Barry Windsor-Smith plotted, drew and I believe largely colored a mini-series revival of a late Jack Kirby creation with which Marvel had failed to get a publishing hit. The sensibilities of a new generation, and probably some influence from the release of the movie Blade Runner, inspired the fabled Conan the Barbarian artist to bring his delicate, detailed line. I love how the story's colored cinematically. It's a story of one anachronistic marvel, awake in a world that left him for deactivated scrap, who identifies with marginalized, communal rebels. They risk their lives to survive in the capitalist wasteland of surgical video gamers and patrols of droids who terminate with prejudice. And the head of the company whose scrapyards they pick over? The woman who had Machine Man deactivated, decades before: Sunset Bain. Here's a link to my Tik Toks on Machine Man: @cecildisharoon AI gets out of the box: the retrofuturistic Machine Man (Barry Windsor-Smith art) ...

Then the hand culminates in a finger pointing to the credits. Genius. This is probably my favorite Ditko splash page of his run; the arm is the border against pitch blackness, representing the lost limb that carries the plot ---straight to Madame Menace. There’s a terrific metaphor---the hero sacrifices his arm for one person he finds worthy and inspirational---then his arm becomes subject the attentions of greedy manipulators who want to sell the value of his arm to the highest bidder. Whoever thought up the plot could’ve been talking about Kirby, or many others besides, and if it was Ditko, it has a nice Randian subtext while maintaining the crackle of a superhero adventure. Machine Man searches the area of his battle (near the cathedral last issue) but gets no signal from his detached arm. He checks in on Pamela Quinn, who finds him cold and unemotive but senses something mysterious beneath that...as well as a touch of déjà vu, like she knows him. The next-to-last piece of MM’s ...