THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: SEASON SIX #3

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: SEASON SIX #3

Since I’m apparently going to keep doing these, I thought I ought to throw in the proper credits for each issue. Make it more 'professional' looking.

Unfortunately, the rest of this will still be the random musings of a
decidedly non-professional, so, ya know, whatevs….

Besides, the credits can double as spoiler-space.

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: SEASON 6 #3

Writer: James Kuhoric
Art: Juan Antonio Ramirez
Colors: Fran Gamboa
Letters: Joshua Cozine
Publication Date: May 2014
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

The story so far….

Former OSI head Oliver Spencer has returned and made his move to
disband the Bionics project in favor of his fully robotic agent,
Maskatron. Unfortunately, Maskatron doesn’t seem to be as obedient as
Spencer hoped, and has its own ideas about how to accomplish its
mission - bringing in the Seven Million Dollar security risk, Barney
Hiller.

Steve arrived in Russia on a ‘secret’ mission only to find the Soviets
waiting for him. Someone has tipped them off.

Meanwhile, a strange, alien entity has hitched a ride to Earth on a
returning satellite and infected scientist Joan Anderson….

Now:

So Maskatron is back from his mission to get Barney, but due to damage
it’s operating independent of Spencer’s control so it tends to react
somewhat badly to potential threats, like the SWAT team that greets it
as it returns to OSI HQ. It pretty much destroys the team until
Spencer arrives to command it shut down in person.

Steve finds himself in a knock-down, drag-out fight with a giant,
Soviet, armored robot-tank, but of course he finds a way to beat it
and get away. Now he just has to make it out of Russia. Note: the base
Steve infiltrates is in Chelyabinsk, which was hit by a meteor in
February 2013. Lots of nice dash-cam videos on YouTube of that if you
haven’t seen it.

Jaime returns! She’s on the scene at Washington National Airport,
where a plane with a US senator on board has been hijacked. After the
hijacking has been dealt with, Rudy gives her the bad news about the
Bionics project, but explains that they’ll likely be re-assigned
somewhere else as opposed to cut loose from the OSI altogether.

Oscar shows up at the hospital emergency room after a call from
Barney’s wife, Carla. We find out for sure how Maskatron decided to
complete its mission as Barney is a man barely alive and now missing
his bionic arms and legs. (Lucky for him he didn’t need an eye or an
ear - that wouldn’t have been pretty.)

And police show up at Dr. Joan Anderson’s house to find out why she
hasn’t been at work only to be attacked by a Species-esque alien
version of her.

Things are, as they say, heating up.

So, cue the random musings -

Since the final seasons of their respective shows were on different
networks, it’s been a long time since Steve and Jaime were able to
interact. It’ll be nice to see them working together again. Wonder how
Steve will get along with Chris Williams
- Jaime’s semi-boyfriend from her final season?

The hijacking scene also starts with a newscast setting up the
situation. A newscast from the Peeping Blonde herself, Victoria
Webster. Webster was one of Farrah Fawcett’s three characters from the
show and this is the type of cameo I love. So often on episodic TV
we’re introduced to characters that by all rights we should see again
in our heroes lives, but it’s not practical due to having to bring
actors in again for a thirty second scene. Comics don’t have to worry
about that so if you need a newscast, let Webster deliver it. If Steve
is chilling between missions, let him be playing tennis with Fred
Sloan. I hope to see more of this. (I *really* hope to see crossovers
with other shows/characters of the time snuck in but that’s just a
thing with me.)

Still not sold on the art style, but I can’t say it’s bad, just not to
my taste. I think there’s a bit of a manga influence and I’m not a fan
of that. And I’m really not sure why Spencer is always wearing a hat.
Pretty sure he never wore one in the pilot movie. I suspect it’s a way
to cue us that it’s him, but I think a better likeness to Darren
McGavin could cover that. Still, those are just personal quibbles. It
does the job and is dynamic and gets the point across. And it’s
entirely possible it will grow on me. It’s happened with other artists
before.

The writing, the part I was most worried about when the title was
announced, has continued to impress. Aside from the changes necessary
due to the format (that I mentioned in earlier write-ups) it’s pretty
easy to hear the characters I grew up with in there and that’s what I
really wanted.

Overall, I’m still really happy with how the series is going hope we
get season’s seven, eight, nine….

Also wonder if we’ll be getting a separate ‘The Bionic Woman: Season
Four’ comic. The way this one is going, I’d be on board with that.

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: SEASON SIX #1

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: SEASON SIX #1

(originally posted on Tumblr on 20 April 2014).

It occurs to me I’ve done write-ups of the first two issues of Dynamite’s THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN - SEASON SIX comics so I figured I’ll post ‘em here and probably keep going as long as I’m reading the series.

SPOILERS abound, of course, so I’ll toss in a few lines of nonsense to give you time to skip past this without accidentally seeing something you would rather not if you want to check it out with virgin eyes.

See, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (SMDM going forward) is my show. I don’t mean that in any sort of competitive fanboy “my collection/trivia knowledge is better than yours” sense, just that for as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the show and watched it whenever I could.

I suppose that technically there was a time in my life that I was unaware of the adventures of Steve Austin - the World’s First Bionic Man (tm) but obviously those days were wholly unremarkable and not worth recalling.

