evil, and that war is necessary to protect national interests - just enough to stop him slaughtering civilians but not question why he was fighting.
The first Mk III Hammerstein would be the template for those that followed. He was field-tested by having him serve with a human regiment; he faced and overcame robophobia from his comrades and came to be a trusted soldier under Sergeant "Country" Farmer's command. The human generals were pleased by this and began to withdraw human soldiers & mass produce robot ones.
Hammerstein was promoted to sergeant and began to lead the new war robots; as a result he was one of the few whose movements weren't remotely controlled by human generals. Despite his programming, he showed a paternal interest in the other Hammerstein units under his command and at one point disobeyed orders to save them from Volgan Stalins. He also became disillusioned due to the constant horrors of war and robots being used as cannon fodder by the humans. He once removed the pain barrier - which allowed humans to remotely experience a Warrior's actions but not its pain - from a dying comrade to put him out of its misery; this killed the officer in the process, but nothing was ever proved.
Following their success, the Warriors returned to Earth and separated. Hammerstein ended up with a new head and a different personality to go with it. He was eventually sold as army surplus to the much feared Ro-Busters
Disaster Ltd, which saw him serving alongside the sewer robot Ro-Jaws. After helping to save countless human lives (and once going on a rampage in London after his programming reverted to the war years), Hammerstein and Ro-Jaws thwarted a plot by Ro-Buster's owner to kill all the robots for insurance money. He helped mount a mass robot escape to Saturn Six, a moon taken over by robots years before; he felt he could be made a general on this free world and viewed this as meaning he would not associate with Ro-Jaws anymore. He threw this dream away in order to cover the robots escape, fighting alongside Ro-Jaws and ten other brave robots - entering Saturn Six legend as The Hero Dozen - to cover the other robot's escape. The two of them then walked off with new identity papers singing as they went, admitting that despite their wildly different personality clashes they were still mates and would be stuck walking "side by side".
, who reformed the ABC Warriors to help save the Gothic Empire from invasion and later to train the Goths in combat. They re-joined Nemesis as he ventured into the Time Wastes of Termight to find his son, Thoth. With Mad Ronn lost, their numbers were bolstered by Hammerstein's former Ro-Busters comrade Mek-Quake. The team ventured to the end of the world, and lost a second member when Hitaki was killed during the first encounter with the Monad. Adding Ro-Jaws to the team, The Warlock dispatched The Warriors into the Time Wastes alone to repair the damage done by Thoth, and stop the destruction of the planet.
He temporarily relinquished command to Deadlock, which saw the Warriors drawn into his quest to bring Khaos to the galaxy. For most of this mission, Hammerstein was bewildered and disgusted by the task and the lunatic excesses of his comrades. The most reluctant of all The Warriors to embrace Khaos, he finally realized that he did not have to obey orders any longer and renounced Deadlock's leadership.
The Warriors went their own ways. Hammerstein agreed to let Blackblood (now an arms dealer) give him a service, only to find himself welded to a workbench, used for testing new weaponry and deliberately tortured for five years. With the help of Deadlock, Hammerstein escaped and pulled the Warriors together again to stop the Terran ship Hellbringer. During this, it was shown he was loyal to Khaos and had some understanding of it, more so than some of his comrades like Joe.
In the battle against Hellbringer a demon overloaded his neural net with all the repressed guilt from his long career, almost killing him before he took out his fury on the demon. He also discovered the other Warriors had all known he was being tortured but had deliberately not come to save him, as "Nobody likes a nice guy!" - Morrigun even informed him that his innate goodness was against the order of things and this was why bad things happened to him.
Cobb's 'transformation' sparked a civil war, with the Confederacy of Martian Industries on one side and the Union of Martian Free States on the other. Hammerstein led the ABC Warriors in attempting to force a peace, leading to the Confederacy hiring a seven-strong robot mercenary gang called the Shadow Warriors to assassinate them. The battle saw Hammerstein infected with parasitical brain-eating robot snakes, forced to be killed or let them kill his comrades, and though he escaped the situation he was left severely wounded. He managed to kill the Warrior responsible, Doc Maniacus, with his own snakes.
Currently, Hammerstein is leading the ABC Warriors to rescue Zippo, a robot comrade from the Volgan War.
wrote the Judge Dredd story Hammerstein which placed the eponymous robot into Dredd's world.
