Kevin Smith's the Bionic Man Volume 1: Some Assembly Required

The Bionic Man #1-10

by Kevin Smith, Jonathan Lau (Artist)

We Can Rebuild Him! Steve Austin is back and acclaimed filmmaker Kevin Smith unleashes his high-octane vision in this new series from Dynamite. Smith unleashes The Bionic Man into the 21st century as only he can, with an innovative take on this classic character that will show you The Bionic Man with a whole new set of powers and abilities - not to mention enemies! Kevin Smith is joined by Phil Hester, artist Jonathan Lau, and cover artist/character designer Alex Ross (the team that brought you the new Green Hornet series). This tradepaperback collects the entire critically acclaimed 10-issue series, along with a complete cover gallery.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Science Fiction, Superheroes, Fantasy

248 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2012

About the author

Kevin Patrick Smith is an American screenwriter, director, as well as a comic book writer, author, and actor. He is also the co-founder, with Scott Mosier, of View Askew Productions and owner of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash comic and novelty store in Red Bank, New Jersey. He also hosts a weekly podcast with Scott Mosier known as SModcast. He is also known for participating in long, humorous Q&A Sessions that are often filmed for DVD release, beginning with An Evening with Kevin Smith.

His films are often set in his home state of New Jersey, and while not strictly sequential, they do frequently feature crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon in what is known by fans as the "View Askewniverse", named after his production company View Askew Productions. He has produced numerous films and television projects, including Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Kevin Smith's Green Hornet comic, Dynamite took a script Smith wrote in the 90's while making Mallrats and turned it into a comic. Coincidentally, I was just listening to Kevin Smith talk about it today on a podcast. Universal gave him the feedback that it reads like a comic book. Kevin thought that was great praise, but at the time, eh, not so much. So years later Phil Hester broke the book down into panels which Jonathon Lau drew.

The Good: All of the meat of the original series is here. Steve is still a test pilot. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster. The only thing missing is Oscar Goldman's exploding briefcase. Even Maskatron is in here with a name change.

The Bad: I found the story a little too drawn out at 10 issues. Steve Austin felt overly macho for modern times. He was also upgraded to the point that he was a basically a robot, a way too powerful robot to be interesting.

The Ugly: The villain only needed a mustache to twirl.

[Peter Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

It turns out, as Sam said in his review, that this was a 90's Kevin Smith screenplay adapted into comic book form some 10 years later.

Quote: "True story: when I turned in a script for The Six Million Dollar Man back in '98, there was an exec who dismissed it as being more like a comic book than a movie."

Interesting stuff. Kinda the same treatment given to George Lucas' original Star Wars screenplay.

I like this idea. There are some movies out there that'll never get made, because they're expensive or made by the wrong people at the wrong time. But I'd love a whole series of graphic novels based on screenplays that never made it to film.

The ones I wanna see most?

Beetlejuice 2: Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian
Yes, the sequel to Beetlejuice that never happened. Kind of on purpose.

The story goes that Tim Burton wasn't too hot on doing a squeakwel, so when he was asked to pitch one, he basically came up with the laziest, most-asinine idea he could think of, which was to superimpose Beetlejuice in Hawaii and have basically the same story but with more surfing.

I'm not unhappy that this movie was never made, but I'm down for seeing what would have been.

Jodorowski's Dune
If you haven't seen that documentary yet, totally do it.

The entire storyboard exists in graphic novel form already.


Why the hell can't we put this out? I'm into it, and what I say is very important. To everyone.

Sovereign
Supposedly there's a script floating around out there about a guy who goes to space to destroy a sentient spaceship that killed his wife. This sounds totally awesome.

Gladiator 2
Hear me out.

Gladiator did its thing, and then they wanted to do it again. So they hired none other than Nick Cave to come up with a screenplay that not only provided the sequel's meat, but also explained away that whole thing where Maximus was, you know, dead.

Well, he did it. Viewers would find Maximus fighting gods in the afterlife, he'd be reincarnated as immortal, and he'd go on to just fight and fight and fight his way through time, wedging his sandal right up time's ass all the way up to the current day.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is a profoundly stupid idea. But it would be a great read.

Kevin Smith's Superman
The project that never was, I'd love to see what Kevin Smith and Time Burton's Superman would have looked like. Honestly, I feel like, at the time, there was a lot of trepidation about whether those two dudes were the right ones for the job, but in hindsight, with the shitty Supermen we've gotten in more recent times, I don't see how it could've caused any harm. And maybe what Superman really needs is a fanboy treatment.

Silver Surfer
With a script by J. Michael Stracizinsksiyfdsicsiuasdihjkcjzxh, I'd be down to see it switched over to comics format.

