Superman Robots - Silver Age Versions

Silver Age Versions

Superman robots played a particularly dominant role in late 1950s and 1960s era Superman comics, when readers were first introduced to Superman possessing various robot duplicates. These robots each possessed a fraction of the Man of Steel's powers, and were sometimes used to substitute for him on missions (such as those where kryptonite was present) or for the purposes of protecting his secret identity (to that end, Superman also possessed a few Clark Kent robots.) One notable Superman robot was named Ajax, also known as Wonder Man. Other Superman robots had other names, including Robot Z, Robot X-3, and MacDuff.

The idea of Superman robots were extended into Superboy stories of the period as well, where it was revealed that Superboy also possessed robot duplicates of himself (both as Superboy and as Clark Kent). Nearly all of these robots were either deactivated or converted into adult-sized robots when Superboy grew up to become Superman. There was also Supergirl and Linda Lee robots so that Superman's teenage cousin could be a hero while at the same time seemingly be at class. Also while not Superman robots per se, Superman had other machines who could pass for human. For example, in one 1960 Superman story, "Mr. and Mrs Crandall" adopt Bizarro's human-looking infant son who had wandered into Midvale orphanage. The Crandalls were really robots who only pretended to adopt the baby so that their master Superman could take custody of the child.

In the early 1970s, the Superman comics largely abandoned the use of Superman robots as part of a change in the books' tone and writing style; the excuse given in the comics was that Earth's pollution levels and atmospheric conditions had rendered Superman's robots unusable.