Comics Fondle

Dark Horse’s Robocop ends here. Finally.

It’s not a bad issue, definitely the best in this series and probably overall (the competition isn’t particularly steep, however). It helps Jeff Butler handles some of the art chores. I don’t know who he is or what else he’s done, but he’s better than Byrd.

There’s some unintentionally funny moments here, especially when they rip off a scene from Robocop 2.

A brief post-mortem on Dark Horse’s Robocop, since there’s nothing else to say about the comic book (it’s bad, but not godawful):

There’s no continuity. Just a general reference to the movies, especially the third one, but nothing to really tie the series together. There are these evil rich white men who control all the bad things (oh, is it just me or is the only real black character in the comic–set in Detroit–a criminal?), but it goes nowhere.

Byrd’s art is pretty awful, but it’s a surprisingly okay issue. Even taking all the stupidity into account, Arcudi does manage a couple all right moments here, like when Robocop goes back to the scene of his own murder.

There’s also a lot of cop talk, not related to Robocop, and it passes the panels. It’s not exactly filler, just more of Arcudi doing whatever he can to avoid making Robocop the protagonist in his own comic (which isn’t bad, necessarily, the first Robocop spent a lot of time with other characters–except they were interesting, Arcudi’s are not).

Maybe the time between reading the previous issue and this one has something to do with it. They certainly weren’t written “for the trade,” so a delay–just to let the brain cells regrow–is a must.

Still, shame they can’t do anything with Robocop; it’s a waste of a license.

Twenty-four pages of story and nothing really happens. I mean, clearly, things happen. There’s a fight, there’s an argument with the dumb detective, there’s Robocop’s girlfriend–she’s not his girlfriend but whatever (Byrd draws her middle aged, clearly not basing her off the very young Jill Hennessy who played her in the movie), there’s a surprise at the end, there are callbacks to previous Dark Horse titles.

There’s just no content. Robocop is, in the Dark Horse comics, a boring character. He’s outlived his usefulness, dramatically, and it’s just a mess. He doesn’t fight crime anymore, he fights the limited series’s villains, which just makes him a cartoon, cookie cutter superhero.

There’s got to be something I like about it….

I guess the design work on the bad robot is pretty well done. It looks a little like the Robocop 2 in the movie, but it’s still different enough.

Robocop goes up against the I.R.S.? Who can win? So far, with Mitch Byrd’s artwork looking like the McFarlene school of everything having lines being a far cry above the other series from the publisher, Roulette is the best. It’s not promising, because it’s still set in the stupid post-Robocop 3 continuity where Dark Horse apparently tried to set up the ground situation and made a silly mess. Not to mention having Robocop barely in the comic and his annoying lab tech around again….

There is the whole Robocop vs. ignorant detective, something no one’s ever explored–where is Robocop in the police hierarchy–but it’s dimly handled. Arcudi does a decent enough job with the action and the dialogue even, but his scenarios and plotting (scenarios, especially) are lame-brained.

It’s only four issues though and it does read fast. Except the I.R.S. nonsense, which is just painful.

I think, seeing the cover, I had this issue as a kid. I don’t remember any of it–it’s a bunch of electrical engineering mumbo jumbo after a certain point–but I certainly hope I didn’t like it. Marvel always prides itself on that shared universe idea, but this issue, despite some lip service, certainly doesn’t show it.

While Rhodey’s off fighting a Beyonder-powered supervillain (a disgruntled television writer–I guess doing a disgruntled comic book writer would have been too New York at this point), Tony’s worried about his ex-girlfriend. Instead of sending, I don’t know, the Avengers to help her, he goes himself and fails. Only then does he save the day for Rhodey, who isn’t smart enough to take out the villain alone.

Then there’s the painfully mediocre artwork and the bickering techie siblings.

It’s a painful read; Tony’s characterization as a jerk doesn’t help.