Omega Men #1 (of 6)

Written by Andersen Gabrych

Art & Cover by Henry Flint

 

Now seems like an odd time to launch an Omega Men miniseries. The luckless group of spacemen–er, space-humanoids—played a pretty pivotal role in the Andy Diggle/Pascal Ferry ‘Adam Strange’ miniseries from a few years back (The one collected as Planet Heist), and like every other DC space character Ferry drew in it, they came out looking really cool. Its aftermath might have been a good time for an Omega Men spin-off.

 

Or maybe a few months later even, when Rann-Thanagar War was raging, and Tigorr, the most charismatic and human-looking of the Omega Men, played a pretty big role in it.

 

But why now, when the characters have lain fallow again for almost a year?

 

Ah well, no sense second-guessing the ‘Powers That Be’ at DC, other than noting they're definitely showing a lot of initiative in pumping up their space-faring properties of late, as this miniseries follows the new Mystery In Space and Green Lantern Corps.

 

The Omega Men here don't look quite as cool as they did in Ferry's book, but though the art is much less lush than Ferry's was, what it lacks in realism it more than makes up for in personality.

 

Pencils and inks come courtesy of British artist Henry Flint, and he infuses the proceedings with a kinetic, chaotic, at times only half-serious looking art (That Guardian, for example, looks like pure Simon Bisley whimsy). The book looks more like a 2000 A.D. story than your typical Marvel or DC space book (and I mean that in a good way), and it' as much fun to see Flint tackle familiar faces as it is to seem him designing new ones.

 

You'll have to be pretty familiar with the Omega Men, or at least DC's outer space characters in general, to make heads or tails of this story though, as it's very fast-paced, and the only thing it has less of than exposition is characterization (All of which makes me wonder who exactly the intended audience for this series is—the 41 fans of the old Omega Men series?).

 

Gabrych gives us a nice page of explanation about the history of the Vega System (with only one continuity curveball—what's this about the Darkstars?), before we plunge into our first of many big battle scenes. Tigorr, Broot, Elu, Doc and new addition Darkfire, a Tamaranean prince, swoop in and start laying waste to a space-church, looking for something.

 

As to what the holy hell is going on, apparently the intelligent space-spiders that make up the Spider Guild are after the DCU version of the Infinity Gems, and so are the Omega Men, but L.E.G.I.O.N.'s Vril Dox is on their collective tail, and he catches up with them on earth.

 

The last panel should ensure that any DC fans simply trying the book out on a whim pick up number two as well. To help him take down the Omega Men, Dox recruited locally, and he shows up to the fight with Superman, Green Lantern John Stewart, Cyborg and Wonder Girl in his corner.

 

This title could sorely use a text page in the back to explain the many players (or at least a JLA-style roll call), but I suppose starting things off too fast is infinitely preferable to starting things too slow.

 

Rating – 4