Review: Frank Miller’s ROBOCOP (BOOM! Studios)

It’s no secret that Hollywood has a knack for sometimes messing with a “good thing” until it eventually unravels into development hell, rarely to ever be heard of again. In some cases, though, a movie manages to avoid enough misguided tampering to make it past the execs and onto the big screen (albeit with some battle scars). RoboCop 2 is one of those films. Directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back) and intended as the Hollywood debut of writer Frank Miller (Sin City, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), the sequel to RoboCop had the fairly simple task of continuing Alex Murphy’s superhuman story while making the stakes more threatening and the action more violent than before.

…but nothing is ever that easy. After writing draft after draft, Miller’s flair for tragic superheroism and rich subtext – seen in works like Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns – was eventually whittled away. The writer’s original vision for the sequel – full of “violence, black comedy and science fiction” – never made it to the big screen. What we got instead was a misguided flop that clearly fell short of its predecessor. But what about Miller’s original vision? Well, thanks to BOOM! Studios we now have it in graphic novel form

Released last August, Frank Miller’s ROBOCOP collects all nine issues from Avatar Press’ original mini-series, adapted from Miller’s original script by Steven Grant (2 Guns, Punisher: Circle of Blood) and illustrated by Juan Jose Ryp (Black Summer). There are some slight similarities between this version of the story and RoboCop 2, but they’re thin at best. OCP is still trying to evict and rebuild the city of Detroit from the ground up and there’s still a division trying to develop “RoboCop 2,” but rather than Security Concept like it is in the film it’s the twisted Dr. Margaret Love and Attitude Concepts.

Gone are the drug-dealing Cain and his designer drug “Nuke,” replaced instead by a special ops team called Rehabilitation Concepts and it’s leader, Seltz. Seltz’s right hand psychopath, Kong, also plays a role in the second half of the story when everything really get crazy. It’s easy to see why most of this script was left on the cutting room floor. It’s got some pretty insane action sequences that would’ve cost a fortune to film, even by today’s standards. Miller’s “Robocop 2″ is also a hulking monstrosity, as much living metal as it is machine, with an arsenal that makes RoboCop 2’s “RoboCain” look like an oversized trash compactor. Seriously.

Unfortunately, despite a serious uptick in sex and gore I can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed by all the elements that Miller has crammed in. Not only is there RoboCop’s search for his humanity, but there’s a strike that takes place within the Detroit Police Department, their struggle with Rehabilitation Concepts (which gets really violent, really quick), Dr. Love’s manipulation of RoboCop, OCP’s takeover of Detroit, something about an orphaned little girl, social commentary on consumerism in American culture, a transvestite talk show host named Lilac AND *inhale* a televangelist named Luke Spindle. All that, plus some commercial-like interludes every few pages or so.

If that doesn’t make your head spin, then Ryp’s artwork certainly doesn’t help to clarify things at all. Each panel is densely packed with detail to a fault, so much so that it often makes the story harder to follow instead of enriching the experience. Credit where credit is due, when you can tell what’s going on, Ryp does a damn fine job. Severed limbs are soaked in soft tissue and blood, sweat and motor oil mix into a mighty fine stew and never had Officer Lewis looked sexier or tougher than she has here. That said, it would have been nice if Ryp had left at least a little room for the eye to rest.