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the initial gore-fest, all seems normal in the life of Steve Austin. Everything changes after a crash leaves him without three limbs and declared officially dead. I enjoyed the attention to detail in the bionic limbs, for example how the skeleton has to be reinforced to sustain superhuman stress-levels. You can't lift a car with strong-enough arms if your spine breaks in the process. There is also an emotional side to the story concerning his fiancee. The villain threatens to use his superior strength to destroy Austin, but the latter never gives up.

Colonel Steve Austin is the best test pilot in the airforce. He is also annoyingly arrogant and on his last test flight before retirement. The flight goes horribly wrong with several systems failing in his aircraft. He barely survives after receiving multiple wounds that leave him without an eye, an arm and both legs. Upon waking up Austin feels great anguish and wants to kill himself.

Meanwhile a series of O.S.I. facilities researching bionic equipment are hit by an experienced, superpowered, sword-wielding man named Hull - their own creation. In each case the culprit gets away with classified data after killing all employees. He gives the tech to Russians who intend to build fully-automated constructs and uses it himself for his own army.

The O.S.I. director chooses Austin to be their next subject, to be rebuilt with bionic limbs and sent against Hull. Oscar, Austin's friend and an O.S.I. employee, is unable to prevent this. Instead he avocates for it to give his friend a chance at a normal life. Austin reluctantly agrees to the procedure and, given its total success, agrees to work for O.S.I.

After a failed first mission during an international robotics conference where a speaker called Genndy Leonov is the target, Austin is sent straight to Hull's mountain fortress where he has to go through Hull's cyborgs before he meets the man himself. Austin gets imprisoned and Hull tries to win him over without success. Then Hull leaves Austin with a timed nuclear device and attacks the US capitol with EMP devices and his cyborg army. Austin finally defeats Hull by transfering into him the virus that was meant as a failsafe.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kevin Smith wrote a script for The 6 Million Dollar Man which was going to be a movie back in the 90s but was never made. The script has languished unread and unproduced for years, much like his Green Hornet script, and, like the Green Hornet script, Smith has handed it over to Phil Hestor and Jonathan Lau to turn into a comic book for publishers Dynamite Entertainment.

I was never a fan of the cheesy 70s TV show; in fact I never saw a single episode, I just saw clips on Youtube recently and it was all slow-motion shots of middle-aged portly men in track suits jumping to weird sound effects - these guys were supposed to be state of art bionic men?! Well thankfully Smith puts it right in his book and the Steve Austin in this story is awesome. He's mostly bionic so can do all manner of Superman-type things like run faster than cars, leap incredible heights, fight with enhanced strength, and so on.

Smith is faithful to fans of the series so the title sequence of the TV show is incorporated into the book along with the famous red track suit and the words "We can rebuild him...stronger...faster...better".

My big complaint about the book is that it's just so formulaic and predictable. Once Steve Austin becomes the Bionic Man, the story follows the traditional hero arc we've all seen before: hero explores his powers, villain does the same, there's some romance between the hero and his lady, hero and villain fight for first time and hero loses, villain sets his master plan to take over the world into motion, hero fights villain second time and wins, hero and lady drive off into sunset (in this book, literally). Extend this over nearly 300 pages and "Bionic Man" is a bit of a drag to read.

Also some of the superhero stuff Austin performs would look more impressive on screen as you can't appreciate his speed, etc. on the page quite as much, nor do his bionic parts look as good as I expect it would have looked in cinemas. Then there's the fact that Austin has been supplanted in the 21st century by another man/machine hero, Iron Man. Iron Man is the character we all want to see more of, not an army colonel cyborg. "The Bionic Man" feels like a relic of a bygone era that we've all passed and moved onto something better.

But it's not a bad read; I think it's great that Smith's scripts are being published as entertaining comics so that fans of his can read what would otherwise be unknown. Smith's done a decent job of rebooting the character it's just I felt that "The Bionic Man" was a bit generic in scope and story, and too long by half. That said, here's hoping his Superman script gets the comic book treatment - giant spiders!

[Hobart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---
I was a big fan of The Six Million Dollar Man as a kid, and when I got a little older I stumbled onto -- and devoured (repeatedly) -- Martin Caidin's Cyborg. Throw in a strong appreciation for Smith's work? And I'm clearly the target audience for this (so why did it take me 3+ years to read it? Good question).

The main story hasn't changed: Steve Austin is a test-pilot, horrifically injured -- almost killed -- when a test flight goes wrong. A team of experts save his life, rebuild him with bionics, and set him loose fighting for truth, justice, and the American way and so on.

The story was nothing special -- good, solid action/adventure story. There were a couple of nice twists on the TV show's story/characters. Just enough to keep it updated and fresh. I'd have appreciated something closer to Cyborg, but I understand why they made the choices they made. Austin goes up against his bionic predecessor, who has gone rogue and now is running around attacking and raiding technology companies. The battle scenes may have been a bit too big and epic -- but they fit in with the current cinema trends, so, I guess they worked.

