Comic Review: Marvel's "The Toxic Avenger!" (1991)

In the early 1990s, the house Spidey built ran a comic based on Troma’s flagship character for 11 issues … and surprisingly, it wasn’t half bad.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

I know I’ve said this before, but it absolutely BLOWS my mind that somehow, someway, The Toxic Avenger — a no-budget splatter movie whose highlights include children having their heads squished by drunk drivers and morbidly obese men having their intestines yanked out of their stomach cavities — was transformed into a children’s property, complete with Nintendo games, a toy line from the same people behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, of course, a short-lived cartoon on Fox Kids. To this day I have no idea how such an arrangement came to be, with seemingly the only reasonable explanation being “cocaine, and a whole lot of it.”

But no siree, the kidification of Toxie didn’t stop there. The Toxic Avenger also managed to land not just one, but two different Marvel Comics series. While the second was based upon the Toxic Crusaders cartoon (and thus, was naturally inclined to be a little more subdued, thematically), its forerunner was based explicitly — and I mean that in more ways than one — on the original Troma film trilogy.

Millions of fans? That seems like
a bit of an overestimate, don't
it?

Penned by veteran comic scribe Doug Moench (who is probably best known for an insanely long run on Master of Kung Fu back in the day), I think it’s safe to say expectations for the series were pretty low. But as it turns out, the 11-issue run isn’t bad at all … in fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s actually a pretty fun and inventive take on Troma’s marquee character that somehow manages to stay true to his cinematic roots even without all of the copious violence and nudity.

With artwork supplied by Rodney Ramos and Val Mayerik, the series looks WAY better than you’d expect. And while the comic does play it fast and loose with the official Toxie canon, that’s not to say it didn’t get away with some pretty risque material. Indeed, for a comic published by Marvel in the early, pre-Image 1990s, it does push the boundaries pretty far, complete with a few uncensored swear words sprinkled in with the exploded limbs and gruesome zombies whose skin is so rotten it’s practically gelatinous.

The series does a pretty good job of keeping Toxie’s personality aligned to the movies, even if his created-for-the-comics catchphrase “omgowa” feels really forced and out of place. After recapping the character’s origin — it’s close enough to what we see in the first movie to avoid any complaints — it doesn’t take long for the comic to start blazing its own trail, introducing a new central antagonist — a devilish CEO named simply “The Chairman” who has two demonic dragons flying in and out of his mouth — who immediately begins plans to take over Tromaville using a bevy of toxic waste-spawned atrocities.

And admittedly, we do have some pretty cool original villains show up. The first couple of rogues are by-the-numbers goons and thugs with generic mutation gimmicks, but things pick up considerably when The Chairman contaminates the health club from the original movie with a toxic juice that turns all of those hardbodies into undead killing machines. And once Toxic has made mincemeat of them, The Chairman ups the ante by digging up the graves of the dispatched mutants and patchworking them into a ten foot-tall, hulking anti-Toxie called Biohazard … which is actually a pretty badass villain, if just in terms of aesthetics alone.

Of course, showing a body explode into a shower of limbs and appendages is just peachy as long as no bloods or innards are visible ...

But really, the highlight of the series has to the the “Souvlaki Sewer Syndrome” two-parter in issues seven and eight. In this mini-arc, The Chairman concocts a wild plan to turn half of New York into irradiated, sewer-dwelling zombies via tainted souvlaki, with the hideous creatures eventually pooling together into a mammoth wad of rotting adipose tissue. As I said earlier, for Marvel in the early 1990s this is actually some pretty edgy stuff, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the artwork here at least partially unnerving. For me, the zenith of the series has to be when Toxie gets devoured by the souvlaki monster, and he has an internal dialogue about how oddly serene it is to be sloshing around inside it as it rampages through New York, as if he was peacefully gliding to and fro in a rotting womb. Yeah, the way I put it is really unartful, but trust me, the execution in the book itself is WAY better than my crappy description.

Unfortunately, "The Toxic Wigger"
just didn't have the mass appeal
Marvel hoped for.

Unfortunately, the series is all downhill from there. The ninth issue is definitely a “jump the shark” issue, as the issue completely abandons the ongoing story arc for a one-and-done yarn in which Toxie gets abducted by aliens and, inexplicably, raps his way through the whole story. Issue 10 resumes the normal story arc, and while it is fun watching Toxie kvetch his way through half the issue while stuck in a stockade, it’s pretty obvious that the writers knew the whole series was about to get cancelled. Hence, why the 11th and final issue feels like such a rush-job, complete with a very anticlimactic end to the whole Chairman and Apocalypse Inc. storyline. Granted, it has its moments, but it’s clear the folks behind the comic were just phoning it in — as obvious by the series’ final panel, in which they get all meta on us and have disembodied naysayers scream “higher sales!” at Toxie. Get it, because the book itself wasn’t selling enough to keep Marvel happy? Man, now that shit is clever.

Still, on the whole, I’d say The Toxic Avenger is nonetheless a better than average tie-in comic, especially for Marvel in the early ‘90s (anybody remember their series based on Pirates of Dark Water, Bill & Ted and even WCW by-god ‘rasslin?) While it doesn’t perfectly mirror the attitude or spirit of the Troma films from which it’s based, the writers did a pretty good job translating the material into PG-reading, and I thought the artwork was just plain snazzy.

I wouldn’t call this a “great” series by any stretch, but it’s certainly better than it had any right to be. Granted, I haven’t checked out its spiritual successor in the Toxic Crusaders follow-up, but if that one is at least half as decent as The Toxic Avenger … well, actually, that’s pretty much what I would expect it to be, I suppose.

Regardless, this is a fun, moderately overachieving series anchored around a seemingly impossible premise. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a way better take on the character than what we saw in The Last Temptation of Toxie. Sigh, if only it lasted long enough to give us that long-awaited crossover with Robocop we had no idea we both wanted and retroactively needed …

Kudos my hero, leaving all the best ...

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Robocop: The Animated Series - The Pilot Episode!

Because why not turn one of the goriest, anti-capitalist screeds of the 1980s into a cartoon for the kiddo consumers?

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

The 1980s were a strange, strange time in American consumer culture, especially in terms of kid-targeted marketing. On one end - and keep in mind, this was well before the Disney-Marvel-Star Wars pop cultural Wehrmacht came to exist - you had stuff that was pretty straight-forward, kid-baiting capitalist claptrap, sans any real subtext, intentional or unintentional - your Smurfs, your Super Marios, your Care Bears and so on and so forth. This being the Reagan Era, of course there was a lot of pseudo-political stuff being repackaged as preteen entertainment, as well; it's no coincidence that G.I. Joe suddenly came back into vogue right around the same time America was transitioning from its post-Vietnam non-interventionist stance to today's always-battle-ready global protectorates (David Sirota's entertaining 2011 tome Back to our Future is a great read for anyone looking to see how jingoistic media in the ALF years helped create a culture of militarism in the U.S. that is still reverberating today.) 

