Redartz: It's been awhile, so the time has come once again to give you all the opportunity to set the agenda for the week! Perhaps you've been anxiously awaiting this chance, nurturing a provocative poser or inspiring inquiry. The field is wide open, the stage is set, the audience is seated. The rest is up to you!
But before I turn the mike over to you, here's a quick preview of coming attractions. For next week, you might start gathering some thoughts about........Team-up Comics.................
24 comments:
Well heck-- I'm heading in to have my left knee replaced in about an hour (I'll probably blather it all over FB and Instagram later)-- so that's kinda got my mind occupied at the moment-- but is there something to be mined topic-wise in that realm?
Favorite/best use of cyborg tech?
Other teammates here who have had similar procedures? (it is ASTONISHING how many joints can be replaced now-- I wonder how much of a human skeleton can indeed be replaced safely at this point?)
Given that we're largely a group who are staring at twilgiht-ish years not too far down the road (reluctant as we may be to acknowledge it, sure--), and have still hung onto our attachment to a childhood/youthful passion, are we handling this unavoidable journey okay? What does "Act Our Age" mean, exactly? Do some of us strive mightily to live in denial (personally, you will NEVER catch me sporting a comb-over!), while others seem to embrace and lean into senior-hood FAR too soon, declaring themselves "Old People" as an excuse for self-indulgent, un-civil behavior?
Mind you-- feel free to toss this aside if something more on-brand pops up, eh?
HB
Both my parents lived into their seventies but neither needed any kind of replacements and so far neither have I. Best of luck with the operation HB.
The cyborg tech that immediately springs to mind is the Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman.
Yeah, good luck with the operation (I'd say "break a leg", but, you know ...) I'm still in relatively good shape and my dad is 88 and hasn't had anything replaced yet, so maybe I have good genes.
The first cyborg that came to my mind was (strangely enough) Cyborg from the New Teen Titans, always a cool character.
Good luck on the surgery and the rehab!
I've definitely been taken out of the box and been played with, but I still have all the original parts. The hairline has receded a bit too much for my vanity, but I keep active enough to have avoided the paunches of my school buddies. And I'm glad I must have been missing that day in health class when they discussed cholesterol and hemorrhoids.
But favorite cyborg is the dark flipside to Steve Austin, in the form of the Cold Knight, Deathlok the Demolisher.
I've always considered him the anti-Bionic Man, as everything about the Six Million Dollar Man is darkly inverted. And I've also thought that Spawn was influenced by the character's origin, but haven't been able to back that up with anything I've found.
Take care, and cheers!
HB- best of luck, hope it went well!
Interesting topic, and one that prompts some self examination. I still have all 'original parts ', but a few have (or may soon be) removed. Did great for many years, but the last couple seem to be showing my age a bit. Don't rebound quite as fast, and those little aches and nuisances get more frequent. Now my wife has an insulin pump and monitor. I call her my "Cyborg"...
As for fictional cyborgs, Deathlok comes first to mind. One of the first 'new' bronze age series I picked up upon entering the world of comics. But I'd already been following Steve Austin with enthusiasm...
I’ve had my share of trips to the shop. I’ve had my left knee scoped twice back in late 80’s and early 90’s (too much basketball) and had spinal fusion in Spring of ‘19 (auto accident). Also have circulation issues, so I have about 2’ of stent in my left leg from just above my knee to the intersection in my abdomen. Good luck with your procedure.
Deathlok has fascinated me since I won a used copy of one of his stories at a Halloween carnival back in the mid 70’s.
Graham - any chance you work with the Corps of Engineers in the Vicksburg area, given you are a civil engineer? (DId I ask you that before???)
Cyborgs - gosh I have no idea besides the obvious $6 MM man.
BUT - for conversation purposes, surely we must have watched cartoons in the 60s / 70s with cyborgs??? I keep having a vague recollection of one of the "The Mighty Heroes" (which had Diaper Man, Lasso Man, et al.) possibly having one??? Something like robotic arms that could extend out and retract?
As a practical matter, would not Doc Ock be a cyborg? I mean, all he really needed to do was simply graft his arms to his body, but that would be uncomfortable for sleeping! We all saw how Petey got really irritable when he grew 4 extra arms in ASM 100 - 102!
I still got all my parts... plus 20 extra screws and some titanium in a wrist that was shattered about 10 years ago playing soccer. Per the surgeon, who had done 100os (?) of these... it was nearly the worst break and most miraculous healing he had seen on a wrist. (We attributed it up to the organic kale-beet-carrot-cilantro smoothies I grow in my garden.)
HB, et al. I was reading a book called The Humans (I recommend... it's a bit of sci-fi and drama and humor).
We are reminded we have about 30,000 days on the planet. Most of us here probably have around 5,000 - 10,000 left?
And then I read an article where this guy said to take 5,000 marbles and put them in a big jug when you hit 60. And then daily remove one to another jar to give you some immediacy to so something with your life b/c you will see that your time is indeed running out.
