Review: Cyborg: Homecoming trade paperback (DC Comics)

Reading Morgan Hampton’s Dawn of DC miniseries Cyborg: Homecoming, I was put in mind of DC’s Showcase anthology series from the 1990s. There, particularly characters appearing in team books would get their own multi-issue stint, nothing too ground-breaking but a chance for a character mostly sharing the page with others to get a spotlight.

Homecoming is pretty much like that. I can’t say “nothing” happens to Cyborg Vic Stone here — indeed, there’s a pretty big occurrence that may shape Vic’s stories going forward — but the emotional conflict is relatively standard as Cyborg stories go. Perhaps my bad for having read all of Cyborg’s solo outings in one go leading up to this; if you’ve never read a Cyborg solo story or haven’t read one since 2018, Hampton represents the character well, but if you’re well-versed in Cyborg, there’s not a lot to see here.

Art by Tom Raney is overall fine, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention we get some contributions from Valentine de Landro, whose condensed, expressive work continues to impress after Black Manta and the Mister Miracle backups from Future State: Superman.

[Review contains spoilers]

The big event in Cyborg: Homecoming is that Vic’s father, STAR Labs scientist Silas Stone, dies, and barring shenanigans with the robot body he inhabits and then gives up, it looks to be he’ll stay that way. That’s momentous in the orbit of modern Cyborg comics, at least since 2011’s New 52; prior to that, Silas was introduced in Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s 1980 New Teen Titans, but died of radiation poisoning just seven issues later.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Again, having just read quite a few Cyborg adventures, I’ll be curious to see what writers make of all of this with the character. Angst has not historically been Cyborg’s driving force; if he was introduced as an angry character, my most pervading memories of Cyborg are later on when he was mentor to a group of kids with prosthetics. But with the New 52, Silas' return as someone for Vic to clash with, and Vic’s recent inclusion among the tortured freaks of TV’s Doom Patrol¹, I feel there’s been an X-Men-esque turn in Vic’s portrayals, from confident in to struggling with his robotic identity.

We saw this in David Walker’s DC You Cyborg series, where a grievously injured Cyborg questions “what I am,” and who ends up (at least temporarily) with the ability to camouflage his robot parts. Then John Semper’s Rebirth Cyborg series saw Vic worrying over whether he was actually Vic Stone or just a digital representation — whether he was possessing of a soul — and suspicious of Silas over whether Silas blocked some of Vic’s memories when he became Cyborg. The two reconciled, but Vic was still portrayed as self-conscious and/or warring with Silas in subsequent stories by Kevin Grevioux and Marv Wolfman.

That brings us to Homecoming, in which Silas has died and we learn he and Vic were estranged after Silas turned Vic into “this.” Through the magic of comic book science, Silas is resurrected and the two have a chance to reconcile again (seemingly for the first time), before Silas sacrifices himself to stop the villain Solace. My frustration with these successive Cyborg stories has been the repetitive emotional beats (when, as Grevioux’s Sarah Charles points out, Vic is relatively fortunate); Hampton is guilty of the same, but having killed off Silas, might that cycle finally be ended?

That’s something only subsequent Cyborg stories can answer, but indeed there’s a bit of that in Homecoming, not exactly telling a story of Cyborg’s future so much as providing the bridge to get there. Maybe Hampton’s second most notable continuity contribution here is a swift sequence that posits Cyborg as having been a Justice Leaguer before he left to become a Teen Titan, the first attempt I’ve seen to try to make Cyborg’s original New Teen Titans appearances and New 52 Justice League appearances coexist. Hampton equally nods back to Walker’s Cyborg Vol. 2 and Justice League Detroit, verily a DC continuity free-for-all.

In contrast, the book’s back cover suggests Homecoming is a “Teen Titans animated series-inspired Dawn of DC epic,” but that’s not nearly as prominent as one might fear (no disrespect to the jolly Teen Titans Go! folk, but the vibe in my cartoons is not exactly the vibe I want in my comics). Really the only nods to animation (besides Cyborg’s “booyah!” call, though that’s been well integrated into the comics elsewhere) were in the villains: ATLAS, direct from the cartoons, and See-More and Billy Numerous in his cartoon-faithful costume. Fearsome Five-ers Mammoth and Gizmo have long since met in the middle with their comics counterparts; I’m surprised Hampton didn’t make more of Jinx’s appearance in a Cyborg comic; she’s largely in the background, though more resembles her cartoon appearance now.

In the canon then of modern Cyborg comics, Cyborg: Homecoming fits right in; again, I didn’t think it did anything new, but it’s certainly a primer on where Vic Stone is right now in the DCU if you haven’t read his other recent appearances. Vic’s concern at the book’s end whether he can handle the pressure of Titans doing Justice League jobs seems incongruous with his more mature Justice League Odyssey portrayals (not to mention as a teacher at the Teen Titans Academy). As mentioned, Morgan Hampton has taken a big step; hopefully other writers use that to break new ground.

[Includes original and variant covers]

---

1. Friends, that final episode? I sobbed.  ↩︎

Rating 2.25