Happy Friday, autonomous human units! It’s the end of another week of prodigious blister-acquisition due to ceaselessly operating a minor spitvalve on the underside of the capitalist world-engine, so what better time to revel in the joys of some really bloody cheap comics, as showcased here, in my BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOOM? This week, we’re getting more up to date than we’ve ever been before, with O.M.A.C.
Many of the titles showcased in this column were bought
long, long ago – but I recently obtained the first two issues of this series
from the fantastically fertile 50p boxes at City Centre Comics, Glasgow.
Now, I’ve not been much of a fan of what I’ve read of DC’s
New 52. While the relaunch has produced some interesting titles (Animal Man, Aquaman, probably some other men beginning with A), there’ve been
some stunningly unjustifiable stinkers too (my eyes are still seared and bloody
from the unconscionable horrors of Firestorm,
Stormwatch, Deathstroke, Hawk & Dove
and Red Hood & the Outlaws). O.M.A.C., written by Dan Didio and drawn
by Keith Giffen, was one that passed me by the first time round.
Originally created by Jack Kirby in 1974, OMAC (One-Man Army Corps) was a fairly
offbeat sci-fi book starring Buddy Blank, a corporate drone in an antiseptic
future dystopia, who is turned into a mohawked super-soldier by a sentient
satellite called Brother Eye. The series lasted just eight issues before being
cancelled, after which OMAC had an extremely brief (one-issue!) stint as a back
up feature in Kamandi (he was
revealed to be Kamandi’s grandfather) and later in a few issues of Warlord. The character then all-but
disappeared until the early 1990s, with a prestige-format series by John Byrne.
In the 2000s, the OMAC concept was revived, brought into DC’s present and
rejigged in connection with Infinite Crisis – as a kind of techno-organic
virus that turned people into metahuman-killing cyborgs, again controlled by
the Brother Eye satellite (which was now created by Batman), which in turn was
controlled by Maxwell Lord, head of the shadowy Checkmate organisation.
Bringing together elements from both realisations of the
concept, the New 52 O.M.A.C. focuses
on one Kevin Kho, an unremarkable worker for the science corporation Cadmus.
Unbeknownst to him, Kevin has been infected with the O.M.A.C. virus, which at
inopportune moments turns him into a giant, electric-blue mohawked monster-man
with a very limited vocabulary, unquestioningly carrying out the programming of
its mysterious master. The first issue’s plot is pretty thin. Kevin has
gone missing from his desk. A giant electric-blue monster-guy rips through the
building, guided by an unseen voice, in search of Cadmus’s mainframe. Along the
way, he encounters and fights some brilliantly ridiculous creations from Jack
Kirby’s Fourth World. He gets what he came for, disappears, leaving a
bewildered Kevin Kho in a pile of rubble. In the second issue, we see Kevin
learning a little more about what’s happened to him, before once more being
turned against his will into O.M.A.C. in order to take down an updated version
of the Amazing Man (DC’s take on the Absorbing Man).
If all of this sounds pretty flimsy and silly – well, it
might just be. Much moreso than the original OMAC, the central concept and story structure
– man-turns-into-a-super-strong-engine-of-destruction, shouting and
devastation ensues – is essentially a high-tech version of the Hulk
mythos, all wrapped up in freakily conspiratorial sci-fi gubbins. But this
series has a secret weapon – and it’s called Keith Giffen. Having never
been tempted by OMAC before, it was
Giffen’s involvement that piqued my interest. I’ve been a fan of his artwork
since first encountering it on Legion of
Super-Heroes way back in the dawn of time. He’s a penciller with a
constantly evolving style, but here he’s going back to his – and O.M.A.C.’s – roots. Essentially,
the book is one big, joyous and stunningly blatant homage to Jack Kirby.
Everything from the main character and his supporting cast to the artwork and
the sound effects are steeped in Kirby lore.
Giffen is clearly having a blast here, taking the completely
wild energy, psychedelic touches and distinctive ultra-dynamic style of Kirby
in his prime and amping them up to absurd levels. O.M.A.C wreaks incalculable,
surprisingly brutal havoc while doing the dubious bidding of Brother Eye, his
five-foot-tall metallic mohawk literally crackling with energy while he does
so. The first issue has some fantastic Kirby-style adversaries, too, including
a sexy albeit gun-faced lady android and voracious synthetic lifeforms known as
Gobblers. His human side completely subsumed by the obedient cyber-monster,
O.M.A.C.’s dialogue is comically functional to the point of being disturbing
– it consists largely of him yelling his own name, along with minimal
phrases that almost act as descriptive captions: ‘SUBDUE’, ‘HURT’,
‘WEAPON’,‘DESTRUCTION’. And the sound effects… oh, the sound effects. In an age
in which such things are seen as cheesy throwbacks, it’s immensely gratifying
to read a book unafraid to let rip with such pleasingly onomatopaeic gibberish
as ‘PA-THOOM’, ‘BARR-SOOM’ (a nice little reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs,
presumably), ‘KLLA-BLOOM’ and even a mighty, double-page
‘FRRZTTTZKKKK-RRAAACK’.
Ahhhhh. That’s the stuff.
While very much not the most intellectually stimulating read
that modern graphic literature has to offer, and faaaaaaar from the most
original, O.M.A.C. is massively
enjoyable simply by virtue of its utterly gonzo, hugely unfashionable approach
to making a 21st-century comic. Though the story’s nothing remarkable, it’s
intriguing enough to grab the attention, but the hyper-energetic
retro-fetishistic art is just pure, sweet visual nectar. The series revels in
its ridiculousness too, with little touches like the titles of these two
issues repurposing the titular acronym in bizarre but thematically appropriate
ways: ‘Office Management Amidst Chaos’ and ‘Odd Meals Assure Confrontation’.
In a sad bit of synchronicity with the original OMAC run, the New 52 O.M.A.C. was also cancelled at #8. This
is perhaps unsurprising, given its niche, anachronistic appeal. But I for one
will be scouring the bins to complete the run – and I’ll definitely check
out Kirby’s original run, too, see how the master’s crackle and creatures and
‘KRAKA-THOOM’s compare with those of his progeny.
(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)
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