How do you prefer your Cyborg?

[Alphaxman]

What he need is a major story where he's the main hero. I would make Dr. Cyber his main antagonist (since the Wonder Woman writers don't want to use her) and beef up her powerset. Make her a Dr. Doom level treat while making her a ghost inside the machine (net). She would have a real body, but it is always hidden. Her consciousness would migrate from android to android. If she was at a treat level just under say Brainiac, she could be the perfect foe for him.
Maybe an Fourth World villain (not Darkseid but a new creation who's nearly as powerful) could confront him over the Motherbox.

Or maybe a villain like Marvel's Lionel Jeffries (Omega). A mad scientist who can manipulate flesh, bone, and organic matter. Someone totally scary, powerful and dangerous. He could create minions (or infect humans) that could manipulate their bodies like the amine Parasyte. And only Victor's tech could detect them.

[Midnight_v]

The Fourth World is a niche property that serves as fodder to other major properties, Superman and Justice League more often than not. Victor didn't need them to be popular as evidenced by how well received his Teen Titans and, to a lesser extent, Smallville incarnations were.

You only need to look at how irrelevant Victor has been to the so-called big picture ever since he got a mother box.

I disagree on the Motherbox. Having New Genesis tech is a huge advantage for him. That would put him above most other tech based heroes and villains. And as for the red eye, I just think it is more striking than a glowing blue one. Just look at Superman when he's pissed off. Glowing red eyes are intimidating. Even if blue is my favorite color

Shrug. I think we'll find more people disagree with you that agree with you so. . .
Meh. Dc did him a good turn with that.

It gives him a additional cast options and links him into anything Darkseid related. free real estate is free and good. Way more important than another "Steel" or T.O. Morrow. He's now Tony Stark and neither is his dad and thats okay, they're not the focus.
He's post human via alien tech and it has a LOT of gravitas.
Sucks its not for you, oh well.

[Sutekh]

Maybe an Fourth World villain (not Darkseid but a new creation who's nearly as powerful) could confront him over the Motherbox.

Or maybe a villain like Marvel's Lionel Jeffries (Omega). A mad scientist who can manipulate flesh, bone, and organic matter. Someone totally scary, powerful and dangerous. He could create minions (or infect humans) that could manipulate their bodies like the amine Parasyte. And only Victor's tech could detect them.

Mixing and matching these two ideas, there's been toying in the past with the notion that members of races being taken over by Darkseid's forces are abducted and transformed into parademons, and made to join his army, and a new New God baddie, a 'Mother of Monsters' who is sort of the alien Hive Queen of the para-demons in service to Darkseid might come to Earth and attempt to jump the gun (and impress the boss with her initiative...) by infecting large swathes of humanity with a nanotech virus that, when it receives the necessary signal, will begin converting the infected into parademons at a much advanced rate to their normal conversion process (making the conversion much faster and more effective, on these pre-infected folk). Victors Apokaliptan tech might be able to find, and even turn off, this nanotech, saving the many thousands of infected humans from this horrible fate.

And since Mother of Monsters wouldn't technically have permission for this jumping of the gun, she'll be in big trouble with the boss when it all goes pear-shaped. (If, on the other hand, it had worked brilliantly, all would be forgiven and she would have gotten a big bump in status! If it wasn't for that darn Cyborg and his meddling Mother Box!)

[Alphaxman]

Mixing and matching these two ideas, there's been toying in the past with the notion that members of races being taken over by Darkseid's forces are abducted and transformed into parademons, and made to join his army, and a new New God baddie, a 'Mother of Monsters' who is sort of the alien Hive Queen of the para-demons in service to Darkseid might come to Earth and attempt to jump the gun (and impress the boss with her initiative...) by infecting large swathes of humanity with a nanotech virus that, when it receives the necessary signal, will begin converting the infected into parademons at a much advanced rate to their normal conversion process (making the conversion much faster and more effective, on these pre-infected folk). Victors Apokaliptan tech might be able to find, and even turn off, this nanotech, saving the many thousands of infected humans from this horrible fate.

And since Mother of Monsters wouldn't technically have permission for this jumping of the gun, she'll be in big trouble with the boss when it all goes pear-shaped. (If, on the other hand, it had worked brilliantly, all would be forgiven and she would have gotten a big bump in status! If it wasn't for that darn Cyborg and his meddling Mother Box!)

