Kickin It Old School

Let's take another look at comic's past.

NOTE: For a great crash course in all things OMAC, check out RicKey's post from a few months back.

Alright folks, here it is. The first appearance of OMAC. The concept seems to be popping up all over the place and I don't think anyone believes it's a coincidence. I'm not up to date on everything (school=no money=no comics), but from what I hear Jack Kirby's creation has appeared in the most recent issue of Superman as well as in Paul Pope's issue of Solo. And of course there's everyone's favorite book to talk about Countdown to Infinite Crisis. So you may be asking yourself where all this craziness began. Right here.

In true Silver Age fashion, Kirby (wrote and drew the book) starts with the end and then builds up to what happened. We get to meat OMAC before his alternate identity Buddy Blank. As the story opens, OMAC is destroying a plant that makes "Build-A-Friends," androids that look just like humans. Why is he so angry? Glad you asked.

Now we flash back to Buddy's day at the office. He works for Pseudo-People Inc. the makers of "Build-A-Friends." He's your average, picked-on guy that gets in trouble even though it's not really his fault. The kind of guy you feel sorry for. So why is he chosen? Because he works for Pseudo-People. That's what I got out of it anyway. See, there's an organization called the Peace Agency that has suspicions about P-P, so they tell Prof. Myron Forest to start the OMAC Project. The OMAC Project grants super-powers to a normal person (hence One Man Army Corp) via a talking satellite called Brother Eye.

In the end it turns out that Buddy's friend was actually a robot and he gets mad. Then Brother Eye turns him into OMAC and he destroys the factory.

I wasn't exactly riveted by the story. My favorite part, though, was Kirby's version of the future. In it, the Peace Agency board members who chose Blank as the test subject have no faces because they want to stay impartial. Another cool aspect of this future is that P-P actually has stress-relieving areas like the silent room, the destruct room, and the crying room. It was nice to see a future that wasn't completely bleak and disparaging. Sure it had it's problems but there were also a number of positive aspects.