If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably already aware that this post is the fourth I’ve published this month. If, in addition, you’re already familiar with its subject, you may also have noted that it’s the third out of that four to be devoted to a comic book featuring the writing of Steve Gerber.
Of course, if you are a regular reader, you may not consider that latter fact to even be all that notable, as your humble blogger has made it pretty clear that Gerber was (and is) one of my two favorite comics writers of this era (the other being his fellow Steve, Englehart). And it probably wouldn’t have surprised my eighteen-year-old self, either, back in the waning days of 1975, to learn that Steve Gerber’s work would continue to hold my admiration, half a century on.
What did in fact surprise me way back then, however, was that, per the credits given on the first page of his latest project — a new superhero series called Omega the Unknown — Gerber was sharing the authorial byline… and with a woman, at that, at a time when female comics professionals in general were hardly numerous, and female writers even less so:
So, who the heck was Mary Skrenes?
From House of Mystery #204 (Jul., 1972). Art (and plot) by Bernie Wrightson; script by “Virgil North” (i.e., Mary Skrenes).
As it turned out (although I wouldn’t discover this until years later), although I didn’t recognize Gerber’s collaborator’s name, I had in fact already read some of her work. Originally from Las Vegas, Mary Skrenes had become friends with future pro comics artist Alan Weiss while they were both students at UNLV; later, on moving to New York, they’d both become part of the community of young comics creators there. Starting back around early 1971, Skrenes had placed several stories in the DC Comics “mystery” anthologies I was then regularly following, such as House of Mystery and House of Secrets. The only problem is, the stories had been published under the pseudonym “Virgil North”, so there was no reason for me (or anyone else who didn’t know Skrenes personally) to associate them with her name.
Evidently one of the most self-effacing creators to ever enter the comics field, Skrenes had also written several scripts for those and other DC titles that were published under the name of fellow author Steve Skeates (with whom she also sometimes collaborated, both for DC and for other publishers, again using only his name). Along with the stuff of hers I had read, she’d also contributed to a number of comics I didn’t follow — e.g., DC’s romance comics and various Gold Key humor titles (none of which carried credits, incidentally, so even if I’d been buying those books, I wouldn’t have known Skrenes had work in them). She’d had other gigs as well (some where she even used her own, real name), but you get the idea; while the younger me might not have ever heard of Mary Skrenes prior to late ’75, she was hardly a newcomer to the comics industry.
Cover to Crazy #12 (Aug., 1975), in which Skrenes’ byline appeared on two pieces done in collaboration with other writers (including both Steve Skeates and Steve Gerber). Art by Nick Cardy.
Skrenes’ earliest work for Marvel Comics appears to have been a 4-pager for the 5th issue of the light-horror anthology title Journey into Mystery (Jun., 1973); as with her DC “mystery” tales, it was published under a pseudonym, “Kevin Frost”. Over a year later, her first comics writing published under her own name at Marvel showed up in another anthology, the black-and-white Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #5 (Oct., 1974); some months after that, she began contributing pieces to Marvel’s Mad magazine knockoff, Crazy — which, at the time, was being edited by one Steve Gerber.
Sometime in the latter half of 1975, Skrenes made a major — if informal — contribution to one of Gerber’s most notable projects, when she participated with him and artist Frank Brunner in a plotting session for the first issue of Howard the Duck… and invented the character of Beverly Switzler. Soon thereafter, Gerber shared with Skrenes an idea he had for another new series… but at this point, we’ll let Gerber himself take over the telling of the story, via the text piece he himself wrote for Omega the Unknown #1:
As noted by Gerber, the character design for Omega was “a product of three heads”; in addition to Gerber, those heads belonged to Len Wein (evidently the first editor involved with the project, although it would be Marv Wolfman who actually brought the premiere issue in for a landing) and Marvel’s art director, John Romita. In looking at Romita’s original sketch (shown at right), one may notice that, along with the use of the “omega” symbol (Ω) on the title character’s headpiece as well as on his torso (the latter usage ultimately being turned upside-down and moved to the costume’s neckline), the most visually striking aspects of Omega’s costume underscore its similarities to the ur-costume from which all such superheroic outfits ultimately derive… or, as Mary Skrenes writes in her 2022 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Omega the Unknown, Vol. 1:
It’s no secret that Steve Gerber had been ensorcelled by Superman at a particularly tender age. He designated that Omega’s costume colors be blue and red and John Romita made it so.
As many of this blog’s readers will already be aware, Omega was actually the second character Gerber had created for Marvel as a pastiche of DC Comics’ Man of Steel — the first, Wundarr, had debuted in a Man-Thing story in Fear #17, then gone on to appear in several Gerber-scripted issues of Marvel Two-in-One. It was an itch that the writer felt an evident need to scratch every so often — and while he’d eventually get the chance to work with the the real deal, he’d have to wait until 1981 for that opportunity, at which time he and artist Gene Colan would produce a Phantom Zone miniseries for DC.