That's not a bad idea. I wish DC visited these forms sometimes. Would you want credit if suddenly Vic was battling a Mother of Monsters and her Parademon hordes? LOL

[marhawkman]

I just want Vic to be powerful, confident, and competent. I want him to be in the upper echelon on tech heroes. He should have all of his standard weaponry, including the Boom Tube. The White sound emitter should always be his go-to offensive weapon of choice. Just like in the Snyder-cut, Vic should be a techno-path, which should take away the need for Oracle in Titan business. Leave her for the Bat-family.

I want him to be more man (60% of his body) than machine. Maybe have his left arm up to his midarm be cybernetic, as well as both legs knees downward. His right hand would have cybernetic inlays, but it would still have flesh. His spine, or possibly his entire skeletal system, be reenforced by super-dense metal. He should still have most, if not all of his organs, but he should have a power core within him, similarly to Tony's Arc Reactor (a Motherbox?). Only half of his skull would be metallic.

Now for the controversial part: the half-face plate. It's part of his established look, so he should keep it. Maybe it could only be seen while he's in battle mode. So, while he is in his civilian guise, either it could be covered by artificial flesh or a holographic illusion. Keep the red eye, though.

The idea of Cyborg learning to use Apokoliptian junk is fine, but not in his origin story. Also... it's been explicitly stated on occasions that you really don't want to interface with Apokolitian tech. So having a Motherbox being a critical part of his cybernetics seems... like a curse... worse than being maimed so badly you need cybernetics to live. You're now a cyborg, and your computer is EVIL.

[Ascended]

I fell like the bigger reason was because he was in Superfriends which had no other black characters to use and for whatever reason they seem scared to use Vixen. I'd also argue I see more people say Static is DC's most popular Black character.

Vic wasn't the only black character they had. They used him because Titans was crazy popular at the time, and maybe someone behind the scenes thought he was the best choice. They also had Firestorm, so maybe Vic being younger was part of it? Who knows, but he wasn't their only option.

So where does that leave writer Morgan Hampton and the current Cyborg title?

Far as I can tell, he's got the same freedom most DC writers do these days and he can use, twist, or ignore what he wants, outside of the big story beats.

Can someone clarify what is going on in these attached images for me?

It clearly looks like Cyborg is in mid transformation i.e.[B] Cyborg is altering his appearance

How is he able to accomplish this?

If I remember right, that was shortly after Vic discovered he could use holograms to disguise himself. As I recall, for some reason it pulled a huge amount of power from his cpu so he didn't do it all the time and had to shut it down to activate his defensive systems.

[skyvolt2000]

Often Cyborg enthusiasts cite writer David Walkers 2015 series when referring to character evolution , growth and the ability of the character to alter his appearance at will. I often find myself doing this as well (credit to Walker. He left an impression as a writer) despite there being other canonical source material . I've seen Priest run cited as well.

Oddly enough i don't see writer Semper Jr's 2016 run on the title used as evidence often (again...guilty of that myself). It's as though many of us saw what Walker (and to a lesser extent Priest) did and completely over look that Semper Jr continued / re established this power set in his 2016 run following David's work.

So where does that leave writer Morgan Hampton and the current Cyborg title?

The editor that ran Walker off his run was the SAME editor that did Semper's run.

And it seems that editor was proven to be hard to work (see New 52 Static Shock and what Marc Bernardin had to say (being told he couldn't write despite working on 2 tv shows and winning awards for writing) with among other issues that lead to him being a former DC employee after Black Lightning's last mini.

Semper's run seems to fit what certain folks wanted Cyborg to be versus what Priest, Walker and others felt Cyborg could be. Semper did the man versus machine trope while giving Cyborg a sidekick.

Morgan's run and he pointed out in an interview took a LOT of feedback from others including Marv Wolfman.

Can someone clarify what is going on in these attached images for me?

Cyborg doing something he should be able to do with tech inside him mother box or not.

[skyvolt2000]

Vic wasn't the only black character they had. They used him because Titans was crazy popular at the time, and maybe someone behind the scenes thought he was the best choice. They also had Firestorm, so maybe Vic being younger was part of it? Who knows, but he wasn't their only option.

Depending on WHEN those last season of Superfriends were started-remember some animation had to start years in advance for some shows.

So if this season was started in say late December 1982.

Cyborg was the only one.

