Cyborg is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, and first appears in a special insert in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980). Cyborg is best known as a member of the Teen Titans. However, in September 2011, Cyborg was established as a founding member of the Justice League as part of DC's 2011 reboot of its continuity.

Biography

Victor "Vic" Stone is the son of Silas Stone and Elinore Stone, scientists who use him as a test subject for various intelligence enhancement projects. While these treatments worked and Victor's IQ grows to genius levels, he grows to resent this treatment. He strikes up a friendship with Ron Evers, a young miscreant who leads him into trouble with the law. This is the beginning of a struggle in which Victor strives for independence, engaging in pursuits of which his parents disapprove, such as athletics, and abandoning his scholastic studies. Victor's association with underage criminals leads him down a dark path in which he is often injured, but he still lives a "normal" life in which he is able to make his own decisions. He occasionally refuses to participate in Evers' grandiose plans of racially motivated terrorism.



When he visits his parents at work at S.T.A.R. Labs, an experiment with an inter-dimensional portal goes horribly wrong and a massive gelatinous monster kills Elinore. The creature turns on Victor and severely mutilates him before Silas forces the creature back through the portal.

To save his son, Silas outfits him with experimental prosthetics of his own design. The equipment can not be worn inconspicuously, and Victor is horrified upon discovering that most of his body and part of his face have been replaced with metallic implants. Victor initially wants to die, but he eventually adjusts to the changes and learns to control his implants.

Stone finds that reintegration into society is very difficult, due to the fearful reactions by others to his jarring appearance. Even his girlfriend, Marcy Reynolds, rejects him. He is disallowed further participation in athletics, both for the unfair advantage provided by his cybernetics and because of his poor scholastic record. When Ron Evers attempts to manipulate Victor into participating in a terrorist attack on the United Nations, Victor finds new purpose as he equips his weapons attachments and stops his former friend in a pitched battle on top of United Nations Headquarters.




Teen Titans
Vic joins the Teen Titans, initially for the benefit of a support group of kindred spirits and outsiders, and has remained with that group ever since. In addition, Victor finds new friends, who see past his disfigurements and his own nobility. His team mates are like a group of juveniles who are adjusting to their own prosthetics for they idolize him because of his fancy parts and his exciting adventures. It also turns out that their beautiful teacher Sarah Simms, who has often assisted Cyborg and the Titans, admires him as well. Cyborg and Sarah have a deep relationship that is considered by some fans to be Cyborg's one true love, although writer Marv Wolfman insists it is a deep and caring friendship.

Another person who sees past the cybernetic shell is Dr. Sarah Charles, a S.T.A.R. Labs scientist who helps him to recuperate after having his cybernetic parts replaced. Cyborg and Dr. Charles date for some time and, along with Changeling, keeps trying to reach him when he is seemingly mindless following the severe injuries he incurs during the Titans Hunt storyline.


Deaths and rebirths

Although Cyborg's body was repaired by a team of Russian scientists after the missile crash he had been in, albeit with more mechanical parts than previously, his mind was not. Eventually, his mind was restored by an alien race of computer intelligences called the Technis, created from the sexual union of Swamp Thing and a machine-planet when Swamp Thing was travelling through space. Cyborg, however, had to remain with the Technis both to maintain his mind and because, in return for restoring him, he had to teach them about humanity. He took the name Cyberion, and gradually started becoming less human in outlook, connecting entirely to the Technis planet.

