Written by Pat Mills
Art by Kevin O'Neill
Lettered by John Costanza
Edited by Andrew Helfer
Cover Painting by Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics Inc. A Warner Communications Company in 1986 as 'GRAPHIC NOVEL NO. 6'
. . .
"But know this . . . on the day the god-beast dies, the end of the robots is near, and the sun shall set on the era called . . . METALZOIC."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
This is the story of Armageddon and Amok, two mechatyrants engaged in a death duel for supremacy over a race of highly evolved robots in the distant future.
We're not talking about Asimov's rational, servile robots. These are some wildass machine beasts, whose evolution has been turbocharged by the succession of Cold War military-industrial-infotainment complexes and totalitarian surveillance systems gone rogue. Add in a side-salad of sprawling, hyper-mutational chameleon plants known as Traffids, and you've got yourself a buffet of post-human, future-botbarian savagery-what fun!
Amok is a kind of robot mammoth on tank treads. He leads a massive herd of similar creatures. He manufactures an heir by combining data with a female wheeldebeast, and then pumping liquid steel into her womb-foundry. Out rolls junior, a little guy, who will be built and modified with new, larger parts as he accumulates data over time.
Amok is the oldest robot, and therefore the God of this cruel world. But as Amok ages, and his parts are damaged, and become dysfunctional, other 'bots may arise to challenge him to a death duel to attain the God position.
Armageddon is a cruel and treacherous being who has conducted surgery on his own positronic brain to become a more perfect slaughter engine. Armageddon is determined to best Amok in combat and become the God.
But Armageddon and Amok must endure a world of dangerous mechabominations if they are to have their fated duel . . .
Polaris nuclear submarines that have merged with robosharks.
Predatory eaters that camouflage themselves with the rusty hulks of junked-out 'bots'n'infrastructure. You're scavenging for parts in a boneyard when a terrible, mechanistic maw opens wide to consume you . . .
The organic traffids, genetically engineered carnivorous plants of yore who have developed a taste for steel.
Manipulative religious leaders-shameks-who try to psych you out by manipulating your positronic brains with strategic radio waves . . . or is it wi-fi?!
All of this craziness is drawn with mindbending detail. You'll want to take this one slow, lingering over each page, savoring the comic grotesqueries of each beastbot battle.
Metalzoic is a clever comedic riff on how human technology is bound up with our values, our fantasies, our pathologies, our tribalisms, our stubborn refusal to let go of outdated mythological and religious motifs.
And yet . . . these terrible 'bots carry on human idiosyncrasies and desires. Truly, they are making the most of their dreadful human heritage as the misbegotten spawn of late twentieth century war machines.
Terrifying vessels of an ambiguous spark . . .
