Hero Profile: Cyborg

At what point does a superpower become a disability? Does Daredevil’s super-hearing, smell and touch make up for his inability to see like a normal person? What about Batman, who is as close to superhuman as a human can be, and yet is pretty much emotionally dead inside? No more is this question more apparent than with Victor Stone, a man who had about 85% of his body replaced with machinery. Without further ado, Cyborg.

His organic bits include: Half of face,
heart, and brain. That's about it.

Victor Stone was one of those guys that could never quiet live up to his parents expectations. But, then, when you are the average intelligence child of two super geniuses, I can understand having difficulty living up to expectations. Though, his parents did cross a line in “helping” Victor smarten up. His father, Silas, and his mother, Elinore, use Victor as a test subject for various projects designed to increase his intellect. While the various procedures did make Victor markedly smarter, it did lead to Victor pretty much hating his parents for treating him more like a science project than a son. He begins hanging out with local troublemaker, Ron Evers, and starts saying “screw you” to academics. He thrives as a football player, and let’s his grades drop to the barely respectable C’s. Life at the Stone household was tense, but things were still relatively normal.

A short time later, he visited at their lab in the famous S.T.A.R. Labs. Things were going fine, until an inter-dimensional portal experiment accidently pulled a massive goo monster into the Lab. People, leave interdimensional travel to guys like Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty. Only a deeply disturbed, alcoholic seems to be able to travel between realities without horrible repercussions… usually. I’m getting off track again. So monster kills Elinore, and… well, there’s no nice way to put it, he mutilates Victor. Silas sends the monster back and rushes to save his son. He gives Victor a number of experimental prosthetics that Silas had been working on. When Victor awakened, he was…less than thrilled with the results. But then if I were to wake up and discover 80% of my body, including half my face, was replaced by shiny faux-chrome I’d be pretty upset, too. Victor, while suicidal at first, adjusted to his new body rather quickly. Now if only the rest of the world could adjust to Victor. People were…put off by his appearance. Like folks were put off by Frankenstein’s Monster. His girlfriend left him, he was kicked off the football team, and every one else was just being a dick to him. Ron was the only one to stick by him, and that was just part of an insane plot to manipulate Victor into performing a terrorist attack on the UN. Victor, rather annoyed by this, fought his former friend and saved the UN. After that, Victor decided to put his new upgrades to use, and became the heroic Cyborg.

Yeah, comic Cyborg wishes he looked this good.
Rest in Peace, Lee Thompson Young.

His first order of business was to seek out and join the Teen Titans. It’s like a junior Justice League, it’s members being mostly former sidekicks. He forms strong and lifelong friendships with many of his teammates. The other young heroes pretty much idealize Cyborg for his fancy tech and courageous spirit. He thrives with these young heroes, and saves the world on a few occasions. He was seriously injured in a missile crash, leaving him largely brain dead. His body was repaired by a group of Russian scientists, but his mind was seemingly beyond repair. He was eventually saved by a group of alien beings called the Technis, who repaired his mind in exchange for Cyborg becoming, well, an ambassador of Earth to the Technis. He eventually returns, going by the name Cyberion, to Earth, but isn’t really Victor Stone anymore. The human side of Victor was largely suppressed, but his subconscious desire for friends cause his techno-self to start seeking out his former friends and kidnapping them. The Technis put each of the heroes into a “perfect” world simulator, for example buddy Beast Boy was back with his original team the Doom Patrol, and Nightwing (aka Robin) got to have a heartfelt conversation with his father figure, Batman. Just to highlight how…damaged Victor is at this point, his Cyberion persona had sent out a probe to find Cyborg. So, yeah, he’s really not right in the head at the moment.

Eventually the Titans he was holding were freed by the Justice League. There was a bit of an argument between the JL and the TT on how to hold the Cyberion situation. Most of the Justice League argued that there was nothing left of Victor to save, while Robin and Beast Boy along with the Titans argued the opposite. In the end, they were able to save the real Victor from his Cyberion form, and placed him in a new mechanized body. Since, Victor has been killed, destroyed, reborn and rebuilt on numerous occasions. He’s become one of the most iconic DC superheroes, and perhaps one of the most iconic Black superheroes of all time. He’s trained a number of newer heroes, like Tim Drake the third Robin. He led the Teen Titans for a long time. As of the New 52, Victor became a founding member of the Justice League. He’s come along way.