Eventually, Cyberion returned to Earth, establishing a Technis construct on the moon and a smaller base on Earth. With Vic's consciousness dormant, but his desire for companionship controlling the actions of the Technis' planet, it began kidnapping former Titans members, his conscious mind so suppressed that he was not only searching for deceased Titans, but even sent one probe looking for himself as Cyborg. He ended up plugging them into virtual reality scenarios, representing what he believed to be their "perfect worlds"; for example, Beast Boy was back with the Doom Patrol, Damage was spending time being congratulated by the Justice Society as a true hero, and Nightwing was confronted by a Batman who actually smiled and offered to talk about their relationship. Although the Titans were freed, there was a strong disagreement between them and the Justice League over what action to take; the League believed that there was nothing left of Victor to save, whereas the Titans were willing to try, culminating in a brief battle, where the Atom and Catwoman (who had followed the Justice League to investigate) sided with the League while the Flash fought with the Titans. While Vic was distracted trying to aid his friends, a Titans team consisting of Changeling and the original five Titans were sent by Raven to try making contact with Vic's human side, while Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, Power Girl, Captain Marvel, and Mary Marvel moved the moon back to its proper place. Eventually, thanks primarily to Changeling's encouragement, and Omen and Raven holding Vic together long enough to come up with a plan, Vic's consciousness was restored, and "downloaded" into the Omegadrome, a morphing war-suit belonging to former Titan Minion. In the wake of this event, the Titans reformed and Vic was part of the new group. However, he felt less human than ever before.

Shortly after this, Nightwing revealed he had cloned Vic's body, and by flowing the Omegadrome through the clone, Vic regained his human form, but still had the abilities of the Omegadrome. He often used the Omegadrome to recreate his original look in battle. With his newfound humanity, Vic took a leave of absence, moving first to L.A. with Beast Boy and then to Central City. While in Central City, Vic was involved in one of the Thinker's schemes, helping Wally hack the Thinker's attempt to plug himself into the minds of Central City's population so that Wally could outthink his opponent, though Vic lost the abilities of the Omegadrome in the process.


Mentor
Vic mentored the new incarnation of the Teen Titans, consisting mainly of sidekicks, most of whom have taken over the identities of former members (i.e. Tim Drake, the third Robin, instead of Dick Grayson, the original Robin and Titans leader), as well as stalwarts such as Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy, where they have fought enemies such as Deathstroke, Brother Blood, Doctor Light, The Titans Tomorrow, and a brainwashed Superboy and Indigo during a team up with the Outsiders in the Insiders storyline. In the end, Cyborg was the only one capable of standing up to Dr. Light, thanks to his solar shields, although he makes it clear that he only won the fight because the rest of the Titans had softened Light up first.


Infinite Crisis and beyond
During Infinite Crisis, Cyborg joined Donna's New Cronus team that went to investigate a hole in the universe that was found during the Rann-Thanagar War. He left Beast Boy in charge of the Titans while he was gone. They arrived at the reset center of the universe and with the help of assorted heroes aided in the defeat of Alexander Luthor, who was attempting to recreate the multiverse and build a perfect Earth from it.

According to 52 Week 5, Cyborg was fused together with Firestorm after returning to Earth. This was caused by the energy ripples caused by Alexander Luthor Jr. which altered the Zeta Ray Beams the heroes were going to use to return home.

After being severely damaged during the events of Infinite Crisis, Cyborg was rebuilt over time in thanks to Tower caretakers Wendy and Marvin. He awoke a year later to find a wholly different Teen Titans being led by Robin, the only member from the team he formed prior to going into space. He is still a member of the team, but feels that Kid Devil and Ravager are hardly worthy Titans, and thus is attempting to find a way to reform "the real Titans".

After the team along with the Doom Patrol defeated the Brotherhood of Evil, Cyborg asked Beast Boy to rejoin the Titans, but Gar refused, saying that his skills were needed with the Doom Patrol. After returning to Titans Tower, Cyborg began reviewing the security tapes during the last year, in which it appears that he was looked to by all the Titans of the past year for a shoulder to lean on, despite being in a coma-like state.

It appears that although Cyborg has returned to the team, the role of leader is now in the hands of Robin. He does however retain the position of statesman amongst the team and occasionally plays second-in-command.