But, naturally, that’s a topic for a future post; for now, let’s turn from Omega the Unknown #1’s letters-page-to-be back to the comic’s cover — just long enough to note that it was produced by the art team of Ed Hannigan and Joe Sinnott — and from there, move on to the first page of our story…
Providing full art for this opening chapter of Omega’s saga was Jim Mooney — a veteran artist who, as mentioned in Steve Gerber’s column, had previously collaborated with the author on both “Son of Satan” (in Marvel Spotlight) and Man-Thing (he was also inking Sal Buscema’s pencils for Gerber’s Defenders around this same time). With professional credits dating back to 1940, Mooney’s resume included a substantial run drawing the adventures of the cousin of the hero who’d so strongly inspired Omega’s visual appearance — i.e., Supergirl — as well as the feature called out by Gerber, “Tommy Tomorrow” — the latter of which could be taken as serving as good preparation for the sort of outer space-set adventure we’re presented with on this story’s opening pages…
As if we readers aren’t disoriented enough by being immediately tossed into a situation involving a violent conflict between strange characters on a strange world, Gerber and Skrenes up the ante with the oddly detached third-person-limited voice they use for their narrative captions. As Skrenes writes in her Marvel Masterworks intro:
About those captions. Yes, they are clunky and overdramatic. Not the flowing, storytelling headers of our other individual works. Steve wanted them to almost seem like the clashing of large metal gears. He made me (who seldom ever used captions) write all the ones in the first issue. (I cringe at the memory.)
Skrenes goes on to quote from a response Gerber wrote (in third person) to a letter regarding the narrative voice of Omega‘s early issues, which was published in #5:
The “choppy” prose style… was, as most readers seemed to understand, quite intentional. Steve and Mary wanted to convey the disjointed quality of our protagonists’ situations not merely in pictures and dialogue, or in captions which told you repeatedly how weird everything was, but also on another, less obvious level.
The discussion continues the next day, as James-Michael and his parents leave the motel and continue their drive along winding mountain roads towards their destination, New York. J-M’s mom encourages him to embrace “the prospect of facing the unknown — learning, growing”, and assures him that human beings aren’t quite as dull as he seems to assume them to be, “Hardly,” adds Dad. “Understanding people is a science in itself.”
In her Marvel Masterworks intro, Mary Skrenes offers some background concerning the genesis of the above sequence:
Steve was telling me his idea for the opening scene of Omega. He started to describe James-Michael’s road trip into the “real” world. When he got to the car crash, I suddenly saw where he was going. I blurted out “and his mother is a robot!” He was shocked and aglow with the possibilities. It turns out that Gerbs and I had a telepathic rapport.
(For the record, Gerber and Skrenes’ “telepathic rapport” would eventually lead them into a romantic relationship of several years duration; happily, they remained good friends following their eventual breakup, as well as occasional writing partners.)
Startled by James-Michael’s composed, analytical demeanor, the nurse calls the doctor to tell him, “The Starling boy is awake… and quite calm.”
Once the restraints have been removed, Dr. Barrow asks James-Michael where he went to school to gain such an impressive vocabulary, and is told that his patient’s parents tutored him at home. “And where is home?” “I don’t have one anymore” J-M replies. “Mother and Father are dead.” When Dr. Barrow inquires when this happened, the boy answers that it was this morning, in the car crash; when the doctor follows up by asking him how he feels about that, James-Michael says simply, “They were good to me. But I don’t have anything to fear except the voices.”
Dr. Barrow may be fascinated by the mysteries of James-Michael’s case, but he’s also frustrated by the financial restraints imposed by his clinic’s directors: “The Board says we’ve too many charity patients already!” he fumes. “Are you sure?” asks the nurse, Ruth. “Maybe if I checked over the finances with you…?”
Ruth Hart. At this point, with Dr. Barrow having just provided us readers with the surname of his young nurse, I’d like to think that my eighteen-year-old self was able to put two and two together and remember where I’d seen this character before… but I really can’t remember after all these years, so who knows? In any event, Ruth Hart’s earlier appearances in the work of Steve Gerber haven’t come up for discussion on this blog until now, so introductions are clearly in order.
Panel from Man-Thing #2 (Feb., 1974). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani.
Panel from Man-Thing #7 (Jul., 1974). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Mike Ploog.
Ruth Hart had first appeared in the second issue of Man-Thing (Feb., 1974), which found this former resident of St.Louis, MO in the Florida Everglades, on the run from her former associates in the Skull-Crushers motorcycle gang. There she’d met another character making his debut in that same issue — Richard Rory, the sad-sack sometime-DJ who was essentially a stand-in for his creator, Steve Gerber. Following the resolution of Ruth’s difficulties with the Skull-Crushers in Man-Thing #3, she and Richard (and the Man-Thing, naturally) found themselves in a further succession of scrapes, including an encounter with the first iteration of the Foolkiller as well as taking roles in a spectral psychodrama involving a suicidal clown. Along the way, Ruth and Richard became close; nevertheless, in Man-Thing #7 (Jul., 1974), she opted to return home to St. Louis, to “try to finish school”. (Presumably, that was nursing school, and she was already most of the way to her degree, given that she’s now working professionally in New York City, less than two years later.)
Is it just me, or is Ruth’s roommate Amber giving off some pretty strong Mary Jane Watson vibes here? Be that as it may, the character’s personality (like that of Howard the Duck‘s Beverly Switzler) appears to have owed a great deal to that of one of her authors, i.e., Mary Skrenes.
The last time we saw our mysterious caped friend, he was on a spaceship, bound for… Earth? Has this been his destination all along? If so, how long has he been traveling? And what has brought him here to this particular room in this particular NYC clinic, at precisely the right moment to save (or at least make the attempt to save) James-Michael Starling’s bacon?
