Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Comic du jour: The Bionic Woman #1 (Oct. 1977)

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an episode of the TV show this comic is based on, but I hope it was better and less silly than this comic from Charlton.

To say something nice about this book, the art is interesting and offers a decent likeness of actress Lindsay Wagner. But the story! Let’s get to it ….

First off, is a little ditty called “Rico, Come Home.” In it, Jaime Sommers gets involved in the personal life of the child Rico when the kid is nearly abducted in an extensive family dispute involving Rico’s dead father, rich grandfather and normal mother. It’s kind of confusing, but it somehow ends with Rico nearly falling off a cliff into the ocean and Jaime saving him. I guess in the 1970s it might have made sense if you just looked at the pictures, but still …

The second story is titled “Weaker Sex?” and is pretty much what you’d expect. Oscar Goldman, in all his wise manliness, decides Jaime doesn’t need to have her bionics on all the time — he’s only going to give her super strength and speed when she goes on dangerous missions. He then proceeds to send her on a mission in which she’s disguised as a flight attendant so she can keep an eye on a recently paroled terrorist who’s being returned to Algiers on a commercial flight. This, apparently, doesn’t qualify as dangerous, but she does get to wear a cute flight attendant hat that, were it made of paper, would require to ask folks to drive through, please. Of course, shit goes wrong and she has to save the day without her powers, prompting Oscar to realize he was being an ass and restore her powers.

There aren’t any credits that I can see, but I will say the art is not bad — especially for a Charlton book of this era. It also manages to be only slightly more entertaining than the NBC revival series that came out last year and could have easily exceeded it had only Max the bionic dog made an appearance.

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