Dynamite Comics’ The Bionic Man series, especially Issues #17-26, was among the best comic book reading of 2013. They are now available in a trade paperback: The Bionic Man Volume Three: End of Everything. Featuring a story by Aaron Gillespie, with art by Ed Tadeo and Rey Villegas, colors by Thiago Ribeiro, letters by Simon Bowland, and covers by Mike Mayhew with other regular edition covers and variants by prolific Dynamite Comics artists Jonathan Lau and Ed Tadeo.
The Bionic Man is a great read and recommended for comic book fans. It features Aaron Gillespie’s storytelling, which we lauded on our borg.com Best of 2013 list last year. It also has the whole package from cover to cover–story, art, covers, humor, action, and fun. We won’t re-state what we said in our review last year–you can read that here. Enough of the origin stories that bogs down superhero books, this Steve Austin was able to get out there and do something.
The series featured some of our all-time favorite cover art, with a cover run on Issues #17-22 by The Star Wars artist Mike Mayhew. Mayhew created a new, cool, young look for Steve Austin, who sported the classic track suit updated for a modern audience and fashion sense. His Issue #19 cover has Steve holding a car over his head, and you get to really see the strength. Probably his best cover is for Issue #20, an inspiring cover which reminds me of one of my favorite paintings of President Kennedy.
This trade edition features all the cover art that accompanied the series, including variants, and a final draft script of Issue #21 by Gillespie with thumbnail copies of inked pages by Tadeo. It provides great insight into the creative process for putting a comic book together. Going further behind the scenes, Gillespie provides his writer’s notes and photocopies of his hand-written pages of concepts, ideas, outline, and timeline for that issue. This bonus content provides enough extra to make it worthwhile to grab the trade edition even if you already bought and read the monthly.
Get The Bionic Man Volume Three: End of Everything now at your local comic book store or here
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
