Magnus - Robot Fighter

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Magnus is a comic - superhero made by Gold Key , United States. The cartoonists were Russ Manning , Dan Spiegle , Paul Norris and Frank Bolle .

content

In the year 4000 AD, humanity is almost completely dependent on robots . It comes to the point that robots take advantage of people's lethargy to subjugate them. The robots are officially subordinate to humans, including the police robots, so-called polrobs .

Magnus is raised by robot 1A, which apparently has feelings and awareness. 1A trains him to become an extraordinary fighter who never tires of saving people from that gloomy fate, and also equips him with the ability to listen to the robots' radio conversations. His girlfriend Leeja is the daughter of Clane, a Senator from North Am.

Publications in the USA

Gold key

Russ Manning was the creator of the title hero Magnus. He was the author and draftsman of the first 21 issues. From February 1963 to January 1977, Gold-Key- Verlag published the issues "Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 AD" No. 1–46, with numbers 22 and 29–46 containing reprints. In 1981, Doctor Solar published the last Magnus story in 3 parts in issues # 29-31. The last editions ran under the label "Whitman". After economic difficulties, Gold Key and its parent company Western Publishing were sold to Mattel in 1982 , and two years later all comic publications were finally discontinued.

Valiant

Under the slightly changed title "Magnus Robot Fighter", the series was revived in the early 1990s with newly produced adventures, when Valiant Verlag , USA, acquired the rights to Doctor Solar , Magnus Robot Fighter and Turok , Son Of Stone . Together with their own titles such as “Harbinger”, “XO Manowar”, “ Shadowman ”, “RAI” and others, a complex comic book universe was built up. Under the leadership of former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and initially with some remarkable ideas, both in the stories and in the marketing, Valiant had considerable success for a while. These series appeared in a few other countries, but not in Germany. The following Magnus titles and issues have been published by Valiant :

  • "Magnus Robot Fighter" No. 1–64
  • "... Steel Nation" as Trade Paperback (TPB),
  • "... Invasion" (TPB),
  • "... Yearbook" No. 1,
  • "Vintage Magnus" No. 1–4, (reprint of some Gold Key stories),
  • "Original Magnus" No. 1,
  • "Magnus Robot Fighter / Nexus" (Crossover Valiant / Dark Horse) No. 1 + 2.
  • "Predator / Magnus Robot Fighter" (Crossover Valiant / Dark Horse) No. 1 + 2.

Acclaim

1994 Valiant Comics was sold as part of Voyager Communications Inc. to the game manufacturer Acclaim . An economic slump in 1996 was followed by the restructuring of the publishing house and its Acclaim Comics program .

Under “Acclaim Comics Vailiant Heroes” (VH2) some new titles were published from 1996 to 2002 in a partly heavily changed form (“same as it never was”), including “Magnus Robot Fighter” from 1997 to 1998 with a total of 18 issues. Magnus was also featured in Unity 2000 1-3 issues. Acclaim went bankrupt in 2004, its own comic book titles were auctioned off the following year - Magnus, Turok and Solar fell back to Random House , the rights holder of Western Publishing.

Dark Horse

From 2004 onwards, reprints of the Gold Key Stories were available from Dark Horse Comics in the form of 3 hardcover books: Magnus Robot Fighter Archives .

In 2006, Dark Horse produced a limited Magnus figure within the Classic Comic Book Characters series . The figure has the number 3.

Since August 2010 a new comic series has been published by Dark Horse with new stories, written by Jim Shooter ; the first issue also contains Gold Key's first Magnus story. In September 2010 a reprint of the first Gold-Key issue in the series "1 for $ 1" was published. The artists are Bill Reinold (drawings), Wes Dzioba (colorist) and Raymond Swanland (cover).

In 2005, Ibooks published a 48-page paperback book called Magnus Robot Fighter .

Publications in Germany

The Gold-Key series was published from November 1966 to December 1970 as "Magnus Robot Fighters" in Bildschriftenverlag (BSV) with the numbers 1–25.

From 1978 to 1982 (numbers 1–14) appeared episodes in the paperback series “Die Actionhelden” (title of No. 1: “The Superhelden” ) from Condor-Verlag together with other heroes from the BSV, such as Doctor Solar , astronaut family Robinson (see also: Lost in Space ), The Mighty Samson (see Mighty Samson ), Turok - son of stones and other titles. The stories and titles in the paperbacks were lined up in a completely mixed order.

In Norbert Hethke publishing two Gold Key stories were eight albums from 1989 to 1991 each published.

There were no publications of the Valiant or Acclaim series in Germany.

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