In Justice League of America (vol. 2) #3, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman agree that Cyborg should be offered membership in the new Justice League. However, following a battle against Amazo, Green Lantern and Black Canary take over the formation of the JLA, and Cyborg is not amongst the roster.

In the Teen Titans East one-shot, Cyborg gathered together a new team of Titans. During a training exercise, the group was attacked by Trigon, and Cyborg was blasted by a giant energy beam. He was last seen in a crater, with only his head and torso remaining.


Titans
In the aftermath of Trigon's assault in the Titans East one shot, Cyborg has been placed into a special hoverchair while he recuperates. Cyborg's body is completely repaired in Titans #5. Soon after, the resurrected and unbalanced Jericho enters Cyborg's body, using him to manipulate the defenses at Titans Tower to kill the Teen Titans. Jericho's plans are foiled when Static, the newest Teen Titan, uses his electrical powers to overload the Tower's systems, causing feedback that knocks Jericho out of Cyborg. After recovering, Cyborg pretends to still have Jericho inside of him, in order to draw out Vigilante, who was currently targeting Jericho. The plot works too well when Vigilante appears and shoots Cyborg in the head.


2008 miniseries
In an unspecified time during the Teen Titans comics, a man with enhancements similar to Cyborg's attacks Dr. Sarah Charles on the day of her wedding to Deshaun, a young scientist. Cyborg rushes in for the save, discovering how Deshaun, connected to Project M, has sold the technology used to turn Stone into Cyborg to the military. He also finds that the enhanced man was Ron Evers, once Vic's best friend now turned terrorist, who was seeking vengeance for the soldiers used as test subjects. After Cyborg manages to calm down his friend and discovers the truth: Mr. Orr, revealed as the mastermind behind Project M's cyborg research, brings his Stone-derived best subjects: the current Equus, an armored form of the Wildebeest, and a cyberized man sporting enhancements even more powerful than Stone's current ones called Cyborg 2.0.

Cyborg 2.0 turns out to be the Titans Tomorrow Cyborg 2.0, snatched from his proper timeline and cajoled by Orr into fighting his younger self for the possession of their shared technology and Orr's permission to use it in the battlefield. Cyborg is soon forced to fight simultaneously against the Phantom Limbs, an elite force of soldiers crippled in the Middle East and restored by his tech, and the Cyborg Revenge Squad, a broader formation composed of the Fearsome Five, Magenta, Girder, the Thinker, and Cyborgirl. Although the Cyborg Revenge Squad soon gains the upper hand, with the help of his fellow Titans Cyborg is able to hold his own in combat, reverse engineer on the fly some of the future technology used by Cyborg 2.0, and enhance his own body enough to win against Mr. Orr. He later decides to get a new lease in life, forgiving Deshaun and Sarah Charles on their wedding day for abusing his technology, resuming dating Sarah Simms and having the Phantom Limbs fitted with new, non-military, prosthetics. It is however implied the Phantom Limbs, unwilling to see Stone's offer as a sign of good will, are trying to get back their weaponized prosthetics and wait for a rematch.


Blackest Night and JLA
During the events of Blackest Night, Cyborg joins with Starfire, Beast Boy, and several other heroes to form an emergency team to fight off the army of dead Titans who have been reanimated as Black Lanterns. He later joins in the final battle at Coast City.

Following the dissolution of the current JLA after Justice League: Cry for Justice, Cyborg is invited by Donna to join Kimiyo Hoshi's new Justice League. He befriends Red Tornado, and claims that he has come up with a plan to make him indestructible.

After a battle with Doctor Impossible's gang, Cyborg is forced to take a leave of absence from the team in order to not only help rebuild Red Tornado, but also help Roy Harper, who had his arm severed by Prometheus. During this time, Victor leads Superboy and Kid Flash to the city of Dakota to rescue the Teen Titans, who had been defeated and captured by Holocaust. The Titans emerge victorious from the battle after Kid Flash uses his powers to send Holocaust plummeting into the Earth's inner core.

