Missed Landing: The Bionic Man #11 Review

When I was six or seven years old, I had a Power Records LP…

(Note to Generation Y: “LP” stands for “long playing record.” It was a big piece of vinyl that sounds were recorded on. Think a CD, only bigger and with shittier sound, no matter what line of horseshit Jack White tries to sell you about vinyl sounding “warmer.” Crackles and skips are not features, they are bugs,)

(Note to Millennials: “CD” stands for “compact disc.” It was a small piece of plastic that sounds were recorded on. Think an MP3, only one you had to spend all your beer money on in college back in 1991 if you wanted to own any music. Now all of you: get the fuck off my lawn.)

Sorry about that. Anyhoo, I had the Power Records LP of The Six Million Dollar Man, which included a retelling of Steve Austin’s origin, according to the television series. Which is a story that anyone old enough to associate the “bah-nah-nah-nah-nah” bionic sound effect with something other than Chevy Chase doing putts in Caddyshack knows: Steve Austin is a test pilot in a plane crash, and Oscar Goldman and Rudy Wells…

(Note to Gen X’ers and drunken comics Website editors: There is a thing on the Internet called YouTube where everything you ever loved as a child has been collected, for free. And it allows you to embed those things in your own Website! So quit chasing those little bastards off your lawn and, you know, do that,)

We Can Rebuild Him: The Bionic Man #2 Review

And, as is becoming a tradition, one final quick review from last week before the comic stores open for New Comics Day…

“I know Steve Austin is going away… but I’ll never forget him.” That, as my parents are fond of reminding me, is what I said about the cancellation of The Six Million Dollar Man. They also like to remind me that I was crying and cuddling my Steve Austin action figure when I said this. I was 24 years old.

Just kidding. If you were of an age and a type to be predisposed to liking comic books in the late 1970’s, The Six Million Dollar Man was required viewing. And I know that Time / Life’s released the entire four-year run of the show on DVD, but I’ve resisted dropping the cash or looking for rips online because no matter what nostalgia I feel for the show, I know that if I watch it now, it will suck out loud. It’s one thing to nostalgically go, “Bin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin…” under your breath when you lift a heavy box. It’s quite another to sit down to watch a show where you know full well that you will see Steve Austin befriend Bigfoot, and worse: William Shatner.

And yet I’ve been picking up Dynamite Comics’ modernized adaptation of the story, The Bionic Man, written by Kevin Smith and Phil Hester and drawn by Jonathan Lau… and I am HOOKED.

Don’t misunderstand me: there is no objective reason for me to be into this comic. Smith is indulging in the worst form of decompressed storytelling, as he did in Batman: The Widening Gyre when he took six issues and 120ish pages to say “And one time? Batman peed in his pants.”