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Christopher Hastings' Writer's Commentary on the Six Million Dollar Man #1

Published Sun, 10 Mar 2019 14:30:07 -0500

Christopher Hastings has a Writer's Commentary on the Six Million Dollar Man #1 from Dynamite.

Hello and welcome to the author commentary for THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (2019). I'm Christopher Hastings, I wrote the script for this comic, and now I'm going show you how this six million dollar sausage got made.

Please have your copy of The Six Million Dollar Man #1 nearby, and let's read it together.

PAGE ONE

One of the major things we wanted to do to set this comic apart from prior incarnations of the $6MM was to give it a viewpoint character that wasn't Steve Austin himself. It's one of my favorite tricks to preserve an air of wonder and mystery about an extraordinary character. We don't put you in the boots of that character, but we put you in the boots of the person next to them.

And here those boots belong to Japanese secret agent Niko Abe, introduced on this first page.

A big part of this plot is that the head of fictional electronics company ANSA wants to nuke Hawaii. I did not choose the name ANSA randomly! It was inspired by SONY, whose name was created as a mix of two words, the latin "sonus" for audio and sonics because… speakers and such. And the other is "sonny" as in an old man being like "Hey there sonny boy, take this nickel and buy yourself twelve pounds of candy." "Sonny boy" was/is a loan word in Japanese, and was something you would use to refer to say… sharp, young, go-getting men. Kind of a fun slang thing. And the founders of Sony considered themselves to be "sonny boys." And so SONUS + SONNY = SONY.

To that end, I picked thegairago word "ansā" from the English origin word "answer." Seemed like a good word for an electronics company like SONY. Got a problem? Get ANSA.

PAGE TWO

Here's Steve! And here's his buddy Rick, the helicopter pilot!

"Don't BREAK ANYTHING, Steve", Rick says. Rickknows.

PAGE THREE

Steve being this big white guy in Japan wearing his NASA patch jacket reminds me of this guy who came to speak at my elementary school once. He was a classmate's uncle, he traveled to Japan a lot, and he told us all about how because he was white and so tall, he really stood out in Japan. And he said it got him a lot of respect. Then he turned around and revealed that the back of his jacket had a HUGE kanji on it that he said meant "Respect"… which he wore because he was white and tall.

Anyway, kind of weird, looking back on it.

PAGES FOUR AND FIVE

Steve tells Niko he's a cyborg! She doesn't believe him. He's pretty casual and jokey about it, because the whole experience is new to him, and he's not entirely sure if he's supposed to disclose this information or not. But he knows Niko is upset, and he wants to do something to reassure her, and he kind of stumbles through it. He's not a trained spy at this point. He's a former astronaut that got a bunch of super powers. This mission IS the training.

PAGE SIX

Again, Steve is a crap spy. He shines a flashlight right in a guard's face. What a maroon.

PAGES SEVEN and EIGHT

But what's this? Perhaps Steve is more capable than we thought! He distracts the guard and leads him on a wild chase, appearing to Niko as though he is in multiple places at once, moving at what must be an impossible speed! You and I know that Steve has just showed off his powers for the first time, his bionic super speed. This is an example of having fun with not having Steve be the viewpoint character. He'd move at slow motion, we'd hear the sound effect, the magic trick would be ruined.

PAGE NINE

By this point, you've picked up that this is a much less serious Steve Austin than the original Six Million Dollar Man TV show. In the early stages of developing the pitch for this series, editor Nate Cosby and I discussed adjusting Steve's attitude to reflect more of the astronauts we loved from the sixties, specifically going to The Right Stuff. These test pilots stared death in the face on a regular basis, and coped with it by joking about peeing in their space suits because the engineers didn't think to put toilets on rockets.

They probably don't shut up about being astronauts long after they retire either. Hence the dialogue here.

PAGE TEN

Once again, Steve using his powers on the sly, using his bionic eye to see through the rocket and read out the chemical makeup of the fuel inside of it. Look how smart he sounds because I spent 15 minutes on Wikipedia reading about rocket fuel!

PAGE ELEVEN

BAD GUY ALERT. Much like Steve Austin, Mr. Amari, should ALSO be dead. But Amari hasn't been kept alive by slick, pretty-boy cybernetic parts. He's got a mix of nuclear mutation and strange botanicals keeping his stuff alive and gross. We'll show you later, don't worry.

PAGE TWELVE

Okay we're halfway through this book. Time to see Steve kick ass.

PAGE THIRTEEN

I did the dialogue on the back half of the story after David drew it, and I'm going to be honest, it was… kinda tough! David's storytelling is really solid, and the characters didn't really HAVE to say anything for most of this fight. The sequence completely reads without words, and I have absolutely no interest in writing dialogue like "Take THAT!" or "Thought you could shoot ME, eh? I'll show YOU!"

And so, I see a panel of Steve holding up those two guys, and that inspires "I'm looking for the giant Buddha statue! He's THIS big."

Comics are fun.

PAGE FOURTEEN

Let's take a sec to shout out Ariana's lettering with translation from Zack Davisson! I love the blended languages in this book, especially on the sword sound effects.

PAGE FIFTEEN

I like to make special playlists to listen while I work on new projects. The playlist for my writing $6MM is a mix of '70s rock and pop, some songs about astronauts, and some songs about robot men.

Here is the playlist:

open.spotify.com/user/drhastings/playlist/4Z5tkaQtIVaPLbX2vECk8F?si=Tci8J7gbQdKB2MIB0PjkaQ

For THIS scene, I suggest "The Loco-Motion" by Grand Funk Railroad.

PAGES SIXTEEN and SEVENTEEN

Okay stop the song when Steve's leg gets cut off.

PAGE EIGHTEEN and NINETEEN

Here's where we get to our other main goal with this series: Steve gets MESSED UP.

His powers are cool but he is NOT invincible. Every issue, we are going to see that Steve's experimental cyborg technology is just as much a hindrance as it is a help, and ultimately his survival is going to come down to his and Niko's creativity, drive and grit.

PAGE TWENTY

And there we have it! I hope you enjoyed our first issue of The Six Million Dollar (and depreciating) Man! I had a blast writing it, and things only get more intense in the next issue. Thanks to my collaborators for making this look so awesome. See you next time!