But on the other side of the toy store aisle - across the way from all of the Glo-Worms and My Little Pony dolls and Pound Puppies - you had stuff that seemed, well, just a wee bit outside the domain of juvenalia. Right next to Atari 2600 cartridges based on properties like E.T. and The Empire Strikes Back, there were video games inspired by ultra-violent splatter films like The Evil Dead and raunchy sex comedies like Porky's. Side by side with the hula hoops and Slinkies were startlingly realistic replicas of the machine guns used by Rambo and the A-Team, with some "playsets" more closely resembling the contents of Timothy McVeigh's tool shed than an elementary schooler's toychest. Wedged in between The Karate Kid action figures and plastic WWF pro wrestlers, one could find licensed playthings celebrating everything from a cybernetic assassin cop-killer to a horribly-disfigured, mass murdering child predator. And if you think that's a little age-inappropriate, just wait until you flip on the slate of Saturday morning television programming!

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, there were, at various points in time, kid-centered cartoons based on all of the following, adult-themed licenses: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Police Academy, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, Highlander, Conan the Barbarian, Little Shop of Horrors and, god help us, even The Toxic Avenger. Granted, these programs couldn't replicate the gross-out humor, sexual innuendos, and occasional disembowelings of their parent I.P., but they did what they could to soften up and reserve the properties (almost always with a corresponding toyline and video games out the wazoo) to America's consumption-hungry adolescent masses ... which, naturally, makes the existence of the 1988 Robocop cartoon series all the more ironic. 

It may have taken some major liberties with
the source material, but at least they kept in
the part where Eric Foreman's dad shoots
Murphy 40-bazillion times at point blank range.

My adulation for all things Robocop is no secret. Shit, I'll even go as far as to cite Paul Verhoeven's original 1987 film as the single greatest anti-consumerist satire in history, and probably the most palatable cinematic interpretation of Das Kapital that will -- or can ever -- exist. But even if you look beyond Robocop's less kid-friendly components - the dudes being melted by toxic waste, Red Foreman having his trachea ripped open with a metal spike, "bitches, leave," etc. - the central message of the film is that brain dead consumer culture is the root of all societal evil, and that mass marketed anything just stands to make us less happy and less intellectual citizens. So why the hell not repackage that thematic into a TV program for the booger-eater set?

The first Robocop cartoon series - a joint Marvel Productions/AKOM Productions venture - ran for one season in 1988. While the general gist of the Robocop mythos was left intact - the program even began with a toned-down re-imagining of Alex Murphy's execution! - the show made quite a few tweaks here and there, primarily, to expand the toy line ... I mean, in-show universe. While the program certainly didn't live up to the lofty precedent set by its source material, for what it's worth, it wasn't that bad of a little cartoon, and a few of its ideas actually bordered on ingenious. The execution - in more ways than one - may have been flawed, but you at least have to give the writers some points for trying; all in all, had the basic storyline of the show been used as the general basis for the Robo-sequels, Parts 2 and 3 probably would've turned out as way more entertaining movies. 

The pilot episode, titled "Crime Wave," introduces us the series' primary antagonists, a gaggle of criminal mischief-makers named the Vandals who share more than a passing resemblance to the Cretins from the Class of Nuke 'Em High franchise. Their shenanigans begin with a heist of the OCP-branded blood bank - why plasma in Future Detroit is so guldarn valuable, however, the episode never tells us. Carrying laser weapons, the scoundrels tell the po-po to kiss their "big toes" and threaten to blow the building sky high. They set an I.E.D. to go off in 12 minutes (not real time, of course), and here comes Robocop and his sidekick Officer Lewis to shoot the guns out of the bad guys' hands and prevent a few of them from making a getaway in a stereotypical 1980s rape-wagon. Robocop, with eleven seconds to spare, decides to get rid of the explosives by throwing them really high in the air, where the contents safely explode overhead and totally don't send shrapnel raining down on innocent citizens below.

Believe it or not, it does look like the cartoon included the
full frontal female nudity of the source material, though.

After a still exterior jump-cut which appears to feature a poster of a topless woman lets us know we're back at the precinct, Robocop recounts his "prime directives," which irritates the station sergeant who believes OCP never should have made cyborg cops to begin with and that those no-good ruffians wouldn't have even set off the damn dynamite had that walking refrigerator powered by Peter Weller guts not intervened. From there, we hop to an OCP boardroom meeting, where the metal-fisted (literally) Dr. McNamara says that Robocop is causing too much collateral damage and it's time to bring out the old enforcement drones as replacements. Cue the all new ED-260 traffic control guards, which are basically the ED-209 sentries from the first movie, albeit with red and green lights welded onto them. As you'd expect, the unit tends to overreact when people make illegal U-turns, and before long, its rampaging down the streets of the Motor City, machine gunning people for not using their blinkers. 

Following the embarrassing incident, Dr. McNamara comes up with a pretty creative way to save face. Traveling to the local arcade - complete with coin-ops titled Rambo and Cobra - he throws down a briefcase full of cash before the Vandals (it's never explained how they got out of jail for the blood bank heist, however, nor why the fuck they have a robotic wiener dog in their gang) and tells them he'll supply them with all of the high-tech weaponry they need to embark upon a rampage across Detroit. The idea, essentially, is to convince his Omni Consumer Products higher-ups that the crime level in town is so out-of-control that Robocop alone can't handle the volume, thus necessitating the roll-out of those aforementioned ED-260 bots. 

This being a children's cartoon, their mayhem is limited to pretty PG-stuff, like driving dune buggies through department stores and setting teddy bears and Voltron action figures on fire. Still, it's more than enough tomfoolery to rouse the ire of the stereotypical black police chief, who speaks almost entirely in sports metaphors. After inquiring to the whereabouts of Robocop, we learn he is downstairs, having an "upgrade" installed by technician Dr. Tyler, who gets into a brief argument with Lewis, who accuses her firmware patches of wiping the "humanity" out of Robo's brain. 

You know what's sorely missing from today's cartoons? Sociopaths with chainsaws.

The Vandals - now equipped with all sorts of high-end weapons, including electro-shock gloves, chainsaws and even a pair of boots that can cause mini-earthquakes - are causing a ruckus at a shopping mall, and the local police are no match for their, uh, bowling balls. Thankfully, Robocop shows up and uses his expert marksmanship to shoot down a pile of twisted metal to create a makeshift kennel for a cyborg dachshund (no, really), but LOLOOPS! He ends up getting crushed under a pile of rubble, complete with his arm popping off. 

We see that damn exterior department matte painting bumper (the third time this episode!) and Dr. Tyler says Robocop may have to go offline for good. This causes Lewis to kvetch about being responsible for Murphy's second demise. For like, two seconds. 

