Cavalcade of Awesome

In my reviews for Dynamite Comics’ The Bionic Man and The Bionic Woman titles, I mentioned that they are separate timelines. The Bionic Woman happens years after the end of The Bionic Man title. The point of today’s comic is supposedly to bridge the gap between the two titles and see why Jaime Sommers has “gone rogue” from OSI.  Today I’m reviewing Dynamite’s The Bionic Man vs The Bionic Woman mini-series.

This 5 issue mini is written by Keith Champagne and drawn by Jose Luis.  At first glance the art is fairly strong so let’s see how the story holds up.  Since this is a short mini, this review is going to be a little shorter.

Essential Plot: A giant bionic guy is killing people and stealing their hearts. Jaime and Steve have to stop him.

Characters: The story, of course, focuses on Steve and Jaime, and they are portrayed roughly the same as they are in their own titles.  We also get a cameo from Oscar.  And another “new” bionic menace is introduced.  Again.

Story: I guess I liked the story, with the bionic serial killer, but honestly, it’s a little tired.  Another bionic menace that only Steve and Jaime can handle.  The first story arc in The Bionic Man involves a prototype bionic man wrecking havoc and the second story arc involves bionic Bigfoot creatures.  The Bionic Woman comic involved an organization stealing bionic parts that eventually get used to create a bionic bad guy.  This story device has become a little old.  Part of the problem I think is that Jaime and Steve are a little too powerful at this point.  It’s like having every Superman story feature an evil Superman.  Let’s think of something else.

Differences from the TV show: Steve Austin has only one bionic arm in this comic (see below) as opposed to the two he started with in his own comic.  Otherwise, the differences that I mentioned in the previous comic reviews still stand.

Art:  The art is actually pretty good. Jose Luis brings some good action art and the characters are drawn faithfully. I even like the design of the evil bionic serial killer. Lots of pretty art to look at in this comic, even if the story is constantly trying to put you to sleep.

Overall: Overall, I was disappointed. While the art is great, the promise of this timeline and title bridging story was completely wasted.

This entry was posted on March 24, 2014 at 8:00 am and is filed under comic books, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Man, Bionic Review, Bionic Woman, BW Comic, comic books, pop culture, reviews, SMDM Comic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.