Sintek

Real Name: Bruce Tollman

Identity/Class: Cyborg

Occupation: former motorbike racer

Affiliations: None

Enemies: Anton

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Mobile

First Appearance: Tiger (I.P.C., 8th May 1982)

Powers/Abilities: Sintek is your stereotypical bionic man. He has bionic legs, allowing him to run at superhuman speed or jumping incredible heights and distances, bionic eyes which allow him to see great distances and which could be switched to x-ray mode, bionic arms giving him great strength, etc.

History: American motorcycle ace Bruce Tollman suffered horrific injuries in a pile-up during the Austrian Grand Prix in Salzburg, leaving him hospital blinded, with severe brain damage, both legs shattered and severed arm tendons. Near death, his body is was stolen by Professor Sintek and his deformed assistant Anton. Sintek rebuilt the dying man, giving him powerful artificial eyes, arms, legs and heart. However, shortly after this life saving surgery, Anton murdered the Professor. When Tollman woke up, his memory foggy, he believed himself to be responsible, and when the police arrived he fled. Stealing clothes from a passing motorist, he hitched a lift with the next car to come along. The driver of this car was a sports promoter, Hal Ford, who realised that there was something special about his passenger and decided to make money out of him by representing him in various athletic endevours. Ford asked his passenger his name, and the amnesiac Tollman gave the name he spotted on a notebook in the laboratory: Sintek.

But Anton was still around, and kept trying to get hold of Sintek in the hope of reproducing the late professor's work. As his knowledge of Sintek's construction improved, Anton turned another injured athlete, Kurt Hengson, into a second bionic man, and also constructed robot minions able to pass for human. Eventually Sintek caught up with Anton as the villain and his robots were robbing the Fort Lincoln Gold Depository. When Sintek confronted his nemesis, Anton revealed he had programmed his robots to perform surgery on himself, so that he too was now robotic. Grappling with Sintek, he began to gain the upper hand, but the U.S. Army intervened, blowing both cyborgs to smithereens with a high-velocity shell. However, though very little of Sintek was left, his computer brain survived, leaving the slim chance he might one day be revived.

Comments: It appears like most of his skeleton has been replaced which is something writers of similar characters often miss out - the legs might be bionic, but if the spine isn't reinforced, it'll shatter from the reverberations of the legs pounding the road at 60mph, for example. As his final appearance demonstrated, Sintek was almost completely robotic by the end.

The pictures on this page showing Sintek's bionic limbs was a common artistic trick in the strip, where they would show the reader his bionic parts by drawing him as if his skin was transparent. Appearances not-withstanding, Sintek actually looked fully human with no visible bionics.

The picture of Sintek on the bottom this page was drawn by John  Richardson. Thanks to Jim Croasdale for this additional information.

CLARIFICATIONS: None.

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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