In this story, Hammerstein rejoined the American army after the Mars mission, serving under General Blood 'n' Nuts in President Robert L. Booth
's robot armies. Following the great Atomic Wars
of 2070, Hammerstein fought in The Battle of Armageddon against the Mega City
Judges. Following the robot's defeat, Hammerstein was trapped under the Cursed Earth
for decades before emerging, whereupon he faced off against Judge Dredd. Realizing the war was over and the Judges were no longer his enemy, Hammerstein became unsure of his purpose.
However, the subsequent story ABC Warriors: The Volgan War removes this story from continuity by having the original war against the Volgans taking place in 2083, 13 years after the Atomic Wars in Judge Dredd.
. Although not named, he was identified as an ABC Warrior and his appearance was similar to that of Hammerstein.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
created by Pat Mills
Pat Mills
Pat Mills, nicknamed 'the godfather of British comics', is a comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since....
who first appeared in 1978 as a member of Ro-Busters
Ro-Busters
Ro-Busters is a British comic story that formed part of the original line-up of Starlord. Similar in premise to that of the Thunderbirds television series, it was created by writer Pat Mills and was drawn by Carlos Pino and Ian Kennedy initially, before Starlord's merger with 2000 AD...
in the British comic Starlord
Starlord
Starlord was a short-lived weekly British science fiction comic published by IPC in 1978 as a sister title to 2000 AD, which had been launched the previous year in anticipation of a science fiction boom surrounding Star Wars....
but is best known as the leader of the ABC Warriors
ABC Warriors
ABC Warriors is a long-running 2000 AD comic strip written by Pat Mills, which first appeared in prog 119 in 1979 and continues to run today. Art for the opening episodes was by Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Brett Ewins, and Brendan McCarthy - who between them designed the original seven members of...
in 2000AD
2000 AD (comic)
2000 AD is a weekly British science fiction-oriented comic. As a comics anthology it serialises a number of separate stories each issue and was first published by IPC Magazines in 1977, the first issue dated 26 February. IPC then shifted the title to its Fleetway comics subsidiary which was sold...
.
Physical description
Hammerstein is described as a Mark III war droid and was commissioned in the early 21st Century to fight in the Volgan WarsVolgans
The Volgans are a fictional fascist Russian government appearing in 2000 AD in the stories of Bill Savage and the ABC Warriors. The Volgans in both series are in the same fictional universe - this was explicitly shown shown with ABC Warriors: The Volgan War Book 1 referring to a specific event ...
. Hammerstein's right hand is a hammer that is used in hand to hand combat while on the back of his left he has a missile launcher. There are tank tracks on his feet to aid mobility. Hammerstein also has two sockets in his waist to attach auxiliary arms but he finds these embarrassing. During combat operations his head has a grim human like face but after he was decommissioned this was replaced with 'civilian' head that features a single square 'eye'.
The Volgan War
Years after the Volgan occupation of Western Europe, the United States began a counter-invasion to, officially, liberate the area; unofficially, Earth's oil reservesOil reserves
The total estimated amount of oil in an oil reservoir, including both producible and non-producible oil, is called oil in place. However, because of reservoir characteristics and limitations in petroleum extraction technologies, only a fraction of this oil can be brought to the surface, and it is...
were running low and they wanted to seize the Volgan's oil reserves. To do this they created expendable robot soldiers - ABC Warriors - designed to wage war across any terrain in any kind of combat, atomic, bacterial or chemical. The first of their number were called Hammersteins. Developed by Howard Quartz's Ro-Busters
Ro-Busters
Ro-Busters is a British comic story that formed part of the original line-up of Starlord. Similar in premise to that of the Thunderbirds television series, it was created by writer Pat Mills and was drawn by Carlos Pino and Ian Kennedy initially, before Starlord's merger with 2000 AD...
corporation, they first saw use at Fishguard
Fishguard
Fishguard is a coastal town in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, with a population of 3,300 . The community of Fishguard and Goodwick had a population of 5043 at the 2001 census....
in 2009, leading the Allied liberation of the United Kingdom.
The first two models were failures. The Mk I robot was an effective killer but could not recognise civilians. When controlled remotely by human soldiers in 2009, the Volgans seized control of them and caused them to turn on the Allied forces, driving them back across Wales and causing the American public to protest the use of war-robots. Thousands of Hammersteins were destroyed for fear of Volgan reprogramming. The later Mk II was given an artificial intelligence and moral values, but that caused it to become a pacifist. The Mk III was given artificial values and emotions such as patriotism, believing the enemy is always evil, and that war is necessary to protect national interests - just enough to stop him slaughtering civilians but not question why he was fighting.