At an OCP meeting, McNamara (boy, I wonder where that name came from?) shows the suits news clips of the Vandals royally fucking up the mall. Apparently, they've acquired jet-boosted vehicles, which kind of begs the question - couldn't the OCP auditors easily trace all of the money used to fund the crime spree back to McNamara, or is he pulling some Superman III/Office Space secret account shit on us?

Using God knows how much money from God knows what funding streams, the hoodlums have managed to build a giant bulldozer-type weapon, which they use to break into the Federal Reserve and steal gold bars. Interestingly enough, they don't encounter the mysterious oil-drum headed mastermind from The American Dream, which alone makes this cartoon a far more realistic take on central banking and fiat capital. 

A half-powered Robocop shows up, and he's immediately knocked out by a steel beam. Lewis makes the save by tossing a smoke grenade in the bulldozer, which additionally gives Robo some time to recharge his batteries. Assailed by thugs, Robocop is mercilessly set ablaze and chainsawed - which, yeah, isn't exactly something you saw happening to the protagonists in that many other late 1980s cartoons. Eventually, though, he powers up to full capacity and starts tossing thugs around like lawn darts. Using one of those handy, dandy steel beams just lying all over the place, he manages to send the bulldozer operator off-course, retrieve his handgun and with his impeccable sharpshooting skills, make the heavy machinery's gas tank explode. And in true 1980s cartoon fashion, despite all of the wanton carnage going on, not only does no one get killed, no one is even seriously injured. 

With the crime wave officially halted, OCP reneges on its plans to introduce the new ED-260 models, with a distraught McNamara vowing revenge and to expose Robocop as nothing more than a pile of "nuts and bolts." Back at the office, the shouty Afro-American chief keeps using sports analogies and Dr. Tyler chides Robocop for going back out into battle knowing he could have been damaged beyond repair. She orders him to hit the electro-charger chair thingy ASAP. "You can't keep a good man down," Lewis states, to which Tyler responds "or a good machine." Cue a somewhat out-of-character smirk from Robocop, and this one is all over. 

And Alex Murphy gives that sweet scientist ass his thumbs-up of approval...

All in all, the Robocop cartoon series - which lasted just one season - was somewhere between better than average and almost great. The show was certainly prone to all of the late 1980s cartoon tropes and thematic devices - with hyena-laughing villains knocking off cookie factories and slapstick humor replacing all of the psychopathic bad guys butchering police officers and satirical gore of the first flick - but it nonetheless had its moments of brilliance. Beating I, Robot to the punch by about 15 years, one episode dealt with rampant anti-robot discrimination sweeping Detroit, complete with the appearance of a hooded, cyborg-hating sect that acted, and looked, just like the Ku Klux Klan, while another dealt with Robocop going rogue to take down some politically-untouchable corporate polluters (which, as fate would have it, predicted the mass contamination of Flint, Michigan's water resources almost 30 years in advance.) The series finale even threw one of the biggest curve balls in animated TV history, when it was revealed that the leader of the Vandals was none other than Clarence goddamn Boddicker himself, who, somehow, had managed to survive having his trachea ripped out with a data spike at the tail end of the first Robo-picture. 

Granted, the short-lived 'toon was really nothing more than a shameless excuse to market tie-in action figures, but to be fair, those action figures were pretty bitchin'. I mean, those motherfuckers doubled as cap pistols, and one of the toys sported a Hitler mustache ... sigh, if only I knew where I could've bought those little translucent blocks that were in EVERY toy commercial in the 1980s, I would have been in elementary school heaven. The Robo-mania would die down for awhile, but there was no corresponding toy line or animated revival by the time the somewhat-under-appreciated Robocop 2 hit theaters in 1990. Looking back on it, the '88 series definitely would have lent itself to an awesome - if not impossibly expensive - live-action Robocop sequel. I mean, who WOULDN'T have paid good money to watch Buckaroo Banzai wearing a refrigerator shoot it out with OCP-hired techno-goons with chainsaws and electro-death gloves welded to their hands? That's right, nobody who isn't a goddamn communist, that's who.

Following the box office disaster that was Robocop 3, Alex Murphy and pals were relegated to a crappy, no-budget live-action syndicated series that was redeemed ONLY by the fact that it featured Roddy Piper played a recurring vigilante superhero. The character got a second shot at animated stardom with 1998's Robocop: Alpha Command, which lasted about 40 episodes. Alas, I've never seen any of them and good God, will my girlfriend probably leave me if I told her I needed to invest a full weekend to binge-watching something intended for latchkey children at the beginning of the dotcom boom. 

The fate of this particular Robo-toon? Well, the Wikipedia says it got a limited video release in the early, early '90s, but due to the restrictive nature of the media format, it only included three episodes. The original cartoon ultimately did get a DVD release in the mid-2000s, but it appears it was limited to the U.K. 

So - unless you were one of those rare souls that had the original-syndicated television shows taped on VHS - it was pretty much impossible for us Yanks to watch the program for a good twenty years. Alas, the same way technology saved Alex Murphy from the icy sepulcher, the Intrawebs brought this antiquated bundle of nostalgia back from the dead. Thanks to the miracle of streaming video and Google's relaxed enforcement of copyright law, you can now watch every episode of Robo '88 online for free, anytime you want...

... you know, if you are a criminal and shit. And we all know how Robocop feels about criminals, don't we?

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The 50 Greatest Sega Game Gear Games Ever! (Part One of Five)

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

HEY! LOOKING FOR THE REST OF THE COUNTDOWN?

PART ONE IS RIGHT HERE.

PART TWO IS RIGHT HERE..

PART THREE IS RIGHT HERE.
PART FOUR IS RIGHT HERE.
PART FIVE IS RIGHT HERE.

Oh, the Sega Game Gear. The 8-bit, full-color handheld always played second fiddle to the Game Boy, despite being a much more impressive piece of hardware. Alas, while Sega's portable is largely remembered today as an epic hardware failure (thanks in no small part to an absurdly short battery life), the truth of the matter is that there actually were quite a few good, great and flat-out excellent titles released on the platform, including a number that not only rival the best the Game Boy had to offer, but in some cases, even exceeded them. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say the Game Gear has such a less-than-stellar reputation today because the pool of North American cartridges was rather shallow compared to the MUCH more robust library overseas. Thankfully, the Game Gear is a region-free unit, so as long as you don't mind stumbling through some kanji, you can play virtually every title released on the handheld worldwide on your U.S. hardware. Well, that, or you can cheat and hit up the emulators. Not that we would EVER condone such behavior at The Internet Is In America, obviously.