Despite apparently being written off the team, writer James Robinson explained that Cyborg will continue to have a presence on the JLA, and will even be given a co-feature in the back of the book for Justice League of America #48-50. In the co-feature, Cyborg battles Red Tornado after he has been driven insane by the power of the Starheart. In the midst of the battle, a flashback reveals that Victor had rebuilt Red Tornado using self-replicating nanites similar to the ones that Prometheus infected Roy with after cutting off his arm, thus making the android indestructible. Cyborg manages to free Red Tornado his power matrix.

Cyborg briefly appears in Justice League: Generation Lost. where he is shown helping Wonder Woman and Starfire search for Maxwell Lord after his resurrection.

Following an adventure in another dimension, Static is left powerless, and Miss Martian is rendered comatose. Cyborg stops the powerless Static from returning to Dakota, and instead tells him that he and a scientist named Rochelle Barnes will be taking him to Cadmus Labs to find a way to get his powers back and awaken Miss Martian. As Static packs up his belongings, Cyborg and Rochelle have a conversation which reveals that they are lying to Static, and have an ulterior motive for taking the two Titans to Cadmus.

He later appears in the final two issues of The Return of Bruce Wayne, where he helps his former teammate Red Robin in his attempt to stop Bruce Wayne from inadvertently unleashing an apocalyptic explosion of Omega Energy.

Cyborg and Red Tornado later travel to the moon alongside Doctor Light, Animal Man, Congorilla, Zauriel, Tasmanian Devil and Bulleteer as part of an emergency group of heroes gathered to assist the Justice League in their battle against Eclipso. Shortly into the battle, Cyborg and the others are taken over by Eclipso and are turned against their JLA comrades. The reserve JLA members are all freed after Eclipso is defeated.


The New 52

As of August 2011, Cyborg is featured as one of the main characters in a new Justice League ongoing series written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Jim Lee as part of DC's The New 52 relaunch. Johns has said of Cyborg, "He represents all of us in a lot of ways. If we have a cellphone and we're texting on it, we are a cyborg — that's what a cyborg is, using technology as an extension of ourselves."

The first storyline takes place five years in the past and details the revised origin of the original Justice League. Victor Stone appears as a high school football star who is heavily sought after by a number of college scouts, but apparently has a distant relationship with his father, Silas. After winning a big game, Victor is shown calling his father and angrily telling him that he broke his promise and missed yet another one of his son's games. Later Victor appears at S.T.A.R. Labs where his father works. The scientists appear to be working on the Mother Box that Superman came in contact with from the Parademon. Victor engages in another argument with his father and tells him that the scouts were there to give him full scholarships to college. When asking if his father will ever appear at any of his games, his father replies "No." Just then the Mother Box explodes killing the scientists and destroying most of Victor's body to which Victor's father looks in horror. Silas does everything he can for Victor's survival. He along with Sarah Charles, and T. O. Morrow go in "The Red Room" in S.T.A.R. labs which contains every piece of technology from around the world. Silas attempts to treat Victor with something that has never been attempted before and he is seen injecting Victor with some type of nanites and having Dr. Morrow put the robotic pieces on Victor (devices such as: a Promethean skin graft, Doctor William Magnus' responsometer, Anthony Ivo's A-maze operating system, The classified and prototypical B-maze operating system and Ryan Choi's White Dwarf Stabilizer). Vic's life is saved and the energies from the motherbox are incorporated into his new form as Cyborg. This allows Victor to access the vast New Gods data library and discover Darkseid's true invasion plans.

