Robotman first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963). He was one of the founding members of the Doom Patrol along with Negative Man and Elasti-Girl and is unique in that he is the only character to appear in every version of the Doom Patrol.
Cliff Steele became Robotman after a car accident caused by Niles Caulder[citation needed] destroyed his body. Caulder subsequently placed Cliff's intact brain into a robotic body. After the operation, Cliff suffered from frequent depression because he viewed himself as less than human. A background serial in Doom Patrol #s 100, 101, 103 & 105 (December 1965 – August 1966) indicated that Caulder made a mistake in the operation that caused Steele to go on a rampage and was corrected when he was recruited for the Patrol, although this was incompatible with Cliff's flashback in My Greatest Adventure #80.
Apart from his physical abilities, he had a video communicator strapped to his chest that allowed Caulder to maintain contact with the team in the field, complete with visual information.
[edit] Death and rebirth
Although initially believed to have been killed by Madame Rouge, Cliff's brain had survived. Will Magnus, the robotics expert who created the Metal Men, recovered Cliff's brain and built him a new body. Cliff then joined a new Doom Patrol headed by a woman claiming to be Caulder's wife, Arani, Refusing to believe that Niles was dead, she formed this new team to search for him and took his place as leader, calling herself Celsius, due to her heat-and-cold-based powers. This new Doom Patrol was eventually almost all killed in action with the exceptions of Cliff, Tempest, Negative Woman, and Rhea Jones (who remained comatose). Caulder had turned up alive by this time, and denied having been married to Arani, although he admitted having known her.
Following this, Cliff voluntarily committed himself to an asylum[citation needed], having fallen into a state of depression due to his condition and the loss of his teammates. In particular, he was angry about being in a metal body and unable to enjoy the feeling and senses that humans take for granted. Caulder sent Magnus round to try and help Cliff. Magnus introduced him to a person with "worse problems than [his]": a woman called Crazy Jane. Cliff became the guardian of, and eventually fell in love with, Jane. Near the end of Grant Morrison's run on the title, his human brain was revealed to have been replaced with a CPU, making him a robot in reality.
In Rachel Pollack's run, Cliff's artificial brain began to malfunction so Dorothy Spinner's Imaginary Friends "rebuilt" Cliff's old brain.
Cliff later met and began a relationship with a bisexual, post-op transsexual named Kate Godwin. At one point, Kate and Cliff merged and shared his memories.