To help repair the handheld's somewhat dinged-up image, I decided to conduct an experiment. Over the course of three years, I played EVERY SINGLE game released on the Game Gear. As in, all 400 or so U.S., Japanese and PAL releases, along with a few weirdbeard Brazilian offerings (don't ask me why, but in Blanka's home country, they were still making unlicensed games for the system in the late 1990s.) Scoring the games on a 10 point scale (with one being the worst and ten being the best), I quantitatively ranked every last Sega Game Gear title. Before you today is a final tally of the top 50 cartridges released on the system, the titles representing the absolute cream of the proverbial crop when it comes to early-to-mid 1990s non-Nintendo portable gaming. Before we hop into the countdown, however, there are a few caveats I'd like to address:

Number One: Only officially licensed Sega Game Gear games were eligible for the countdown. That also means homebrews are off limits, no matter how cool they are.

Number Two: For the sake of making things simple, I played fan-translated versions of all of the text-heavy Japan-only games (chiefly, all of the role playing games.) For every other type of Japan-only Game Gear game, I opted for the original version, complete with the indecipherable characters.

Number Three: The games were rated on how well they compared to similar genre offerings on the handheld, so a game like "FIFA '96" would be scored on the same criteria that "Sensible Soccer" was scored, and not the criteria used for a game in an entirely different genre, like "Sonic the Hedgehog" or "Factory Panic."

Number Four: As always, AC adapter gameplay is much encouraged.

Now, with all of that stuff out of the way, who is ready to take things to the next level? You know, as long as the six Double-A batteries can make it, anyway...

Number 50

“Arena: Maze of Death”

Released: 1996

Developer: Eden Entertainment Software

Publisher: Sega

If I am not mistaken, “Arena” was one of the last games Sega published for the handheld before they gave up on supporting the platform. While the game definitely has some issues with its controls, it’s pretty hard to not appreciate what it sets out to do; it’s basically “Escape from New York” in portable form, with gameplay mechanics lifted right out of “Syndicate.”

An isometric action game, you commandeer a generic video game tough guy named “Freelander,” who is waging a one-man jihad against an evil, tyrannical corporation (named, ho-ho-ho, “ABC”) by doing what generic video game tough guys do best; picking up rocket launchers conveniently just laying around and grenading the holy hell out of indistinguishable drones in warehouses and abandoned railroad stations.

Yeah, “Arena” ain’t winning any awards for creativity, but it does what it does fairly well. The graphics are solid and the audio is slightly above average, and the level layout is really well-done. The action, while not as good as some of its genre contemporaries, is still respectable and its pretty much impossible to hate on any game that steals its grand finale from the Roddy Piper classic “They Live.” Really, the big Achilles’ Heel for this one is its sticky controls -- had the developers made movement a bit more fluid and manageable, this one definitely would have ranked a lot higher on the countdown.

Number 49

“Predator 2”

Released: 1992

Developer: Teeny Weeny Games

Publisher: Arena

Speaking of isometric action titles, here’s another fairly decent one for the Game Gear -- and it’s also probably the only game released on the system featuring an exposed human spinal cord on its front cover.

“Predator 2” on the GG is a really faithful adaptation of the Sega Master System port, which itself was a really good iteration of the Genesis title of the same name. The game follows the plot of the movie quite closely, as you hop in the shoes of Danny Glover to gun down a million bajillion drug runners in the slums and on top of buildings while also avoiding being caught in the crosshairs of a certain dreadlocked, skull-collecting crab-monster warrior from outer space.

The premise is very simple: each stage has a timer, and a finite number of hostages you must rescue to proceed to the next level. The action here is fast and furious, at times feeling like an even more intense version of “Narc” than the already hectic arcade original! Alas, as with most isometric themed games, the big problem here are the controls; as with “Arena,” they are a bit slippery and unresponsive, which is definitely not something you want when you have 15 enemies onscreen shooting at you. Still, it’s a fun game and something probably worth ROMing at least once, especially if you are a fan of the underrated 1990 film (and if you aren’t, I pity you a plenty.)

Number 48:

“Coca-Cola Kid”

Released: 1994

Developer: Aspect Co.

Publisher: Sega

This Japan-only release features some of the most egregious product placement in the annals of video gaming, making such shameless offerings as “Yo! Noid” and “Cool Spot” look like anti-consumerism screeds by comparison. That said, despite its pimping and pandering for a certain American soft drink brand, "Coca-Cola Kid" is actually a surprisingly competent little platformer, with good visuals, better than average music and some unexpectedly well-designed levels.

Playing the eponymous mascot, you travel across cityscapes, forests and about 14 different warehouse levels, collecting power-ups and kicking the living dog-shit out of everything that breathes. The animations here are really nice, and for a handheld game from the mid-90s, you actually have a lot of different moves you can pull off.

Towards the latter half of the game, the stages do get a little bit too predictable, and there is a little bit of uneasiness with a few platforming segments. That said, the combination of “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Mega Man” style gameplay -- with even a little bit of “Ninja Gaiden” thrown into the mix -- definitely makes for a memorable title. And if that’s not enough for you? For some inexplicable reason, the final boss is a levitating, half-naked dominatrix … no doubt possessed by the inferiority of Pepsi Crystal, I assume.

Number 47:

"Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin"

Released: 1992

Developer: B.I.T.S.

Publisher: Flying Edge

"The Amazing Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin" on the Sega Genesis remains my all-time favorite Spider-Man game (although it's definitely arguable that the souped-up version on the Sega CD is even better, but I'm going into this thing with my nostalgia lens on, not my objective reporter glasses.) As such, this Game Gear port is actually pretty damned impressive, although it certainly has a few faults and foibles.

As in the Genny game, in this one you commandeer Peter Parker as he traverses his way across New York, beating up muggers and kung-fu-ing costumed super-villains before Kingpin blows up the whole fucking island with some neutron bomb or something. Just like in the brilliant home console game, you have to take pictures of bad guys for money, which allows you to purchase more web fluid, which you will definitely need if you even THINK about finishing the second level.

While it is admirable just how much from the Genesis game was stuffed into this shrunken-down port, there is a big, big problem keeping the game from begin truly amazing: the controls. I'm not really sure what happened, but both web slinging and wall crawling seems next to broken at some points, and since that's such a huge component of the gameplay, expect to be miffed a plenty throughout the experience. Alas, as long as you can work your way around the controls (a tall order, I know), you will find yourself a really content-heavy portable platformer that, if not precisely great, is at least technically impressive.

Number 46:

"Putt & Putter"

Released: 1991

Developer: SIMS Co.

Publisher: Sega

There were a ton of "realistic" golf games on the Game Gear, but to be honest with you, they all pretty much sucked. Despite having one of the worst names of any title on the handheld, "Putt & Putter" is actually a really fun little diversion, and easily the best golfing title -- arcade, or simulation -- on Sega's underrated platform.

