InsaneJournal

Not the Hobgoblin Saga entries alas, but something close to it of a character I so adore just as much, one Hank Henshaw aka the Cyborg Superman.

My love of the Cyborg Superman come's over the fact he has a pretty awesome design and his personality. As for all these scans of him, well I've kept them ever since I started the Cyborg Superman Appreciation Thread A LONG time ago on the old Newsarama.


We all know the story how it all starts out in Adventures of Superman #466. In a direct homage to the Fantastic Four, four astronauts are bombarded with radiation. However unlike the four, more tragic results befall Hank Henshaw and the crew of the Excalibur. Just a note these scans aren't mine. A friend scanned them of the actual two issues for me. If these go past the rules than I'll remove some. But again, thank you MoTA :) :






The four head to S.T.A.R. Labs in an effort to get cured. Alas they run into some trouble and eventually are confronted by Superman. A minor fight erupts but is ended thuogh more time is wasted. Steven during this goes insane and kills himself. Hank's condition begins to worsen as he continues to rapidly age:










Hank and Terri's tale continues several issues later in Adventures of Superman #468:










Hank than appears with a new robot body at NASA control demanding for his wife. Superman enters the picture and does battle with the robot. It is then he learns that it is Henshaw and is puzzled at the man surviving his grizzly fate. It is then that Terri's doctor runs in to inform Hank and Superman that Terri is now in an even worse catatonic state than before.

Interesting given that later origins and Hank himself state that she committed suicide right after the encounter. In any case, he retreats to an area VERY familiar to the Man of Steel:




It is then that Hank's sanity slips even further into madness as he begins to blame Superman more and more for his fate. This period was later covered near the tale end of Return of Superman explaining how Hank found Mongul and got him to be his minion. The tale is told by two minions of Cyborg and Mongul:





Mongul has him promply executed. Though as his body was destroyed Hank took a joy ride into the machine areas of Mongul's base before coming upon his spaceship, and learning from it's database of War World:






Then canonically in Adventures of Superman #500, Hank becomes the Cyborg Superman and make's his first appearance:








As an extra bonus here are two origin tales of the Cyborg. The first one I cannot claim as scans done by me. They're from the original Scans Daily when someone posted Superman Secret Villain Files of Lex Luthor going over all of Supes Rogues by telling his daughter stories of them:







From Countdown (however I've forgotten the actual issue given it's been so long):




I really really loved the way Reis portrayed Hank's origin here and the various designs he used throughout his time in the 90s until now (though it lacks a few designs I'll get into in part III). Still, I'm amazed that at all he had gotten this. It was quite a nice reward in reading Countdown just for the villain origins to see him among the villain elite again. I'll be talking of that also how Hank became an A list Superman Rogue to his downfall into becoming a mort and his rise again into A List status but now as a Green Lantern villain as well. But more on that for another time.

So ends part one of my look into the Cyborg Superman. In my next entry, the Cyborg raids Cadmus, tricks Lois Lane, and the entire world. Oh, and the act that forever changed the DC Universe in the 90s, Coast City going boom.