Wonder how big a hole that will punch in a tank?

Victor’s powers stem from the advanced machinery that keep him alive. The robotic prosthetics give him superhuman strength, stamina, speed, and the ability to fly. His left eye was replaced with a highly advanced electronic camera that mimics natural vision, but allows him to do things like see into the electromagnetic spectrum. As well as zooming in and enhancing images. His metal body is largely bullet proof. His body hides a number of tools, from a grappling hook, various power tools, and a finger mounted laser. His most well-known weapon is a sound amplifier. The amplifier can do things like release an ultrasonic pulse that can disorientate his foes, or fire a concentrated sonic burst that can shatter rock or dent steel. He can also interface wirelessly with most forms of technology and control them. Over the years, his body has been upgraded, the most impressive upgrade being that his internal systems are able to repair themselves. Basically, no matter how banged up he gets, give him enough time and his machinery will recover, better than ever.

Cyborg is one of the most well-known DC superheroes. He’s appeared in a number of series.

His first major appearance, to my knowledge, was in the animated Teen Titans. He’s one of the five main characters. One of his most important episodes being the fifth episode, “The Sum of His Parts.” During a battle against an evil magician named Mumbo, Cyborg’s body shuts down due to a failing battery. He’s discovered by a strange machine mechanic named Fixit. Fixit intends to remove the “flaws” in Cyborg’s body, namely his organic bits. It takes a bit, but Cyborg does convince Fixit to let him go, and to try and see what’s so good about being Human. Over the course of the series, he develops a bitter mutual hatred for Brother Blood, a supervillain that ran the HIVE. Think of the HIVE like an anti-Teen Titans. They battle on a number of occasions, and Blood begins to obsessively trying to break down Cyborg and steal his technology. We also get to see an interesting bit side of Cyborg in “Troq” the 45^th episode. In it, the Titans team up with an alien named Val-Yor. Yor continually refers to the alien Titan, Starfire, as Troq. She initially plays it off, but when Cyborg jokingly refers to her as “Troqy” she flips out, and then explains that the word literally means “nothing” and is used as racial slur against her species. Cyborg sympathizes, since he knows a lot about prejudice, given that he’s a half robot. Cyborg is often seen as the Titans second-in-command and would occasionally buttheads with team leader Robin. Friendly rivalries are like that.

I'm just going to lie down and play dead.

A live action version of Cyborg is introduced in the fifth season of Smallville. He’s portrayed by late actor Lee Thompson Young. This version of Victor Stone was a Metropolis Football star who was supposedly killed in a car crash along with his family. In actuality, he was saved and rebuilt by a Dr. Kreig. This version of Cyborg’s robotics are all internal, but we get a snapshot of his usual skull covering when young Clark Kent looks him over with his X-Ray vision. Clark and his friends save Victor, and even reunite him with his girlfriend, due to the annoying assistance of Clark’s on-again off-again girlfriend Lana Lang. He returns in the sixth season episode “Justice” as part of a team assembled by Smallville’s version of Batman, Green Arrow. He admits that Oliver and his team were what kept him from committing suicide when his girlfriend left. He and the Team are attacking and destroying Luthor Corp’s labs that are committing illegal experiments. They team up with Clark Kent to rescue their Flash, Bart Allen, after he’s kidnapped by Lex Luthor. This is the last time we see Victor in action, though he’s mentioned several times in later episodes. Thems the breaks when you’re just a recurring character.

Cyborg is appears in Justice League: Doom. This version is a sort of unofficial aid to the Justice League, helping the team beat the technologically advanced Royal Flush Gang. Batman enlists his aid again to help save the Justice League from deadly versions of the contingency plans concocted by Vandal Savage and the Legion of Doom. He then helps them stop Vandal’s genocidal plan and is officially made a part of the Justice League.

