WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman #109, by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Gotham City isn’t in a great place right now. Under psychological siege by Scarecrow and still recovering from the effects of the Joker War, the government of Gotham has turned to a new force to protect the city in ways that Batman never could, with the introduction of the hi-tech Peacekeeper-01.
In Batman #109, the public debut of Magistrate’s Peacekeeper-01 revealed that the character has many similarities to the titular hero from the RoboCop franchise. Aside from the physical similarities, the two have a fighting style in common, similar origins, and even a similar setting that led to their creation in the first place. Unfortunately for Batman, Peacekeeper-01’s mission to uphold the law will be more callous than that of RoboCop.
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The most obvious similarities exist in their designs, which are characterized by heavy armor coating the body as protection. Parts of their bodies are completely mechanical while others remain organic, making both characters functioning cyborgs. The two even use similar weaponry such as infrared tech to locate targets, something Batman learned the hard way while trying to put some distance between him and Peacekeeper-01.
Perhaps their greatest similarity lies in their very creation. RoboCop was the brainchild of a corporation that was allowed to privatize the police force of Detroit. The city was on the brink of collapse. Its societal and financial structure was well past the point of correction without serious intervention. So in the city’s most desperate hour, power was ceded to a corporation in the hope that they could help. Their solution was to create a far more dangerous and ruthless version of the police force already in place.
The situation leading to the creation of RoboCop is almost exactly what is happening in Gotham right now. Like RoboCop‘s Detroit, Gotham City is a powder keg, and one wrong move could send it spiraling into anarchy. Its residents have developed a distrust of both the police and vigilantes and a company owned by Simon Saint is eager to put the Magistrate forces on Gotham’s streets.
The candidates chosen to participate in the corporation’s endeavor are even similar. Peacekeeper-01 was a guard at Arkham who was severely injured following the A-Day attack that kicked off the Infinite Frontier era. Likewise, RoboCop was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. By taking these men in and empowering them, the corporations became their patron saints, offering them everything in return for the betterment of their individual cities.
Unlike RoboCop, Peacekeeper-01 is on the wrong side of the conflict. He is arguably both more and less human than RoboCop. He obeys orders without question, trusting in someone else’s idea of what’s right for the city. This is in direct contrast to RoboCop, who ended up defying his programming to better protect his home.
Despite having literally died, RoboCop maintains his own code and moralities. With Peacekeeper-01 it is almost as though he traded his free will the instant the cybernetics kicked in. There are also their respective origins to consider, specifically how much of their original trauma was imposed upon them by the companies that experimented on them.
RoboCop suffered from this, his death being the scheme of the very company that brought him back to life. While the perpetrator of the A-Day attack that mutilated Peacekeeper-01 has yet to be revealed, it is almost certainly an agent of Simon Saint, with the most likely candidate being the Scarecrow. If this is the case, then not only do both characters share origins and setting, they also share being victimized by the designs of the very people who remade them.
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