I was sure I'd seen Jonathan Lau's art somewhere before, but from what I can tell, I haven't. Which is a shame -- it's great. I'm not going to say that it's my favorite comic art -- but it's exactly what I want comic art to look like. Which seems like a contradiction, but let's move on. Yeah, some of the gestures are over-done, and a couple of the men are just too huge. But otherwise, dynamic, easy to tell character-from-character, nice detail, overall very attractive. I'd be willing to give a book a second look just because of his art in the future.

There are some nice references -- visual and verbal -- to the TV series that are pretty seamlessly worked in. Which I appreciated -- looks like the next volume will be less subtle about it (which is not necessarily bad). I'm not going to say this was a great comic that leaves me chomping at the bit for the next, but it was worth the time and entertaining. Not much more to ask for.

[Nikki in Niagara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reason for Reading: I loved the six million dollar man as a kid. Had to read this.

The Bionic Man still costs $6 million, only with the addendum of /per day. This is a serious re-imagining of how Colonel Steve Austin became the Bionic Man and his first assignment. When most trade collections contain 5 comic issues, we are getting good bang for our buck here with the complete first 10-issue series combined in this trade edition. I enjoyed every minute of it. Everything fans loved about the past show is still here, minus the cheese. Steve has a red tracksuit for fan's to savour that iconic look, though he barely wears it. Jamie is his fiance, thankfully, so we are spared re-running the agony of that old love story. Steve is a tough old guy, older than he would have been in the TV series but not too much so. The author has managed to maintain the same type of sarcastic, snide, tongue-in-cheek without being rude humour that the original character had. This makes him totally lovable and I'm hooked. Tons of action, quite gruesome at parts, the main characters are given some background and one looks forward to getting to know them even better. As far as art, the artist hasn't tried to make the characters look like the actors from TV, though he has kept them the same physical types. The only one who actually reminded me of his TV counterpart was Oscar Goldman. If you were a fan of the show back in the '70s, this modern adaptation is sure to please!

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

I feel I should point out that I have never seen The Six Million Dollar Man so I had no preconceptions going into this graphic novel.

Decent storyline, if somewhat predictable at times. I enjoyed the artwork, especially at the end of the novel as the full page portraits were fantastic with extremely intricate detail. I also found some of the dialogue to be rather funny with some tongue-in-cheek jokes; made me chuckle on more than one occasion.

Overall an enjoyable read and I look forward to reading more from Smith.

An advance reader copy was kindly supplied by the publisher through Netgalley.

[E.R. Torre · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw comixology had this book on sale, it was an easy decision to buy it. I heard of Kevin Smith writing, in the 1990's, a screenplay for a never made movie adaptation of the classic (to those in my age range, for sure!) Six Million Dollar Man TV show and I was always curious to read what that was all about.

So fast forward to a few days ago and I see a sale on the digital release of the comic book adaptation of the Kevin Smith screenplay (that make sense!?) and my curiosity got the better of me. Released as 10 individual comic book issues, Some Assembly Required collects the adaptation of Mr. Smith's screenplay as written by Phil Hester and drawn by Jonathan Lau.

First things first: I feel Mr. Lau's art is at times quite good while at other times... not so much. Sorry, Mr. Lau! As someone who has worked in comics, I know how hard deadlines can be and sometimes things may not work out as one hopes. Still, Mr. Lau's storytelling is clear.

As for the story itself, this is where I would offer my bigger critiques. The story is decent but, when all was said and done, nothing that floored me. Basically you have the "origin" of Steve Austin, the introduction to the main characters in his mythos (Oscar Goldman, Rudy Wells, and, yes, Jamie Summers) along with the revelation that there is a "big bad" out there taking out cybernetic research, a big bad who is essentially the Bionic Man version 1.0.

A few years back there was a TV remake of the Bionic Woman TV show and I can't help but wonder if some of Mr. Smith's concepts, now that I've read this book, were *ahem* cannibalized for that TV show, specifically the concept I just noted above.

The book follows a sorta/kinda parallel track as Austin takes the fateful flight that nearly kills him and eventually turns him into the Bionic Man while Bionic Man 1.0 does his evil deeds. Eventually the two intersect and, with the entire world in danger, we head to the book's climax.

While there may not be anything outrageously original or out of the ordinary here, story wise, I would recommend the book to anyone who enjoyed the series. It was certainly good enough for me to be curious about follow up collections. My (non bionic) eyes are certainly open to them!