An alternate version of Cyborg appears in the animated film in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. The original helps the League defeat the Flash’s enemies the Rogues, and Professor Zoom. In the alternate timeline the Flash unwittingly creates, Cyborg is America’s greatest superhero and works for the US Government. After a disastrous mission ends with the death of Lex Luthor and Deathstroke, two important assets, he’s relieved of duty. He somewhat begrudgingly works with Batman (in this universe he’s Bruce Wayne’s father, Thomas Wayne) and the Flash. The three break into an “unofficial” government facility which had been keeping Kal-El in prison since he arrived on Earth. Kal flies off, and Cyborg and the other heroes agree to help the Flash try and stop the Atlantian/Amazonian war. He personally battles Aquaman, and despite holding his own for some time, is nearly killed. Kal-El flies in and beats Aquaman back, but he’s unable to save Victor. He’s assumedly restored when the Flash fixes the timeline. Fun fact, Victor in this movie is played by Michael B. Jordan, who will soon be appearing in the new Fantastic Four movie as the Human Torch.

Booyah! Teen Titans Go! is an affront to you, sir.

The “New 52” version of Cyborg appears in Justice League: War. He’s an excellent football star who has to deal with his workaholic and dismissive father, Silas Stone. He storms into his father’s lab, and berates his dad for missing his big game. When Silas again dismisses Victor, because of the potential alien invasion, Victor grabs the device his father was studying and tries to smash it. Unfortunately, the machine was a nigh-indestructible Mother Box, and that was the moment the alien invasion started. Victor is blasted with energy and irradiated. He’s taken by Silas into a sort of advanced medical machine to keep him alive. The Apokoliptian tech that irradiated his body caused the machinery to fuse with his body, creating a giant metallic titan. He joins the other heroes that become the Justice League, and save the world from Apokolips and its master Darkseid.

The same Cyborg is seen in the Justice League sequel Throne of Atlantis. He’s more or less come into his own as a hero, and is the one to discover that an America Sub was attacked by an Atlantian battalion. He works hard to stop the war between the surface World and Atlantis. The relationship with his father has pretty much deteriorated to nothing, and he has a trippy dream or two where he’s got his real body back and rudely awakened by his robotic enhancements.

Cyborg is one of the more interesting characters. He’s one of those guys whose powers are as much a curse as a gift. He’s so much more than human, but is stripped of a lot of the parts that make him human. He can lift trucks over his head, and yet can’t even feel the breeze on his face. If the Justice League: War movie storyline is more or less canon, then all he has of his internal organs are his left eye, his brain and heart. So, yeah, he doesn’t really eat or breathe. He can dream, but only when his body is recharging. Kind of sucks, right? And yet, he doesn’t let it stop him. He keeps on trying, keeps on moving, and keeps on living as best he can. To answer the question I raised in the beginning, yes in many ways Victor is disabled, and yet he’s still superpowered. Sometimes to gain something you have to give something up in return. He’s the tinman with a heart, the broken but whole, the super-human robot, Cyborg. Next time, the sequel to Justice League: War, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.

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Hero Profile: Ant-Man (Eric O'Grady)

We end our Ant-Man theme week with the scummiest character to bear the name. Seriously, Eric O’Grady is one of those terrible, awful human beings that doesn’t deserve half of what he gets. He’s so bad that his initial comic series was entitled Irredeemable Ant-Man. They are saying in the title that this guy is beyond help. Deadpool isn’t beyond help, and he’s one of the most sadistic psycho’s I’ve ever seen. But enough build up, let’s get to it.

Bad, bad, bad man. But an awesome
costume.

Eric O’Grady began his career as a low level SHIELD agent. How low? To use a live action comparison, he’s essentially one of the SHIELD agents standing around during the first Avengers movie. He’s a man of few, if any, morals. He’ll lie, cheat or steal in order to get what he wants. Eric’s life takes a major turn when he and friend Chris McCarthy were assigned by their immediate superior, and friend, Mitch Carson to watch Dr. Hank Pym’s lab on the helicarrier. A short time later, Pym comes out, and the two raw nerved SHIELD Agents accidentally knock him out. They see inside the lab and find the prototype of a new Ant-Man suit that Pym was working on. Chris actually dons the suit first, and briefly disappears after shrinking down to an inch high. Eric uses Chris’s disappearance to attempt to seduce Chris’ girlfriend, Veronica. Again, he’s a very bad man. His attempts are thwarted by a HYDRA attack on the helicarrier, and Chris is killed in the conflict. Eric doesn’t even wait for his friend’s body to cool before he strips the suit off of him and puts it on. He uses his new powers mostly to commit minor thefts and stalk women. Again, not a great person. But he does occasionally save people from muggers and the like, so...he's not a good guy, but he's more of a shade of grey than outright bad.