In the following issue we see Victor as Cyborg. As the issue opens Victor cannot feel his hands or legs. He sees himself for the first time with his robotic parts and is panicked by his new body. Suddenly, Parademons burst into the red room and leap toward Sarah Charles. However, Cyborg's defense system's reacts automatically weaponizing his arm into a sound cannon from which he fires his powerful white noise cannon, disintegrating the two Parademons and blasting a gigantic hole in the Star Labs building. After saving Sarah's life Victor asks his father what has happened to him, his father tells him that he couldn't let him die. Cyborg obviously distraught exclaims, "You did this to me." and flees, despite Silas' plea for him to wait. Later in the street Cyborg sees a woman being set upon by a group of Parademons. He leaps to the woman's aid, punching the parademon. However, in ensuing scuffle Cyborg inadvertently absorbs some of the Parademon's components giving him access to Boom Tube technology. This new ability automatically transports or teleports Victor to where Batman, Green Lantern, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman are fighting the Parademons, moments before Darkseid arrives. Cyborg fights alongside Batman, Green Lantern, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman against Darkseid and his Parademons, but despite their best efforts Darkseid proves to be too strong. Fortunately, Cyborg is able to reverse engineer the alien boom tube technology and with a considerable amount of stress on his systems he is able to teleport all the invading aliens including Darkseid off the planet, saving the earth. After sending Darkseid back where he came from, Cyborg helps to found the Justice League.

Victor has not begun any process of reconciliation with his father, who is primarily concerned with Victor's mechanics rather than his humanity. Cyborg primarily focuses on his super-heroics, aiding Batman and others when he can and monitoring crime through his cybernetics. After the villain David Graves makes an attack against the Justice League, Cyborg and his team mates travel to the Valley of Souls. There he learns that he walks the line between life and death. He sees a false apparition of his human self that tries to convince him that Victor Stone is dead and Cyborg is just an imitation. Victor quickly sees past this ruse, and he and the rest of the Justice League defeat Graves. We learn through a conversation with Flash, in Justice League #13, that Cyborg questions his humanity now that he is part machine and that he lives on the Watch Tower, the Justice League's headquarters. Flash cracks a joke in an attempt to lighten the mood and assure Cyborg he is still human. During the Throne of Atlantis storyline, Cyborg at first rejects an upgrade his father has that would allow him to operate underwater at the price of his remaining lung which to him would mean sacrificing more of his humanity. However following the capture of the rest of the Justice League by Ohm who sentenced then to the bottom of the ocean, Cyborg as he calls in reserves to hold off Ohm's forces reluctantly accepted the upgrade. This allows him and Mera to rescue the others.

It is unclear if this version of Cyborg was a member of the Teen Titans or the original Teen Titans ever existed, as there have been contradictory statements and references made regarding the Teen Titans in The New 52.

During the "Trinity War" storyline, Cyborg gets a visual of Shazam heading to Kahndaq, to which Batman assembles the Justice League with the help from Zatanna to meet in Kahndaq to stop Shazam. Following the supposed death of Doctor Light in Kahndaq, Batman tells Superman that Cyborg and Martian Manhunter are doing an autopsy to prove his death was not Superman's fault. As Wonder Woman leads the Justice League Dark to go look for Pandora, Cyborg is among the superheroes that remain at A.R.G.U.S. while Batman, Flash, Aquaman, Shazam, Steve Trevor, the Justice League of America, Zatanna, and Phantom Stranger go to stop Wonder Woman. Cyborg was present when Atom tells him, Superman, Element Woman and Firestorm the true purpose of the creation of the Justice League of America and that she was spying on the Justice League which is how the Justice League of America ended up in Kahndaq. When the Crime Syndicate arrives on Prime Earth, Cyborg's old prosthetic parts combine to form a robot called Grid (who is operated by a sentient computer virus). During the Forever Evil event, after Batman and Catwoman drop Cyborg off to his father in Detroit, he makes the choice to willingly receive a new cybernetic body and helps his father and Dr. Morrow create one that is slimmer in appearance so Cyborg could look more human. Working together with the Metal Men created by Doc Magus, Cyborg succeeds in shutting down Grid.

Cyborg's eponymous ongoing series, by writer David F. Walker and artist Ivan Reis, debuted in July 2015.

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