The first Mk III Hammerstein would be the template for those that followed. He was field-tested by having him serve with a human regiment; he faced and overcame robophobia from his comrades and came to be a trusted soldier under Sergeant "Country" Farmer's command. The human generals were pleased by this and began to withdraw human soldiers & mass produce robot ones.
Hammerstein was promoted to sergeant and began to lead the new war robots; as a result he was one of the few whose movements weren't remotely controlled by human generals. Despite his programming, he showed a paternal interest in the other Hammerstein units under his command and at one point disobeyed orders to save them from Volgan Stalins. He also became disillusioned due to the constant horrors of war and robots being used as cannon fodder by the humans. He once removed the pain barrier - which allowed humans to remotely experience a Warrior's actions but not its pain - from a dying comrade to put him out of its misery; this killed the officer in the process, but nothing was ever proved.
The Mars Mission and Ro-Busters
He was the first ABC Warrior recruited by the mysterious Colonel Lash to work as Martian peacekeepers near the end of the war, and gathered the other recruits. His distrust of humans increased when he was ordered to recruit the Volgan butcher Blackblood and when he discovered that his fellow ABC Warriors were being slaughtered by the humans following victory. Nevertheless, Hammerstein and Colonel Lash took the newly formed team to Mars to tame the devil planet and finally bring peace to its red plains.Following their success, the Warriors returned to Earth and separated. Hammerstein ended up with a new head and a different personality to go with it. He was eventually sold as army surplus to the much feared Ro-Busters
Ro-Busters
Ro-Busters is a British comic story that formed part of the original line-up of Starlord. Similar in premise to that of the Thunderbirds television series, it was created by writer Pat Mills and was drawn by Carlos Pino and Ian Kennedy initially, before Starlord's merger with 2000 AD...
Disaster Ltd, which saw him serving alongside the sewer robot Ro-Jaws. After helping to save countless human lives (and once going on a rampage in London after his programming reverted to the war years), Hammerstein and Ro-Jaws thwarted a plot by Ro-Buster's owner to kill all the robots for insurance money. He helped mount a mass robot escape to Saturn Six, a moon taken over by robots years before; he felt he could be made a general on this free world and viewed this as meaning he would not associate with Ro-Jaws anymore. He threw this dream away in order to cover the robots escape, fighting alongside Ro-Jaws and ten other brave robots - entering Saturn Six legend as The Hero Dozen - to cover the other robot's escape. The two of them then walked off with new identity papers singing as they went, admitting that despite their wildly different personality clashes they were still mates and would be stuck walking "side by side".
Nemesis the Warlock
As the centuries passed, Hammerstein realised war was all he knew, and decided to re-join the army. With a number of other ABC War robots, he was brought into service by Torquemada's Terminator armies during the invasion of the Gothic Empire. After being caught showing mercy to alien civilians, he and two comrades Mad Ronn and Hitaki - were reprogrammed and sent on a suicide mission. The mission was thwarted by Nemesis the WarlockNemesis the Warlock
Nemesis the Warlock is a story created by writer Pat Mills and artist Kevin O'Neill which appeared in the pages of the weekly comics anthology 2000 AD. The title character, a fire-breathing demonic alien, fights against the fanatical Torquemada, Grand Master of the Terran Empire in Earth's distant...
, who reformed the ABC Warriors to help save the Gothic Empire from invasion and later to train the Goths in combat. They re-joined Nemesis as he ventured into the Time Wastes of Termight to find his son, Thoth. With Mad Ronn lost, their numbers were bolstered by Hammerstein's former Ro-Busters comrade Mek-Quake. The team ventured to the end of the world, and lost a second member when Hitaki was killed during the first encounter with the Monad. Adding Ro-Jaws to the team, The Warlock dispatched The Warriors into the Time Wastes alone to repair the damage done by Thoth, and stop the destruction of the planet.
