Real Name: Steelhorn
Identity/Class: Robot
Occupation:
Affiliations: ABC Warriors; George
Enemies:
Known Relatives: None
Aliases:
Base of Operations: Mars, formerly Earth
First Appearance: 2000 A.D. #127 (25 August 1979)
Powers/Abilities: Steelhorn's original body was nearly indestructible. As the Mess he was a mass of sentient molten metal. When Medusa rebuilt him she gave him the additional ability to control the animals of Mars.
History: Designed to be indestructible, Steelhorn was the A.B.C. Warrior who struck the final blow during the war against the Volgs. He penetrated the fire shield around the Volg capital and executed the fleeing Marshal Volgod, Zarr of all the Volgans.
With the war over, Hammerstein went to recruit Steelhorn as the last member of his special squad. However, Steelhorn had become tired of bloodshed and decided to become a pacifist. He refused Hammerstein's offer, and decided instead to become a fireman when he was demobbed. But the humans had no intention of letting thousands of war robots loose into the population, and the demob camp contained a hidden furnace where the robots were to be melted down. Even Steelhorn's supposedly indestructible body could not survive the intense heat.
Somehow
Steelhorn survived, his body now a molten mess of liquid metal, full of hatred
for all humans. Once he had killed the humans who had done this to him, he
allowed himself to be recruited into Hammerstein's squad, taking the new
name "The Mess". In order to prevent his new form cooling too much and
solidifying, he was carried by Mongrol in a vacuum flask most of the time,
and the two very different robots became friends.
During one of the missions on Mars the Warriors met a giant robot called George. He was a Gargantek, one of the robots who had originally terraformed the planet. Due to his immense size, each of his limbs had a separate brain, with a master brain in his head which was supposed to co-ordinate the rest - instead the brains tended to argue, which left George a huge klutz as limbs refused to co-operate with one another. The Warriors recruited George to help them on their current mission, with one warrior apiece taking control of each of the brains in order to overcome their arguing and transform George into a proper fighting machine. When the team had finished and left his body, they realised that the Mess' flask had been left inside. The flask was split open as George was attacked by enemy forces, and the Mess ran free, acting as a link to each of George's brains. With the brains working together from this point, George was no longer a joke - instead he was a force to reckoned with.
Having concluded their mission the Warriors departed Mars and went their separate ways; the Mess was left behind with George. Many centuries later, when the human colonists attempted to further terraform the planet, they awoke the angry spirit of Medusa, the consciousness of the planet. It destroyed George because he had terraformed her, discovered the Mess within his remains, and using the Gargantek's part rebuilt a version of the original Steelhorn body. Steelhorn then acted as Medusa's spokesperson, attacking the human settlers. The ABC Warriors returned to Mars, and Deadlock reached a compromise with Steelhorn and Medusa to end the slaughter. Now Steelhorn has returned to the ranks of his former squad.
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