Joe Pineapples

Real Name: Joe Pineapples

Identity/Class: Robot

Occupation: Soldier, sniper, assassin

Affiliations: ABC Warriors; formerly X-Terminators

Enemies: Volgs

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Mars; formerly Time Wastes, Mekka, Earth

First Appearance: 2000 A.D. Prog #119 (Fleetway, 30th June 1979)

Powers/Abilities: Joe is the best sniper in the galaxy. Like all ABC Warriors, he is immune to atomic, biological and chemical weapons; being a robot, he does not age, nor need to breath, eat or drink.

History: During the early 21st century much of Earth was at war, as western powers took on the Volgs from the east. After a while the human soldiers gave way to robots, the ABC Warriors, so dubbed because they were immune to the atomic, biological and chemical weapons used by both sides. Specialised robots were developed for specialised tasks; as well as the most common war droid model, there were medics, torturers, and assassins. And while logic dictated that every robot of a given make should be as good at their task, as identical, as any other off the same assembly line, their sentient computer brains inevitably had individualistic quirks, making some better at what they did than others.

Joe Pineapples was a sniper, and the best sniper at that. Initially he was assigned to the elite X-Terminators squad, Earth's deadliest robot assassins, but he was eventually dismissed in disgrace from them for undisclosed reasons. Reassigned to the front, he ended up under the command of the first successful war droid, Hammerstein, and like his commander, in the closing days of the war he was given a new task, joining a squad of robots sent to clean up the Martian frontier. Following the Mars mission, he spent some time as a shooting instructor for the London police (during which time he saved a malfunctioning Hammerstein's life by incapacitating him with a careful shot which left him repairable, rather than destroying him as others had wanted). He was either still a police officer, or else had returned to the job, when next he resurfaced centuries later on Mekka, a free robot planet; however the excessive zeal he showed pursuing human criminals saw him eventually blacklisted. With no career prospects, he gladly accepted Nemesis' offer to join a reformed ABC Warriors squad alongside many of his old teammates. He assisted them in defending the alien Gothic Empire from the attacking Termite armies, then accompanied the Warriors as they ventured into the Time Wastes in pursuit of Nemesis' wayward son, Thoth. Afterwards the warriors travelled to the planet Hekate, where Joe suffered a breakdown as the Night of the Blood Moon approached (see comments). Allegedly to save his life, his teammate Deadlock unleashed a Khaos virus into his system, modifying his sartoiral outlook so that he went through a brief tranvestite stage. The Warriors split up after the Hekate mission, and seeking employment Joe became a hit droid for the Terran Empire; enjoying his new life, he was a less than willing recruit when the Warriors reformed to attack the Terran vessel Hellbringer. However he was less argumentative about returning to Mars to help broker a peace settlement between the human settlers there and the planet's consciosness, Medusa.

Comments: Created by Pat Mills and Clint Langley.

It was eventually revealed that Joe, the "macho" member of the ABC Warriors, had gained a liking for covertly wearing human women's clothing, as the picture on the right supplied by Matt Spokes shows.

More on this: "Dave" notes that he "was kicked out of the Exterminators for being a closet transvestite. Blackblood held on to the photos, for later blackmail during the Goth Wars".

Dave Perks gives a slightly different account of Joe's transvestite period: "In the latter ABC stories (in my opinion the best ones) Joe became more cooler in image and attitude - he wore leather jackets and generally looked good. The adverse affect of this coolness was that his programming began to think he was actually human and he began to malfunction, finally having a complete shutdown due to some kind of logic conflict. Deadlock said the only way to revive him was to introduce a chaos virus into his logical & ordered system to wipe out the programming that was making him think he was a human - this worked, as he was operational again but a side effect was that it led to him suddenly removing his leather jackets and biker boots for something a little more Ginger Rogers. The raving transvestite image lasted a few issues before kind of settling down to long coats with fur collars."

CLARIFICATIONS: Not to be confused with

• Joe Pi, robotic Top Ten cop

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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