Black Hero Appreciation Month: Cyborg
Booyah! One my favorite superheroes is one of the founding members of the Teen Titans as well as a founding member of the New 52 Justice League, Victor Stone a.k.a Cyborg. Honestly he’s been a favorite of mine from the early days of the Teen Titans cartoon. He was my favorite of the Titans next to Starfire and Robin. And due to the cartoon, I went back to his earlier roots from the 1980s in first run in DC Presents. He was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. His earliest run had his origins correlate to issues of gang violence and racism, but I actually prefer his New 52 origins.
Victor Stone was a star athlete. He won every game he played in and was a high school star. However his father wanted him to focus on his brains instead of wasting his time with football. Sadly even with all his college scholarships coming in, his father and Victor started fighting over everything, but mainly Victor’s future since they had different views on this. Sadly during the invasion from Planet Darkseid, energy tore through Victor after he went to visit his dad. As he laid on the floor dying with more than half his body burning, his father decided to do something so crazy, it just might work. He assembled his team and took experimental alien technology to save Victor’s life, transforming him into Cyborg. After coping with his new-found abilities he was able to help the Justice League push back the forces of Darkseid and form the New 52’s Justice League.
As Cyborg, Victor is resistant to a lot of physical and projectile attacks and can sustain a lot of damage without very little damage to his body. He is also now a Technopath able to infuse with any form of technology he comes across. As well as altering his own body to make weapons like arm cannons, grapple claws, missile launchers, etc., Cyborg also can fly using either his jet boots or flight pack. He also has a Boom Tube inside his body that allows him to teleport.
Victor’s struggles to deal with holding onto his humanity while being this half human-half robot was always interesting to me, and I love that he is getting more attention in the New 52. He even has his own solo run that came out recently that I loved reading. You also can read more about him in the New 52 Justice League Origins, as well as Forever Evil, and especially his early 1980s run which I highly recommend. Most obviously you can also watch the Teen Titans cartoon where he stars alongside Robin, Starfire, Raven and Beast Boy which I highly recommend you check out. Also you can catch him in just about mostly all DC animated movies including Justice League Doom, Justice League War, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, and Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.
Cyborg is also rumored to be making an appearance in Batman V Superman next month, and the option has been picked up for his own solo movie coming in 2020 in which he will be portrayed by Ray Fisher. He has also become one of my favorite characters to cosplay recently. I strongly suggest reading up on him because there will be a lot of more coming this way for Victor Stone.
