Member Reviews
My actual rating for this is 4.5 Stars
I really liked this take on events! Can't wait to read more about what happens to cyborg and his father.
Well written but not intriguing enough to warrant a comic line for this character. He is supporting cast at best.
Cyborg is having nightmares. He is also questioning whether he is himself or just a machine imitation of himself. And then just when he is getting a handle on himself, he is forced back into questioning himself and his father when facing Killg%re, his father is kidnapped and replaced with a replicant and then asked to help create a cyborg. When will he figure out what is true and what is a false memory?
Six issues of Cyborg moping around wondering whether he's man or machine. Sounds exciting, right?There's some mystery bad guy who's replaced Cyborg's dad but he doesn't do anything. Almost half the book is Cyborg's dreams or Cyborg trapped in his head while he fights off a computer virus. This may be the most uninteresting book DC has ever produced. Paul Pelletier's art is really wasted on this book.
Disappointing. We get a recap in memories of Cyborg's origin story. Then Cyborg discovering that his father is worried whether he saved his son or has simply created a machine with no humanity. This thread is quite an interesting idea, but I don't think it was fully explored before it was buried under the story of the machines that want Cyborg to denounce his humanity and join them. There are several story threads here that aren't finished in this collection, in fact nothing is really resolved, which is a disappointment. I like to have some part of the story arc resolved even if we are left on a cliffhanger on another part.
Artwork: This started off well (although Vic looked older than 21 to me). A different style to the type that I really like but it seemed to suit the story and characters. Then the artist changed and in the last two issues (especially the second half of the final issue) the artwork got much more carton-like and didn't even try to emulate the style in the first four issues.
Will I pick up the next collection? yes, probably, but only because I want to know what happens.
Yawn. Well, there's little else to do in response to a baddy robot who can read every electrical synapse in Cyborg's mind and access his full memory, but who waffles on in full Basil Exposition mode in English speech. Not that his verbiage was interrupting much – a doubt for Cyborg and some mysterious threats were the limit of it. But then comes more of the Rebirth about this volume, with Cy looking more human, finding people from his past that get in the way of his present, and liking, er, jazz. Hmmm… But then comes a complete switch to Cartoon Network-level artwork, and pretty much any interest goes out the window. How can we expect a coherent story when the artwork changes so suddenly, and so awfully? And yes, we indeed get into a goddamned helluva mess by the end, with the artwork yet one further step down the quality scale, meaning this is added to the list of DC titles I might have to consider abandoning til the next reboot.
From what I read I liked this snd the direction it was going. Didn't get to finish due to time running out.
ARC from Netgalley.
The soul of a man in a machine OR a machine pretending to be a man? This is the philosophical question that Victor has to deal with in this Volume.
Starting off with a battle against new foe Malware (while also recapping his origin story), Cyborg comes across a recording from his father expressing doubts over his decision to save his son. This really hits home and starts the mental conundrum that echoes throughout the book. But sinister machines won't let Victor go too far to his human side. A mysterious enemy has sent out destructive combative robots to show Cyborg the error of his humanity.
Also... a forgotten love of his life is trying to show him how to relax, with the help of jazz, and a friendly old blind man.
The Volume ends on a cliffhanger. Dr. Stone (his father) has been replaced by a cyborg clone and the process has begun on the creation of a female Cyborg. How will Victor escape this one?
Great story, but can we please settle on an artist for the title? Still... recommend.
'Cyborg, Volume 1: The Imitation of Life' has a clever title that has at least a couple different meanings.
Vic "Cyborg" Stone has a crisis of his very nature when he finds out some things about himself that had been hidden. He is also attacked by a villain named Kilg%re, which I just pronounced as Kilgore, so the name felt like a lame attempt at hacker-speak or something. Vic trouble getting along with his distant father, but his father is acting even more distant these days. Vic also finds himself infected with some malware which could be dangerous for himself and those around him.
I like this character, but it's hard to find interesting stories about him, including this one. It's not helped along by some of the mediocre art, especially in the last issue in the collection. There is some interesting things in this, and I'm looking forward to seeing Cyborg on the big screen, but this story left me underwhelmed.
I received a review copy of this graphic novel from DC Entertainment and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.
Cyborg is a fantastic character, so I was excited to check out the latest relaunch of his solo series. Victor Stone has a traumatic backstory – one that unfolds as throughout this graphic novel. It was confusing at times, trying to figure out if the scene is a flashback, dream-like sequence, or presently unfolding. There is a lot of story and action packed into this first installment. It also got very wordy at times, and I found myself wanting to skim a bit to get back to the meat of the story. The artwork varied. Sometimes it was too dark and not easy to see what was going on. Other times, it was great and bold and fit the mood. There are some really great twists to the story and a cliffhanger ending that definitely made me eager to read the next in the series.
