Hammerstein is a fictional robot created by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill,[1] 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.
[3] 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.
[8] The Mk III Hammerstein 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.
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.
[10] 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[11] and at one point disobeyed orders to save them from Volgan Stalins.
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.
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.
The mission was thwarted by Nemesis the Warlock, who reformed the ABC Warriors to help save the Gothic Empire from invasion and later to train the Goths in combat.
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.
[9] 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.
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.
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.