DETROIT

The Future

ROBOCOP would be an unlimited series set outside the Marvel Universe. It would continue from where the movie and Marvel's adaptation left off. OmniConsumer Products still hopes to build their model "Delta City" over the crime-ridden wasteland that is the Detroit of the future. Understandably, considering what happened to him in the movie, OCP's "Old Man" is 100% behind the RoboCop program. As a result, when we open six months to a year after the end of the movie, human police officer/RoboCop teams are common on the streets and crime is down (the human officer is there because of the concessions the Police won in the strike, although human officers aren't completely obsolete. For instance, I imagine that good as they are, RoboCops are next to useless as undercover operatives).

Of course, the solution to Detroit's crime problems aren't quite so simple. Technology is every bit as available to criminals as it is to the City of Detroit and the bad guys are beginning to fight back successfully with high-tech implements of their own. This will be a growing problem for Murphy as the series progresses.

If RoboCops are as common as I say, you might wonder what's special about Murphy. Why are we following him instead of any other RoboCop? Doesn't the existence of other RoboCops make him less interesting, less important? It might, but Murphy is unique. He is the only RoboCop that remembers his previous life. All of the later models are perfectly operating cop machines with no trace of humanity. Murphy is a tragic hero, a man trapped inside of a machine that won't even respond to all of his commands (witness the mysterious "Directive 3", preventing him from acting against OCP officers). He's a man who's still trying to do his job, still protecting a populace of which he's no longer really a part.

ROBOCOP the comic book would remain very close to the tone of the movie. It would be a science-fiction/Superhero/adventure series as action-packed as the movie (but also one that cuts down on the gratuitous violence which was perhaps more appropriate for the movie's audience than it is for ours). An element of the movie which I'd like to stress, one that we neglected in our adaptation, is the corporate, social and political satire that helped push the movie slightly beyond the genre's normal limitations. I think this element will serve to give the comic an edge that most of our licensed properties lack. The device of "Media Breaks," the TV news and commercial parody inserts, will help create a texture that can likewise serve to separate this book from the crowd. The device can also be used to allow us to move quickly through any boring exposition so we can go right to the good stuff (like adventure and shooting and explosions).

CAST OF CHARACTERS

I suggest we pull the recurring cast directly from the movie. Murphy, of course, and his partner Lewis. Sergeant Reed, their superior. The project technicians, Roosevelt and Tyler. And the new project head, promoted after his predecessor got blown away in the movie, Johnson. There's lots of dramatic tension built into this group, lots of good stories.

POLITICS

A simplistic but dramatic set up. I picture a sort of corporate distopia. Government has been reduced to, at best, a referee between the small club of giant multi-nationals (of which OCP is a member) that run everything. OCP is a completely amoral company interested entirely in profit and power. Remember the board of executives in the movie? I figure that every person on it was working on a project at least as sinister as the ED 209 or RoboCop programs. And the "Old Man" runs the company. How tough do you figure he must be? The tension between Murphy's duties as a cop, and his restrictions as a machine will often put him into conflict not only with the company that owns him but also with himself. Every single one of OCP's "projects in development" is another story, and another issue to explore.

SPRINGBOARDS

Murphy decides to confront his wife and child, who think he is dead.

Murphy discovers that when a new RoboCop is created possessing memory of its previous life, it is destroyed.

In yet another variation of Fred Brown's "Arena", when OCP's contract with the city of Detroit runs out, Murphy is pitted against a competing company's cop machine in a brutal contest to see which model will be used.

RoboCop vs. RoboCrook, the first fully automated bad guy. This would be better still if the Crook is somebody Murphy killed in an earlier issue.

Murphy befriends a "pretender", a RoboCop who has memories but doesn't reveal them to anyone.

Murphy and Lewis sent on assignment to another city.

Any number of "crome-plated" normal cop show plots, you know them all, with a science-fiction twist or two.

OCP and another corporation literally go to war on American soil.

Lewis discovers that there may be technology that could put Murphy in a human body but at a high moral cost to herself.

And many more. I hope you will consider doing this book, with Greg Wright and myself as co-writers. Please get back to us.

-Dwayne McDuffie

October 18, 1987

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