The New Machine Man
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| The New Machine Man a.k.a. Machine Man Update | ||||||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | |||||||||||||||
| Published in | The Transformers issue 25 | |||||||||||||||
| First published | 24th August, 1985 | |||||||||||||||
| Writer | unknown | |||||||||||||||
| Artist | Steve Ditko (uncredited) | |||||||||||||||
| Penciller | Herb Trimpe (uncredited) | |||||||||||||||
| Inker | Barry Windsor-Smith (uncredited) | |||||||||||||||
In order to prepare readers for the second volume of Machine Man, The Transformers printed a text feature under the header "The New Machine Man".
Synopsis
Machine Man started life as X-51, the last of a series of lifelike robot soldiers created by a secret U.S. military project. Unlike his brothers, X-51 was taken in by programmer Dr Abel Stack, who raised him like a son and provided him with a humanised face mask.
The first fifty robots in the X series project began to act erratically and violently as the result of existential crises. After three quarters of the robots suffered nervous breakdowns, project head Dr Oliver Broadhurst made the decision to activate the self-destruct failsafe mechanism concealed within each test subject. Stack, determined that his son should live, removed the bomb, but was killed in the explosion.
Following his father's wishes, X-51 took on the name Aaron Stack, fighting to better humanity as Machine Man and working at Delmar Insurance in his civilian identity.
After a time, Machine Man took a sabbatical from Delmar. While walking the earth, he met another robot named Jocasta, with whom he fell in love. This put him in the sights of Ultron, Jocasta's creator, who wanted her back. In the ensuing battle – which involved a rematch with Machine Man promised by the Thing – Jocasta was destroyed. Machine Man took her remains back to the workshop of his mechanic friend Gears Garvin in the desperate hope of a revival.
Flash forward to the year 2020, and Machine Man is disassembled and stored away in a vast warehouse. Can he uncover over thirty years of missing memories while surviving in a hostile technocracy?
Mentioned characters
| Regular cast | Antagonists | Others |
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Notes
This feature was printed immediately after the final part of "Jolted by Jack O'Lantern!". The table of contents on the Transformation page refers to it as "Machine Man Update!", but if they wanted us to call it that they should've put it as the largest text on the page instead of a small, column-width logo.
"The New Machine Man" is illustrated by the final panel of "Jolted by Jack O'Lantern!", by Steve Ditko, and two sequential panels from "He Lives Again!", pencilled by Herb Trimpe and inked by Barry Windsor-Smith.
Technical errors
- The very first sentence on the page is a comma splice.
- Abel Stack's first name is misspelled "Able".
- "Binary Bug" is presented without the definite article.
- Madam Menace is misspelled "Madame Menace".
Continuity notes
- Machine Man's origin, including Broadhurst, Abel Stack, and the X series robots, was depicted in "Introducing Machine Man". This summary is the first time Broadhurst is named in the pages of The Transformers.
- Aaron taking the job at Delmar, and his clash with the Binary Bug, took place in "Byte of the Binary Bug!".
- He faced Baron Brimstone and the Satan Squad in, uh, "Baron Brimstone and his Sinister Satan Squad!".
- He fought Madam Menace in "Arms and the Robot!" and "Alone Against Alpha Flight!".
- Miles Brickman showed ill will towards Machine Man, either directly or indirectly, in "Byte of the Binary Bug!", "The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls", and "Alone Against Alpha Flight!".
- Machine Man's meeting with Jocasta took place in Marvel Two-In-One issue 92
and 93, though "The New Machine Man" cites "Big Ben Nos. 1-4". This refers to the first four issues of The Thing is Big Ben , a Marvel UK reprint title with Ben Grimm as its main draw. Said story depicted the rematch ol' blue eyes promised Machine Man in "Kill Me or Cure Me".
- The idea of a despondent Machine Man trying to get Gears to revive Jocasta is actually a call-forward to "Rime of the Ancient Wrecker!".
- "[T]he scene shifts forward thirty-five years", says the summary, which doesn't quite fit in with how we square things on this wiki, but does reflect the amount of time between the date of publication and 2020.
Continuity errors
- This summary posits that Abel Stack named X-51 Machine Man, and the living robot took on the name Aaron Stack to work at Delmar. It was actually Abel that named him Aaron.
- The phrasing implies that Abel died just as he was removing the bomb from Aaron's head, when in actuality Aaron had enough time to fly away.
- You wouldn't know it by just reading TFUK, but Aaron doesn't actually leave Delmar in "Jolted by Jack O'Lantern!". In fact, the The Thing is Big Ben story cited here depicts him still working there, having prioritised his civilian life over superheroism.
Reprint
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| The New Machine Man a.k.a. Machine Man Update | ||||||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | |||||||||||||||
| Published in | The Transformers issue 308 | |||||||||||||||
| Cover date | 9th February, 1991 | |||||||||||||||
| Writer | unknown | |||||||||||||||
| Artist | Steve Ditko (uncredited) | |||||||||||||||
| Penciller | Herb Trimpe (uncredited) | |||||||||||||||
| Inker | Barry Windsor-Smith (uncredited) | |||||||||||||||
| Colours | unknown | |||||||||||||||
With the entire second volume of Machine Man being reprinted late in The Transformers's run, "The New Machine Man" was trotted out again the issue beforehand.
This reprinted version uses the same layout and much of the same text. Original colours are provided for the artwork, most evident in the panel from "Jolted by Jack O'Lantern!", which originally took place during a moonlit night, but is rendered here in sunset orange.
Edits
- Text concerning the second Machine Man volume being a sequel to the open ending of "Jolted by Jack O'Lantern!" is altered or removed. Indeed, instead of playing on the reader's familiarity with the character as in issue 25, the reprint refers to "the very well known Marvel Super Hero, Machine Man"!
- The implicit mention of Arno Stark is omitted.
- The creative team are actually called out by name.
- The aside that Aaron leaving Delmar took place "this issue" is removed. References to "He Lives Again!" being printed "in two issues' time" are changed to "in two weeks' time" and "in our next issue".
Technical errors
- The misspellings of "Abel" and "Madam", as well as the lack of definite article for the Binary Bug, are all retained.
- Twice, Aaron's alter ego is rendered as "machine Man", with a lowercase m.
- The text still refers to "the scene shift[ing] forward thirty-five years", which was more accurate in 1985 than it reads in 1991.
- Not a technical error in the strictest sense, but the text also still refers to The Thing is Big Ben issues 1-4, which by that point had been off the shelves for nearly seven years. Good luck tracking those down, kiddies!