Visually, the game takes an isometric approach, so at first glance, it kind of resembles "Marble Madness." Thankfully, this game has much more manageable controls, and the 18 courses are very distinct, with some pretty tricky obstacles. The putting mechanics are very intuitive, and the physics in this one are actually pretty damn astounding for a game released in the early '90s. And if that wasn't enough? The game even includes a two-player mode, which produces a very unique competitive golf experience that I don't think I have seen any game since really replicate.

It's a fun game to be sure, but in terms of replay value, there's not much. Once you figure out the angles on the courses, it's really easy to blaze through the game, and as much madcap fun as the two-player mode is, it's not really enough to surmount the shortfalls of the single-player experience. Still, it's definitely an inventive title, and something probably worth at least one or two play-throughs.

Number 44 (tie):

"Woody Pop" and "Devilish"

Released: 1991

Developer: Sega, Genki

Publisher: Sega, Hot-B

At some point, you've probably played "Breakout", or one of its countless variations. While arguably the most popular "ball and paddle" series, "Arkanoid," never made its way to the Game Gear, we still ended up with two really fun games within that genre -- "Woody Pop" and "Devilish."

Assuming you can make your way past the absolutely atrocious title, "Woody Pop" is a very fun little title that, despite its cutesy dressings, actually packs quite the challenge. As in "Arkanoid" and its ilk, you take control of a paddle (which, in this case, is an anthropomorphic log who smiles or frowns depending upon your performance) and bust myriad bricks and blocks across a multitude of stages. The power-ups in this one are very inventive, including some items that change the attributes of the ball (including one that turns it into a super-powerful fireball) and some assist-characters (including a gaggle of helper robots who march all over the playing field like wind-up toys.)

"Devilish," on the other hand, is quite a bit easier, despite having the much more hardcore horror theme. Outside of the atypically demonic trappings (the whole game takes place in Hell, if you can imagine that), the game's most unique element is that it allows you to change the properties of the paddle at wall, so you can split it into three smaller boards or even reconfigure it into an "alligator mouth" for angled shots. Not only is it a rock-solid port of the Genesis original, I actually prefer this version to the home console iteration -- primarily, because we don't have to deal with that annoying "skull zipper" loading screen here.

Number 43:

"Robocop vs. the Terminator"

Released: 1993

Developer: NMS Software

Publisher: Virgin Games

The super-gory version of "Robocop vs. the Terminator" on the Genesis has become something of a cult hit over the last few years, and for good reason. Not only does it pit two of the most beloved cybernetic protagonists in film history up against one another in a blood-and-guts-drenched battle for robo-supremacy, it's also a damned outstanding action-platformer in its own right.

This shrunken down port is actually remarkably faithful to the home console version, even if it does sacrifice a few things visually and aurally along the way. As with its console big brother, you fill the big, metallic boots of Alex Murphy, embarking upon a literal one man war against Molotov cocktail tossing degenerates in old Detroit Town, with each level concluding with an impressive boss fight against some type of mechanical menace from both film franchises.

Granted, the stages aren't as nuanced as they are in the console version, and the controls aren't quite as smooth, but on the whole, this is a rather bang-up adaptation. And unlike the bone-dry SNES version, this one doesn't skimp out on the red stuff -- in fact, this has to be the absolute bloodiest game on the handheld, bar-none!

Number 42:

"Pengo"

Released: 1991

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

On a superficial level, "Pengo" isn't really all that impressive. With its super unrefined sprites, this PAL and Japan-exclusive looks more like pre "Mrs. Pac-Man" arcade game than a Game Gear offering, and at first glance, the gameplay itself looks quite rudimentary and, dare I say it, even kind of boring.

Alas, something unexpected happens when you actually start playing "Pengo." It doesn't take long before you realize this is actually an ingenious little puzzler, serving as not only one of the handheld's most addictive genre titles, but one of its most challenging as well.

The premise behind "Pengo" is deceptively simple. Playing as the eponymous character (a ruby red penguin, naturally) you have to use your wits and evasion skills to avoid being captured by these little orange fellas with curling brooms. Again, it sounds almost too simplistic, until the number of ice blocks start dwindling down; that's when this turns into one of the most surprisingly nerve-racking games on the handheld. It may not be much visually, but in terms of pure old school charm and challenge, there are not many games on the system that can go flipper to flipper with "Pengo."

Number 41:

"Pop Breaker"

Released: 1991

Developer: Microcabin

Publisher: Microcabin

Every now and then, you play a game with a certain mechanic that, while seemingly simple and insignificant, completely transforms what would have been a good-but-not-great gaming experience into something truly memorable.

I think it's safe to lump the Japan-only release "Pop Breaker" in with such titles as "Psi-Ops" and "Breakdown" as a game that was MADE by a single, unorthodox design decision. On the surface, "Pop Breaker" -- basically, a "Bomberman" variation, sans the bombs and way more shooting stuff -- looks just like any other "kill-em-up" handheld title. That is, until you actually start hitting the fire button, and realize that your attacks pull either to the left or the right, instead of just flying straight out of your avatar in a direct line.

I don't think I have ever played a game of any variety that employed such a hook.  Not only does the design call make the game more realistic, it definitely amps up the challenge, turning a decent top-down puzzle/shooter into one of the most ingenious genre games to be found on the Game Gear (and, if you simply must, yes, you can opt for a center-fire option, you crybaby.) It may not be the most impressive audio-visual experience, but if you are looking for something you've likely never experienced as a gamer before, then "Pop Breaker" is an import title you definitely need to get your hands on.

                               THANK YOU, SEGA

FOR GIVING US THE BEST TWENTY MINUTES IN THE    HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMING.

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MOVIES THAT MAY NOT HAVE SUCKED: “Robocop 2” (1990)

It may not have been the hyper-violent, anti-consumerist classic the first film was, but it most certainly doesn’t deserve it’s lackluster reputation, either. 

As we are all aware of, “Robocop” isn’t just one of the greatest action movies ever made, it’s also the greatest anti-capitalist screed of all-time. But the film isn’t just amazing because of its critique of the free market, it’s also an utterly exceptional criticism of the totality of American culture. Within the toxic waste-soaked bad guys and baby food target practice and scenes of Red Foreman getting his jugular sliced open with a robotic phallus, there’s a greater commentary on U.S. media than in “Network” and more profound insight into the ills of privatization than anything penned by leftist dinks like Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn.

It was simply preposterous to think that ANY sequel to the film could replicate the smashing success of the original, especially without director Paul Verhoeven at the helm. Still, the formula for a decent follow-up was already there -- all you need is blood, guts, a whole lot of bullets, a metric ton of wry commentary on United States sociopolitics and at least one scene of stop-motion animation cyborgs slaying an entire board room meeting and we are all set. Sure, we may not have ended up with an “Aliens” or “Spider-Man 2” type-flick that surpassed the original, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t have gotten our hands on a way above average, as-good-as-they-could-have-made-it sequel a’la the second “Rocky” and “Halloween” films.

