Back in 1990 R
obocop 2 came out. It wasn’t a very good movie, and it was all the more disappointing for the fact that the credited screenwriter was comic book legend Frank Miller. Miller complained that his script hadn’t actually been used, and it was pretty obvious if you saw the movie that he was telling the truth. Other than a 10-year-old drug kingpin and a line about how all that was left of the real Murphy was a couple of chunks on the coroner’s table, the movie didn’t resemble Miller’s writing at all. Miller also got a credit on
Robocop 3 (1993), though I don’t think he did any active work on that movie at all.
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We finally got an idea of what Frank Miller intended
Robocop 2 to be last year when Avatar Press released the first issue of
Frank Miller’s Robocop, an adaptation of Miller’s script by Steven Grant and Juan Jose Ryp. It’s safe to assume that this 9 issue series is close to what Miller intended both by the style and that Miller endorsed the series enough to provide alternate covers.
In outline the plot is almost identical as
Robocop 2. When OCP decides Robocop is becoming a liability because of an overdeveloped sense of social justice the company cripples the cyborg by adding a gazillion new directives to his programming. Meanwhile a new Robocop is prepared, this one with more weaponry and what is intended to be a more obedient personality.
Perhaps the single biggest addition to the comic book is an entire subplot about the police being on strike and OCP bringing in a force of military mercenaries to provide security for the Delta City project. Mostly this gives Lewis (Nancy Allen’s character) something to do, because things get violent and Lewis leads the fight against the mercenaries. These scenes are probably also responsible for Miller’s credit on
Robocop 3, because there are some similar scenes in that movie.
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Another difference between the movie and the comic book is the identity of Robocop 2. In the movie it was a drug dealer who it was theorized could be controlled through his addiction to the new drug “Nuke.” His being chosen for the job was mostly the decision of an OCP psychologist, who it was implied was in love with the drug kingpin in some sick way. In the comic book it’s one of the mercenaries who becomes Robocop 2 (at least for a while), while the equivalent psychologist character is a pop psychologist who is never given any motive for why she hates Robocop. She hates him so much, in fact, that she transfers her personality into Robocop 2. That, plus the fact that she dresses like a high class hooker but pointedly spurns male attention, makes her one of the most flamboyantly misogynist characters I’ve seen in fiction recently. I’m not sure if that’s the way she came across in the original script, or just the comic. Without Miller’s original script in front of me it is hard to say which is more likely. On one hand Miller’s Angel/Whore complex is well documented, mostly by Miller himself. On the other hand Avatar Press isn’t generally known for its positive portrayals of women, in much the same way that Saudi Arabia isn’t generally known for its delicious pork products.