I’m also…not a big fan of Dynamite’s handling of most of the properties they deal with, which is sad because they seem intent on licensing every cool character ever.

So, those are two of the things I was dealing with which factor into my judgement of the book, about which I’ll begin talking shortly.

Spoiler Space is over now.

Dynamite’s new take on Steve Austin is actually going back to the original version as brought to life by Lee Majors on March 7th, 1973 when the first of three tele-movies premiered before the show went to series. The series lasted five seasons, spun off THE BIONIC WOMAN (BW going forward) which went for three, and enjoyed a successful toy line and became a pop culture landmark. Three reunion tele-movies followed, between 1987 and 1994.

Dynamite had previously published two series, Bionic Man and The Bionic Woman, which were based on a Kevin Smith script for a possible movie. The less said about all of that, the better.

The new series bills itself as ‘Season Six,’ picking up after the end of the television series, which means it should be set in the 1978-79 time frame.

Writer Jim Kuhoric has stated in interviews that he is a big fan of the original shows. I hear that all the time and don’t really believe it’s always true (and even if it is - being a fan is no guarantee of quality as a stroll thru fanfiction.net will prove) but in this case, it seems to be the case. Certainly the first issue has enough nods to the original series to bear that out. In short order we’re introduced not only to the expected characters of Steve, his OSI boss Oscar Goldman, and bionic doctor extraordinaire Rudy Wells, but we also get a cameo of Oscar’s favorite secretary Peggy Callahan and are reintroduced to Oliver Spencer - the original head of the Office of Strategic Operations and played by the always awesome Darren McGavin from the original pilot. (Fun trivia - McGavin and Richard Anderson, who played Oscar Goldman starting with the second tele-movie - appeared together in the second Kolchak tele-movie THE NIGHT STRANGLER.)

Spencer was the one who spearheaded the project to turn Steve into a cyborg, tho he wasn’t totally pleased with the results. Steve’s independence and stubbornness got on his nerves. He even wondered if there was some way to turn Steve ‘off’ between missions. Now, he has the obedient operative he wants.

Maskatron was a robotic character originally introduced into Kenner’s SMDM toy line in the 1970s and it finally makes its official appearance in a SMDM story here. Based on the designs of Dr. Dolenz (the ‘Robot Maker’ from three episodes of the series, portrayed by Henry Jones), M.A.S.K.A.T.Ron is the weapon Spencer always wanted, and he’s convinced the powers that be to take away funding for the bionics project in favor of his robotic agent.

While Oscar is dealing with that news, Steve and Rudy are off the coast of Florida looking for a downed satellite. After dealing with the Russian Venus Probe (the ‘Death Probe’ of two, two-part stories from the series) the US government fast-tracked their own Venus probe, sent both to study the planet and to keep an eye out for any other Soviet activity. It turns out that a strange radioactive cloud changed course to intercept the probe when it approached Venus and all contact was lost until suddenly it showed up back on Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic.

That’s the basics of the plot of the first issue. It could be an interesting setup but it’s too early to really be able to judge. Obviously, as a fanboy I liked the callbacks to the series (the wonder-drug Neotraxin from the Bigfoot episodes is also name-checked) tho I’m a little worried that he’s going to front load the series with too many of these. The promo for the second issue already has the Seven Million Dollar Man being brought into the mix.

While I couldn’t “hear” the actor’s voices while reading it, nothing hit me as massively out of character.

The art by Juan Antonio Ramirez is okay. I’m not huge on the style and am pretty sure I wouldn’t recognize Steve if someone had shown me a non-bionic panel with no context. Oscar and Rudy are a little better. Callahan, however, is portrayed in her one panel as a stereotypical leggy blond, which might fit the seventies setting but bears no resemblance to the series portrayal at all. It would also be nice is someone would give the artist some photo reference for Oscar’s office. Again, I’m a fanboy.

For a Dynamite title, it’s definitely better than I’d expected. Again, one issue is too early to offer a fair evaluation but nothing really torqued me off so that’s something.

Dynamite's THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN page.

"If it aint one thing, it's another."

Man...what a day. And what a first new test post.

See, I actually had a two day weekend this time around, which hasn't been happening a lot. And I didn't have any real plans for either of those days, which also hasn't been happening a lot. 'Nothing to do, nowhere to go' and all that good stuff.

So I decide to do a little cleaning up. Next thing I know there's all sorts of water coming out from under the sink. And now I'm spending the afternoon watching the maintenance guys trying to figure out what sort of mess some other person had made of the pipes.

Should've known if I was actually in a mood to clean that meant something bad was going to happen. Pretty much killed my cleaning mood, that's for sure.

So, that's been my day so far. At least the sink was clean.

Meanwhile... I finally got around to picking up "Star Trek: Elite Force II" and found a Buckaroo Banzai reference. The dedication plaque for the USS Dallas includes the ever-popular "No matter where you go, there you are" quote, continuing a long line of BB mentions in Trek stuff. Cool people, those Trekkers. I should have a screen cap up on the World Watch site this weekend if nothing else blows up on me.

Looks like I can put it here, so I'll try that:



There'll be a larger one posted for the site when I get that done. Have to remember to put in links to this thing, too. I've no doubt I'm typing into the wind here, but I might as well let the 2 or 3 people who check out the site know this is here.