Since issue with Tony Isabella might have derailed Black Lightning being added.

John Stewart was still MIA-it took 14 years for him to reshow up after his first appearance.

Vixen had just shown up in Action Comics.

Amazing Man wasn't going to be used.

Also Superfriends can't use someone unless DC allows it.

And lets not forget that show was linked to a toy line. So who knows if Cyborg was chosen because they had something close to his body mold already as a toy.

[The Darknight Detective]

Depending on WHEN those last season of Superfriends were started-remember some animation had to start years in advance for some shows.

So if this season was started in say late December 1982.

It was the fall of '84, FWIW.

[Iconic]

Vic wasn't the only black character they had. They used him because Titans was crazy popular at the time, and maybe someone behind the scenes thought he was the best choice. They also had Firestorm, so maybe Vic being younger was part of it? Who knows, but he wasn't their only option.



Far as I can tell, he's got the same freedom most DC writers do these days and he can use, twist, or ignore what he wants, outside of the big story beats.



If I remember right, that was shortly after Vic discovered he could use holograms to disguise himself. As I recall, for some reason it pulled a huge amount of power from his cpu so he didn't do it all the time and had to shut it down to activate his defensive systems.

That scene was Vic transforming naturally (according to his powerset). The best thing to ever happen to this character. No hologram here.

[Sutekh]

That's not a bad idea. I wish DC visited these forms sometimes. Would you want credit if suddenly Vic was battling a Mother of Monsters and her Parademon hordes? LOL

I constantly come up with ideas for other people's IP, whether it be comic book superheroes for Marvel or DC, or game elements for games I play like D&D, M&M or Everquest II or whatever, and I always feel the same way about that. It's someone else's property, I'm just playing in their sandbox. If they want to tell a similar story, I don't feel like I am entitled to anything from it, not even recognition or a byline or 'cred,' unless I'm actually employed by them and doing so as part of my job.

I respect those who can create these characters and settings, and don't feel like my playing with their toys (without permission!) rates me among the toymakers.

But I'm glad you liked my idea, which, as is my wont, was just a synthesis / development of *your* ideas. I'm hot stuff at playing with other people's ideas.

[Customizer]

I love that you put in this effort and broke down the thread's opinions. Well done man (or ma'am?), your effort is appreciated. Did you by chance notice the percentage of people who are fine with the face plate but also support his ability to alter his appearance? I'm curious what the split there is.

I appreciate the kind words and appreciation I'd like to think in a thread where people care about the character and want to see positive growth having data points is superior to opinions alone. Besides ....with my lady away for a bit i had some me time LOL.

With regard to your question... it was harder to parse that data. The best i could do in order to have a larger pool to draw from was:

Update:
As of 10/14/23 there have been 41 total participants (unique posters).

31.7% (13 of 41) DO NOT WANT the face plate on the character and/or they want Cyborg to display an ability to alter his facial appearance at will.

34.1% (14 of 41) WANT the face plate to be maintained

34.1% (14 of 41) "Abstained" and provided no definitive answer.

Of the group that "abstained" and / or WANT the face plate combined (28 unique posters) * 14 * desire and / or are supportive of Evolution in the character.
That "evolution" specifically includes: 1) the ability to alter his facial appearance to completely non armored / "skin only" 2) a notable increase in visible skin 3) a much smaller face plate and 4) armor modification

So 50% of those that either WANT the face plate or didn't provide a definitive answer are ok with the characters visual evolution.
That's significant.
That means that 65% of this threads total participants are in support of either removing the face plate completely and / or Cyborg using his in canon power set of altering his appearance or modifying his current design.


Note: I removed one vote from the "NO face plate" total as , although i'm confident that his post was sarcastic based upon his posting history, i'm not 100% sure so i'll just remove it for now (i'm referring to the post of the member redjack).

I run 2 businesses. I cannot imagine passing up the opportunity to increase my profit margin by @30% due to refusing to make a small inconsequential tweak to my business model. I've said this before in the Blue Marvel thread years ago...i sometimes question whether financial gain is the primary motivation for some of these for profit companies.

