- You may be looking for one of the other comic publications listed at The Bionic Woman (comics) or The Six Million Dollar Man in Look-in
The title pane for the Look-in strips, which later found its way onto a postcard
The Bionic Woman ran for almost three years in the pages of the British anthology comics magazine, Look-in. As the home of adaptations of mostly ITV programs, the weekly Look-in was the natural location for a Bionic Woman comic strip in the United Kingdom.
The first Look-in with a Bionic Woman cover, promoting the show, not the yet-to-debut strip.
In fact, Look-In's status as a de facto advertiser of ITV products led to the interesting case of Jaime Sommers appearing on the cover of the magazine before her strip started. Jaime started her run in the 7 August 1976 issue, but was the sole feature on the cover of the 3 July 1976 issue. As the cover to the July issue made clear, the reasoning for this early appearance on the cover was simply to advertise the premiere of the show on ITV. As with Steve Austin, Jaime would appear numerous times (both solo and with Austin and occasionally Oscar) on numerous covers, always illustrated (rather than in photographs).
The strip ended the first run of the immensely popular The Tomorrow People strip and was replaced by two strips. After the 24 May 1979 issue, it ceded its color pages to the first run of the ChiPs strip.
The first Look-in with a Bionic Woman strip
However, Jaime returned in the 31 May 1979 issue for a black-and-white cross over strip with Steve Austin called Bionic Action. The strip lasted for another six months, after which Jaime Sommers retired from the pages of Look-in for good.
Unlike The Six Million Dollar Man strips, The Bionic Woman was often surprisingly faithful to the basic tone of the television series. As in the program, Oscar and Jaime have an easygoing father-daughter relationship, and Oscar is usually seen in more casual attire than in The Six Million Dollar Man strips. Important parts of the Bionic Woman series, like Ventura Air Force Base and the OSI were firmly established from the very first adventure. Like its counterpart strip, though, the dialogue, while basically of the same tone as the series, does allow some "Britishisms" to creep into Jaime's speech. In particular, she has a habit of saying, "My stars!" as a frequent exclamation of surprise.
Every story was written by Angus Allen, and the artistic duties were split between John M. Burns (around the same time he was also illustrating the Modesty Blaise comic strip) and John Bolton.
Online[]
Some installments of this comic are available for online reading.
- The very first Look-In strip from 7 August 1976
- Part 2 of Jaime's first Look-In adventure establishes that Oscar and Jaime work for the OSI, not, as had been the contention in the Six Million Dollar Man strips, the OSO.
- The 17 February 1979 strip shows some of the playful Oscar/Jaime banter when she uses him as a cover to avoid an unfortunate hillbilly wedding.