Cyborg #2: I, Robot Meets Frank Miller

Cyborg #2’s cover features a cover from Edwin Galmon that depicts Victor lifting up the robot claiming to be his father. This cover works well for the issue as it establishes two important things right off the bat:

1. Cyborg is immensely powerful and a force to reckon with, and

2. It reminds the reader of what happened last issue.

Too often a month or more goes by between comic book issues, and the ongoing plot gets lost in the waves of other books that people have been reading. This cover cuts that confusion and reminds readers exactly what this book is about before opening it. Galmon read the assignment and performed in an excellent and multifaceted manner.

Valentine De Landro does the art in the first three pages of the issue, setting up the story in a brief prelude. Landro does a great job portraying Silas’s conflicting emotions that arise in the relationship between him and Victor. This section is short, yet it does a great job of laying the thematic and emotional foundation that is the core of this series. Much like the cover before, this sets up a lot of important context that immediately will bring readers up to speed in a clear and concise manner.

Tom Raney draws the rest of the issue, which unfortunately comes off a bit uneven. Cyborg in particular, looks a bit odd in some panels, with different facial features being drawn in slightly different ways on different pages. This unevenness becomes a bit distracting and takes away the narrative. Another nitpick about this issue, but more so of this series, is the creative choice to put Cyborg in a tracksuit. Cyborg is widely known to be portrayed just as he is, with most of his body being a machine while certain human elements show through, like half of his head and his arm. Some iterations, like the New Teen Titans era, have him in a unitard, yet his cybernetics are on full display. Hiding that all behind a tracksuit really takes away from the character design and takes a lot of the visual nuance away.

Morgan Hampton’s writing here is stronger in the overall plot than it is in the execution. Hampton uses the motif of the news to push the themes, which many may recognize from creators like Frank Miller. This can work in small bursts, but this issue wastes a lot of time on a news segment that just drags on and on. Unfortunately, this is also sandwiched in between more interesting portions of the book. Cyborg should be the driving force of his own book but using the news as much as this issue does only is detrimental to the character.

Rob Leigh does a fine job of lettering here, yet the amount of dialogue he is given can sometimes crowd the pages. The sections featuring the news presentation are overly wordy, forcing Leigh to do his best with what he’s given. Leigh’s strongest work comes in the internal conversations between Cyborg and his A.I father, where he expertly maps the dialogue in a manner that allows the issue to be read in a consistent and understandable manner.