RanXerox

Last week I made a passing reference to RanXerox.  RanXerox was an Italian underground comix series--one of my favorites (of admittedly very few comics I exposed myself to in the 1980s).  A creation of artist Tanino Libertore and writer Stefano Tamburini, the character of RanXerox is an ultraviolent, punk Frankenstein (who vaguely resembles former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld).  Created from spare parts of photocopiers, he has a girlfriend, Lubna, an eleven-year-old junkie.  Eight years ago, music video director Chris Cunningham was rumored to be working on a film version.  There are probably zillions of reasons why this work of sci-fi genius has not yet translated to the big screen--among them, copyright concerns with Xerox and its UK distributor Rank, modern moral sensibilities regarding pedophilia, and the simple fact that hardcore punk hardly has a place at all in the post-Reagan, post-Thatcher, post-cold-war zeitgeist.  But its aggro attitude and S&M-kink aesthetic struck a chord with me, still do, and I stand behind my opinion that the role could turn Randy Orton into an A-list movie star.