I asked my therapist about this very thing 2 weeks ago. She said "hell no!" She thinks most of us would go into severe depression watching the marbles disappear. Point being we are what we are at this point... moving a bunch of marbles most likely isn't going to change anything. So why have a visual of our pending end?
Charlie's therapist... I bet thats a helluva job ;)
I had cataract surgery - they cut them out of your eyes WHILE YOU'RE WATCHING! It was pretty horrible actually, like being in your very own pre-Code horror comic.
But they give you bionic eyes as a replacement!
Well, no not really - but you get special lenses put in. For the first time since I was a small kid I don't need glasses. They rebuilt me, better than I was before (or at least less short-sighted)...
-sean
Hiya,
I've been pretty lucky so far, no major repairs beyond some minor surgery that was an in/out affair.
I do believe that this is because I didn't play that many injury prone high school sports as track and field were generally considered non contact competitions. Not that they didn't occur, just usually without intent of doing bodily harm.
My sport was the shot put for which I won regional. My best throw was forty six feet and the coach asked me for ideas how to get some more distance. I told him to have one of the others on the team, the person I hated most in high school and probably my entire life to stand at the fifty foot line.
That day I threw for fifty four and the gold.
Incentive.
Seeya
pfgavigan
HB, good luck with that knee replacement! Yes, you know you're aging when one day you look in the mirror and see your glorious black hair has turned greyish white instead (although my grey came early - the first few strands popped up in my 30s), my teeth are more yellow, and probably the most disturbing trend is that I find it increasingly harder to get up early (even though I was never a morning person). Fortunately, I don't have many wrinkles (yet).
Steve Austin was my fave cyborg back in the day, many kids in my primary school perfecting the art of slow motion running like they saw on the TV series.
- Mike 'I'm still kickin' from Trinidad & Tobago.
The Terminator was also a cyborg - a steel (or whatever kind of metal it was meant to be) exoskeleton covered by a flesh and blood body.
As for the Six Million Dollar Man - it was rather strange that in order to give the impression that Steve Austin was running really fast he was shown running in slow motion :D
PFG-- Good heavens-! So, motivational anger added, like, 18% to your BEST effort-?? "The madder PFG gets, the STRONGER PFG gets!"
Charlie, I totally agree with your therapist. That whole marble-exercise seems to be designed to induce anxiety and an inescapable sense of loss-- it's just so negative, y'know?
And guys-- IS The Terminator a cyborg? Does he have actual human parts in there? Was he a just a person at one point? I didn't think that was the case. (Only seen the film once, mind you-- it didn't grab me like it did others--).
Hunh-- what about Inspector Gadget? Was he fully a robot... or was he a mechanical body with a human mind or brain inside? Which would still be a cyborg, right? Like, Cliff Steel (Robotman) is a cyborg-- not actually a robot. . .
HB-- back home (ROUGH night after a a comically euphoric day-- surely drug-induced--)
HB : hope your recuperation from surgery goes as smoothly as possible.
Comics Cyborg Stuff :
I think Deathlok’s debut in ASTONISHING TALES #25 is one of the absolute best “first issues” of the Bronze Age, right up there with SPECIAL MARVEL EDITION #15 (first Shang-Chi), MARVEL PREMEIRE #15 (first Iron Fist) and HERO FOR HIRE #1. The intro issue was thrilling and chilling in equal measure, noticeably more starkly nihilistic than other Code-approved comics of the time, its grim near-future setting felt tangible in a way that made other sci-fi environments (Killraven, Kammandi, etc) seem like gaudy Post-Apocalyptic Playgrounds in comparison. Deathlok himself was Frankenstein With A Gun, a cold-blooded killer / corpse-machine, one of the most ethically-compromised Anti-heroes the Four-Color world had ever seen. The on-going series was kinda hit-and-miss but man, that opener was pure dynamite.
Exterminator One by Bill Dubay and Paul Neary was a kinda/sorta/somewhat similar series in Warren’s EERIE right around the same time, but it wasn’t nearly as compelling.
I remember being shocked at seeing the first issue of Charlton’s SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN b/w magazine at the newsstand — how could such a notoriously cheap-ass outfit afford the services of Neal Adams in ANY capacity? The cover was great, the interior art looked fairly slick by Charlton standards, being mostly the work of various Crusty Bunkers. Anyhow, the first couple of issues are pretty cool. I like the three or four color comics by Joe Staton too.
Our UK pals had lots more Bionic Comics fun than us yanks, with strips featuring both Steve Austin and Jamie Sommers in a kid-oriented magazine called LOOK-IN , with art by John M.Burns and John Bolton. I need to look on the internets for scans of those....
Lastly — am I the only one here who DESPISES those weird “Mo-taur” commercials for Progressive Insurance? I hate those things with the fire of a bazillion suns.
b.t.
