By Dustin Cabeal
It would be easy to spend most of my review listing all the things this series had going against it before I even picked it up. As a fan of the original two movies, it gets tiring seeing failed attempt after failed attempt to prolong this franchise. While I would love to pitch BOOM! a Robocop story, when they’re landing big established names in the industry, I doubt they’d want to entertain a reviewer’s script idea.
If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time Brian Wood has written for BOOM! He’s done well for himself at Dark Horse in the recent years but has a dedicated audience. He’s a name comic book readers know, and it helps that he’s consistently good with his narratives. You may not always like the subject matter, but from a skills standpoint, he never waivers.
Wood’s approach for this iteration of Robocop is similar to what Hollywood has been doing with other 70s and 80s franchises. Instead of rebooting the story, they acknowledge its existence and instead go for the soft reboot of “look it’s happening again.” Sometimes this works or at least has commercial success (Jurassic World) and other times it fails miserably and is blamed on the internet (Ghostbusters) and certainly not an excess of distracting gags covering a weakly veiled plotline.
The general idea is that OCP has returned from the ashes, bought by a man that’s obviously a hybrid characterization of rich Silicone Valley tech leaders. OCP once again privatizes the police force putting a new cop and a new father out on his ass just minutes before his child is born. Instead of an ED-209 or a new Robocop, Alex Murphy and the entire police force is replaced by an app and some robots. The app, of course, is R/Cop because anyone would be stupid not to play off the name of the title character. The app works much in the way that red light cameras do. You report a crime, and if that person is prosecuted, then you get money. You have to spend money to report crimes, but if someone is busted, you get a nice little payday. Admittedly the Cop Bot was fucking hilarious, though it seemed unbelievable that he would be programmed with so much sass.
Wood makes sure to have a media presence in the story but stop short of having commercials for social commentary. Instead it’s very “Fox News” in its take (though I’m sure a lot of reviews will say its Sinclair-esc which would mean this comic was written two weeks ago instead of three to four months ago or Wood is just that far ahead of mainstream media) with praise for what OCP is doing and making sure to bash Alex Murphy as creepy in the process. Yes, a man turned into an android against his will is creepy… which was an underlining point of the movie, but hey let’s gloss over that with unintelligent news talk. Incidentally, the news segments are the least needed part of this book and are just there because at some point the Robocop formula was forced to have them. As many have said before, these segments work in the movie, not on paper.
Eventually, we get to the heart of things in which the evil OCP is trying to gentrify an area called “The Ruins” in which all the poor people live. The mayor is a puppet of course because again, soft reboot. The only new character is the former cop/new dad that decides he’s going to track down Murphy. This was another interesting part of the story even if it was a bit predictable. It modernized an old idea with Robocop, but also violates his human rights and probably several other laws, but hey… we need a catalyst dammit.
Overall the story is successful because Wood follows the blueprint of the new movie, but finds small twists on how to make it modern. While the film Robocop was in the not so distant future, it was still grounded in the era it was made for the sake of the social commentary it was making. Wood takes the same approach. We’re in the not so distant future, but it’s grounded in our modern era so that the social commentary is effective. It was surprising in that it worked, but it was boring in that with the exception of a few minor twists and a sassy robot, it wasn’t that new or original. Perhaps this is just a bait and switch, establish what people know and then move away from it, but something tells me this approach is what the rest of the series will look like. The dialogue is natural feeling and believable, even the unnecessary news elements, but the story is nothing to write home about. Yes, it’s the best Robocop comic BOOM! has made, but that doesn’t mean it’s amazing.
The real saving grace is the artwork. It has a very Phantom 2040 vibe to it with the pointed noses and long faces. The artwork is very detailed with full backgrounds and the same level of quality for characters as cars and buildings, which is not something that can be said about previous Robocop comics from BOOM! The catch is that theirs is so much cross-hatching that it gets in the way of the finer points of the artwork. There is one panel that has an amazing amount of cross-hatching, and while it shows a lot of skill, you lose the focus of the panel. I looked at it three times before I noticed the drone because everything was cross-hatched minus two intentional spots. The coloring is solid, but due to the inking and line work doesn’t have the chance to give it a personality. It’s just colored artwork. There’s no sense of grittiness in the Ruins, and it’s ridiculously bright when in the “nicer” parts of town. The key thing is, it doesn’t look or capture the feel of Detroit. It’s a shame because the art is really good, but it doesn’t have the focus on the story that it needs to have to be incredible.
Robocop fans have been buying any comic with the title, so I doubt my review is going to change anything and frankly I’m not looking for it to. Enjoy what you want to enjoy, but if you’re looking for something groundbreaking, save your breath. This is a soft reboot that uses the same character in the way that Star Wars 7 used the same characters. It's decently entertaining, but that’s about all you should expect from it.
Score: 3/5
Robocop: Citizens Arrest #1
BOOM! Studios