While “Robocop 2” is not a film without its fair share of faults and flaws, at the end of the day, I think it’s a fairly underrated little movie, and had it been a stand-alone flick sans the “Robocop” albatross, we’d probably be looking back on it as an unsung mini-classic from the early 1990s.

Structurally, the overall vibe of the film follows the original quite closely. As they were at the end of the first movie, the Detroit police department are on strike and OCP is moving in on purchasing the city. With the gang responsible for Alex Murphy’s death now all deader than Elvis, Robocop finds himself staring down a different kind of war, this time against the manufacturers of a highly potent, society-eroding street drug called Nuke. (Not to be confused with the ill-advised children's film "Nukie," of course.)

The main bad guy this time around is a weird clan of criminals consisting of Cain, a hippie-dippie cult-leader who likes to slice open the chest cavities of cops, his Rae Dawn Chong-flavored moll and an 11-year-old kid in a business suit who likes to swear a lot. While hot on their trail, Robocop seems to experience pangs for his past life, at one point driving by his wife’s house to just stare at his son like some kind of metalloid creeper.

The suits at Omni Consumer Products are as unscrupulous as ever, hard at work on a replacement Robocop unit -- if only the could find the perfect central nervous system to plunk down inside the gears and wires of the Iron Man suit. After Robocop is effectively “stripped” by the bad guys -- ingeniously, they capture him with a giant magnetic and jackhammer his limbs off -- he’s reprogrammed to think and act like a complete and total jack-ass, giving hammy lectures to juvenile delinquents and choosing to shut off overflowing fire hydrants while meth runners have tank battles in the middle of a playground. Eventually, he decides to fry himself all over again, and this time, all of his prime directives are wiped clean so now he’s a revenge seeking mother-fucker unhindered by all of that nonsense about not killing people.

After Cain is apprehended, he’s selected to be the grey matter for the “Robocop 2” prototype. Apparently, the suits at OCP figured a drug-addicted mass killer would be easier to control SINCE he’s a substance abuser, which makes me really, really glad the guys at Enron and Lehman Brothers never got into the private security business. In a money laundering deal gone bad between Cain’s surviving cronies and the nearly bankrupt (both financially and morally) Detroit City Council, OCP sends “Robocop 2” in to kill half the cast, including the film’s middle-school antagonist. With Detroit defaulting on a loan, OCP unveils its model for Delta City, complete with a guest appearance by, you guessed it, the same drug-addicted psycho-killer mech from earlier. Unsurprisingly, the robotic abomination goes plum crazy, and its up to the original Robo to save the Motor City from destruction -- and cue our twenty-minute-long cyborg kung-fu paint-the-town-red apocalypse-bonanza, complete with an up-close scene of Peter Weller smashing a dude’s exposed brains into a pothole twice.

Yeah, yeah, the movie doesn’t have the charm of the original, and while its violence is just a smidge toned down from the original, I still reckon this is a mighty damn fine example of good, old-fashioned degenerate Hollywood filmmaking. Yeah, there are some pathos thrown in there, but audiences heading into a movie called “Robocop 2” want action, action and more action, not drawn out, lingering shots of a dude dressed up like a washing machine looking wistful up against a rain-slicked window seal.

Of course, the film isn’t in the same league as the first flick. That’s a given. That said, the film at least TRIES to be its own picture, even if some of the carry-over tricks from the first film -- the upbeat newscast pastiches and mocking television advertisements, primarily -- aren’t as whip-smart as in pelicula numero uno.

You really can’t talk about the movie without first talking about the script. The original screenplay was penned by Frank Miller -- who actually has a cameo in the film as Cain’s main drug chemist -- but apparently, it was a goddamn mess that didn’t work as a nine-part comic series, let alone a big budget feature film. So, veteran scriptwriter Walon Green was brought in by Orion to polish up Miller’s turd, and the end result -- in my humblest ‘o opinions -- ain’t bad at all. Virtually everybody who wasn’t in a body bag at the end of the first movie returned for this one, and the acting, I think, is pretty much on par with the first one.

Ultimately, I think the big problem with “Robocop 2” is the atmosphere. There was this sense of pained, pitiable stoicism that Murphy exhibited in the first film that we really don’t see in this picture, and that really detracts from its impact.

Overall, this just feels like a much cleaner, more sanitized film than the first movie. Everything is brighter and more vibrant, and the blood explosions are nowhere near as massive as they were the first go-around. The movie really doesn’t have that supreme gross-out moment like the part where Emil gets eviscerated on the hood of the SUX 9000, or even a stand-up-and-cheer communal bloodlust scene like when Dick Jones gets defenestrated. It’s not as cerebral and biting as the first film, but at the same time, it just doesn’t provide the same satisfying, extra-large bucket of popcorn movie-going experience, either.

As I was saying earlier, however, if you can manage to stop comparing every single frame of the film to the original, you come to appreciate “Robocop 2” for what it is and isn’t. OK, so it’s not the social satire masterpiece the first film was, but it’s not exactly a Joel Schumacher, light-and-fluffy bastardization, either. It’s certainly more comical than the original, but it definitely has its moments of bleakness -- I mean, shit, there’s a part where Robocop has to read the last rites to a junior high school kid bleeding to death, for crying aloud. Of course, it’s in the same movie which features a robot man smashing a dude’s head into a “Midnight Resistance” arcade machine, but I digress.

Some have argued that Cain and his posse aren’t as interesting as the clique of cretins in the first film. That, I agree with -- in hindsight, I really wished the filmmakers would have stuck to Miller’s original character, which was a religious fundamentalist psycho with a Jesus complex. Conversely, Peter Weller’s performance doesn’t have quite the emotional impact it did in part one, even if his performance here is much more varied. The OCP goons aren’t as engrossing, and the rest of the cast -- namely, Officer Lewis and the mayor -- just feel like they don’t have that much to do except gnaw on the scenery.

A lot of people took offense to the subplot about Robocop being reprogrammed to a PG-13-worthy pussified version of himself, but I thought it was nonetheless a nice dig at all of the executive meetings that surely had to have happened during pre-development. It’s clear that the suits at Orion wanted the sequel to be a little bit more kid-friendly than the first, but at the end of the day, they wisely decided to keep this one an R-rated bloodbath extravaganza.

The sociopolitical commentary isn’t as deftly handled this time around, but I actually kind of liked the subplot about OCP trying to force Detroit into a default -- a thematic made all the more hilarious when the city ACTUALLY did end up filing for bankruptcy a good 23 years down the road. Although I would have liked to have seen a more humanistic portrayal of the main character (the scene between Murphy and his wife, I thought, could have lent to some superb, above-the-grade-and-above-the-genre sequences,) the more grizzled, vigilante-esque version of Robo we get later on in the movie is pretty satisfying, too. I mean, the dude is willing to jack another guy’s motorcycle solely for the sake of running headlong into the windshield of the film’s primary bad guy -- had the producers of part 3 went with a similar hard-R bent, it probably would’ve turned into a similarly better-than-it-had-any-right-to be sequel.

