It's all about respect for the source material

The Bionic Man Volume 1: Some Assembly Required tpb
Dynamite Entertainment
Creators: Kevin Smith, Phil Hester, Jonathan Lau, Ivan Nunes, Simon Bowland, Alex Ross and Jason Ullmeyer
Release date: 2012

Bottom line: I was pleasantly surprised by this book, and I owe it all to Scott Gardner.

I've talked before about what a mixed bag I often find licensed properties in comics to be. Some are really good; but others really, really stink. On top of that, while I like a lot of Kevin Smith's movies, his comics work has also been a mixed bag for me. I really liked his relaunches of Daredevil for Marvel Comics in 1998 and Green Arrow for DC in 2001. Can't stand his work on Batman, though. Batman: Cacophony from 2008 was horrid.

So when I heard the news that Dynamite Comics had secured the license and planned to resurrect the idea of The Bionic Man, I was skeptical. Hearing that Kevin Smith would be the writer didn't change my mind. And the tragically botched attempt at a "Bionic Woman" reboot on television from several years prior was the final piece of evidence in my mind. Modern creators weren't handling Steve Austin or Jamie Summers right. No need to waste money on this comic. Nothing good could come of it.

And I never had reason to second-guess that opinion. Not until I listened to Scott Gardner rave about the then-new title on an old episode of one of his podcasts, Comics Monthly Monday.

A brief aside: For those of you who didn't read my post on podcasts, in a nutshell, I'm anal. I like to listen to podcasts when I exercise. But when I find a podcast I like, I want to listen to it from the beginning. I have more than a dozen I like to listen to, but my time to do so is quite limited, and many of the creators involved have been podcasting for quite a while. Long story short, I'm listening to podcasts from several years ago, not current ones. Right now, I'm listening to early 2012 podcasts because I just finished the 2011 episodes of my favorite shows. And it was during the December 2011 episode of Comics Monthly Monday, I'm pretty sure, that Scott, one of the three co-hosts of the show, was raving about the issues of The Bionic Man that he'd picked up.

He spoke so highly of the book and its faithfulness to the heart of "The Six Million Dollar Man" television program that introduced most of us to the concept of cyborgs and Col. Steve Austin (Yes, I know the show was based on the novel "Cyborg" by Martin Caidin from 1972, but the vast majority of the show's fans only learned about the book after first watching the show it inspired.), that I decided to give the series a try in trade.

The opening arc takes no less than 10 issues, all of which are collected in this larger than usual trade paperback collection. And Scott Gardner was quite correct. This series is very, very good.

It isn't the 1970s television program re-presented in comic book form. It has been updated for a modern audience. But in updating the concepts, the creators involved did not lose sight of what made fans of the television program love the show. The name was simplified to The Bionic Man because $6 million doesn't carry the financial heft it used to, but Smith finds a way to work in a special significance for the figure in this modern story as well. Also here are the red track suit; familiar phrases like "Colonel Steve Austin. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology." and "We'll make him better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster."; Max the bionic dog; that cool sound effect from the show when Steve's bionics are being used. It's all here, maybe in slightly different contexts, but in ways that make sense in this new story while also showing a love for what has come before.

That's part of what makes this such a great comic. It's also why I liked the 1998 movie "Lost in Space" so much when it was not well received by most. That film had a lot of nods to the old TV show, while still forging its own path and finding a new story to tell. So many reboots or relaunches of old concepts today seem to say, "Let's take this old property and fix what's wrong with it." Well, if it was popular enough in its day that you are considering bringing it back, maybe you should have a little more respect for the old property. Maybe some of the ideas and concepts then will seem hokey today, but rather than poke fun of the property for that, find a new reason to make those elements relevant. Because quite often, those are the same elements that made the concept popular the first time around.

The Bionic Man is not an old episode retold in a new format. There are a number of changes and different concepts in this story that make it fresh. But it doesn't forget that there's a reason for the show's popularity. This book is well worth checking out whether or not you ever watched "The Six Million Dollar Man." I definitely think so. Thanks, Scott!

