The Bionic Man #1 and #2

Okay, so I'm going to date myself. I used to love watching "The Six Million Dollar Man" when I was a kid. I thought it was just cool. I'm pretty sure I even had a Steve Austin action figure at some point, but I can't remember for sure. The series ended in 1978 after 5 seasons on the air. I loved this show because it was one of the earlier science fiction shows that was played during prime time when I was a kid that I actually got to see. Many of the other science fiction shows I only really remember in reruns later.

Flash foward to today, a fairly well known movie writer, director and producer by the name of Kevin Smith writes a script for a new Bionic Man movie. The people who own the rights to make the movie turn his script down. Oh well, Smith has plenty of money from his Jay and Silent Bob series of movies I suppose, and he still writes comics once in a while. Oh yeah, since he writes comics, he takes his script to a comic company known as Dynamite Entertainment who happen to have procured the rights to the Bionic Man for comics. So, we never get to see the movie, but the comic based on Smith's script is awesome so far and it's just two issues in.

Colonel Steve Austin is at the end of his career as a test pilot, and as per the series, it ends up placing him in a position where it may be the end of his life as well. We've already seen what the antagonist for the series can see by the time we are even actually introduced to Colonel Austin in issue 1 of the comic and it's not very pretty. I would say that the short lived rehashed Bionic Woman series that got killed due to the writers' strike a year or so ago took some from this script or vice versa. In this series there was another bionic man before Steve Austin, and that candidate has had a severe psychotic breakdown and gone rogue.

We're all the way through issue 2 and Austin is only now on the operating table with doctors trying to save his life after the crash of the latest stealth bomber that he was flight testing. The series is well written and I couldn't put it down once I started issue 1. I was glad I had forgotten that I wanted to pick it up until I saw issue 2 was out, so I got to read straight through both issues. My only regret is I wish I had waited until the whole series was out because I want to know what happens next.

ARt is provided by Phil Hester and it's stunning from beginning to end. The details are what makes the artwork fabulous. When you see the picture of Steve Austin's fiancee in his cockpit at the beginning, you think it's a nice touch. It's an even nicer touch when you see it catching on fire as the plane starts to crash later. It's nice to know that both the writer and penciller knew this had to be there to show the loss that is occurring.

If you were a fan of the old series from the '70's or even if you've never seen it before, I recommend this book. If you were a fan of the '70's series, you'll get a rush seeing Steve Austin back in action. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you like science fiction and the plausibility of cybernetic men, pick this up and see your imagination ignited again with a story that was originally conceived in 1972 in the novel Cyborgby Martin Caidin. For me, The Six Million Dollar Man was the show that showed me that a man could be a hero, much like Superman: The Movie made me believe that a man could fly (at least in my imagination).

Thanks for reading.