And so ends the first issue of Omega the Unknown, which leaves us with a whole lot of questions, and very few obvious answers. Alas, some of the most intriguing of those questions never will be answered — at least, not by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes. But even if complete narrative satisfaction is never to be achieved, there are still some very memorable moments in store as the series progresses on its bimonthly course towards its tenth and final issue. I hope you’ll join me in revisiting some of those moments in the months to come.
Picked up the TPB of this a few years ago. I like it a lot better than I think I did flipping through the issues in the drug store when it came out. Not that I thought it was bad, but it was off-beat enough I wasn’t sure it would be a good investment of my quarter.
For all Gerber’s talk about creating a typical 12 year old, James-Michael looks like Data in training. Though lord knows, lots of kids who weren’t “on the spectrum” had trouble relating and connecting to people. Not that I’d know anything about that, no sirree, nope.
Watching the doctor light his pipe, it strikes me I saw way more pipe-smokers in comics in the early 1970s than I did in real life. For whatever that’s worth.
Happy New Year Alan and everyone. looking forward to another year of posts.
My dad (35 in 1975, with about 18 years in the Navy under his belt by then), smoked pipes regularly, along with the occasional cigar. Mom smoked Salem cigarettes. A few years later, dad was warned that he had early signs of throat cancer due to smoking. Upon coming home, he threw away all his pipes, tobacco pouches and cigars, quitting cold turkey and is still around at age 85, half a century later. Mom didn’t quit smoking until she was 60 in 2003 and died at age 70 in 2014, of various ailments, some of which were brought on by so many decades of smoking.
I recall various government campaigns in the mid-70s to try to convince kids not to start the habit of smoking and despite the example of my parents, I never did take up smoking regularly myself, although in later years, as an adult, I was introduced to the more “wicked” weed, aka pot, aka marijuana, by some friends and partook of that a few times over the next few decades, although never on a regular basis and the last time was maybe about a decade ago.
Funny to consider that in the mid-70s, it was still considered “normal” to portray doctors as smoking a pipe. just part of the cultural landscape of the period in portraying a man as a cultured, thoughtful professional. I think it took about another decade or so for that to fade away.
My dad quit smoking in the early 1970s, mum took another six or seven years after that. I never had any urge to take up the habit — it seemed utterly disgusting.
Outside of a couple of pipe smokers in college, I don’t think i met any after arriving in the US. Though I do remember Rep. Millicent Fenwick (the model for Doonesbury’s Lacey Davenport) took up a pipe after her doctor warned her she smoked too many cigarettes.
Alas, I missed the first three issues of Omega the Unknown and likewise with HtD, possibly because the Navy Exchange where I got my comics didn’t carry them, but after moving to Lemoore in July 1976, the NEX there did carry them and I did get the 4th issues of each. Anyhow, although James-Michael was certainly not a typical 12 year old by any means, and clearly Steve & Mary didn’t intend for him to be taken as such, my younger self of nearly the same age found his situation very intriguing and I was saddened but not terribly surprised that the mag was cancelled all too soon. This opening chapter has many surreal, nightmarish aspects, but J-M takes most of it all in stride, more curious than frightened, although very leery of the prospect of having to interact with other children. Fascinating and very mysterious set-up.
I don’t believe I saw this one back in ’76, or if I did, I wasn’t interested enough to buy it. I imagine 18-yr-old me found the initial origin story confusing and hard to follow, because my 68-yr-old self has the same problem. Gerber’s a great writer, but he and Skrenes seem to have gotten so caught up in the style of the character, that they neglected much of his substance in the first issue. To me (and hey, it’s 8am on the Saturday after Christmas, so maybe I’m not firing on all cylinders), this story is overly confusing and doesn’t flow well. Still, Omega the Unknown wouldn’t be the first comic ever to take three or four issues to really find it’s footing, so I’m with you for this one, Alan, counting on you to make it make sense. Happy New Year, everyone!
There’s a reason this one didn’t catch fire and every comment has pretty much nailed it. Regardless the merits of whatever ultimate plans both Gerber and Skrenes had for Omega and James-Michael, I believe this one failed both because the stories didn’t quite have the “hook” needed to grab and hold readers as well as neither author dropping enough hints to keep the larger narrative moving.
As I recall, the series fell into a bit of rut with someone in the cast getting into trouble only to have a silent or near silent Omega show up to bail them out. The nebulous nature of his powers and lack of any perceivable personality diminished his appeal. Nor did villains such as El Gato and the Wrench do much to help.
What stood out most for me were James Michaels friends in that incredibly chaotic school as well as the real-life consequences faced when one of them was badly injured and the “revenge” that followed it.
If nothing else, I would very much like to know what Gerber and Skrenes had intended for the series. And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Alan for once again giving me an excuse to look back on a series I’d long ago forgotten!
Only Skrenes knows is what I’ve read and she won’t tell. Anything’s got to be better than the Defenders hack job. BTW, if James-Michael was what Defenders purported, the hospital should have caught it. I say he and Omega thus still exist and have been having adventures between comic margins.
Another excellent review. Which led me to wonder, why did I pick up this first issue 50 years ago, as I was starting to buy less Marvels and was not buying any DC comics at this time. I believe it was mainly because of Steve Gerber’s name (as well as Jim Mooney) in the credits. I was enough of a fan of Gerber’s work to give this first issue a chance and had already picked up the new Guardians of the Galaxy series in Marvel Presents the previous month and was regularly buying the Defenders. I had not seen Howard the Duck 2 on the stands so missed that. I would have to say that the first issue of Omega was certainly intriguing with a lot of mysteries to unpack. Unfortunately none of those questions would ever really be answered such as:
Who is Omega?
