Black Comic Characters - Cyborg

Cyborg is a DC comics character and has been with the Teen Titans since the team was first formed in 1980s. I did a little research and realized that there is a lot more to cyborg than I thought. If part of the historical experience of being African-American is to be outside of mainstream America, then Cyborg being black and being cybernetic means that he deals with predjudice from the whole human race. Cyborg is a tortured soul who instead of turning evil after disaster and tragedy chooses to be a hero. I think that is what I like most about him. He is such a major DC character that he has appeared in other media like cartoons as the Super Friends in the early eighties. In that incarnation he looks much like his original comic book depiction (pictured on the left). During the early 2000's there was a show on Cartoon Network based on the Teen Titans that included Cyborg. In that version he looked very different (on the right) and it took sometime for it to grow on me. He has even been in two episodes on Smallville portrayed by Lee Thompson Young (above in the center). In Smallville Cyborg's cybernetics are not visible. He looks like everyone else. I dislike that because then you can't explore that expect of his character - how does he deal people who refuse to see past his appearance? The show isn't about him and it would take way too much time to do that subject justice. Also for non-comic book fans, visible cybernetics could have made him harder to identify with. This is why in the Spider-man films, the film makers decided to have the characters face unmasked at key emotional moments of those films. Cyborg has a huge fan base and I am grateful that someone decided to make a Mugen character for him. I have demo at the end of this article.

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