RoboCop: To Live and Die in Detroit is the second of the Boom! comics set in the universe of the 2014 RoboCop, written by Joe Harris and art by Piotr Kowalski.
Plot[]
The story begins with a young girl stranded in traffic on a bridge. A standard patrol car calls in that hey are stuck in traffic. RoboCop responds that he will take it, and rides onto the bridge, scooping the girl up before she gets hit by a large truck.
He spots a mark on her wrist, like a tattoo, when the original officers appear, offering to take the girl back to safety, as he responds to a runaway truck.
As he's being shut down for the night, Norton offers him a sedative, which he refuses, while Kim notes that he's accessing the databases, doing a search on the number 381.
Later that night, the police car of the officers from the bridge incident, numbered 381, is waiting for a rendezvous at the city limits. A truck appears, with a payoff envelope for the two officers. Just then, RoboCop arrives. He tazes the driver of the truck, and despite the exhortations of the other police officers, he opens the back of the truck, revealing it to be full of small children, each with the same tattoo marking on their wrists.
He "persuades" one of the officers into revealing a name, Jonas Krail.
RoboCop prepares to assault the building to bring Krail to justice for human trafficking. He takes down all of Krail's first line resistance, and bursts into Krail's private rooms, where Krail is standing next to one of his human slaves, a young girl. Krail is smug, insisting that RoboCop can't touch him as he's too well-connected, too rich, and after all, if he's arrested, who will take care of all these children?
RoboCop's infrared informs him that another wave of attackers is massing behind the door, and Krail's likely just been buying time for them. He tells the little girl to cover her eyes, and the assault begins in earnest. RoboCop defeats all of them, and turns to confront Krail again, who is continuing to bluster, until he's shot in the back by the little girl.
Norton and Kim contact him, alarmed because their distance relay of his heart rate is "through the roof", as he's looking down at the little girl, insisting that he's bringing one perp "in for booking".
Trivia[]
- Alex has the flat emotional affect of mid-canon, but the "heart rate" comment seems to a) indicate emotions present, just that he's not capable of processing them and b) directly contradicts a comment from the film, where Alex, preparing to be reunited with his family, says "if I had a pulse, it'd be racing."
- This is the second of the comics to feature the theme that RoboCop really has issues with people doing bad things to children, also seen in RoboCop: Hominem Ex Machina.