To those who were raised on the beloved Glen Murakami Teen Titans cartoon from 2003, the first image of Cyborg that'll come to mind will be him as an outspoken, tofu-loving genius who had a constant back-and-forth with fellow Titan Beast Boy. The years since have painted a much darker portrait of the character however, with Cyborg having made the leap from the Titans to the Justice League, and with it, a slight adjustment in personality.
Even before all of that though, Victor Stone had a tragic origin. Readers would probably be able to discern as much given Vic is half man, half machine, but it wasn't immediately telegraphed by his place on the Titans or by his friendly demeanour; no one could've possibly figured out from appearances alone that Vic fell into a bad crowd when he was young, or that in the same night his mother was killed by an inter-dimensional monster, that he himself would be brutally attacked by the same creature and that he would become half machine in order to survive the encounter.
Yeah... that's a lot to take in.
It's not as if Stone has had it easy since either. He's died multiple times, and creators have even saw fit to introduce the occasional bit of body horror into his comics too. Far from the tofu chowing funny guy from the show, right?
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
