Of all the DC characters shaped by tragedies in their past, none were literally shaped into the hero they are quite like Vic Stone, better known as Cyborg.
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in 1980, Cyborg started as your average teen who rebels against his parents’ wishes and chooses athletics over academics. After a visit to his super genius parents’ lab, everything goes topsy-turvy – as they seemingly always do in comic books – his mother is killed by an inter-dimensional monster and he’s left barely alive. His father tries to pick up the pieces and takes what’s left of his son and builds him into a 75% machine, 25% man.
Unlike Robocop or the Six Million Dollar Man, Cyborg doesn’t start out as a super-hero. Stone is forced to return to his usual routine with the looks of Quasimodo and the body of the Terminator as if nothing happened. Kept out of athletics due to unfairness and shunned by his classmates because of his looks, Cyborg is a testament to the adversity many faces in their teen years.
Cyborg also boasts a genius-level intellect – even before the accident that led him to become mostly machine – and an adaptable body allowing him to modify himself to the needs of any situation; as a human Swiss Army Knife crossed with an iPad crossed with a missile.
Cyborg’s first appearance came with the creation of the “New Teen Titans” by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in DC Comics Presents: #26. This issue, led by a Green Lantern and Superman story, also saw the first appearance of other noted Teen Titan alums, Starfire and Raven.
DC Comics has been giving a big and much deserved push to Cyborg in the last two years. He had his first solo series release in 2015 and he will be part of the DC Expanded Universe as a member of the Justice League in the upcoming film simply entitled Justice League. And rumor has it Cyborg set to star opposite The Flash in a stand-alone movie.
Things are coming up Cyborg, tells us what you love about Cyborg in the comments below!
