ROBOSLOP

ROBOCOP (1987)
dir: Paul Verhoeven

Detroit is full of crime and the police force and has handed responsibilities over to Omni Consumer Products (OCP). OCP President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) demonstrates a new robot officer at a board meeting, which ends up killing one of the executives.

Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), an executive on the rise, also has an idea for a robot cop, but it needs to be a cyborg. RoboCop is called different names here. Meanwhile, at a warehouse, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) and his partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) are attempting to pursue crimelord Clarance Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his accompiles but Murphy is killed in action.

OCP uses Officer Murphy to create their RoboCop. Scene are shot from his point of view of his being built, then he's ready to join the police force and they're getting ready to strike. (A union going on strike because their jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence. Like that would ever happen.) The RoboCop is programmed with three prime directives: 1) serve the public trust 2) protect the innocent 3) uphold the law. He turns out to be a perfect shot. After that is a montage of him stopping a series of crimes.

This parody has an appearance by Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise.

RoboCop stops a disgruntled Congressman who thinks an election was rigged against him. (A riot because a politician thinks an election was rigged. Like that would ever happen.). While on patrol, he arrests Emil (Paul McCrane), who recognizes that he was Murphy. Later he runs into Anne Lewis, who also recognizes that he was Murphy. He puts two and two together, and because he has a video recording of his beat and a database of everyone, ambushes the station and loads the information he has into the main computer, finding out about his past.

Dick Jones was unhappy that Bob Morton upstaged him at their board meeting with a better idea for a cop and has Clarence Boddicker kill him. They turn out to be partners where OCP is developing a new city where Clarence will get to be crimelord. Murphy and Lewis are back in the warehouse where he was shot and she is rehabilitating him, realigning him and feeding him his diet of baby food. Clarence and his men (Ray Wise, Jesse D. Goins, Calvin Jung) are out to kill him because he knows too much. In the chase Emil is run over and his car hits a can of toxic waste.

Nancy Allen was also in Dressed To Kill

Emil comes crawling for help but nobody wants to touch him. The gang attempts to kill RoboCop/Murphy but he manages to overcome all attempts. He crashes OCP's board meeting telling them the jig is up for Dick Jones and has the evidence, but he can't do anything because of the secret fourth prime directive—he can't do anything to an employee of OCP. But as soon as Jones is fired, RoboCop immediately defenestrates him.

Ronny Cox was also in St. Elsewhere, which we'll get to in a couple months.

The Mexican version had their own cover.

As did the German edition.

ROBOCOP-OUT
Cracked #233, January 1988
w: John Arcudi
a: Mark Pacella

John Arcudi wrote for the actual RoboCop comic as well.

Yet another Eddie Murphy/Beverly Hills Cop reference.

CYBORGS UNLIMITED
Cracked #234, March 1988
w: George Gladir
a: John Severin

RoboCop spawned sequels, toys, comics, and cartoons, but sometimes they didn't quite get the satirical aspect.