robocop_to_live_and_die_in_detroit_1_cover_2014I’m gonna start my review of Robocop: To Live And Die In Detroit by copping to the fact that I haven’t seen the rebooted Robocop movie that this comic book is based on. I probably will at some point, in the same way I saw the rebooted version of Total Recall: on cable while too shitfaced to operate my universal remote.

Look, I have established that I am a big fan of the original Robocop, and that I am not exactly thrilled to see a remake of that classic flick. With that said, I have heard a few decent reviews of the movie from sources I trust, so I don’t want to dismiss it completely out of hand, or allow my instinctive disdain for the idea of a new version of the Robocop character to overly color my opinion about this comic. Sure, the original Robocop was a genius mix of action, violence, satire and humor that I can’t imagine anyone improving on, but I imagine there were fans of Batman & Robin that hated the idea of the stylistic mindfucker who directed Memento sucking all the joy out of Batman. If you are one of those people, I hate you and everything you stand for and, oh yes, I will find you, but that’s not the point right now.

So I will try to approach this comic in the spirit that it really is about a character about which I know nothing. It’s certainly not my Robocop (and make no mistake, it really isn’t my Robocop), it’s just a character about a cyborg superhero working in a major American metropolis. So I tried to treat it like a completely new character, and judge it on those merits.

And on those merits? Yeah, it’s not all that great. Even considering it was impossible for me to really put aside the original Robocop.