Five Reasons You Should Pick Up Cyborg #1

[Full Disclosure: David Walker is a good friend of mine and I told him that I would only write something, if I liked the book.]

I’m a Teen Titans fan from since Raven first got the team together. Cyborg (Vic Stone) was never my favorite character, or a character I particularly liked. I mean, how many damn times were you going to use X amount of decibels from your white noise generator? Not to mention that Cyborg is the most dehumanized superhero of color in all of comicdom. Folks are mad that Vic is beginning to look “more human.” I have a question: Why were you okay with him being a walking and talking negroid PS3?

Pre-New 52, Vic looked much more human. Do the research.

Here are the five reasons you should cop and read this book:

Professor, historian, and one of the best artists in the comic industry, John Jennings, said this about the book:

“David Walker, in one issue, totally subverts the image of the black superhero and how it is perceived.”

Ivan Reis (penciller), Adriano Lucas (colorist), and Joe Prado have put together a devastatingly beautiful world — even the bad guys are beautiful. There is something so visually consistent and authoritative about the book — there are some clever uses of negative space and some spot-on tweaking of panel layouts that lent themselves to a sense or propulsion…this book moves.

There has been a lot of talk about how a scene in Cyborg #1 mirrors the classic Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams’ Green Arrow/Green Lantern book that asks real world questions about the influence and priorities of superheroes. It has already been spoiled/leaked, so I won’t do it here (click above, if you’re interested). But this is the type of work I reference when people accuse comics of not having any socially redeeming value.

The “Technosapiens” (the antagonists of the first story arc) and the “Tekbreakers” look like Warhammer 20,000 as designed by H.R. Giger. Their battle at the beginning provides us with a glimpse of how they think and their capabilities. The Technosapiens are going to be a more than worthy match for Vic Stone.

Cyborg is a human. He isn’t just an anthropomorphized machine. In just the first issue we are made privy to Vic Stone’s issues with his father and his father’s colleagues, a potential love interest — who Vic is pretty much blind to — who sees beyond and through the mechanized parts, and (praise every god/dess available) we get a complex interiority that so many superheroes of color never get.

David F. Walker (the “F” is for “F$#kin’ talented”) is a writer and conceptualist of the highest caliber and skill. It is clear that he loves superhero books, but it is also clear that he will not rely on tried and true tropes to eke his stories along. Walker is setting out to challenge us.