The Black Hole and Khaos
During the mission, Hammerstein met and became close to a human female, Terri, who believed herself to be a robot. She had mistaken him for Craig, the father of her baby, and became equally infatuated with the ageing warrior; without the proper modifications, however, Hammerstein had no way to return her affections. The two became fiercely protective of each other, and made plans to find some remote planet and settle down. With Terri's untimely death during the final confrontation with the Monad, Hammerstein realized he was doomed to be an eternal soldier, only finding pleasure in war and destruction.He temporarily relinquished command to Deadlock, which saw the Warriors drawn into his quest to bring Khaos to the galaxy. For most of this mission, Hammerstein was bewildered and disgusted by the task and the lunatic excesses of his comrades. The most reluctant of all The Warriors to embrace Khaos, he finally realized that he did not have to obey orders any longer and renounced Deadlock's leadership.
The Warriors went their own ways. Hammerstein agreed to let Blackblood (now an arms dealer) give him a service, only to find himself welded to a workbench, used for testing new weaponry and deliberately tortured for five years. With the help of Deadlock, Hammerstein escaped and pulled the Warriors together again to stop the Terran ship Hellbringer. During this, it was shown he was loyal to Khaos and had some understanding of it, more so than some of his comrades like Joe.
In the battle against Hellbringer a demon overloaded his neural net with all the repressed guilt from his long career, almost killing him before he took out his fury on the demon. He also discovered the other Warriors had all known he was being tortured but had deliberately not come to save him, as "Nobody likes a nice guy!" - Morrigun even informed him that his innate goodness was against the order of things and this was why bad things happened to him.
Return To Mars
He led the team back to Mars afterwards, initially to tackle a group of zombies calling themselves the Jung Cannibals. They were caught in the Medusa War where Medusa, the planetary consciousness, tried to wipe out her human settlers. Hammerstein struck a deal with the spirit and kidnapped human Mars President D.W. Cobb, though he didn't know Deadlock planned to turn Cobb into a Martian as an act of appeasement.Cobb's 'transformation' sparked a civil war, with the Confederacy of Martian Industries on one side and the Union of Martian Free States on the other. Hammerstein led the ABC Warriors in attempting to force a peace, leading to the Confederacy hiring a seven-strong robot mercenary gang called the Shadow Warriors to assassinate them. The battle saw Hammerstein infected with parasitical brain-eating robot snakes, forced to be killed or let them kill his comrades, and though he escaped the situation he was left severely wounded. He managed to kill the Warrior responsible, Doc Maniacus, with his own snakes.
Currently, Hammerstein is leading the ABC Warriors to rescue Zippo, a robot comrade from the Volgan War.
Hammerstein in Judge Dredd
In 1995, Pat MillsPat Mills
Pat Mills, nicknamed 'the godfather of British comics', is a comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since....
wrote the Judge Dredd story Hammerstein which placed the eponymous robot into Dredd's world.
In this story, Hammerstein rejoined the American army after the Mars mission, serving under General Blood 'n' Nuts in President Robert L. Booth
President Robert L. Booth
Robert Linus Booth is a fictional character from the British comic strip Judge Dredd in 2000 AD. He was the last President of the United States and the man who initiated the Atomic Wars.-Fictional character biography:...
's robot armies. Following the great Atomic Wars
Atomic Wars
The Atomic Wars or Great Atom War is a fictional event in the Judge Dredd universe.In 2070, the possibly psychotic President Robert L. Booth started World War III by starting a nuclear war which dragged in all the major superpowers....
of 2070, Hammerstein fought in The Battle of Armageddon against the Mega City
Mega-City One
Mega-City One is a huge fictional city-state covering much of what is now the Eastern United States in the Judge Dredd comic book series. The exact boundaries of the city depend on which artist has drawn the story...
Judges. Following the robot's defeat, Hammerstein was trapped under the Cursed Earth
Cursed Earth
The Cursed Earth is a part of the fictional universe from the Judge Dredd series that appears in the UK comic book 2000 AD.-Background:...
for decades before emerging, whereupon he faced off against Judge Dredd. Realizing the war was over and the Judges were no longer his enemy, Hammerstein became unsure of his purpose.
However, the subsequent story ABC Warriors: The Volgan War removes this story from continuity by having the original war against the Volgans taking place in 2083, 13 years after the Atomic Wars in Judge Dredd.
In other media
Hammerstein arguably appeared in the 1995 film Judge DreddJudge Dredd (film)
Judge Dredd is a 1995 American science fiction action film directed by Danny Cannon, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Diane Lane, Rob Schneider, Armand Assante, and Max von Sydow. The film is based on the strip of the same name in the British comic 2000 AD...
. Although not named, he was identified as an ABC Warrior and his appearance was similar to that of Hammerstein.