As a fan of Jack Kirby’s original OMAC character (as opposed to the recent reboot that turns Brother Eye evil, connects it with Batman, multiplies the OMACs [doesn’t it defeat the point of a “one man army” to have a whole army of them?], and makes them mindless pawns of Brother Eye), I’m glad to see that a couple of pre-reboot OMAC collections are on the way.
The original OMAC (“One Man Army Corps”) was Buddy Blank, a hapless corporate cipher in a quasi-Orwellian future who is given superpowered enhancements and personality alteration in order to become the Global Peace Agency’s chief enforcer; he draws his power from Brother Eye, an intelligent and apparently benign satellite. After the series ended (along with Kirby’s involvement), OMAC’s universe was moved into continuity with that of another Kirby creation, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, as it was retroactively decided to make a de-powered Blank turn out to be Kamandi’s grandfather.
This collection looks like it’ll be collecting Kirby’s original 8-issue run, while this one will be collecting a grab bag of various Kirby and post-Kirby OMAC stories. (But why not collect all the post-Kirby/pre-reboot OMAC stories in a single volume as a companion to the Kirby volume?) Also, some of the events in the old Hercules Unbound series intended to bridge the gap between OMAC and Kamandi will presumably show up in the upcoming Great Disaster anthology whose release date keeps getting pushed farther and farther back.
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