Wow, so good old Frank Miller coming through here with a happy ending and a dumb joke and just an awful comic book. There’s so little story in this issue, you’d think it was coming out today instead of back in the early nineties.

Miller’s script reads like fan fiction, if I understand what fan fiction reads like–my understanding being totally based on the jokes made about fan fiction. What’s most interesting about the entire series is how the Robocop licensing worked. The Terminator stuff, apparently Miller got to do whatever he wanted because who cares what one’s going to do with a Terminator license (it wasn’t a Terminator 2 license). Robocop, not so much.

Simonson’s art’s real loose this issue too. Lots of whacked out body part proportions of Robocop; Simonson keeps it tighter for the human beings.

This series must’ve made someone out there stop reading comics.

Let’s see if I can recap. The future lady doesn’t kill Robocop because he’s too human so Robocop goes off and kills himself. Wait, wait, I forgot the opening with the Terminators colonizing outer space (another thing Cameron wisely neglected wasting time on–what do the Terminators do once they take over the planet?). Ok, so then the future is okay and all the Terminators get erased from it and the people experience them getting erased, kind of like Back to the Future again. It’s very song and dance.

But then the Terminators, as they’re being erased, race back in time (I love how they just zap through time all the time in the comics) to stop Robocop’s suicide. Then they destroy his body and kill his friends. So then Robocop plants a virus in the Terminator computer so he can come back in the future.

It’s an awful comic.

This issue is definitely better. There’s very little of the future warrior woman’s narration and a lot of Robocop versus Terminator action. Miller’s sense of humor even works a little–even if he overwrites–with the ED-209s being, basically, Robocop’s obedient lapdogs.

His exposition here is still terrible, laughable really. But he comes up with some really effective moments, rather cinematic (it’s a shame his Robocop 2 script wasn’t as good as his Robocop vs. the Terminator script). Even with the stupid flying through the internet (on dial-up) scene with Robocop and his squeeze (from Robocop 3, natch), it’s a decent job. Robocop isn’t overly humanized, for example.

Unfortunately, Miller does give the Terminators thoughts and it’s real stupid. He individualizes them, instead of treating them more as a hive mind. Cameron wisely never went into how the Terminators thought in terms of society–Miller comes off idiotic.

I’m not sure what level this one is most amusing on–Frank Miller doing licensed properties? Robocop vs. the Terminator being a sequel to the dismal Robocop 3 movie? The female soldier from the future knowing everything about the past even though she wouldn’t have been born yet? All the goofy expository dialogue or all the goofy narration? The endless possibilities for snide rhetorical questions?

Robocop vs. the Terminator is a crappy comic book; it’s not even an interesting crappy comic. It foreshadows everything Miller’s writing has turned into over the years–awful pacing–thirteen second action scenes taking two to three pages, dumb “grim and gritty” criminals who wouldn’t last thirteen seconds against Inspector Gadget (hey, a Robocop crossover with Inspector Gadget; Dynamite are you listening?).

Funniest is the time travel–instead of following Terminator time travel rules, Miller goes with the highly visual Back to the Future ones.