What is the connection between Omega and James Michael?
Who are the robots?
Why do the robots want to kill Omega?
Why are James Michael’s parents robots?
Where is Omega from?
What kind of powers does James Michael have and why does he have them?
I am aware that an attempt was made to answer these questions in Defenders 76-77 but that story was not written by Gerber of Skrenes and honestly I don’t remember those issues and they were disavowed by Gerber. What is puzzling to me is that neither Gerber nor Skrenes ever told their editors (Lee, Wein and Wolfman) the answers to the above questions. I really don’t understand how this comic was ever launched when the editors didn’t really know what direction Gerber (and Skrenes) wanted to take this book. But Gerber always made it clear in the first issue and in later interviews that this book was always about James Michael. I’m sorry to say that Omega never amounted to much as a character even over 10 issues. Marv Wolfman once pointed that it is very difficult to deal with a character who is basically mute (referring to Jericho in the New Teen Titans). Even though he eventually said a word or two, Omega never said much and we didn’t even see his thoughts. So he became somewhat uninteresting.
A few other thoughts. Gerber was certainly explicit in his comparisons to Superman with Omega right upfront on the cover (although that may have been written by Wolfman): “The last survivor of an alien world!” and of course the blue and red costume and even his face. The cover also shows James Michael reading comic books (including of course Spider-Man) but during the entire series I don’t think James Michael showed the slightest interest in comics. And yes Amber certainly has a “Mary Jane” vibe but I’m not sure I picked that up right away but it definitely was clear in later issues. The idea that Ruth, a young single woman would be asked to be a foster parent for J-M seems highly unlikely in retrospect but I don’t think I gave it much thought at the time.
Looking back, it is surprising that this series lasted for even 10 issues, because this was a tough period for comics and there were very short lived series during this time some only lasting for 6, 7 or 8 issues or shorter. I did stick with this series to the end but was greatly disappointed that both Gerber and Skrenes never really explained their plans for this series or answered the questions raised in this first issue. I did like the writing and art (but Gerber did miss 2 issues which was unfortunate). It should be noted that in the link you provided last week to an old Gerber interview in the Comics Journal, Gerber refers to Omega as a failure. It was a commercial failure, but there was some interesting things about the series especially in dealing with James Michael. Some of the villains were not great as other commenters have noted. In retrospect, it seems that Gerber wanted to create an empowered Billy Batson type that did not need to turn into Captain Marvel. It seems like Omega was somewhat of Macguffin but the series couldn’t be called Starling comics. I could be wrong but who knows?
By the way, a minor correction: Gerber wrote a Phantoms Zone miniseries for DC in 1981, not 1984. It was designed to tie in (sort of) with Superman II with its Phantom Zone villains.
Thanks Alan. Happy new year!
Having seen how many comic book arcs were started with no idea where they were going, I doubt this bothered anyone too much. There were probably enough hooks in James Michael, his interactions with everyone else, and life in Hell’s Kitchen to sell it to the editors (I’ve often thought it’s a shame DD and Omega never got to meet).
The Defenders finish annoyed me more when I read it in the Omega TPB and realized the big reveal is stolen from the Avengers battle with Korvac.
Thanks for the catch on Phantom Zone, brucesfl (it’s fixed now). And Happy New Year to you, too… as well as to all the rest of you out there reading this, of course!
Like you, Steve Gerber was one of my two favorite writers during the 70’s (the other being Steve Englehart). I was lucky to have been able to buy Omega The Unkown directly off the rack as they were being released. I was particularly drawn to it as I was about the same age as James-Michael Starling at the time. Of course, Omega was just such a cool looking character as well,, who initially never spoke making, him just this mysterious figure. Also, we are thrown into the series immediately with his planet being overtaken by robots, and the people of his planet killed. I think the fun in the comic was trying to figure out what was going on and solving the mysteries. The fact that the series ended so abruptly and the mysteries never explained by the series’ original authors (I don’t consider the Defenders issues canon),, probably helped to make it the cult classic that it is. But you know what?… I think I figured out where Gerber was going to take the book and how he probably would have ended the series. The last time that Jim Shooter was in Montreal for a comic book convention, I spoke with him for a littlw while. I know that he was basically responsible for killing the book because I think Gerber was suing Marvel at the time for the rights to Howard the Duck, but I just had to tell him how much I really loved Omega and how disappointed I was that it was never given a proper ending. I told him how I thought the series reminded me of the movie “Brother From Another Planet” and how I thought it should have ended, and he said that it was an interesting idea (I was with a friend who witnessed it). I’m not going to reveal it here because I think it would work as an original concept as well. I loved the series, but was disappointed with the re-imagining of it made years later. I think it would make a great limited streaming series One season – one and done!
I picked this one up in March 1976, UK distribution being three months behind the US back then.
I was barely older than James Michael at the time and was delighted to find a character in comics I could identify with. Being socially ill at ease and over-analytical myself, it seemed like this was created just for me. I was totally hooked and couldn’t wait for the next issue.
The captions in this issue were indeed bombastic and melodramatic, but no more so than many Marvels of the day, so that aspect didn’t strike me as particularly unusual. I did appreciate the disjointed narrative and the intriguing mysteries and in idle moments am still inclined to ponder what Gerber’s and Skrenes’ had planned. As Mary Skrenes has refused to divulge anything further, I guess we’ll never know.