I think the face plate and the baggage associated with it absolutely need to be debated and a solid, workable direction decided upon (by DC, not us, since we're just nerds on the web with limited influence in the matter), but I don't think the plate is Vic's problem. Yes, you can say that it's following the 'broken black man' troupe and therefore needs to die, and I feel that. But the plate isn't the real issue, DC's view on Vic is. They see Cyborg as ensemble only, worse; Titans-ensemble only. They're not interested in his potential, they see that as misplaced effort because he's 'just' a Titans-aligned team player. They see Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire (among others) the same way. Change that and all the rest works itself out. Remove the plate without doing anything else, and you'll still have the exact same Cyborg, only no longer recognizable as Cyborg.

If the argument is that Vic would be a bigger deal if he were pretty, it's disproven by the fact that he's a bigger deal than all the non-legacy PoC's at DC who *are* pretty. By this logic, Vixen should be the biggest PoC at DC. That said, I do absolutely support updating his look; the plate isn't a problem but the plate looking like it came out of 1985 is.

We can compare Vic to the big name Leaguers, and Vic certainly pales in comparison to them. And it's probably easy to blame the plate on that, with all the perfect white people around him. But it's not the plate, it's the fact that those perfect white people are twice as old as him, global icons with some of the most well known stories in modern (nerd) fiction, and decades of high-caliber talent that built rich, compelling mythologies. The plate doesn't make Vic less, his lack of history and development does. You don't fix that by making him pretty, you fix that by giving him history and development.

YES. That's a lot to unpack and digest which i'll do later. That's all i can say for now as i need refuel That plate won't make itself .

Excelsior!

[Ascended]

The idea of Cyborg learning to use Apokoliptian junk is fine, but not in his origin story. Also... it's been explicitly stated on occasions that you really don't want to interface with Apokolitian tech. So having a Motherbox being a critical part of his cybernetics seems... like a curse... worse than being maimed so badly you need cybernetics to live. You're now a cyborg, and your computer is EVIL.

Mother Boxes are fine, they're used by New Genesis. Apokolips uses corrupted "Father" Boxes, which are evil. The Young Justice cartoon is the only version (off the top of my head) to use the evil Box.

And I didn't care a great deal for that either. Worked Vic into the story and gave him a central role in the plot, and I suppose it was fine for that but I don't need Vic to actually have to fight the cybernetics, his internal struggle with that is more than enough. Comics like to turn every inner conflict into an external one, but Vic coming to terms with the prosthetics isn't something that needs an external focal point, I think. It works best when he can't punch the problem away and has to actually process stuff like a real person.

It was the fall of '84, FWIW.

So there were options. Not a ton, and Black Lightning wasn't among them due to Isabella of course (they would've had to use Black "Vulcan" again I suppose). But yeah, there were PoC other than Vic.

Am I remembering wrong or did that era of the show not use Robin? I feel like they didn't? They had both Firestorm and Vic, I still think they wanted some young heroes for their audience insert character/s and that played a role in who they used. Plus the success of NTT and Firestorm: Nuclear Man of course.

I appreciate the kind words and appreciation I'd like to think in a thread where people care about the character and want to see positive growth having data points is superior to opinions alone.

Always. Though I never take anything here as quality data. Our sample size is too small and too niche to accurately represent the readership. Sometimes the general consensus here lines up with the masses, sometimes it doesn't. Like, here, we tend to hate Events but they still sell better than most anything else. If I were running things then I'd want to keep an eye on what folks said in places like this, but I don't think we've proven to be a reliable metric. If we were, Dark Crisis would have sold terribly. And if places like twitter/X were reliable then the Future State kids like Yara, Jace, and Jon Kent would've sold a lot better. We're worth listening to, but I wouldn't base decisions on us alone.

I run 2 businesses. I cannot imagine passing up the opportunity to increase my profit margin by @30% due to refusing to make a small inconsequential tweak to my business model. I've said this before in the Blue Marvel thread years ago...i sometimes question whether financial gain is the primary motivation for some of these for profit companies.

You and me both. I don't work in publishing, much less comics, and every industry and company have their own unique quirks that defy generally accepted business principals. So I try to take what DC does with a grain of salt; maybe in their industry what they're doing makes sense, y'know? How would I know, not being an insider? But so much of the time, things go exactly the way I predicted and I'm left wondering why I spent so much time and money on a business degree when these asshats clearly don't know an income statement from a balance sheet and still got into the industry teenage Ascended wanted to join.

