OMAC 101

Alright, one of the titles coming out of the DC Countdown event is OMAC. Batman and Greg Rucka are onboard and the book looks like it could be pretty freaking rad. Especially if it deals with Bats finding out the JLA mindswiped him. If he were to call out Superman, I'd rip my lips off and poke them into my ears while singing on top of my car.

Maybe.

But the title gains its name from an older DC book by Kirby. So here's the quickie dirt on that DC antique.

In an alternate timeline, there's this huge, bad event called The Great Disaster that happens sometime in the 21st century. They never revealed the event, I don't think, but you should just know it was bad. Like, "Catwoman, the movie" bad.

To stop the disaster from happening, a group of aliens foretells of the event and forms the Global Peace Agency (G.P.A.) to keep jerks that would wanna hurt the planet in check. These alien pimps then built a satellite called Brother Eye and started "Project O.M.A.C."

In the project, these aliens had to transform some human into their hero. They picked a stockboy named Buddy Blank to serve that role. Cause, you know, stockboy's can stop planetary devastation and stuff.

Anyways, this satellite beams alien energies down to Buddy that can boost his strength, allow him to be bulletproof, or send him messages with info on the baddies he's facing. All these powers make him the One Man Army Corps.

And he has a mohawk, chumps!

Buddy fought for several years for the G.P.A. and then settled down in a bunker near New York for some chill time cause saving lives makes you tired. And thirsty.

So, here's some cool trivia!

There are alternate timelines in the DCU, obviously, and in one of them, OMAC prevents the disaster and his grandson grows up to be Tommy Tomorrow! See, Tommy Tomorrow was another oldie DC character named Kamandi Blank who was left in that bunker that OMAC lived in.

The bunker was called Command D.

Get it? Command D=Kamandi.

Whatev.

And little Kamandi gets adopted and renamed Thomas Tomorrow by an officer who finds him in the bunker. Thomas becomes a space ranger, explores the galaxy, makes out with some ladies, flies a jet called Space Ace and basically rocks the hell out.

Plus, in the James Robinson Starman series, it's revealed that Tommy, or one of his descendents, will become a Starman for the future and carry on the Starman name, thus making it acceptable that a Starman character appeared in the DC One Million story arc. Cause otherwise, why the hell would there be a Starman one million years in the future?

AND, in another possible timeline, OMAC doesn't stop the disaster, the earth is covered by monster/animal people who don't shower, and Kamandi leaves the bunker as KAMANDI: the Last Boy on Earth! He just showed up recently in that issue of Superman/Batman as a nekkid kid on the cover.

And lastly, if you're looking for a brand-new OMAC story to see where the roots of the new series are, check out issue #3 of DC's Solo. It's that book they have going where they spotlight an artist and dedicate a whole book to them. Issue #3's artist is Paul Pope and it just shipped. He's got three stories in the issue and his first story is an OMAC one. Check out the cover below.

So, there you have it. In TJ's earlier post, he said Rucka was going to spin some homages into his title, so maybe some of what I've written here will pop up again. Or maybe not.

Either way, I'm gonna start combing my hair up into a mohawk and kill monsters.

Or animals. Or kitties.

Whatev.