SHIELD quickly realizes who stole the suit and send Mitch Carson to retrieve it. He wears a hastily built copy of Eric’s prototype to apprehend Eric. They fight while shifting size, as Ant-Men oft do, but Eric is ultimately the victor. While they fought, Eric accidentally burned the left half of Mitch’s face with his suit's jetpack. He got Mitch to an infirmary as quick as he could, but Mitch’s face was left scarred, as well as blind and deaf on his left side. He, obviously, swore everlasting vengeance upon waking up. Around this time, Eric also succeeds in seducing Veronica, but there’s an unforeseen complication. Of the reproductive kind. I don’t know how long Eric was planning on staying with Veronica, but her pregnancy moved up his time table. Yep, after sleeping with his dead best friend’s girlfriend and getting her pregnant, he runs for it. God, he’s such an ***hole.

Robo-arms, for those times
when two arms aren't enough.

While still running for responsibility and SHIELD, he encounters the thief Black Fox. He’s a minor Spider-Man baddy and cat burglar, for those who don’t know. Eric, again being an ***hole, steals the jewels that Black Fox had stolen, and pawns them. When Fox hunts Eric down, they manage to work out an agreement, and split the money. Huh, guess there’s a little honor amongst thieves. A little while later he saves a little kid’s life and then is offered a job by Damage Control. Damage Control is a major company in the Marvel Universe. Their job, fixing everything that tends to get broken during a superpowered smack down. They do really well. Eric takes the job, but gives them some fake names, Derek Sullivan for his “real” name and Slaying Mantis as his super-alias. He also starts seeing a woman named Abigail, but that falls apart when he learns she has a kid. She tries to salvage their relationship, why I don’t know, but is interrupted by a rampaging Hulk. Eric reluctantly helps, attempting to attack Hulk from the inside but is defeated by Hulk’s incredibly stomach and other internal organs. He’s shot out of Hulk’s nostril, found by SHIELD, brought to an infirmary, and then arrested by Mitch Carson upon waking up. Just a rotten day for this scoundrel. Can anyone say, Karma?

He’s brought to a secret room aboard another Helicarrier, where Mitch straps him down and starts torturing him. Justifiable payback for destroying part of Mitch’s face and nearly torching his career? Yes, but it turns out that Mitch is a sick SOB too. He reveals to Eric that he’s a raging sociopath that’s been abusing his SHIELD position for years, mostly to kill folks. So yeah, not really sure who’s worse here at the moment. Mitch attempts to burn Eric’s face with the Ant-Man jet pack, but is thwarted by Iron Man. Eric, again being a scumbag, attempts to frame Mitch for all of his own crimes. He spouts the some BS about taking the suit to protect it from Mitch’s evil clutches. He must have forgotten that he’s talking to Tony flippin’ Stark. For anyone who might not get it, you don't lie to a super-genius. It just looks silly and gets you in more trouble. Iron Man would have arrested him again, had Black Fox not stepped in. After first trying to force them to release Eric with a ruse about bombs planted in the Helicarrier, Fox turns himself in in exchange for Eric's release. They bonded after their crime spree together, who'd a thunk it? Eric gets off scot-free, and Fox is arrested.

Such great, tiny male bonding.