Totally in agreement with the Deathlok fans (like b.t., here-)-- I'm fortunate enough to have the whole, all-too-brief Astonishing Tales run. My comics-pal Bryan and I were totally blown away by it at the time-- really the perfect mash-up of monster, super-hero, and sci-fi comics at a level that was irresistible to yer average late-adolescent/early teen. I think the hook that made it stand out was that we were always inside Luther Manning's head, privy to the thoughts of the three entities that resided there (remember that?): Manning himself, who was supposed to be long-gone; the sorta-sentient A.I. (" 'Puter ") that ran the hardware; and a REALLY oddball dark-poet hybrid voice that tended to revel in the violence they visited upon folks.
Mind you, as always, it's been DECADES since I've read these books,so I might be fuzzy on the details, eh?
Regarding Steve Austin, I did love 6MDM as much as anyone-- a dependably fun, exciting well-paced and reasonably well-cast adventure show,yup. BUT--- (I've probably mentioned this 'round here before)-- even as a kid the suspension of disbelief regarding the bionic arm was more than I could yield. Unless they gave him an entire bionic spine & pelvis to go with it-- every single time he blocked a falling 1000-lb I-beam, or tree-- or lifted the rear of a car trying to make a getaway-- that very expensive limb was going to be stronger than its attachment point and tear off, or flatten him, or hit him in the face--- something like that. I feel like his design never got out of the hands of folks who would mount huge wall-televisions straight into hollow drywall without finding studs to anchor into. . .
HB
HB: Warren Ellis put an effed-up techno-horror spin on the 6MDM concept in an early issue of PLANETARY. If I remember correctly, the “Col. Austin” analogue had his spine replaced for the very reason you mention, as a reinforced anchor for the superhuman power in his prosthetic limbs, and it STILL wasn’t enough — the counter-balancing/torque ratios caused major tissue damage in his non-cybernetic parts, requiring further surgeries and constant re-adjustments, and ultimately the poor guy went berserk from the relentless pain. I can see why Martin Caidin and the 6MDM show runners went in a more hand-wavy “Suspend Disbelief” direction....
Been a long time, so I don’t remember: was Bigfoot a cyborg too, or “just” a robot? I’ve got the novelization around here somewhere but I’m too lazy to look it up.
- b.t.
b.t., I'm sure there are plenty of reasons besides laziness to not spend time digging out and checking old Six Million Dollar Man meets Big Foot novelisation (;
Yeah, John M Burns did a terrific job on The Bionic Woman in La-la-laa-la-la Look-In (sorry, whenever that mag gets mentioned I can't help but remember the jingle from the old tv ads).
Obviously there aren't that many afficiandos of 90s comics round these parts, otherwise there'd probably be long lists of comic book cyborgs...
Speaking of which, I have to admit Josh Brolin was pretty good as Cable in Deadpool 2, one of the few superhero films I enjoyed despite - or quite possibly because - I'm clueless about the comics.
And no, thats not an implied request for info on where to begin exploring the work of Rob Liefeld.
(Btw, for who anyone hasn't seen Deadpool 2, its been posted in full on Youtube)
-sean
CH47, I work for the DOT in MS. Would have loved to work for the Corps, but I’m settled in across the state from Vicksburg.
B.T.-- I feel utterly validated! Thank you for that six million dollar update. . . (Surely he would have cost more than that-- even in the early 70's ??)
Hey- another early example: Robert Culp in that excellent Outer Limits episode? Where he had a techno-hand?
Hmm- what's the difference between a cyborg and a person with hi-tech prosthetics, tho? Is there one?
HB - I figure if your mind can control the mechanics - whether the mechanics are integrated into your flesh and blood or attached - it's about the same?
Granted if the mechanics were actually grafted into your flesh, it would suck to have them ripped out of you (as opposed to someone ripping off doc-ocks arms or vultures wings), lol.
But all things considered it seems about the same to me?
Oops - in my earlier comment I mentioned the Terminator's exoskeleton but I meant his SKELETON. An exoskeleton is on the outside of the body like an insect.
Man-- there's a LOT of debate out there in fandom on what differentiates robots from cyborgs from androids-! Regarding the Terminator, there are two staunch camps: Android vs Cyborg, both with arguments to argue their case. Me, I lean towards android for him in particular (artifical frame which has biological elements overlaid-- correct? And-- unless I'm mistaken, he didn't start out life as someone else, and then was later modified, was he? Or is there a human brain/mind inside that body?). There's Youtube gold to be mind with a series called, like, "Nutty Bolts: Android, Cyborg, and Autonomous Robot Group Therapy"-- where cross-Universal near-humans get together with a therapist to talk out their anxieties. Vision, Data, Cyborg, Steve Austin, Robotman, Jocasta, Fatale (from SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE), The Terminator, Robot from Lost in Space-- man, you could get quite a crowd. . . Perhaps a core of "regulars" with a notable special guest every so often. Oh! Perhaps Doc Magnus would be the Therapist, in fact! It would be a very niche little entertainment confection, of course, but potentially quite a hoot, I bet. This rolled right off the top of my head, and already I'm loving it. . .
(Perhaps it's the multiple medications at work. . . )
HB
*note*
Please forgive the MANY MANY typos in the above post! Had about 3 things happening at once as I was wrapping it up, and didn't have a chance to proof-read--- yikes!
HB
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