I think the problem, quite frankly, is that too many people on the administrative end are 'creators' and 'fans' and not looking at stuff from the business end. It's all "Hey wouldn't this be cool? We're gonna do it because *I* think it's a good story!" instead of, y'know, actually looking at the data available and making choices based around that. Creators should have that mindset, but not the guys in charge of the company itself. Didio was infamous for pushing directions, characters, and titles simply because they appealed to his own fandom rather than what the consumer base wanted. I don't think you have to look any further than the Titans and Nightwing to see how disastrous that self-serving approach can be.

YES. That's a lot to unpack and digest which i'll do later.

Interested in your analysis. I'll be honest; I think it's worth serious discussion but usually I think the real issue/s gets buried in the larger 'race' conversation. A lot like how we can say Batman is an example of the worst of the 1%; the super rich white guy going after the desperate and poor, keeping himself rich and powerful by beating up the less fortunate. It's not wrong, precisely, but it misses the forest for the trees. It ascribes elements to Bruce and his mythos that aren't really there, even though he checks all the boxes for it. I think that boiling Vic down to the faceplate and 'broken black man' troupe does him a disservice and only carries heavy weight when you ignore everything else. Vic and his appearance, his entire character and mythos, definitely need the conversation and the racially-charged concerns about the plate need to be addressed, but it's at best a distraction from the real issues at hand, and at worst something that could pull him entirely off course.

[skyvolt2000]

So there were options. Not a ton, and Black Lightning wasn't among them due to Isabella of course (they would've had to use Black "Vulcan" again I suppose). But yeah, there were PoC other than Vic.

Am I remembering wrong or did that era of the show not use Robin? I feel like they didn't? They had both Firestorm and Vic, I still think they wanted some young heroes for their audience insert character/s and that played a role in who they used. Plus the success of NTT and Firestorm: Nuclear Man of course.

There were some issues because Filmation also had some rights to DC folks.

Which was part of the reason we didn't see Joker on Challenge of the Superfriends.

Robin had to be replaced for I think Nabisco and some anti-drug ads and that is who we got Protector with the Teen Titans in those ads.

Like I said it really depends on who they had rights to and when they started really working on the final season of Superfriends.

How long did one episode take to make? Ducktales got started in 1986 and Disney had to spend MORE money to do that. Not because of the 65 episodes but for quality of animation.

If we got by The Simpsons and Family Guy-those took at least 6 months per episode.

6 months times 8 episodes 48 months and if they did one at a time 4 years. Two at a time 2 years.
Mind you Hanna Barbara was doing about 50 shows in that time frame. We mainly the Snorks, Yogi, Scooby Doo, Pac Man and Smurfs with new footage.

[skyvolt2000]

I run 2 businesses. I cannot imagine passing up the opportunity to increase my profit margin by @30% due to refusing to make a small inconsequential tweak to my business model. I've said this before in the Blue Marvel thread years ago...i sometimes question whether financial gain is the primary motivation for some of these for profit companies.

Well part of the issue is which fanbase are you looking at for numbers.

If all you look at is floppies and ignore the trades and movies and tv folks for a variety (even if toxic reasons). You see the messes known as Teen Titans mistreatment under DC comics.

Along with the non-stop events and the messes currently going on in Batman and Peter Parker books.

Along with why we see so many variant covers.


If PROFIT is the end all-who are the DC folks listening to?

I mean you can't have employees that listen to the toxic sides of the fandom that will say nobody is going to buy a black lead book.

Spawn and his empire say HI.
Luke Cage, T'Challa and Miles have 100+ solo issues that say otherwise.
Moon Girl who has only been around 8 years is over 50 solo issues.
Boom and other studios didn't get the memo.
Tom Taylor did it with Seven Secrets.
Cullen has done it with at least 3 black lead series.
We are getting a Jake Sisko lead (with Alexander and Q2) by Morgan Hampton from IDW next year.

But nothing can be done with Cyborg let alone VIXEN. I don't know who is done worst Vixen or Blue Marvel.

Cyborg even if you just FOCUS on the educational aspect of him-you got MONEY. Cyborg is one of the FEW Dc folks kids in my district will READ. Only DC Super Hero Girls Batgirl, All versions up to New 52 (we don't have the Rebirth era) Supergirl, Justice League John Stewart and Green Lantern Animated series Hal Jordan rank higher.

Notice who I left OUT. Raven and Beast Boys series are behind Cyborg. Jaime-we haven't been able to order his books until last week. We STOPPED ordering Batman line due to a lack of interest.