Radio Hope and the Reader Episode 7: Soulless Robot Saviors

Radio Hope and The Reader is a weekly podcast set up like the journal of a superhero, The Reader, John Black, stuck on a satellite in space as he copes with his own loneliness as well as trying to solve the problems of the planet Earth.

Written and Narrated by Luke Herr

This week! Soulless Robot Saviors!

Click here to listen to episode 7 (it’s about 20 minutes)

or here to download the seventh episode.

Notes and commentary after the jump.

So yeah, I am hopefully not offending anyone with what amounts to loosely studied Jain inspired robots because that was really not my intent. Originally when I had done the Justice League post the Metal Men were going to have a different backstory or pitch. My notes from then:

The Metal Men – Gold, Iron, Lead, Mercury, Platinum and Tin – the Metal Men of Magnus Labs are the active force for the Justice League descending into danger and facing the threats. Due to their sentient nature and robotic origin they are classified as technology instead of weapons or people allowing them to be deployed without causing international incidents that would come if they were troops or weapons.

and then I had plans for a tarot set of cards for the characters and I got more into them.

The metal men are the sentient robot creations of Dr. Will Magnus that all have personalities that come from the metal they were made out of so they are a sub group. The metal men are: (and they all should have their alchemical symbols on them)
Gold – leader of the metal men, needs some kind of wreath around his head and should be this Apollo-esqe figure – attractive features – think like a Ryan Gosling made of gold – but he’s still this sort of clunky robot
Iron – strong guy, the fighter and war deity (the planet associated with Iron is Mars – war deity) – have him weilding this giant shield or turning into it – gladiator stuff.
Lead – leads associated planet is Saturn (sort of the time god with bits of death who ruled man) – I’m seeing him as this bearded wizardly figure with a snake staff or something very serpentine to go with the snake on the card
Mercury – hot-headed, fast moving – he is mercury and should be covered in mythological items, mercury hate and winged sandals, armor, etc. He shouldn’t look like a basic human – he’s an equipped person – despite everything being a part of him
Platinum – token female – should be holding her detached head smiling, she is the strangely shapely figure – think very curvy to also tie in the moon which is technically connected to silver
Tin – tin is the loser of the group, he’s the nonbrave and very flawed member of the group, he needs something dragonlike about him though for the final theme and maybe should be clutching, almost timidly to Platinum – think Gollum from Lord of the Ring, almost skeletal and on the line between creepy and cute.
N-th metal – should be this outline of a pure blindingly white figure with no definition or detailed lines and should look like an actual human – the most average shape possible – not fat, thin, strong or weak. His creation is sort of foretold on the card and N-th metal is this shifting metal that transforms and reacts differently to everything.

But when I started to revise the plans I was like – Break away from what people expect. Do something different! So I started lookup up Indian mythologies to look at what their classic elements were and the Jain ideas came up and then I saw that there were soulless elements and it evolved from there. Could a golem made without a soul gain one? And honestly I could have done more research but it gets weird and cosmic.

Till next week!