We often visited my grandparents on Sundays, which was great for me because in the evening after I got bored listening to the adults talk about their adult things, I was left alone to watch The Six Million Dollar Man battling the Venus Probe–in color! As I’ve said before, we only had a black and white television, so even as I watched Star Trek after school every day, it was not quite the same, in is monochromatic monotony. But Grandma and Grandpa McClain had a 25″ color TV, the very height of living room luxury!
The Six Million Dollar Man was my childhood idol. When my stepfather took away all of my comic books and burned them in front of me (“They’ll give you bad dreams.”) I needed a hero. Steve Austin was that hero. If my stepfather had read the source material, as I did, he may have had a different view.
You see, the Six Million Dollar Man from the TV show was an astronaut who was severely maimed from the crash of an experimental spacecraft. The Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) replaced both legs, his right arm and his left eye with bionic (cybernetic) parts. Steve Austin then had tremendous strength, could run at 60+ miles per hour tirelessly, and could see great distances and in the dark. In short, he became a secret agent with super powers.
The television show was clearly made for kids. Steve became the last man to walk on the moon, a famous astronaut. He refused to kill people, and usually only hit people with an open hand. The physics of the show were often questionable. There was no explanation given how when his non-bionic hand was handcuffed to his bionic one, he could simply pull his arms apart and the handcuffs would snap.
Eventually the TV show would spin off The Bionic Woman, featuring Steve’s girlfriend Jamie Sommers, a tennis pro who just coincidentally fell victim to nearly the same kind of injuries while skydiving. She got a bionic ear instead of an eye. There was also a Seven Million Dollar Man, who went bad, a Bionic Boy, with leg implants that compensated for his paralysis, and of course who could forget Max, the Bionic Dog?
When I received the Six Million Dollar Man action figure from my Grandma B for my 11th birthday in 1975, I was the first one in my fifth grade class to have one. I was the envy of all. You could look through his “bionic eye” through a viewfinder in the back of his head. He could lift the included engine block when you pressed a button in his back. Oh yes, my stepfather let me have it over having another doll, but by that time, I was learning to ignore him.
During the summer when I was 11 years old, my grandmother took my brother and me to a bookstore in Traverse City, Michigan. Horizon Books was just a hole in the wall on the south side of Front Street then. When we asked if they had any Six Million Dollar Man books, the clerk showed us the original novel upon which the Six Million Dollar Man was based: Cyborg, by Martin Caidin. My grandmother asked if it was appropriate for my age and the clerk replied that it was. I was so excited to see this book that I couldn’t even wait to get back to her house to start reading it.
To my dismay, I found a mistake. The book claimed that Steve Austin had lost his left arm, not his right! I immediately took a pen to the book, crossing out “left” and writing “right” in the margin above the line. And Steve didn’t work for the OSI, he worked for the OSO (Office of Special Operations). What was this?? My grandmother calmly explained that when books were made into movies or television shows, details could be changed like that. Satisfied with (and more than a little surprised by) that knowledge, I went back to reading.
The Steve Austin of the novel was a whole different character from the one in the TV show. This Steve Austin could not see out of his bionic eye, but it did hold a camera that could take up to 20 frames of film. The camera was activated by a button just under the “plastiskin” at Austin’s temple. His arm could not lift great weights because it was still attached to muscles and ligaments in his shoulder. He used it primarily as a bludgeon. But one huge difference in the arm was the CO2 airgun in his finger that shot cyanide-tipped darts. They definitely never had that little contraption in the television show! He also had a supply of flares that he kept in his hollow wrist joint. There was a plug he could pull out to gain access to them. Austin’s legs were also far different. He couldn’t run 60 miles per hour, but he could run without tiring, since his respiratory and circulatory systems were only working to supply oxygen and blood to one limb. His feet had swim fins that could deploy from the underside, just behind his toes.
Austin was much more ruthless in the novel to say the least. He undertook two missions, one to steal a Soviet MiG and one to infiltrate a Central American military complex. He was basically James Bond with built-in gadgets. The novel also dealt with other, more adult concepts, like impotence. Steve Austin’s doctors had specifically chosen an attractive nurse to try to persuade him that he wasn’t a monster. The novel also dealt with suicide, the first time I had ever been exposed to that word. Austin tried to kill himself, after requesting steak and orange juice to eat. It was a ruse to get a glass so that he could break it and free himself from the restraints that kept him in his hospital bed. That’s some pretty serious stuff.
After finishing this book, the TV show never quite had the same lustre again. When Austin battled the Soviet Venus Probe in January, it looked pretty ridiculous, to be honest, even as I enjoyed both parts at my grandparents’ house. Earlier in the fourth season, Bigfoot had returned, as well. And now, armed with a little more maturity provided by literature, I was a little disappointed. Even the comic books were a bit muted now. Fortunately, there was also a Six Million Dollar Man black and white comic magazine that had more adult stories in them. In fact, in the fourth issue, one of the stories was practically taken verbatim from the first novel.
So, at the same time my interest in children’s comic books was being rekindled, I was taking a more mature look at fictional characters through novels and magazines. This would become a common theme throughout my adolescence, and in fact, even into adulthood. I still enjoy childish things as well as more adult entertainment. It’s very possible to hold two thoughts at once.
