On 7/15/2026 9:22 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:
On 7/15/2026 4:00 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
Monty: Soaking Up The Rays
˙˙˙ https://www.gocomics.com/monty/2026/07/15
Yup, there is the future as we will have billions of minions running
around the place.
Robotman? What happened to you?
According to the May 2014 (final) edition of the defunct racs FAQ:
Q. What happened to the Robotman strip and why is something called
Monty in its place? For that matter, what happened to the Mildes?
A. Originally Robotman was a strip concept (and animated show) to sell
dolls. The animated show was sickly sweet and also starred
Robotwoman. If you find one of the dolls it plays "I wanna be your
Robotman," the theme song.
The character concept was shopped around to various artists
(including Bill Watterson) before Jim Meddick took it up in 1985.
Whatever Meddick's strengths as a cartoonist it is clear that he
doesn't place a high value on continuity.
Initially Robotman was a visitor from outer space who settled in
with the Mildes, a pleasant if phlegmatic suburban family -
mild-mannered, nerdly-like parents, a socially ostracized and
generally repellent teenaged son, and an elementary school-age son
with whom Robotman developed his closest bond.
Around 1990 "Monty" showed up as a shape-shifting alien who became
a roommate of Robotman's; a few strips showed his "parents" as
shape-shifters resembling lava lamps. Shortly thereafter the
Mildes were dropped without explanation, Monty's extraterrestrial
origin was discarded, and the strip concept became "human living
with robot of alien origin." Much later the strip ran an X-Files
parody which "revealed" that Monty was actually an amnesiac
scientist who had built Robotman as part of a failed government
robot soldier project.
Near the end of the 20th century aliens appeared again in a rather
confused sequence involving alien-cat and alien-human crossbreeding
and the abduction of Robotman. Eventually Robotman chose
extraterrestrial exile with the robot he loved (not, however, the
original Robotwoman). In 2001 the strip was renamed Monty,
featuring a household consisting of the title character, his male
hairless cat Fleshy (formerly the mother of alien-cat hybrids),
and the alien (or alien-human hybrid) Dave-7 (formerly Mr. Pi).
Dave-7 seems to have faded away, his sidekick role having been
filled successively by an escaped laboratory chimpanzee (Chimpy)
and the time-travelling Professor Xavier Xemit's "research
cyber-clone" EB-7. Since EB-7 bears a striking (but doubtless
utterly coincidental) resemblance to Robotman we appear to have
come full circle.
The gocomics.com site has none of this history, indeed no mention
at all of Robotman himself; sadly, now that we've told you the
true story we'll have to kill you. (In a mid-2001 interview with
/Hogan's Alley/ Meddick said he removed Robotman from the strip
at United Media's request. Apparently newspapers that had picked
up Robotman thinking it was a kids' strip would complain when a
more adult joke came along.)
--
Mark Jackson -
https://mark-jackson.online/
I have been known to be occasionally sensible,
but never adult. - Jean-Jacques Semp‚
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