Wi-Fi-in and Profilin'
Written By: Marv Wolfman
Art By: Felipe Watanabe, Daniel HDR, Julio Ferreira, Oclair Albert, Adriano Lucas, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: May 25, 2016
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: May 25, 2016
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
While I was up and down with David F. Walker's run of this book, I have to say that I really wasn't a fan of Marv Wolfman's conclusion to the Cyber Registration Act story...... which I'm still not positive if that is over because the solicits are telling me some strange shit. Besides that though, this series is kind of lackluster in that it takes a hero, who I pleaded to get a book and when he finally does, they really don't do much with him. Yeah, we've got this whole new power set for Vic, but what have we really done with it? He's shape shifted into a human a few times, but mostly when he's alone and besides for that it's been same old Cyborg solving every problem by hacking into it........ Which I'm sure will happen again here because even though Marv Wolfman created the character, that seems to be the only thing that anyone can do with him. When in doubt, hack it out. Let's jump into this penultimate issue of Cyborg before it gets a Rebirth upgrade and see what's going on with our hero and if he can quit being a one trick cybernetic pony. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Silas Stone getting a little over protective about his baby boy after he was taken by Cyber Tech Inc. in the previous issue and he wants to run a few hours of tests on him to make sure that he's completely on the up and up........ that or he's just coming up with excuses to experiment with Vic's new tech. I'll let you decide which is true because honestly it could go either way in my mind. So yeah, our issue begins with Cyborg being strapped into a device that will take twenty hours to run through all his diagnostics and other tech talk I don't understand, but what I'm getting at is we have time on our hands and so does Vic........ which pirating movies and then feeling bad about it only takes up a fraction of that time. That's where we start out with Vic's body being taken out of the game and him having some strange moral quandaries and face palming dialog....... and it continues...... well, all except the moral bit because Cyborg in my mind crosses a line when he digitally jumps into the danger zone...........DANGER ZONE!
After deciding that pirating movies to pass the time isn't something that a Justice Leaguer would do, Vic decides that he's going to explore the world wide web and see what's going on in the world........ and what's going on is some terrible shit. We've got fires breaking out in warehouses all over the world and the plane that Dr. Sarah Charles is on coming back from a hacking conference has been.... get this.... hacked and the plane is no longer in control of the pilots. This is where the story begins making me think that we don't need a physical Cyborg doing anything in our comics because he's taken right out of the picture in this issue and we only get him hacking into Sarah's plane's wi-fi, security cameras at warehouses and so on and so on....... which would be cool if hacking wasn't the fallback for every story featuring Vic Stone, but the worst thing that this issue does is make me question these so called morals that Cyborg apparently holds so high because half the issue is spent with our hero trying to figure out a connection between what's going on and a woman on Sarah's plane who is traveling from Afghanistan to Detroit..... Seriously. This is Vic's prime suspect when the only thing that he can really get is that she has a fiance in Detroit that she's trying to get to....... and that she's from Afghanistan. By the time we find out that it has nothing to do with her, Sarah has to coddle Vic about his guilt over this like he's a goddamn child. Vic's been doing this superhero thing since Darkseid first invaded Earth and the dude is still all about profiling people.
In the end, we find out that all the warehouses that are getting burned are actually storage places for illegal contraband and this entire attack was done by some digital protection racket and the reason they went after Dr. Charles' plane is because of the encryption conference she just attended that assembled to talk about ways to stop this very thing. This issue really goes nowhere though because Cyborg just sends the hacker's virus back at them and we find out that this whole ordeal only took twenty minutes....... which is kind of ridiculous since somehow Sarah was on her plane and then back at STAR Labs within that time frame..... and we leave this issue with Cyborg still hooked up to that diagnostic machine and Sarah keeping him company.
That's it for this issue of Cyborg and man was it boring as hell. We take Cyborg always fixing a situation by hacking something in the end and what we get here is an entire comic about it, while our hero just makes us shake our head because he sees a woman from the Middle East and immediately decides that she must be a terrorist........ after feeling bad about pirating movies! His priorities are way off here when it comes to moral conundrums. Even with these things going on that make this comic feel awkward and a rehash of Cyborg just doing what he does, the worst part about it was it was just boring. There was an element here, where the creative team tried to build up a sense of tension, like we were racing the clock, but it never really worked for me and by the end of the issue we find out that it all took place in twenty minutes, acting like a kind of joke about what they attempted in convey. The art was enjoyable enough and I did like how some panels played Cyborg as having a sort of Matrix code running through him when his avatar was working his way through the web, but that wasn't enough to make this comic enjoyable and the colors were really drab and that doesn't help when reading a boring story. Hopefully, we'll have a good send off with this character and his final issue of this run next month before his Rebirth hits, but if it's anything like this....... Well, maybe I'll just wait for Rebirth.
