The History of RoboCop Comics

Den of Geek is screening the original RoboCop on Friday, February 27th, in New York City. Details on that can be found here.

Regaining his composure and fixing his tie, The Old Man addresses the cyborg that saved his life. “Nice shootin’, son. What’s your name?”

With a smirk, RoboCop turns and tells him, “Murphy.” Roll credits.

And there ends RoboCop, one of the most solid movies of the '80s. Filled with action, satire, awesome practical effects, and style. It was no surprise that they would try to follow it up with spinoffs. There would be sequels, an eventual reboot, video games, cartoons, a live-action series, and so on. There ended up being a ton of comics over the years, spanning nearly 30 years with five different publishers and over 100 issues.

It makes sense that there would be so many RoboCopcomics. The first movie was a fantastic superhero origin story. He’s ROM: Spaceknight mixed with Judge Dredd and there’s a lot of mileage you can get out of that. At the same time, it’s such a fantastic movie that it’s widely felt that the sequels don’t measure up. After RoboCop 3 came out and bombed, the comics suddenly went from being promotional tie-ins to being a series of attempts by different creative teams to go, “Wait, no! I think I can do better!”

The character is well-traveled and his different homes have given us many different types of stories. Some are excellent. Some are outright terrible. Let’s take a look at Alex Murphy’s panelized history and its never-ending supply of ED-209s.

Warning, there will be some spoilers ahead, but I’ll try to hold back when I can.

MARVEL COMICS (1987-1992)

In 1987, Marvel released a black-and-white adaptation of RoboCopthat was available for $2. I’d buy that for half the price, but that’s just me reaching for a tired punchline. Written by Bob Harris with art by Javier Saltares and Alan Kupperberg, it’s mostly what you’d expect. The movie is retold in 48 pages in the '80s Marvel style.

In other words, it isn’t so R-rated.

You know how it goes. Blood splatter is blackened out and the more violent deaths are in the shadows. That whole bit where Anne Lewis corners a goon while he’s taking a leak and he momentarily distracts her with his wang is absent.

“Ladies, I’d leave if I were you.” Man, I don’t know. It doesn’t have the same ring to it.

For the most part, it’s the same story. Honest cop is killed by criminals, gets remade as a cold-hearted cyborg, gradually regains his humanity, and gets revenge and attains justice. There are differences, though. There’s an intro scene where Clarence Boddicker and his gang shoot a bunch of police officers. Boddicker notices that one is still alive and mentions how he must be losing his touch. He warns the cop that he wants his kind off his back, but then the cop finally dies and he shrugs it off. “Hmm... Looks like I ain’t lost my touch after all.”

Everyone looks how they’re supposed to except Emil (he's the guy that got turned into a toxic mutant), who looks less like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and more like the Marlboro Man. Otherwise, changes include RoboCop having a bit more agility and an epilogue that has RoboCop standing vigilant on a rooftop because this is a Marvel comic in the 1980s.

Several years later, they would rerelease the comic in color form as setup for the new RoboCopongoing series. The title would last for 23 issues – the longest of any RoboCop run – and is almost cut in half in terms of tone. The first ten issues are by Alan Grant. #11 is a very strong fill-in story by Evan Skolnik, and issues #12 to #23 are by Simon Furman. Most of the art is by Lee Sullivan with later issues done by Herb Trimpe and Andrew Wildman.

The Alan Grant run starts off a little off-model from the first page when we see a street punk riding a hovering motorcycle. While Marvel’s RoboCopdoesn’t take place in the Marvel universe, it sure feels like it the way Grant goes a little too deep into science fiction technology. You have flying cars, cloned dinosaurs, and all sorts of robots.

Like this guy:

Regardless, the comics are good fun. They aren’t must-read, but they’re good for what they are. The characterization is on-point, the art is strong, and it not only holds onto the movie’s satirical nature, but it uses it to push the story forward. For the entire series, commercials and news broadcasts would bring up weird stuff off-hand and a few issues later it would come into play as part of the plot. Like how there’s a quick commercial for a television you put inside your head. Several issues later, RoboCop begins the story shooting down a man who believes he’s in the wild west and he turns out to be one of many driven insane by the television brain thing.

Also of note are Grant’s final two issues, where Detroit is overtaken by a fad of people becoming masked vigilantes. The whole thing pokes fun at superheroes and has such a nonchalant bodycount by the end that you’d think Garth Ennis wrote it. Hell, it even features Beer Gut Man, who is like the prototype for Ennis’ Six-Pack.

Around this time, Marvel released the adaptation of RoboCop 2, by Alan Grant and Mark Bagley. Again, it was first released in black and white, then rereleased in color, though the color version was made into a three issue miniseries. This one is closer to the source than the first book and certainly flows better than the movie. For one, you don’t go about a half hour without even seeing RoboCop. The bit about Murphy’s wife being written out happens far later in the story, but other than that, it’s about the same.

I will say, one interesting thing is Cain’s design. Unlike the movie, Cain is shown to be wearing circular black sunglasses, a long coat, and a top hat, which is not only a better, more striking look, but it’s also how he looks in the NES game.

No matter how good the adaptation, it still suffers from being RoboCop 2, a movie that’s filled with good ideas and good scenes, but is completely all over the place and refuses to become a cohesive product. But you know what? It could have been much, much worse. You'll see why soon enough.

[related article: RoboCop 2 has a hidden joke aimed at the studio]

The Marvel ongoing would mention the events of RoboCop 2 offhand during Furman’s run and let me tell you, Furman’s run is awesome. Really, instead of Frank Miller, they should have just had Simon Furman write the second and third movies by adapting it from his comic run. His first four issues would have made a perfect sequel. With RoboCop being such a success and it being so hard to just have a prime cop corpse fall on your lap like in RoboCop’s origin, OCP secretly starts kidnapping people so that they can lobotomize them and make them into RoboCops. RoboCop stumbles upon this and is both horrified and feels guilty, knowing that his own existence has ruined so many lives.

It basically takes the great “Introducing RoboCop 2!” suicides bit from the second movie and writes a story around it. A really good story. Also really good is an arc called "Mind Bomb" where a drooling, borderline catatonic young man ends up in the police precinct, figured to be a mugging victim. Instead, he’s some kind of creepy, unexplained, malevolent psychic that slowly drives anyone nearby mad with negative emotions, including RoboCop. The final confrontation between the two is extremely dark for an early '90s Marvel comic and deserves a look.

Furman’s run ends just a little too early in that there are a couple of plot threads that never get wrapped up. Lewis’ late-husband turns out to be alive, but it’s never really expanded on and the villain behind it gets away and is never mentioned again. There’s a widow-based villainess who kind of vanishes from the story.

Still, the comic ends on a strong note that’s both badass and bittersweet, reminiscent of how Grant Morrison’s lengthy Batmanrun ended. While the movie has RoboCop come to terms with his humanity, the latter half of Furman’s run is about RoboCop coming to terms with his robotic side and his duty. There’s a brief period where he mentally sheds his programming and becomes 100% Murphy, but he has to turn his back on it, as well as the possibilities of being with his family because it would only lead to disaster.

Coincidentally, a failed pitch for the RoboCopcomic would become a series that would reintroduce Marvel concept Deathlok. The difference is that after a year or so of being elusive, Deathlok is able to reconnect with his family and tries to make it work. He also has the similar drawback of only being able to ingest baby food.

This is a long article with a ton of images, hence the page breaks. Next we'll get into the Dark Horse years, 1992-1994...