The Six Million Dollar Charlton Cover Gallery!

The Six Million Dollar Man was a hot property. So how does it come to pass that Charlton and not Marvel nor DC gets the license to produce comics based on the series. Who knows? Maybe it was a simple question of no one else asked. Comics were in a somewhat tough shape at the time. Charlton created a character which was synthesis of the TV Steve Austin and other elements from the original novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin. 

 They also produced two different versions at the same time, one a regular sized color comic and a black and white magazine version. Neal Adams and his boys at Continuity Associates handled the artwork on the B&W books in the beginning with Adams supplying two pretty great covers for the first two issues. The writers for the series were the sturdy Joe Gill, Nick Cuti and Mike Pellowski. Later in the series, Jack Sparling took the reins and even editor George Wildman contributed. 

Charlton's color comic version began featuring the alluring artwork of Joe Staton, but soon the Continuity Associates had a hand with Neal Adams producing one cover. Joe Staton handled the first four issues before being replaced by Demetrio Gomez. Eventually the Pat Boyette and Fred Himes duo took over the work. Jack Sparling added a cover here and there. Joe Gill and Nick Cuti were the writers for the series. 

The Bionic Woman was a second color series and Jack Sparling handled the artwork on all six issues of the series. Jack Sparling was the artist for the entire series. Joe Gill is credited with the first issue and likely wrote the rest as well. 

Charlton's efforts for the Six Million Dollar Man licenses are fairly typical of what the company had mostly done over its long history, produce comics of immediate interest for niche audiences. These were gems in their day and are even more valuable in the modern day. To my knowledge the material has never been reprinted domestically. 

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