Bits and Pieces:
This issue of Cyborg was not only really boring, but it relied completely on Cyborg hacking something and that trope is getting really old....... since it seems that's his solution in every issue. If that wasn't enough we also get Cyborg coming off really odd, not only because his character makes us question our hero, but his dialog just wasn't great either. All in all, it's stories like this that make me wish that Rebirth had already started because with one more issue of Cyborg in this run, I don't know if I want to see it after this.
After deciding that pirating movies to pass the time isn't something that a Justice Leaguer would do, Vic decides that he's going to explore the world wide web and see what's going on in the world........ and what's going on is some terrible shit. We've got fires breaking out in warehouses all over the world and the plane that Dr. Sarah Charles is on coming back from a hacking conference has been.... get this.... hacked and the plane is no longer in control of the pilots. This is where the story begins making me think that we don't need a physical Cyborg doing anything in our comics because he's taken right out of the picture in this issue and we only get him hacking into Sarah's plane's wi-fi, security cameras at warehouses and so on and so on....... which would be cool if hacking wasn't the fallback for every story featuring Vic Stone, but the worst thing that this issue does is make me question these so called morals that Cyborg apparently holds so high because half the issue is spent with our hero trying to figure out a connection between what's going on and a woman on Sarah's plane who is traveling from Afghanistan to Detroit..... Seriously. This is Vic's prime suspect when the only thing that he can really get is that she has a fiance in Detroit that she's trying to get to....... and that she's from Afghanistan. By the time we find out that it has nothing to do with her, Sarah has to coddle Vic about his guilt over this like he's a goddamn child. Vic's been doing this superhero thing since Darkseid first invaded Earth and the dude is still all about profiling people.
In the end, we find out that all the warehouses that are getting burned are actually storage places for illegal contraband and this entire attack was done by some digital protection racket and the reason they went after Dr. Charles' plane is because of the encryption conference she just attended that assembled to talk about ways to stop this very thing. This issue really goes nowhere though because Cyborg just sends the hacker's virus back at them and we find out that this whole ordeal only took twenty minutes....... which is kind of ridiculous since somehow Sarah was on her plane and then back at STAR Labs within that time frame..... and we leave this issue with Cyborg still hooked up to that diagnostic machine and Sarah keeping him company.
That's it for this issue of Cyborg and man was it boring as hell. We take Cyborg always fixing a situation by hacking something in the end and what we get here is an entire comic about it, while our hero just makes us shake our head because he sees a woman from the Middle East and immediately decides that she must be a terrorist........ after feeling bad about pirating movies! His priorities are way off here when it comes to moral conundrums. Even with these things going on that make this comic feel awkward and a rehash of Cyborg just doing what he does, the worst part about it was it was just boring. There was an element here, where the creative team tried to build up a sense of tension, like we were racing the clock, but it never really worked for me and by the end of the issue we find out that it all took place in twenty minutes, acting like a kind of joke about what they attempted in convey. The art was enjoyable enough and I did like how some panels played Cyborg as having a sort of Matrix code running through him when his avatar was working his way through the web, but that wasn't enough to make this comic enjoyable and the colors were really drab and that doesn't help when reading a boring story. Hopefully, we'll have a good send off with this character and his final issue of this run next month before his Rebirth hits, but if it's anything like this....... Well, maybe I'll just wait for Rebirth.
Bits and Pieces:
This issue of Cyborg was not only really boring, but it relied completely on Cyborg hacking something and that trope is getting really old....... since it seems that's his solution in every issue. If that wasn't enough we also get Cyborg coming off really odd, not only because his character makes us question our hero, but his dialog just wasn't great either. All in all, it's stories like this that make me wish that Rebirth had already started because with one more issue of Cyborg in this run, I don't know if I want to see it after this.
4.5/10
I'm on the other bus, was fearing Cyborg was going to be the big musclehead that they showed on the cover. It was anything but that and I enjoyed the read. This issue shows the Justice League incident coordinator that no other league member can do. Now they need just need to show how he can combine the two, meathead and hacker.
ReplyDeleteI think Marv Wolfman watched The Net and Lawnmower Man while writing this and has Cyborg live by the "When in doubt, Hack it out" philosophy of life. My biggest problem, though, is that he always has Cyborg not be able to do something...until he just decides to do it. Also, I thought I was reading Cyborg, not the after-school special, "Bit Torrent: I ain't Down(loading) With That!"
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