One of the great, fascinating and frustrating unfinished comics narratives, along with Kirby’s Fourth World, Veitch’s Swamp Thing time travel story, and Moore’s Big Numbers.
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/after-36-years-dc-comics-to-publish-rick-veitchs-final-swamp-thing/
Hey, great! Thank you for the heads-up, Man of Bronze. I probably would have missed this otherwise.
I was fourteen when I read (and loved!) this. Looking back, it probably had to do with sharing with James-Michael an otherness from other kids. My own guess is Omega was the latest prime protector of the homeworld and he like his future successor had been raised off planet by robots. I also don’t believe the fight with Ruby gave Omega more than a minor case of temporary death and he replaced the kid with a robot to continue the training in secret. .
More musings about Omega the Unknown. On reflection, if this mag had been marketed as primarily focused on the troubles of 12 year old kid in a big city high school, I might not have given it a try. I can’t say I even recall what prompted me to get OtU #4 when I happened to see it –maybe something as silly as that the cover featured cats and I love cats! Anyhow, once exposed, it was the troubles of that 12 year old junior high school kid that prompted my then 14 year old self, newly arrived in a small town in central California about to start high school, that really piqued my interest in the series. As strange a character as James-Michael Starling was, I somehow found him more easy to relate to than Richard Rider, the new teen hero of Nova launched by Marv Wolfman in 1976 and of which I did get the “fabulous first issue”. Nova was much more of a traditional super-hero mag, although Wolfman did add a few unusual wrinkles — such as, for possibly the first time ever, a hero with two living parents and a kid brother who wasn’t a madman, although he was the scientific genius of the family, the sort who may have launched what would become a multi-billion dollar earning computer-manufacturing company from his parents’ garage Wolfman even had Richard eventually reveal to his family that he was the new costumed superhero on the block, so kudos to Wolfman for not adhering strictly to the usual super-hero tropes of the 1970s. But, still, I found myself more riveted by what was going on with James-Michael and his little social circle and the mostly real-life horrors they faced in an inner-city public school. In 1975, when I was still attending Potrero Hill Junior High School in San Francisco, someone I knew and who had happened to live next door to me when both of our families had lived in Navy housing in Long Beach in 1970 – 71, was attacked in a shop class by someone who wasn’t a student but just walked into the class from off the street, picked up a pipe and beat Carl over the head with it. Carl survived, although he wore bandages over his head for a few months. I never heard any details as to the motive of the attack, such as whether it was someone he knew and had a grudge against him or if it was a purely random act of violence. I never felt any great fear while attending that school and didn’t have any problems with any of the teachers or serious issues with other students, but I did find the behavior of some students very irksome. But that all also applied to the Junior High School I briefly attended in West Jordan, Utah, in 1974 (before we moved to San Francisco in October of that year), as well as in the small town of Lemoore, CA, where me moved to during the summer of 1976.
I certainly own House of Mystery no. 204 with a classic Wrightson story written by “Virgil North,” but didn’t buy Omega the Unknown no. 1, though I remember seeing it. While I like Jim Mooney’s work it looked too much like Marvel “house style” to interest me. While I enjoyed good writing in comics, be it Archie Goodwin, Denny O’Neil, Bruce Jones, Steve Englehart, or any number of fine scribes in ’70s comics and comic mags, it was the *art* that made me decide upon spending the cash on them.
Aside from purchasing the last few issues of Swamp Thing (I had all of Wrightson’s issues and the Redondo ones up to this point) I could see that the title was falling hard and fast. As I shared before, Warren was having a renaissance with his mags, so Creepy and Eerie were regular purchases for me at this point.
Omega looked pretty generic to me. It was not an eye-catching character design like so many of Kirby’s and Ditko’s were, especially at Marvel.
One thing I noticed then, but wasn’t pursuing: the Marvel value stamp series B which were puzzle pieces instead of isolated super-hero (or villain) images. Here is a site with more info on series B:
https://mvstamps.blogspot.com/p/marvel-value-stamps-series-b.html?m=1
Now—-how many of you ever *cut out* any of the Marvel value stamps back in the ’70s? Be honest! I know I did a few times.
Oh, I’m pretty sure I did, MoB!
Same here! I even ordered the stamp book.
On that subject, the book Marvel Value Stamps: A Visual History by Roy Thomas, which was published about four years ago, is highly recommended.
I never could bring myself to cut out the MVS, but in later years I would occasionally acquire a back issue thus damaged, much to my irritation – especially as a piece of the story overleaf would be missing..
In the ’70s Marvel encouraged readers to cut out the value stamps and put them into a booklet the company sold, DC wanted readers to cut apart the back cover of some of their oversized Limited Collectors Editions to create “a 3-D tabletop diorama,” and Mad magazine urged readers to crease the inside back cover to see the surprise message and art of Al Jaffee’s fold-in—-three great enemies of earnest collectors, even then.
And don’t get me started on what I did to some newspaper comic strips and comic books with silly putty! I’m confessing my war crimes. 😉
I never bought comics for the art. However I would not buy comics because of bad art. If the art was Just Okay and I liked the story/character, I was fine with that.
