Cyborg

28 years ago - Victor Stone is born.

13 years ago - 15-year-old Vic begins his high school sports career.

11 years ago - 17-year-old Vic suffers massive tissue damage in an explosion in his father's lab, ultimately losing 60% of his body before the damage can be contained, forcing his father to him to use his experimental bio-prosthesis to replace most of his body.

10 years ago - 18-year-old Vic finishes the worst of his rehabilitation and finds that much of his past life is gone. Raven finds him and recruits him for her new Teen Titans.

8 years ago - When the Teen Titans are infiltrated and destroyed, 20-year-old Vic goes to Howard University, focusing on his own work in bio-prosthesis.

6 years ago - 22-year-old Vic gets his bachelor's degree in biotechnology. He helps Will Magnus revitalize his Metal Men programming and rebuild them. He first meets LeToya Charles.

5 years ago - 23-year-old Vic develops a nanotech limb replacment technology. LeToya Charles, his undergrad assistant tries to get him to use her as a human subject and he refuses, She breaks into his lab and subjects herself to the nanites, which promptly consume up to 80% of her biomass. She fights him, forcing him to render the nanotech inert, ending his research and leaving her paralysed.

4 years ago - 24-year-old Vic joins the original Titans when they reform.

3 years ago - 25-year-old Vic earns a masters degree in bio-cybernetics. When the Titans disband after the death of Donna Troy he starts a new Titans team in San Francisco.

1 years ago - 27-year-old Vic joins all the surviving Titans in space to save Donna Troy & hands over leadership of the Titans to Tim Drake.

now - 28-year-old Vic joins Dick Grayson's Watchtower. He builds himself new sleeker cybernetics that incorporate the Watchtower's advanced alien technology

Cyborg wasn't the first black superhero in mainstream comics, or the first black DC character, even the first black Teen Titan. He did, however, manage to be the first black superhero to transcend the that label and become a complex standalone character in his own right. (There's probably an entire book waiting to be written about the fact that the first truly successful black comic character was basically a stylized Frankenstein's Monster whose natural athletic prowess and virility was stripped from him... but I'm not the guy to write that book.) He was a mainstay member of one of the greatest super teams in comics and even wound up joining the Justice League in the Challenge of the Superfriends. In modern post 52 continuity, he's actually a FOUNDING member of the Justice League. It's impossible for him to have a higher profile. The best thing about this character, however, is his history, experience and relationships, and it's really important that we work to maintain those.

Cyborg's Comic History

Cyborg was an original character when Marv Wolfman & George Perez re-imagined the Teen Titans in 1980, creating a book full of young, innovative, exciting new characters. It was DC's most popular book for most of the decade, holding its own against the X-Men juggernaut. Vic was an accident victim that had been rebuilt by his scientist father, fighting to accept his loss of humanity. He would go on to be featured in the 80's era Challenge of the Superfriends.

Like many of the characters from that era he faded into the background for several years, his mechanical body undergoing several changes before he returned as the leader of the Geoff Johns Teen Titans with a modern version of his classic look which also included elements of his appearance in the insanely popular animated Teen Titans series.

When the New 52 happened in 2011 and the mainstream continuity was rewritten Cyborg was depicted as a founding member of the Justice League. His origins were altered slightly, incorporating the alien supercomputer mother-box in his cybornetics. He was now able to hack anything and everything and open boom tubes. His technology was so advanced it functioned more like magic. He continued to refine these new powers when he was given his own series.in 2015.

Our Cyborg Story

Vic is actually surprisingly easy to get right. We stayed away from his revamped post-new 52 origins, deciding to avoid incorporating any alien technology into his design (at first). Instead, we wanted to use his classic origin, focusing on his struggle to recover a sense of self in the face of the loss of so much of his humanity. Even more important is HOW he finds that sense of self; the circle of friends that he surrounds himself with. Being a Titan means more than being in the Justice League. Titans are family.

One very important new idea was for Vic to be able to take greater ownership of his own cybernetics. He needs to be an expert in biotechnology, and so we made sure that his post-Titan years include him earning an advanced degree and updating his own armor. He then has the same role in our story that he had in Geoff John's Titans; a mentor and leader to a new generation of heroes. Then, of course, he joins the Watchtower. We want to reflect his membership in the League, but do it in a way that honors his history with the Titans as well. He's not just one of the biggest heroes in DC, but he's firmly a part of the new generation of heroes.

Plus, they're bound to have a mother-box in their trophy room.

Cyborg's "Costume"

There are roughly five different versions of Vic's cyborg body. Six if you count the time he had a weird liquid metal body (which we don't). First there's his original body, which featured a lot of what looked like arm straps, and which should be considered his original appearance when he first joins the Titans. He was eventually updated into a much bulkier, much more robotic body, which would continually adapt over the years. Then there's by far the look that most people would recognize; the blue-shouldered full-robot body from the animated series.

The New 52 kicked off with Cyborg's debut as a founding member of the Justice League where he started with a huge, powerful, awesome-looking cybernetic body, and it was pretty killer. Eventually his cybernetics became sentient and independent, (they were taken over by a rogue AI to become the villain Grid, which is cool), and he came back with the new, sleeker, more efficient-looking body from his own series.

So how is this going to work? We like the idea that his body is slowly changing over time, so we can slowly build up his cybernetics as the years pass. Then we come to THIS year, and he joins the Watchtower and has access to all the cool alien tech. At this point, I imagine his whole body is pretty modular, so it makes sense that he'd finally build his sleek new tech, and have access to all his cool super-hacking and teleportation powers. It's then reasonable that his original modular cybornetics might in fact undergo the story arc with the Grid AI.

This is one case where it's not so much about picking one or two costumes, but allowing that he slowly changes over time. If nothing else, I'm personally really jazzed that he finally has his own chest logo now.

Cyborg's Future

The idea that Vic is starting to really master his cybernetics presents a lot of cool possibilities, and not just for cool new applications of his tech powers.

He's had love interests in the past, but the nature of the character meant he was always sort of trapped in his own body, and that made any sort of meaningful relationship feel forced. Also... you can't really help but question how that would work. Now that he is the person developing and advancing his own cybernetics, however, it introduces an idea that perhaps he has a greater degree of control over his own body, and his life, and perhaps he could have a more human relationship in his future.

One idea that seems to be pretty popular for Vic, at least in our discord, is what might actually happen romantically for him in the future? There was a heated debate as to whether it made more sense for him to start to have a relationship with Starfire, or Donna Troy. I happen to prefer the latter, but it got to be a pretty heated debate, and that's usually a good indication that we're on the right track. Part of Vic's next chapter is probably going to involve him developing a relationship with one of his fellow heroes, and since I'm the one writing this, I bet you can guess which one it will be.

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