Oh my gaaawwwwd, I can’t get over how tedious this book was! Seriously, it shouldn’t take two weeks to read a superhero comic but this was so shitty I kept finding reasons to read other stuff over this garbage!
Nobody’s favourite Justice League member, Vic Stone aka Cyborg, fights robotic monsters. One of them’s called Kilg%re which takes the prize for worst-named villain of the year! How do you say that name? In my head it’s “Kilgore” for readability but I guess the way it’s written is “Kilgpercentagere”? Awful! We also get Cyborg’s dreary origin story again. Yay…
Vic is such a dull character. Some of the blame lies with writer John Semper Jr but I’ve read another Cyborg book before, David Walker’s failed attempt, and that was awful too. Some characters just aren’t meant to have solo titles and Cyborg is definitely one of them! None of the characters here are remotely compelling though and the blind black jazz guy was an embarrassing cliché.
At its core, the book has an interesting philosophical quandary: is Vic a human or a machine that thinks it’s a human? Shame it’s not addressed! In its place is the usual superhero crap of hero punching villain, snore. One forgettable storyline, when Vic’s software is compromised by a virus and he starts attacking ordinary people, even makes the argument, inadvertently, that Vic is more of a liability in general than a useful hero!
Cyborg, Volume 1: The Imitation of Life was overwritten and beyond boring. Purely for being so monotonous and taking me the longest to read, this is the worst of the Rebirth bunch - and it hasn’t been a stellar line either! I genuinely don’t know who would find this drivel worth reading. Unless you’re looking for a sleeping aid, don’t do it!
Is Cyborg who he thinks he is? Is he all machine who's been tricked into thinking he's a man, or is he truly still part human and part machine? Those are the main questions in the TPB.
It all starts when he and a monster called Malware fight all the way into an air-gapped room and while defeating the bad guy Victor finds out something he wishes he hadn't.
We also get an interesting nightmare story, and we get to see much more with Victor and Sarah, which was cool.
Of course, there was the ending too. I'm not sure I'm jazzed about that ending, but, we'll see.
I got this ARC through Netgalley on behalf of DC Entertainment.
It was fun reading about a superhero that doesn't get a lot of recognition usually. I also enjoyed the justice league entering for a few scenes, but not in a way that hijacks the story away from Cyborg. My one complaint would be that art style changes so drastically for the last chapter that it should have either been the same art the whole way through the book, or leave that chapter for the next book.
Like some of the Rebirth titles, it's not an origin story, but a continuation of Cyborg and the things he's going through. In my opinion, Cyborg has been hard to pin down as a character, going from Teen Titans to the Justice League, at times it's tricky to see where he fits. But in this story, he fits fine by himself, asking the big questions now that he's half human and half robot. This was a well written, well drawn storyline, and the only major complaint I have against it is that I want to see what happens next!
The Rebirth Cyborg Vol. 1: The Imitation of Life spends five of its early pages in a jazz club, and the book is rife with enough little moments like these to mark John Semper Jr.'s Cyborg as worth watching. The emphasis on race and on the city of Detroit distinguishes the title as something different and important among DC's publishing line.
Over the years I've found that it's difficult for authors to develop a strong Cyborg centered story. I'm not sure why this is the case, since he is a complex hero with capabilities of traveling across the universe in a second and controlling any piece of technology, but for some reason authors feel the need to connect him to his human roots more than make him an epic hero.
I like the idea of making Cyborg connect with his Victor Stone humanity and find that he isn't just a superhero, but still a man, but this leaves the stories being predictable and unexciting. I would love to see an author develop a strong rogues gallery for Cyborg and develop it over a series of 30 or so issues and, although I think that's what John Semper is trying, I don't think he's going about it properly.
If offered the chance to read vol. 2, I will probably do so, but at this point in the series, I would not recommend Cyborg to any of my friends or fellow comic book readers. Disappointingly enough, this is a passable Rebirth title.
A decent Cyborg story-- some interesting twists and turns, and it leaves me wanting more. I'm really not sure about [spoiler] the idea of this leading into a female cyborg being made as well but I suppose they could do something interesting with that. I just get tired of so many female heroes just being the female analog to an already existing male character. [/spoiler]
I requested this book for by brother, who's currently reading the DC Rebirth comics. He enjoyed this immensely, and he read it in under an hour, which for him, shows that this book is worth reading.
The art was well drawn, the emotions in the characters were forefront, the villain was terrifying, everything we expected from this comic was there, both above and beyond our expectations
Victor Stone is Cyborg.
Teen Titan
Member of The Justice League
Hero.
But is he a man in a machine shell?
Or a machine that thinks it's a man?
He has to look deep inside himself to see if
he finds a soul or a hard drive.
All while battling threats that seem
to me monstrous versions of his own worst fears.
That he is just a machine, his humanity gone.
Which side of Victor will be there at the end?
Man or Machine?