Alas, I think it’s a solid little movie. It’s no “Hardware” or “The Running Man,” but for what it is, it’s quite respectable. It’s a fun, dumb, high-energy motion picture that’s long on style, short on substance and filled with unrepentant slam-bang-pow-wow school-shooter influencing mayhem -- in short, it’s precisely the kind of Bush the First-era, post Reaganomics cinematic madness that made the post Genesis, pre-SNES years such a wonderful time to be alive.

And as far as I am concerned? It’s far and away the best movie ever directed by Irvin Kershner, and it’s not even close…

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RoboCop: The Greatest Critique of The Free Market Ever?

Half Man. Half Machine. All Metaphorical and Stuff. 

There are some things in this world that really go without saying. For example, it’s kind of hard to breathe underwater, unless you’ve had one of those newfangled oxygenating micro particles injected into your bloodstream shortly beforehand. Along that same vein (har-har), goddamn, was Marion Butts overpowered in “Tecmo Super Bowl.” These are the things that are essentially engrained in our cultural code - we know these things to be self-evident, as if such data was implanted in our genetic structure while we’re still growing appendages in the womb.

Among these Dawkinsian memes, there is also this universal truth: that “RoboCop,” the 1987 Paul Verhoeven-helmed masterpiece, is awesome. Well, not just awesome, but almost the exact DEFINITION of “awesome,” so much so that the terms are almost interchangeable today. So the next time you find a hidden five dollar bill in the wash, you could just yell “Man, that is so effing ROBOCOP!” and all of us would understand it.

Simply put, “RoboCop” is one of the greatest movies ever made. In fact, it’s probably one of the greatest pop-cultural texts of the last 30 years, a cultural pillar only marginally eroded by that piece of shit third movie where Alex Murphy grows robot wings and fights samurai-androids built by Mitsubishi. The fact that there exists people within Western civilization that don’t like this movie absolutely perplexes me; it’s like finding someone with a vendetta against brownies, or someone with an aversion to air hockey. I can accept that such opinions might exist somewhere, but for the life of me, I don’t know how anyone can think to the contrary.

Recently, two RoboCop related events hit me head-on. First and foremost, there’s the news about the upcoming RoboReboot, starring some guy nobody’s ever heard of, with a script that’s purportedly more in-line with “Transformers” than the 1987 social satire classic. And then, there was this:

A one-night only screening of the original flick at a local indie-theater, complete with an ass kicking mock-up of the film in the lobby. Trust me, if you haven’t been in the same room with about three dozen wackos screaming “I WORK FOR DICK JONES! DICK JOOOOONES!” you sir, have yet to experience this thing we call “living.”

There’s no denying that “RoboCop” is one of my top ten favorite movies of all-time. In my lifetime, I’ve probably seen it a good 20 or so times, and it’s one of the rare 1980s relics that STILL holds up rather well today. In fact, in today’s hyper-techno world, there are elements of the film that feel more relevant TODAY then they did back in Reagan’s America. It’s an extraordinarily well-written movie, and a flick that strikes the absolute perfect balance between good old fashioned, brain-dead American cinematic violence and subversive sociopolitical commentary. Yes, yes, “RoboCop” is a great place to go if you want to see Eric Foreman’s dad throwing hoodlums out of the back of moving vehicles and watch yes men get riddled with 9,000 rounds of ammunition by stop-motion animation robots, but it’s also a film with five very important statements about United States culture. Now, perhaps even more than we required them a quarter century ago, we would all be wise to take note of these five sociological lessons stemming from the celluloid classic.

Mass Consumption Is The Root Cause of All Contemporary Social Problems in America

The world of “RoboCop” is one almost indistinguishable from our own; policemen are on strike, municipalities are inadequate in meeting the needs of its citizenry, and economic stagnation has led to a tsunami of violent crime in densely-populated urban environments. There are many suspects that can be blamed here, but Paul Verhoeven points his Dutch index finger towards a culprit most Americans would never think about: mass consumerism.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds far-fetched…at first. But try taking a cue from one Edward Bernays, the advertising mastermind that co-opted psychoanalysis in the early 20th century and, effectively, created modern consumer culture:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind…”

With that little nugget in mind, let’s re-evaluate the film, shall we? In “RoboCop,” the citizenry is practically guided by mass media. It tells them what to drive, what to worry about, and completely alters their diction patterns. With the possible exception of Murphy and Officer Lewis, seemingly EVERYBODY in the film is driven by some sort of material desire. The OCP goons, the crooks, the deranged mayor; all of their wants stem from a yen for consumer goods, like cars with really shitty gas mileage and TJ Lazer action figures. It’s pretty clear what Verhoeven is getting at here; instead of striving for social progression or a more equitable culture, our primary desires as Americans is to consume and advance socially so that we can do even MORE consuming. In a Pavlovian sense, this “material motive” is really nothing more than social priming to the extreme, with individuals chasing consumer goods simply because that’s the message they’ve been bombarded by since birth. And since individual material accumulation takes precedence over the social collective, CEOs backstab, policemen are corrupt and thugs run around blasting the hands off cops because this consumption priority completely supersedes the idea of cultural cohesion altogether. Social disjunction, for the sake of personal consumption needs? We’d buy that for a dollar, most definitely.

Technology Has Officially Replaced Religion in U.S. Culture

Watching “RoboCop” for the first time in a couple of years, I was actually pretty shocked by the accuracy of the film’s vision of the “immediate future.” Characters drove around in cars with what appear to be GPS units, clubs play music that sounds suspiciously a lot like dubstep and what is Murphy’s data spike but a flash drive that doubles as an ice pick?

A lot of people have picked up on the idea that “RoboCop” is, potentially, nothing more than retelling of the story of Jesus. Like H. Christ, Alex Murphy, too, died for our sins, only to be resurrected so he could shoot would-be rapists in the testicles and chow down on baby food. But I don’t think you REALLY uncover Verhoeven’s intent with the picture until you put the two together; in many ways, the central “message” of the film is that, in contemporary society, technological infrastructure has officially replaced religion as our utmost cultural pillar.

How many churches do you see in “RoboCop?” Does anybody go to a confessional, at any point in the picture? Do you see any bibles, or doom saying fundamentalists on the streets of Detroit, or even any televangelists getting skewered on the idiot box? Remember, this is a movie that came out at the HEIGHT of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart - not only were pseudo-religious figures of the like ripe for the mocking, it was pretty much pop culture du jour to do so. The blatant lack of religious imagery or references in the film leads one to believe that Verhoeven was intentionally trying to downplay the iconography of Christianity, so that we, as an audience, were forced to draw parallels between Catholic ritual and technological ritual.