As a kid, I wasn’t overly picky as to the quality of the art — the Avengers became one of my favorite comics circa 1973 despite a lot of bad Heck art or average-at-best Bob Brown art. Of course, I did appreciate what I regarded as excellent art, such as by Brunner on Dr. Strange and Starlin on Captain Marvel and Warlock. I did become much more discriminating as young adult, but I was really more put off by bad writing than bad art. The first Secret War series remains my prime example of writing I found so atrociously bad that I stopped getting it after sampling the first couple of issues. Zeck’s art was fine but I got the feeling that Shooter was purposely writing down to a level I would have found insulting at age 8. I know a lot of comics fans loved it, but it really turned me off.
I think the first time I didn’t buy a comic for the writing was Denny O’Neil’s first issue of my favorite series, Justice League of America. That partly reflects my budget — in the 1970s, with more of an allowance to spend, I kept buying lots of series even when the writing turned to crap (or was always crap — Bronze Age Sandman, anyone?). I think the first series I gave up on was Ed Hannigan’s tedious run on Defenders. As Tom Brevoort puts it, a lot of my money went to “subsidizing mediocrity.”
As an aspiring comic book artist back in the day, I definitely bought books for the artwork, depending on whose work it was. Adams and Kane I’d be pickier about, because they were so prolific in their early days, plus, more often than not, they were just doing covers. But Simonson? Byrne and Rogers when they hit the scene? Starlin? I’d buy Simonson or Starlin, even if they drew Brother Power the Geek (which I don’t believe they did, so don’t go looking for it). Would I not buy a comic for bad artwork? Not if it was a book I loved or if I needed the issue for continuity purposes. That’s why I’m so familar with the work of Don Heck and Frank Robbins. Awful pencillers who sometimes worked on great books. But if a bad penciller was drawing a new book, one I wasn’t familiar with, even if it was written by a writer I enjoyed like Englehart or Gerber, I’d put it back on the rack. No thank you.
Never seriously crossed my mind to cut out the Value stamps, especially since it often meant cutting out whatever was on the other side of the page. With the amount of Marvels I was buying, I’m sure I would have had a complete set.
I never felt compelled to do so either. Frankly, it strikes me as utterly bizarre that Roy in particular, with his background as comics fan turned pro, thought it was a good idea to initiate something that effectively encouraged fans to damage their comics. Maybe he or Stan thought it was a clever (if cynical) way to get hardcore fans to get two of each issue – one to cut up and the other to keep in more pristine condition.
I suspect the success of FOOM with its puzzles, games, and other interactive (read: damaging) features spurred the idea of the Marvel Value Stamps — and, yes, buying two copies—-one for “usage” and the other for collecting—was only another incentive for the company.
I can’t remember the particular issue but it had a Stan’s Soapbox about the value of comics (Amazing Fantasy I suspect) and in the same issue is the MVS to cut out. The Hypocrisy is wild!
I actually have the list of the 416 MVS issues on a spreadsheet tab in my Excel file, last time I checked I had 171 of them.
Wolverine 180/181 is the only book that can retain any value with a MVS removed – I’ve had pristine copies of Tomb and fantastic Four with them cut out – you cannot sell them even at 80% off FMV.
The most notorious incentive for comics mutilation was found on the inside cover of Action Comics no. 1. Children were asked to tear out the first page of Chuck Dawson, a black and white back up story, and to color it with crayons, with a $1 prize being given to the 25 best entries. This meant losing the last page of Superman’s debut story.
Of the 200,000 copies printed in 1938, only 50 are accounted for today and there are 50 more suspected of existing. How many of these are missing a page, I wonder . . .
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I can’t remember if I bought this first issue off the newsstand at the time of its release – I was 8 years old in 1976, and had just started reading (mostly DC) comics the year before, but I did acquire this issue at some point along the way, and remember it well. The character of James Michael is pretty clearly a stand-in for Steve Gerber, and for every nerdy, bookish, socially awkward member of the audience reading this book, i.e., me, which leads to me a question I think I’ve asked before on this forum, namely, why did Steve Gerber even write superhero comics? With hindsight, I’d say that the answer to this question would be that, at this point, a few years before Cerebus, Elfquest, and Love and Rockets, there wasn’t much of a market for an indie comic about a twelve-year-old boy who *didn’t* have a caped alter-ego, and so Gerber had to pay lip service to Omega being a guy with powers who could shoot lightning bolts from his hands or whatever was expected of him in order for Marvel to publish the book in the first place. But, as with most of Gerber’s work, what still interests me about this book 50 years later is the mundane, ordinary side of it, not the slam-bang action aimed at True Believers.
Strong disagreement. Gerber’s writing and some of his comments about writing make me think he dug weird. In another decade he might have ditched the superhero aspect but I don’t think he’d have done a story about a 12 year old orphan’s coming of age. There’d be some other strange aspect — Omega the Duck, maybe?
Gerber clearly dug weird, but I’d respectfully disagree insofar as something like Omega #3 is at heart pretty clearly a story about a shy, sensitive kid whom one imagines is a stand-in for young Steve Gerber being bullied at school. Gerber cleverly integrates Omega’s fight with the nominal villain of the issue, Electro, into this story as a sort of fantasy wish-fulfillment for James Michael/Steve Gerber fighting back against his bullies, but the core of the story has nothing to do with superheroics. There just had to be a few pages of superheroics for Marvel to publish it. It’s like the issue of the Defenders where Valkyrie enters a tenement building and finds its inhabitants terrified by giant rats – the real villain is poverty, not Nebulon or the Headmen or some other cartoon bad guy. In this regard, I’d say that Gerber’s particular sensibilities and strengths were best suited for books such as Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, and Son of Satan, i.e., books that weren’t explicitly about superheroes, even if Daimon Hellstrom was a superhero of a sort. For me, his Defenders run is interesting almost despite the central premise of the book, which is superhero fights. The ‘70s social satire, the zany non-sequiturs like the Elf with a Gun, the Hulk talking to animals, etc. are what is really interesting about it, not so much the Hulk smashing the Squadron Sinister.