Final thoughts: The language in this book is at times saltier than anything presented in the TV show, so beware of that. It also features some gore, again far more than was presented in the original TV show.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I'm pretty picky with The Six Million Dollar Man.
I was OK with the idea of a Kevin Smith reboot. But I thought it was be more like, say, TSMDM, mixed with 24. And there is some of that. But Smith blew up Steve Austin's abilities to the point where he is closer to Captain America (or even Superman with being hit by multiple machineguns and not even flinching). And that seemed to lose the point of it being TSMDM.
Hopefully if this ever gets made into a movie, it'll be taken down a notch or two in terms of powers and taken up a notch or two with Lee Majors-style cockiness combined with humanity.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was surprisingly good.
It is a remake of the old Steve Austin The Bionic Man TV show. It might have originally been a movie script. But it made a decent comic book. The comic basically follows the Bionic Man story and then veers into wild movie mode like a James Bond movie.
I was entertained.

[Rubin Carpenter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good attempt at an upgrade
This modern retelling of the six million dollar man almost works compelling has a great premise
But it downgrades toward the end a bit over the top with adolescent cheesiness which seems to be Kevin Smith's M.O. but looking forward to the next volume a good read

[Mhorg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't recapture the fun of the show

The story was too long and to James bond like. The art was decent but the bad guy was very generic. Also, a little research. F-16s don't land on carriers.

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was based on a never developed treatment of SMDM dreamed up by Kevin Smith. It is fairly faithful to the original but it also updates the bionics to account for the advances in science since the original series heyday in the 1970's.

[Greg Moulton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not Your Lee Majors Bionic Man

I really enjoyed the way Kevin Smith handled the origin and story of Steve Austin. Being a fan of the tv series, I had my doubts, but I enjoyed his take, and look forward to more.

[Paxton Holley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The comic story based on Kevin Smith's unproduced Six Million Dollar Man movie script. It's not bad. I liked it. I liked some of the changes he made.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

The classic action show is contaminated with amateurish reference humor that fits neither the setting or the tone of the original. Read Season 6 instead.

[Sara Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the six million dollar man became a popular tv show, I wasn't old enough to appreciate it. I did enjoy the originial Bionic Woman but I picked this book more because it was by Kevin Smith. I'd like to see this as a movie - that would be cool.
The art is great and well colored. I didn't find myself struggling to understand the action like with some graphic novels. I was even able to keep most of the characters straight which always makes the story better.
The plot was fairly typical but I liked the meshing of a Terminator type theme with the soldier gone astray story. The action was interesting and the plot just deep enough that you got a feel for the man without it disrupting the flow of the story.
There's a slight comedic edge that rounded out the book perfectly. This is definitely a keeper.

[Stephen Ormsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. I remember watching the Bionic Man as a kid and always enjoyed it, so I wondered what Kevin Smith might do to it, but I am happy to report that he keeps the feel of the original series and adds some great new elements to it.

Through the first issue, I did not think much of it, but then you get towards the end of the first book, you will be well and truly absorbed in it. I sat down and read the rest of it in a single series. The rest bit was when Kevin used the original words from the introduction of the television show within the book and mentioned the noise (nuh nuh nuh nuh). I had a quiet chuckle to myself for that.

This is a great collection of the first 10 issues and I will be looking forward to the next ten. The Bionic Man has been rebuild for the 21st century. Get into it.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

'I grew up LOVING "The Six Million Dollar Man" in the 1970's. I even read the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin(and it's sequels) on which the TV was based.
I'd already read Kevin Smith's Green Hornet comic and enjoyed it, so I was happy to hear about this!!!
It's a good 'reboot' for the most part. Fans of the show should be happy, in that Smith kept many things we are familiar with. He did 'update' the story, to our time, and made a few changes here and there.
The plot is a "By the Numbers", but I still enjoyed it, and look forward to reading more....

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great update for the seventies action packed show I used to love Just about everything I can remember is back (the red track suit, the sound effect is explained, Oscar and Dr Rudy and Jaimie and Max the dog) except for Big Foot. They even tackle the problem we used to discuss on the playground about having one arm bionic and the other not (what would happen if you forgot which was which). I look forward to more of these!

[Joe Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before anyone asks, yes I was a fan of the original show. Which is why I was a bit hesitant to read this version. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Kevin Smith was able to take this 70s character and update it for today's audience in a way that fits in well with the original vibe of the tv show. I'm interested to see where the comic goes from here.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had given up on Kevin Smith as a comic writer (or as much of anything besides a stand-up storyteller). But this book came strongly recommended, so I gave it a try. It was good. Not great, but very good. I'm not ready to go back to picking up everything with Smith's name on it, but I'm far more open to whatever his next comics-related project is.

[Marc Leroux · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good reboot of the franchise.

[Josh English · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good update for a standard franchise that is saddled with the 70's.

[James Elkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad nice update to a classic.