You know what, this issue isn’t terrible. I mean, it’s bad, but not in comparison to the rest of the series. Robocop is in it, more than usual, and as comic relief instead of the protagonist, but whatever, at least he’s in the comic book. And some of the ideas–presumably Miller’s–are actually somewhat entertaining here. Ryp’s sexpot female after sexpot female is annoying, but, again, whatever. It moves faster than the previous issues and is less painful.

Some of it might–might–have to do with Grant finishing the issue with Lewis. Even though she’s barely been in the comic book (and I love how this Amazon War thing is such a great key phrase for everything, nothing like introducing all sorts of nonsense complicated world events for the reader to keep up with), she’s the closest thing it has to an empathetic character.

So, terrible, but fine.

Here’s where the comic sort of jumps off the deep end. I do want to point out how poorly Grant uses the commercial breaks, which are funny, in this issue. He doesn’t do them with any related news program, so there’s just story, commercial, story. He certainly hasn’t set up a comic book where he can makes moves like that one.

As for the drowning Robocop narrative, I find it hard to believe Grant, who doesn’t just write comics, but writes about them, thought this was a solid idea. It’s a complete, unmitigated disaster of a narrative. Grant gives pages to OCP goons, action scenes Lewis couldn’t survive and maybe a page and a half to Robocop this issue.

Ryp’s a bad match for a Frank Miller adaptation. Spared down artwork might have made it more tolerable, but this intestine-filled mess is just getting tiresome and ugly.

It’s crap.

And here Robocop is even less of a character. Grant (or Miller?) has found a character he wants to follow, a voluptuous female version of Dr. Phil who can guide the story.

The supporting cast here is really thin; since Ryp doesn’t exactly do likenesses (at all), the familiar movie cast is identifiable only by their traits. The sergeant at the police station is black, check; Lewis blows bubbles, check. The comic’s major problem is with the yawn-inducing corporate bad guys taking center stage.

The issue ends on a lame cliffhanger, but it’s only appropriate, since it opened on a really lame cliffhanger resolution. Frank Miller’s Robocop came relatively early in the unproduced scripts to comics genre and it’s unclear how Avatar thought anyone might confuse this book for one Miller actually wrote himself.

It’s too much of a misfire to even be interesting enough to be a disaster.

There’s technically twenty-two pages of story here, but so much of it is wasted–five pages alone, at the front, go to showing clips of television shows of the future (Grant adds, presumably, the material about TV being safe for all kids, since when Miller wrote his Robocop 2 script it was 1988 or whatever)–it doesn’t even feel like half an issue.

The big problem is the lack of characters–Robocop isn’t a character here and maybe he just doesn’t work with comic books. He doesn’t have an alter ego to humanize him, so maybe you need to actor with the voice, need the acting.

Ryp’s art has its moments and his Robocop certainly does look worn down and “realistic,” but it’s a little too much. The comic relies on his detail over writing or plotting. He also can’t figure out how to make Robo-Vision look good.