Just from reading Gerber’s stories as well as what I’ve read about him, I get the feeling Gerber loved the fantasy, wish-fulfillment aspect of Superman comics but was also very taken in by the darker aspects that Lee/Ditko/Kirby slipped into their mags in the early Marvel years, with Ben Grimm and Bruce Banner obtaining tremendous powers but at tremendous costs, and puny, picked on Peter Parker getting powered up and it going to his head to such an extent that his selfishness overwhelmed his sense of social responsibility, inadvertently leading to the death of his beloved uncle and leaving him consumed by guilt. Gerber also was perfectly aware of the absurd aspects of super-hero comics and when he got the chance to write them, he couldn’t help but both up the ante on absurdist elements while also infusing his stories with dark aspects of both the genre and society at large. All to a greater degree than any previous mainstream comics writer had done. O’Neil and Adams maybe came closest in their celebrated run on Green Lantern / Green Arrow, but I think once he really got the hang of writing comics, Gerber did it better and with his own idiosyncrasies that no one else could match.
In his own way, Gerber was as much a fanboy of old comics as Thomas, but I think Thomas was a touch overzealous in attempting to remake aspects of those old comics so they made more sense continuity wise while Gerber didn’t really bother with that sort of thing but played up the absurdity and potential for existential horror.
Well said, and I think patr100 nailed it with his observation that Gerber’s James Michael Starling is not so much Peter Parker as he is Peter Darker, and, as a reader, I find James Michael interesting for many of the same reasons I find Ditko’s Peter Parker interesting. Upon further reflection on this point, I’d echo the observations of others in this thread that where Omega the Unknown falls short of the model of classic Spider-Man is that Spidey, or Peter in his costume, also had an interesting personality, and was full of quips while fighting the bad guys, and so on, whereas Omega is pretty much just a mute cipher. I would say that in both cases, the costumed alter-ego taps into that archetypal reader wish-fulfillment fantasy of seeing mild-mannered Clark Kent (clearly a stand-in for the reader) turn into Superman, but, again, while Peter Parker and James Michael Starling both appeal to the bookish dorky kids often drawn to comics, myself included, Spider-Man is just a vastly more interesting heroic alter-ego than is Omega. Having said that, I still find a lot to like in Omega. Whatever his quirks or faults, Gerber, as you point out, was a talented writer who took his chosen medium of superhero comics in some unique and fascinating directions during the mid-‘70s.
Bought this when it came out and was definitely curious as to what was going on. I remember thinking James Michael Starling? Was Gerber hoping Jim Starlin would get a kick out of the name and do the art?
As pretty much everyone else, I was not pleased with the wrap up to the story in Defenders, but I thought it was karmic payback for Gerber’s Bloodstone finale in Rampaging Hulk magazine.
A waste of an interesting character
I think I only read one or two early issues of this at some point. (Uk distribution allowing) I might still have them. My general impression at the time was as many titles became more sophisticated by the mid 70s , that it was an attempt to do a teen/superhero otherworldly/domestic crossover but more subversive and darker. Not so much Peter Parker but Peter Darker, if you’ll excuse the pun.
But I didn’t care for the main character and am actually reassured that quite a few of you also found it a bit baffling and unresolved.
The disintegrating robot head does remind me of the scene from the first Alien film (1979) where Ash (Ian Holm) is revealed as an android.
Gerber already wrote a mute character with a uniquely interesting appearance: the Man-Thing. Omega was a mute with a very generic ‘super-hero template’ appearance.
I’ve been looking forward to your thoughts on this issue, and you didn’t disappoint.
I was first introduced to Omega with the second issue, and probably wouldn’t have picked it up if not for the guest-appearance of the Hulk, my Marvel gateway-drug character at the time. What I found inside was far different from a typical Hulk story, that’s for sure. It was intriguing enough that I picked up Omega whenever I found it on the spinner rack, which wasn’t often.
In particular, James-Michael’s interactions with his peers provided me with a template for high school that persisted for a long time, and the street-level view of New York/Hell’s Kitchen both fascinated and repelled this small-town kid.
It would be years before I read the entire series and realized that the mojo of those early issues faded fast. By the time the series wrapped up in The Defenders, the magic was gone.
Like others here, I think Gerber was channeling DC’s Captain Marvel more than Superman, although since the Man of Steel and the Big Red Cheese were cut from the same heroic cloth, similarities to both are obvious.
Just last year, I read the updated Omega (from 2007-2008). Like its predecessor, it started strong and ended badly. Maybe there just isn’t a way to satisfy such a haunting premise.
This will definitely be an interesting series to follow and discuss.
When I first learned of Omega, it was already crystalized in the seemingly permanent mystery that it is fated to be for the foreseeable future.
What to think of it? Why think of it?
My current stance is that it, much like the “elf with a gun” plot of Defenders issues of nearly a year prior, is mostly a series of glimpses of how weird what we insist on wanting to perceive as normal everyday life can be.