“RoboCop” is very much a film in which technological procedure has replaced religious practices. Note that while there are virtually zero direct references to Judeo-Christian doctrine, many visuals in the film seem to be oblique allusions to the bible, including the “celestial” elevators at OCP, Dick Jones’ Lucifer-like fall at the end of the movie and the rigid, mass-like “ceremony” that takes place when RoboCop’s batteries are recharged. Now, I’m not necessarily saying that all of that tapioca Murphy munches is supposed to represent the Eucharist, but is it NOT the manna given to him by his literal creator?

But seriously though, part 3 really was a piece of crap. 

Corporations, and NOT the Federal Government, are at Fault for Fostering Social and Economic Inequities 

For a moment, let’s revisit Robocop’s “Prime Directives”:

1. “Serve the public trust”
2. “Protect the innocent”
3. “Uphold the law”
4. (Classified)

Assuming you’ve seen the movie - and if you haven’t, what the hell have you been doing with your life, man? - you’ll know that the fourth commandment is that, under no circumstances is RoboCop allowed to arrest a senior ranking member of Omni Consumer Products…the massive, totalitarian organization seeking to build a corporatist utopia by razing Detroit and turning it into a futuristic Mecca. This is a fascinating little aspect of the movie, for a few reasons.

I don’t know if you noticed it or not, but “RoboCop” is kind of a violent movie. Lots of people get riddled with bullets, a whole bunch of stuff explodes, and if I had to venture a guess, I’d suspect that at least two mobile blood banks worth of fake plasma were spilt throughout the filming of the picture. Just about every violent crime you can think of is at least attempted in the film at some point - and almost immediately afterwards, the offending perpetrator ends up having his intestines scrambled on the ceiling. In the world of “RoboCop,” there’s such a thing as vindictive criminal justice, that is, sort of a Code of Hammurabi-like social mechanism in play that ensures that if you try to shoot a dude, some guy wearing 400 pounds of spare refrigerator parts will intervene and pop a bullet the size of a small phone book in your pleated leather ass five minutes later. The one area where such instant retribution DOES NOT occur, however, is the same area where justice seems to take a nap in the “real world,” too; white collar, corporate crime.

The suits at OCP do some pretty nasty stuff throughout the film, beginning with the fact that they plan to completely demolish a major metropolitan area so they can construct some stratified, utopia state on its ashes. To achieve this goal, the guys at OCP pretty much buy out as much public infrastructure as possible, culminating with the privatization of Detroit’s police force. Later on in the film, we learn that OCP is trying to GET the cops to go on strike - and even encouraging hyper-violent criminals to commit as much mayhem as humanly possible - to make it easier to facilitate the leveling of Detroit. Interestingly enough, when “RoboCop” was programmed, his prime directives seemed to be anchored around a collective social trust - that is, a communal goal, in this instance, striving towards a safer community - which was cemented in place by the conditional that OCP officials were, quite literally, above the law. To make society more civil and secure, the OCP suits decided that it would be for society’s best if THEY had complete and utter control over the society itself, writing themselves a literal blank check to rule over the masses via consumption and municipal manipulations.

So yes, Detroit pretty much sucked while it was under the control of the government, but under the control of a private entity, it turned into a post-apocalyptic negative utopia. As shady and crooked as the feds are, they at least have SOME checks and balances, whereas with privatized firms, there’s really no such thing as “transparency” to be found at all. In that, the survival of the corporation as SOLE dictatorial force of society directly led to the increase in violent crime and civil unrest, since the best interests of the PRIVATE FIRM were placed above the collective needs of the city. I suppose what Verhoeven is trying to say with the film is that, as long as private corporations are in charge of “serving the public trust,” there’s really no such thing as true “order” or “law” - primarily because social improvement isn’t a concern when you look at people as “consumers” as opposed to “constituents.”

A True Democracy Simply Cannot Exist in an Anarcho-Capitalist State

While George Orwell’s impossibly socialist-Republican ass warned us of a hypothetical “Big Brother" in "1984," Paul Verhoeven instead warned us of “Big Business" in 1987's "RoboCop."

Clearly, the true villain in “RoboCop” is Omni Consumer Products, a massive conglomerate that has essentially “conquered” Detroit by privatizing everything. Remember Dick Jones' comment about how OCP has “"gambled in markets traditionally regarded as non-profit: hospitals, prisons, space exploration?” His immediate follow-up is a the rather succinct “I say good business is where you find it,” and obviously, that’s not a place where authentic democracy likewise resides.

“We practically are the military,” Jones utters at one point in the picture. There isn’t a single pot the execs at OCP do not have their hands in, from the media to the police force. In fact, a prominent plot point in the film is that OCP engineers a police-strike so that they can false-flag their way to establishing an even more privatized security force than what currently exists. Fueled by expansive net profits, OCP is a fascist entity reforming society via the almighty dollar. Whatever vestiges of citizen freedom that exist are eaten away by rampant criminality…a criminality, I might add, that is literally supported by the suits at Omni Consumer Products.

If you closely analyze the film, you'll note how Verhoeven draws many parallels between the street-level criminals led by Clarence Boddinger and the OCP criminals led by Dick Jones. At one point in the film, Emil says something to the effect that all of the dog-eat-dog violence that has ravaged Detroit is the direct result of the "free market," and Clarence himself even parrots a phrase from the OCP second in command when, during a deal with some Italian coke runners, he likewise indicates that "good business is where you find it." Perhaps the best line in the film comes in a seemingly throwaway moment where an "unemployed person" on the street talks about the "law of the jungle" enveloping the city streets just before the city police's big strike. While consumerism has effectively sapped the citizenry of an adult intellect (leaving the population in a pop-culture addicted, perpetually infantilized state) the unfettered free market has left Detroit in a state of civil regression, where people are viewed more or less as products as opposed to living things. In an anarcho-capitalist society, Verhoeven seems to be indicating, the only truly free individuals are the wealthy and already-empowered and the antisocial cretins that have no qualms about butchering, mugging and stealing in order to "advance" their ways up the social ladder - or, at the very least, making themselves a few dollars closer to owning all of that worthless crap they really don't need, like Yamaha branded artificial hearts and Butler Brothers board games. In a state where the free market is greater than the society itself, the middle-class remains nothing more than brainless shoppers or target practice for hoodlums; which, of course, brings us to the ultimate lesson of “RoboCop”…

Seriously Folks: NEVER, EVER DRIVE THROUGH A TANKER OF TOXIC WASTE, FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER. 

…especially when Red Foreman is cruising around the intermediate area in a sports car. I mean, for real.

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