This Ain't Your Daddy's Bionic Showdown

The Bionic Man Vs. The Bionic Woman: Artificial tpb
Dynamite Entertainment
Keith Champagne
Jose Luis, artist

I decided to pass when Dynamite first announced a new ongoing title updating the concepts and characters from the 1970s television show "The Six Million Dollar Man." Licensed properties in comics are a hit-and-miss bag of chance with me, but the ones I feel hit their mark and that I enjoy are usually the exception, not the rule. That ongoing series launch was also being written and updated based on ideas by Kevin Smith, also a hit-and-miss variable for my personal tastes.

But I admit I was a bit curious about The Bionic Man. That curiosity increased when the companion title, The Bionic Woman, was announced as another new ongoing. And finally, with both series having several issues under their respective belts, a miniseries was solicited pairing the two title characters together. Or rather, against each other. I figured to wait for the trade on the mini and sample both updated characters for a smaller investment.

I once sought out and read "Cyborg," the 1972 novel written by Martin Caidin upon which "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman" television programs were based. That novel's Col. Steve Austin was not exactly the character as played each week on television by actor Lee Majors, but Majors' Austin is the one I am most familiar with and enjoyed as a kid. Same goes for Lindsay Wagner's Jamie Sommers. I enjoyed these characters so much, I own copies of all three made-for-TV reunion movies from the late 80s and mid 90s; they're still fun to watch.

When I cracked open this trade, I had high hopes but pretty low expectations. What I found was an equally mixed bag. It is assumed that if you are reading this miniseries, you are already familiar with these characters and their world from the new, ongoing titles; very little setup or exposition is offered. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that both Austin and Sommers work separately as agents of the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence) under Oscar Goldman, just like in the shows. A past relationship between Austin and Sommers is hinted at but not detailed; they work together rarely but well and seem to have a mutual attraction but also something that has forced distance between them. All of that matches up pretty well to what was established in both television series.

Most of the updating seems to have taken the form of de-aging the two leads considerably and modernizing their language and mannerisms. That was a tad off-putting, but not at all unexpected. It was something I could live with.

The depictions of both Austin's and Sommers' bionic abilities, however, was all over the map. They are depicted in this miniseries as performing feats far beyond what they ever did during the runs of their respective television and movie histories. Nothing in this series seems to contradict the established extent of the pair's bionic enhancements: Austin has two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye, while Sommers has two bionic legs, an arm and an ear. In this series, both make jumps and other uses of their bionic legs which seemingly would damage their spines unless they, too, were bionically enhanced. Both routinely use both arms to crush things when only one arm is bionic, but then this was an error made on the television programs, too. For example, using a normal arm as leverage while bending something with a bionic arm; that normal arm wouldn't be strong enough to provide sufficient leverage against the force exerted by the bionic limb.

But beyond this, several times Sommers' and Austin's bionics are said to have self-repairing capabilities, and the cyborgs seem to be able to control each individual bionic component independently of the others, almost like a Transformer or something. That's definitely an upgrade from what they used to be able to accomplish. The two OSI operatives are even described at various points as being off-line and even re-booted remotely in the field by techs back at the office. Are they cyborgs or flat-out robots?

Overall, this isn't a bad story -- a foreign power has created its own bionic juggernaut but not perfected the process, and this failing cyborg attempts to lure, kidnap and reverse-engineer Austin and Sommers for his own benefit. I was pleasantly surprised by how much from the bionic heroes I knew from TV had been incorporated into this updated version. But these are still different people, harder people, more cynical than the heroes I knew from my youth. Realistically, this miniseries has made me curious to try a collection or two of the regular Bionic Man and Bionic Woman series to learn more. But it hasn't inspired me to spend money on them. Instead, I may try to seek out more from my local library to see how the regular monthly series stack up against the TV shows and this series. Or I might just try to newly announced Six Million Dollar Man Season 6 series from Dunamite; maybe it will be more my style based on the name.