It seems to exist in the space of conflict between the rather predictable expectations and restrictions that come with the mainstream serial comics medium which defines it and gives it form and the obvious yet often surprising desire of Steve Gerber (and clearly to a considerable extent also Mary Skreenes) to express what may or may not be extraordinary, perhaps depending more on the willingness to perceive things by some perspective or another than on anything else.
My main reason for reaching that conclusion is the very lack of clear, definite information on the writers’ intent. That is in itself very unusual and as easy to overvalue as it is to overlook.
Are Gerber and Skreens denying us clear explanations because they do not exist? Because it would harm the message? Because we just plain would not get it? Because there is no message and never was? Because the series lost its way at some point due to factors beyond their control? Because they lost track or changed their minds?
Are we even supposed to wonder who and what J-M and Omega are and how they relate to each other?
Right here and now, I think that James-Michael is clearly the main character – and, indeed, in many senses the only _real_ character_ between the two that are pictured in the upper corner box of this series’ covers – all ten issues of them. That is just way too blatant to be accidental.
Going by this issue at least, James-Michael is clearly very much a victim of circunstances that he can barely influence in any meaningful way; a cypher; and a very active, very meaningful actor who seems to have little interest or patience for the distractions that everyone else insists on throwing in front of him. He is defined by the meeting of his very specific age of twelve; his obvious intelligence and awareness of plenty of impersonal information; and what to me seems to be a persistent, barely contained yet somehow subtle longing for the people around him to stop being distracted by so many arbitrary yet unexplained and unquestioned boundaries and limitations and start caring about things that actually make sense.
At the end of issue #1, we naturally expect to be given some hints about Omega. But what we do learn is simply not very much and it is not at all clear that there is much to be learned, even 50 years later. Certainly not in the following nine issues.
What we do see are hints and glimpses, far more from James-Michael, Ruth, Amber and a handful of character yet to appear than from the supposed protagonist or even from most other characters given what would conventionally be key roles (such as Doctor Thomas Barrow).
I think that this book is truly about a young man that, much like everyone else at his age, is trying real hard to make sense of the world he exists at and the circunstances that it shows to him. How odd he, his parents, and even this situation that he is currently in as of the last panel are may be fully arbitrary questions with no truly meaningful (or at least non-arbitrary) answers.
Right now I truly believe that the reason for being of this book is indeed to remind us that so much of what we see as “our true selves” is ultimately formed from reactions to very directed stimuli that we receive without asking to. James-Michael asks his parents why he should go to school. We know what his father says in response, and we are given fair reason to wonder if that is even truthful, despite being a very standard and expected answer. We will see a James-Michael that is essentially denied a past through circunstance (and writer’s design) go through the motions and the genuine reactions all the same, perhaps unaware of how unusual his circunstances truly are.
Maybe in some slightly different circunstances James-Michael would be all but identical to so many people that we meet that are easy to explain and describe. And maybe that is the true lampshade of how James-Michael is precisely as unusual as every single other person is.
The convention for main teenage characters was that they were either sidekicks or alter egos. Personally I always really disliked the Robins/Bucky Barnes’ of this world. Did comics writers feel that their then young mostly male readers needed a character “they could relate to ” . Did they actually relate to them or as I often felt at the time – “hey that’s only a kid, it’s irresponsible to let them go crime fighting with you as a responsible adult. I don’t care how acrobatic they are!” Maybe I wanted escapism but also a certain adult maturity in the comics I read as a child – the feeling that the level is just that much higher – one’s reach should exceed one’s grasp ,as the saying goes. A playful, sometimes scary “model” of an adult world. I don’t necessarily want to see myself mirrored? Not quite Proust or Kafka, but not Casper the Friendly Ghost, either. Maybe Roy Thomas did something different with Rick Jones in the Skrull/Kree wars. That did have the attraction of Neal Adams art. Going by the first issue here, my naïve expectation was eventually , the teenager would be merged as an unconventional alter ego rather than a side kick- if that ever happened, I didn’t see it or remember it so will wait for further updates here.
To a large degree, the relationship between James Michael and Omega echoes that of Rick Jones and Captain Mar-Vell, or even that of Billy Batson and the original Captain Marvel, except, as you note, in this instance, James Michael is clearly the main character and the heroic alter ego is just an afterthought. Which is why I said what I said above about how Gerber wasn’t really interested in the superhero part of superhero comics. Whatever is interesting about Omega the Unknown, and there is a lot interesting about it, has to do with James Michael, not with the nominal protagonist of the book.
Happy new year everyone! What a fantastic way to start the new year – by waking up and reading this great review and the 40 comments from the wonderful community.
I was very late to this party – bought an issue about 3 years ago – with no knowledge of what it was. I sat down at night, read it and it really did sit with me…the next morning when I got up as soon as the day was under way I sat down to re-read it. I find it perplexing because i enjoy it so much but I’m not sure why…it’s the unsolved, unfinished plot threads and the fact that nothing seems to get answered, i really like the fact it’s not neat and clean, it reflects our lives, you move on and never know what became of your past, it’s complicated, it’s messy and we’re all just doing our best. I think Gerber was years ahead of the field when it came to taking comics into the ‘indy’ space.
I’ve upgraded my Omega #1 a few times (very high grade seems to be a bit difficult to get, mine always have little flaws) and I’ll gladly sit down and reread it each time a copy comes in my door!
Thanks Alan for another great read!