Twenty-four pages of story and nothing really happens. I mean, clearly, things happen. There’s a fight, there’s an argument with the dumb detective, there’s Robocop’s girlfriend–she’s not his girlfriend but whatever (Byrd draws her middle aged, clearly not basing her off the very young Jill Hennessy who played her in the movie), there’s a surprise at the end, there are callbacks to previous Dark Horse titles.

There’s just no content. Robocop is, in the Dark Horse comics, a boring character. He’s outlived his usefulness, dramatically, and it’s just a mess. He doesn’t fight crime anymore, he fights the limited series’s villains, which just makes him a cartoon, cookie cutter superhero.

There’s got to be something I like about it….

I guess the design work on the bad robot is pretty well done. It looks a little like the Robocop 2 in the movie, but it’s still different enough.

Robocop goes up against the I.R.S.? Who can win? So far, with Mitch Byrd’s artwork looking like the McFarlene school of everything having lines being a far cry above the other series from the publisher, Roulette is the best. It’s not promising, because it’s still set in the stupid post-Robocop 3 continuity where Dark Horse apparently tried to set up the ground situation and made a silly mess. Not to mention having Robocop barely in the comic and his annoying lab tech around again….

There is the whole Robocop vs. ignorant detective, something no one’s ever explored–where is Robocop in the police hierarchy–but it’s dimly handled. Arcudi does a decent enough job with the action and the dialogue even, but his scenarios and plotting (scenarios, especially) are lame-brained.

It’s only four issues though and it does read fast. Except the I.R.S. nonsense, which is just painful.