- You may be looking for one of the other comic publications listed at The Bionic Woman (comics) or The Six Million Dollar Man (comics)
The usual title pane for Bionic Action. The final installments tended to omit the faces of Jaime and Steve.
Bionic Action was the successor to The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman in the pages of the weekly British Look-in magazine. It had a brief, six month run from 31 May 1979 to 17 November 1979. Outside of the four-page preview of Bionix, it was the only known English-language comic to feature both Jaime and Steve until The Bionic Man comic was launched in the 2010s.
Unlike its two parents, Bionic Action was an exclusively monochromatic affair, and had a particularly unstable creative team. Four artists — Ian Gibson, Ron Tiner, John Richardson and Mike White — worked on the project, with only Richardson inking a complete story. The resut was a series with a highly varied look, ranging from the almost parodic to the firmly realistic.
The final Look-in cover on which Jaime or Steve appear, dated
22 September 1979
The strip apparently faced cancellation from a very early stage, with the strip's second artist, Ron Tiner, leaving after only a few outings because he believed the strip was coming to end after the first story. However, the 1979 ITV strike, in which no programming was shown on ITV for 75 days, probably extended the strip's life a little longer than might otherwise have happened. The story which began in the middle of the strike proved to be the last story of the series. Ironically, Steve Austin's run in British comics ended at the hands of Charlie's Angels, the star vehicle for Lee Majors' wife.[1] The strip's status as more or less "filler" was strongly evidenced by the general lack of support it received on the covers. Perhaps fewer than ten issues which contained an installment of Bionic Action mentioned the fact on their covers.
Bionic Action's short run made for a low page count and only four complete stories. Its total content was thus significantly less than the whole run of the American comic book. While the stories tended to include the friendlier, character-driven dialogue of the Bionic Woman strips, most of the trappings of the individual series — such as Ventura Air Force Base, Steve's astronautical connections, and Jaime's school kids — were eschewed in favor for solid, overseas espionage action. A tie to Jaime's schoolteaching is maintained in the final story of the run, by having both Steve and Jaime go undercover as teachers. The final bionic moments in Look-in allow Jaime's profession to take precedence over Steve's greater OSI experience.
Online[]
- The final installment of the series from 17 November 1979
- An example of the sometimes nearly parodic style of artist John Richardson