Review: Cyborg Vol. 3: Singularity (Rebirth) trade paperback (DC Comics)

John Semper completes his long 18-part story in the DC Rebirth-era Cyborg Vol. 3: Singularity. The length is ambitious, and while I don’t think collecting all 18 parts together would improve the quality any, DC’s got a neat potential package on their hands the next time Cyborg has a big media push that would probably please ardent fans and first-timers.

Indeed, 18 issues in, Semper’s got some nice revelations as he brings the story to a crescendo; I also enjoy, as I mentioned for Cyborg Vol. 2: Danger in Detroit, the new characters he’s introduced as well as a certain guest star. But the story, into this final volume, is highly overwritten, every page and panel packed with dialogue and narration, and that’s in addition to pausing for probably a few too many fight scenes. I’ve remarked before on other books, I find Will Conrad’s art inked too dark; in all, I was impressed with the story’s scope but found it rather a chore to read.

[Review contains spoilers]

Singularity finds Cyborg and his companions pulled into an alternate dimension, this being the culmination of the evil plot of nemesis Anomaly that took up the first 13 issues. But as we learn, Anomaly’s mysterious muse has actually been Cyborg Vic Stone’s alt-reality mother Elinore, trying all this time to recruit our Cyborg to help end a robot war.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

That’s clever, the “turns out your enemy was actually your friend,” as well as that Semper’s been having Vic flit in and out of this alt-reality throughout all the issues. At the same time, there’s a lot that falls apart under scrutiny, including that the plot required our Silas Stone to be tortured for over six months, as well as the complication of a celestial being that’s further overseeing and pulling strings in these events.

Semper involves the character he created, Variant, “new” to our universe but whose late doppelgänger was influential in the other, and that makes for a nice job tying in Variant’s role. Also, wanting for an alt-universe perspective character, Semper brings in Beast Boy Gar Logan. This is still some time before Cyborg’s New Teen Titans origins would be reintegrated into the DCU — he does not know Beast Boy here at all — but equally a smart way for Semper to get some Titans action on the page without violating any prime directives.

All of that makes for a story that’s passable — throughout, I think Semper has done well by Vic Stone — but is never consistently engaging. Dialogue and narration often overlap, as when Elinore reacts coldly to Cyborg, he discusses the encounter with Beast Boy, but then Semper also has Cyborg narrate how awkward the encounter was. (Semper’s final issue is done wholly in narration, which might be a nice effect were it not how prevalent narration is throughout.)

The dialogue, as in Cyborg Vol. 2, is often hackneyed — consider a robotic villain’s long-winded speech at the end of Semper’s penultimate chapter — nor do the villains ever seem altogether dangerous or compelling. The story’s sci-fi connection to Mother Boxes is cool, but hampered again by trite naming conventions like the “digiverse.”

Writer Kevin Grevioux takes over for this collection’s final two issues, in a story that sends Vic to Africa and pits him against a militant warlord backed by magic. Both of these are unusual — Cyborg against a semi-realistic, international and non-cybernetic background, and Cyborg vs. the supernatural — especially as compared to Semper’s previous 18 issues.

Some of Vic’s internal conflict here is anachronistic given what Semper resolved in the previous chapter, though Grevioux is not the first fill-in writer to have that problem. That Vic wishes away and then ultimately wants to regain his robotic side is no big surprise, though I’d happily read more stories of Cyborg and Sarah Charles as world-traveling crimefighters.

All of this catch-up has been in preparation for reading Morgan Hampton’s Dawn of DC Cyborg miniseries; not that I expect any great connection between John Semper or David Walker’s Cyborg series and that, but there’s a few DC You/DC Rebirth series I never finished that I’m taking the opportunity to read when a new series comes up.

Following from the Grevioux example, however, I’m curious to see how much angst Hampton gives Cyborg about his robot body. It’s due no doubt to my having just read five Cyborg books in a row, but Cyborg missing his humanity feels played out, especially given — as Grevioux’s Sarah Charles describes — how much worse his situation could be. I’m undecided whether there are workable superhero stories to be told of Cyborg, the human internet, that don’t involve his own self-loathing, his anger at his father, and so on, and I’d be eager for Hampton to make that attempt.

Meanwhile, Cyborg Vol. 3: Singularity caps a long Cyborg story. Interesting, not great, some good ideas but also a lot to wade through. Again, the whole thing might make a nice-sized compendium.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Rating 2.25