Robotman (Clifford "Cliff" Steele) is a fictional character, a cyborg superhero in the DC Comics Universe.
Robotman first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963) and was created by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani.
Robotman is one of the founding members of the Doom Patrol along with Negative Man and Elasti-Girl.
He is unique in that he is the only character to appear in every version of the Doom Patrol.
Cliff Steele became Robotman after a race car accident destroyed his body.
Caulder subsequently placed Cliff's intact brain into a robotic body.
After the operation, Cliff suffered from frequent depression because he viewed himself as less than human.
Although initially believed to have been killed by Madame Rouge, Cliff's brain had survived.
Will Magnus, the robotics expert who created the Metal Men, recovered Cliff's brain and built him a new body.
Cliff then joined a new Doom Patrol headed by a woman claiming to be Caulder's wife, Arani.
Refusing to believe that Niles was dead, she formed this new team to search for him and took his place as leader, calling herself Celsius, due to her heat-and-cold-based powers.
This new Doom Patrol was eventually almost all killed in action with the exceptions of Cliff, Tempest, Negative Woman, and Rhea Jones (who remained comatose). Caulder had turned up alive by this time, and denied having been married to Arani, although he admitted having known her.
Following this, Cliff voluntarily committed himself to an asylum, having fallen into a state of depression due to his condition and the loss of his teammates.
In particular, he was angry about being in a metal body and unable to enjoy the feeling and senses that humans take for granted.
Caulder sent Magnus round to try and help Cliff. Magnus introduced him to a person with "worse problems than his": a woman called Crazy Jane.
Cliff became the guardian of, and eventually fell in love with, Jane. Near the end of Grant Morrison's run on the title, his human brain was revealed to have been replaced with a CPU, making him a robot in reality.
In Rachel Pollack's run, Cliff's artificial brain began to malfunction so Dorothy Spinner's Imaginary Friends "rebuilt" Cliff's old brain.
Cliff later met and began a relationship with a bisexual, post-op transsexual named Kate Godwin. At one point, Kate and Cliff merged and shared his memories.
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Machine Man (Aaron Stack, serial number Z2P45-9-X-51 or X-51 for short) is a fictional character, an android superhero in the Marvel Comics Universe.
The character was created by Jack Kirby for 2001: A Space Odyssey #8, a comic written and drawn by Kirby featuring concepts based on the eponymous Stanley Kubrick film and Arthur C. Clarke novel.
Machine Man, whose real name is Z2P45-9-X-51, was the last of a series of sentient robots created at the Broadhurst Center for the Advancement of Mechanized Research in Central City, California, by robotics expert Dr. Abel Stack for the US Army.
However, all previous 50 experimental robots went mad as they achieved sentience and became psychotic, due to a lack of identity.
X-51 was the only survivor, as he was treated as a son by Stack and given a human face mask as well as being exposed to one of the monoliths from 2001.
After Stack died trying to protect him, X-51 assumed the human name Aaron Stack and escaped confinement, only to be relentlessly pursued by the army.
While on the run, the newly-christened Machine Man initiated contact with humanity in order to better understand it.
After being captured and later freed, Machine Man was found by psychiatrist Peter Spaulding.
Spaulding and Garvin set up Machine Man with a human identity as Aaron Stack, insurance investigator for the Delmar Insurance Company, but he continued having adventures as a superhero on the side.
Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen's Nextwave series sees Machine Man join a team formed by the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort, or H.A.T.E. (a subsidiary of the Beyond Corporation©) to fight Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Now preferring simply to be called Aaron, Machine Man is partnered with Monica Rambeau, Tabitha Smith, Elsa Bloodstone, and The Captain, and the team soon discovers that H.A.T.E. are funded by the Beyond Corporation©, leading them to go rogue and carry out their mission on their own prerogative.
Calling humans "fleshy ones" and expressing a degree of pride in his "roboty parts" - which he uses to kill Fin Fang Foom, Aaron has developed a fondness for alcohol, stating "My robot brain needs beer" on regular occasions.
He is not especially popular with his teammates because of his self-important attitude, and as is learned in a flashback that after being brought to space by the Celestials at the conclusion of his previous series, he was dumped back on Earth because the space-gods considered him to be a "complete and utter ☠☠☠☠."
He appears to have a rather serious attraction to Elsa Bloodstone and stares at her chest constantly, much to her chagrin.
It is revealed that when still an agent of H.A.T.E, Aaron would often sneak into Dirk Anger's room to steal beer until he found out what Anger made it out of ("I thought lizard squeezings was the name of a brewery!").
He later uses his knowledge of Dirk's quarters to steal Anger's mother's dress and hold it hostage in exchange for the safe escape of Nextwave.
