Cyborg #4 Review and *SPOILERS*

A Nightmare At STAR Labs 2: Cyborg's Revenge

Written By: John Semper Jr.
Art By: Timothy Green II, Joseph Silver, Guy Major, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: November 2, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Cyborg's still having that same old problem where he's not sure whether he's a man or a machine.......... yeah, I know it's the same old story whenever anyone starts writing for our techno titan, but at least this time it's a little different to the point where I don't loath reading it....... I know, not the best vote in confidence, but Cyborg has at least been interesting, especially since we saw in the last issue that Dr. Silas Stone blocked some of our hero's memories when he was originally brought online and while these memories might unlock a terrible truth....... well, things are already terrible because somebody has taken control of Cyborg's body while his mind was shutdown to retrieve these memories so now it's a fight with the scientists at STAR Labs against a rampaging Victor Stone and a fight between Vic and the Justice League as he's trapped inside of his mind.  Let's jump into this issue and find out if Cyborg can tell himself that it's only a dream or if he'll go all A Nightmare On Elm St. on us and die in real life because he happened to die in his dream.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins thankfully with Cyborg realizing that he can't be fighting the Justice League on Mars because for one, that shit doesn't make any sense and for two, how could some of these fools be breathing if they're on Mars?  With this realization, Cyborg turns the tables on his subconscious teammates and opens a boom tube to Apokolips, forcing the Justice League to take on Darkseid, while Cyborg figures out how to escape his mind.  The rest feels kind of cliched though because if Cyborg wants to unlock his mind, he has to traverse an actual maze within him to get to a strange voice that's telling our hero that she can help him.

Along the way, the Justice League return and Vic realizes that he must have been affected by a virus from when he fought Malware back in his Rebirth issue and with this simple realization, the Justice League turn into actual worm monsters because why wouldn't a computer virus look like a goddamn nightmare creature?   The rest of the issue becomes all about Vic taking these worms out as they hide in his most painful memories, forcing our hero to relive things he's blocked out........ until he just kills them and then moves on.  Eventually Vic finds the source of the voice that said it could help him and it's apparently the person that he loved the most but because the mind is a funny thing, Cyborg isn't able to see the face of the person because he must be subconsciously blocking it out so that he can keep her protected.......... which is weird because this figure is able to give him back all the memories that were taken from him when is father decided that maybe Vic doesn't need to know everything about what happened to his mother, his past girlfriends or even his accident that led to him becoming a superhero, but even though all these things were given back, for some reason this figure still remains an enigma.  With his memories back, that contain his emotions for some reason, this allows Victor to fully unlock his humanity and become even more powerful, at least in the eyes of his mind and with that Cyborg overcomes his nightmare world.

In the end, Cyborg comes to and realizes that he's caused a shit-load of damage while he was asleep and even choked out Sarah Charles, who was trying to get close to him to download a program to shut down his defenses and things might get weird between the two because while she runs off scared, when Vic later goes to her apartment to apologize, we find out after he leaves that Sarah is the person who Vic used to be in a relationship with and it's her that he's trying to protect by forgetting her....... for some reason.  

That's it for this issue of Cyborg and I found this issue a bit silly with all the traversing the labyrinth that is the mind ideas coming out of it because it just boiled down to Cyborg battling actual worm monsters in order to retrieve his memories and escape his mental prison.  It was a fun premise, but just didn't come across as well as it could have and it does little to move our story forward in finding out who Dr. Stone's double is and what he actually wants from Cyborg, but it does give us a bunch of backstory into what Malware was actually up to and that Sarah Charles and Vic were actually a thing before his accident.  As for the art, well I didn't really care for any of it when it had the Justice League featured, but I was pleasantly surprised when the art started getting better and better as the issue went on.  Ultimately, this wasn't that interesting of an issue, but there are some decent points within it that made this book worth reading, I just hope that we stop backtracking and get going with this story.

Bits and Pieces:

Cyborg spends the majority of this issue battling his inner demons and even some that were put there back in the Rebirth issue and while the concept seems kind of cool, the overall delivery of it just came off underwhelming and I found myself bored.  There are some decent revelations in this issue, but nothing about what we've been dealing with previously with the main threat of this series so far.

6.5/10