Somehow, Eric got his old job back with SHIELD, and also helped Fox escape prison. Again, a little honor amongst thieves. Veronica also gets in touch with Eric, and for reasons I cannot fathom, tries to work out an arraignment so that Eric can be a part of their child’s life. Eric refuses, not because he’s a selfish, narcissistic, amoral, scumbag…no it’s because of that. What I mean is, Eric knows he’s a bad person and believes that he’d be the absolute worst influence on their kid. So yeah, he’s not completely, totally awful. He’s given the Ant-Man suit, again, simply because he’d shown that he can use it better than any of the candidates Hank had previously chosen. The one major condition being that Eric join the Initiative, the training program for superheroes that was created after the Superhuman Civil War. So they can keep an eye on him. Pym and Stark aren't idiots. Eric agrees. He meets with Abigail one last time, and despite saying he loves her, he still opts to break things off. He does tell her his real name, though, and that he hopes that when they meet again he'll be a better person. On the first day as part of the Initiative, we see the chances of that happening are slim. Eric, in an attempt to make himself seem less scummy, starts slandering the heck out of Scott Lang. He pushes most of his most awful antics on his predecessor, claimed that Scott was never a real Avenger, and that he’d mostly just hid out at the Avenger’s Mansion during his time with the team. Scott’s daughter, Cassie aka Stature, overhears and is decidedly miffed at the bold faced lies Eric was spouting. She pretty much tried to kill him via giant sized stomping, but that only leads to a titanic brawl between the two, and Hank Pym when he tries to break up the fight. Three giants duking in out in the middle of Connecticut... yep, get Damage Control on the phone. The fight is finally broken up by Taskmaster, who disables the three giants by striking their supersized Achilles tendons. While Eric does start to fit in a little, things are never great between him and Stature, or him and Dr. Pym after this incident. During a later Skrull Invasion, he tries to wuss out and hide, but that ends up being useful. He found out that the Skrull’s evil plan was to basically destroy the continental US by throwing it into the Negative Zone. Solid plan. He is pretty giddy that the one tactic that the Skrull were unprepared for was the "one-inch tall coward." I guess you got to take your victories where you find them. He rallies the heroes and they beat back the Skrull. Again. The Skrull are one persistent group of lizard people. After this Eric is “promoted” to the Thunderbolts, a government sponsored superhero team made up of mostly former villains. He probably would have done well here if it wasn’t for the insanity of Norman Osborn. He goes along with it until Norman's...instability inevitably causes the groups downfall. After the Thunderbolts fell apart, Eric is given a job as part of the Secret Avengers. He mostly uses his “Avenger” status to pick up women. Sigh… He also spends a bit of time working with his predecessor, Hank Pym, now going by the codename the Wasp. While they come to something of an understanding, they are like oil and water throughout their short run together. Eric is ultimately killed by supervillain known as the Father and replaced with a Life Model Duplicate (crazy realistic robotic clone.) The LMD goes by the Black Ant, and is ultimately defeated alongside the Father and his henchmen. A rather abrupt end to a scummy but interesting character.

Eric O’Grady’s Ant-Man costume is the most advanced to date. He has the usual Pym Particles that allow him to shrink while retaining his “full size” strength as well as grow to colossal proportions. He also has the insect control helmet that all Ant-Men have used. He has a jet pack that allows him to travel much faster than his predecessors, and that has a part of robotic extra arms that can be deployed. He also adds Wasp-like stinger gloves down the line.

Cover of his first issue pretty much sums
him up.

Eric has only been used once outside of the comics. He is given a cameo appearance as a SHIELD Agent during the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes episode “Nightmare in Red” when the Red Hulk attacks the helicarrier. Technically it might not even be him, just a SHIELD agent that bears a resemblance.This doesn't really shock me. Since Hank's mental problems and marital troubles have caused him to be...glossed over more than once, is it any wonder that the Ant-man that is also a thief, scoundrel, peeping tom, and all around not a great person is also glossed over? I think not.

I think I’ve made it clear that Eric O’Grady is a bad, bad man. He abuses his powers, his positions, and the trust of others to get what he wants. Heck, the one thing that separates him from most baddies is that he’s willing to admit that he’s a scumbag. And yet, that might be what makes him interesting. He has his demons, he has his vices, and even though he succumbs to them often, he does continually try to be a hero. In many way’s I’d characterize him as the polar opposite of Scott Lang. While Scott is a good man who’s trying to make up for a few seriously bad mistakes, Eric is a bad man trying to occasionally make up for a long list of seriously bad mistakes. It makes him a little more human than say, the ever perfect Superman. And, unlike a lot of supervillains, he’s aware enough of his own awful nature to protect those who should be closest to him. Heck, he opts out of being involved with his kid simply to reduce the risk of his bad behavior negatively influence the kid. Puts him head and shoulders above Norman Osborn, aka Green Goblin, whose always trying to corrupt his kids. I don’t condone Eric’s behavior, obviously, but it does make for an interesting character. He’s the deplorable scoundrel, the despicable do-gooder, the oxymoronic…moron, Ant-Man. Next time, something DC related. I promise.

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