What if Frank Miller wrote “The Dark Robocop Returns” instead of his seminal Batman story? Well, if you’ve ever asked yourself that overly specific and oddly presumptive question, you finally will have your answer with “Robocop – The Last Stand.” Unfortunately, by the time you’re done reading it, you’ll probably wish he would have written it as “the goddamn Robocop” instead.
Written by Steven Grant (adapted from Frank Miller)
Illustrated by Korkut ÖztekinFrank Miller’s incredible screenplay has been brought to life in this hard-hitting Steven Grant (2 GUNS, PUNISHER: CIRCLE OF BLOOD) penned adaptation. With all the brains, guts, and bullets that made the first film an instant classic, this is a comic event not to miss.
The police force has disbanded. The people of Detroit have been evicted from their homes. ED-209s and OCP officers run the streets. With OCP’s vision for Delta City well underway, Robocop may be his city’s last hope. This is Robocop’s last stand, as it was always intended to be.
Let’s just get this out of the way early. At this point, one issue in, this book is basically “The Dark Knight Returns.” It’s actually absurd how true that statement is. The story begins in a near-future time rampant with debauchery, class warfare, and government corruption. Sound familiar? Robocop, at this point, is living in shadows and swiftly taking on corruption when he can. He’s an urban legend of a man and unable to be duplicated, despite his manufactured origins. Along the way, a determined heroine, Carrie Ke…err…Marie Lacasse tracks the unfindable Robocop down in his Robocave by using a method that should have been immediately obvious to any other interested party. After all, he’s a robot – as long as he’s powered up, he could never be off the map. There’s only two explanations: a.) the bad guys in the book are flat-out inept or b.) Frank Miller realized far too late in his plotting that the human Batman is a far easier person to hide.
Okay, so the story isn’t terrible and slagging on it the whole way through isn’t my intention. It’s just that the parallels to what is arguably Frank Miller’s most important and critically favored work are unavoidable. It actually is disappointing, because it neither works as well as it does for his version of Batman, nor is it nearly as meaty or thought-through. Setting that aside, if you dig the 80’s Robocop aesthetic – there’s enough of it here that identifies this as his character. As in the films, Frank Miller’s “Robocop” world is ultra-violent and vulgar, highlighting the realities of a world gone wrong and a city filled with massive automatic weapons and itchy trigger fingers.
The issue is only very interesting in short bursts, however. A lot of time is spent establishing the feeling of dread in the city, which is generally a good idea in longform storytelling (and I would think there’s enough time for it in an 8-issue miniseries). The problem is that one of Robocop’s most enduring traits as a classic film was its colorful villains and its sense of humor. Little of that is present here, which I guess is to be expected from a Frank Miller story. The idea seems to be that the city has never been a darker place for its downtrodden inhabitants. That’s fine, I guess, but characters like the hilarious and short-fused “Clarence Boddicker” or his goofy gang of goons are sorely missed. Anything approaching that sort of color would have made the book stand out more.
Korkut Öztekin lends the city and horrifying and dirty veneer. Characters are haggard and manic-looking. The sequential art definitely succeeds in giving the setting a consistent out-of-control feeling. Miller and Öztekin’s Detroit feels like anarchy, but the sort of anarchy where it’s the powers-that-be that are causing it all to their own gain. But as an action-heavy comic book, the art doesn’t pick up the slack for an overly uninteresting cast of characters and a regurgitated plot. While the overall look and feel of the city is right, there are no memorable details added to flesh out any of the characters or locations. At times, the manic character visuals remind one, again, of Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight” stories to a Robocop story’s detriment.
Continued belowThe action beats are few and far between, but when they’re there, they’re pretty well-staged. Robocop moves through whatever stands in front of him – man or machine – with a matter-of-factness befitting of the character. Robocop takes on a mech late in the issue in a particularly stellar and visually propulsive sequence. The composition of the action sequences is a step above the rest of the book, as Robocop’s movements convey the assuredness and the rigidity that the character has been visually defined by since the 1980s. Michael Garland’s colors give the issue the appearance of the city at dusk – perhaps in the dusk of its life as a functioning home for anyone on the outside of the corrupt power structure.
There’s a common problem with comic book adaptations that act as the only way the story will ever see the light of day. Whether it is thought that the best idea is to adapt it straight-forwardly or whether they’re choosing to bare the inherent weaknesses of such faithful endeavors, it makes for a story that rarely leaves the proper impression in its first installments. “Robocop – The Last Stand” takes too long to get started, without giving us colorful enough characters to latch on to. The issue ends right in the middle of a scene of dialogue that is reaching toward some dramatic arc, but stops before it even reaches some sort of emotional or philosophical cliffhanger. All along the way, it is impossible to divorce the work from the script’s original writer, so much so that the parallels to his far greater works hang over it like, well, some kind of Dark Knight or something.
Final Verdict: 4.5 – I’D BROWSE THAT FOR A DOLLAR! (but not for $3.99)
