THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: FALL OF MAN

 

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: FALL OF MAN

Writer: Van Jensen

Artist: Ron Salas

Colors:Mike Atiyeh & Caitlin McCarthy

Letters: Taylor Esposito

Publication Date: 2016

Published by Dynamite Entertainment

 

 

Okay, I was actually going to take a break from The Six Million Dollar Man and/or Bigfoot stuff but I haven't finished the book I'm currently working on and kinda zoned out during the movie I was watching, so I dug out my trade paperback collection of this other SMDM title from the folks at Dynamite.

 

Should be a quick one....

 

 

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: FALL OF MAN is another continuation from Dynamite of the original bionic series, but it's not a follow-up to their "Season Six" series.

Set in 1979, it starts with our bionic hero, Steve Austin, regaining consciousness in mid-air amidst the debris of the plane hurtling towards Earth. At first, he assumes he's in a recurring dream he has about the accident that led to his becoming the world's first bionic man (handily giving new folks a capsule origin story) but a mysterious, apparently profane, voice in his head assures him it's no dream and he's got only seconds to figure out a way to survive.

 

Since this is only the opening pages, suffice to say he does survive, tho not without getting quite roughed up. When he regains consciousness the next time, he's safely back at the OSI with all-new bionics replacing the damaged set. He's also still got the voice in his head, and at its urging he doesn't tell anyone about it.

 

Barney Hiller (formerly Miller), the Seven Million Dollar Man, is also around, having been returned to full bionic strength yet again despite his previous problems. Steve calls him "the only other not-quite-human out there" which makes me wonder what happened to Jaime.

 

The voice downloads an OSI memo into Steve's brain which indicates he's just the first person to survive bionic reconstruction and not the actual first attempt. To get at the truth, he breaks into Oscar's office and finds evidence of dozens of failed experiments, all ending with the death of their subjects. He's caught, escapes and at the end of the first chapter is attacked by a group of Ninja.

 

Yeah, Ninja. And a dude who can shoot frickin' laser beams out of his eyes shows up to help Steve.

About those Ninja....

Kevin Smith has talked about the script he wrote for the reboot. I can't find the video right now (at 3:30am) but he stated something like he liked the show, liked being asked to take a crack at it, but just really didn't have anything to say and wrote a lazy script. How lazy? It included Ninja. I've read the script - it's out there on the web, of course, and I have to agree with him. So, throwing Ninja in at the end of the first issue also kinda lost me.

 

End part one.

What follows afterwards is Steve on the run from the OSI, hooking up with some people who promise they can make him fully human again if he'll help stop the OSI from creating a cyborg army, fighting man-made monsters and Barney Hiller, and basically not acting a whole lot like the Steve Austin I remember. He clams up about the voice in his head when he wakes up in the OSI, but opens right up about it to these strangers as soon as he meets them, for example.

That would be my biggest problem with this series - Steve not being the character I remember. Overall, it's a decent series, with nice art by Salas (including a fun issue that's one big chase on a train, drawn basically as one long panel - I liked that idea) but it seemed like it would be more appropriate either taking place early in the series run when Steve was more conflicted about being bionic, or maybe in Dynamite's original, updated BIONIC MAN series, based on Kevin Smith's abandoned reboot script. I had too much trouble with Steve just going along with mystery-voice to really be comfortable with the rest of the series. Not bad, but as I've said in most every other of my 'bionic comic' reviews, I'm a pretty die-had fan and am stupidly picky about what they do with my heroes.

Luckily, the next bionic-related series worked much better for me. I'll get around to spouting off about that one later, trust me.