Back in December, we took a look at the first issue of Omega the Unknown — Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes’ 1975-77 Marvel Comics series that was just as much about a seemingly “normal” 12-year-old boy named James-Michael Starling as it was about the strange visitor from another planet that gave the book its title (if not more so).
This time out, we’ll be looking at the next two installments of the bimonthly title, beginning with issue #2 — which, as you can tell from the Rich Buckler-Al Milgrom cover shown at left, featured a special guest appearance by one of Marvel’s biggest stars, the Incredible Hulk — before proceeding to #3 — which, as you can tell from the Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover shown above, featured Omega’s run-in with one of Marvel’s longest-active supervillains, the Spider-Man adversary known as Electro.
According to Skrenes’ 2022 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Omega the Unknown, Vol. 1, the inclusion of such highly recognizable denizens of the Marvel Universe as these two was a condition that publisher Stan Lee had laid down when he gave her and co-writer Gerber the initial go-ahead for the series:
I was skeptical about being given free rein but, Stan assured me/us that we could do anything we wanted with the book. We just had to have Marvel guest stars and villains, of his choosing, appear occasionally.
Later in the same intro, Skrenes adds:
Stan didn’t believe that a new book without known Marvel characters could ever succeed. He was probably right. Thus, we had to use recognizable guests. I believe they were suggested (foisted) upon us for each issue. In some ways it was a real pain to give up real estate to, what were to us, nonessential characters. In other ways, it was kind of fun. Our hero had to display his fighting skills, right?
Well, if you want your hero to prove he has what it takes to survive in the big, bad MU, I suppose that putting him up again The Strongest One There Is right out of the gate is one way to do it. That said, any prospective readers enticed by the slugfest promised by OtU #2’s cover would have to wait until relatively close to the book’s end for their gratification, as Gerber and Skrenes (and ongoing regular series artist Jim Mooney), had a lot of other “real estate” to cover first…
Dr. Barrow reminds James-Michael (and us readers) that the car accident that made him an orphan also left him in shock for almost a month, then notes, “We can’t be sure of the consequences of that period yet… neurologically, psychologically.” The doctor tells the boy to get dressed, then come see him in his office.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but back in February, 1976, my eighteen-year-old self would have known that green-and-yellow-tinged, jagged-headed silhouette anywhere.
Is this the earliest unambiguous reference to “human excrement” in a mainstream, Code-approved American comic book? I think it might be, though I can’t say for sure.
Incidentally, Mary Skrenes was a resident of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood at the time she was working on this series, as were several other comics professionals; according to her Masterworks intro, “Ruth and Amber’s apartment is based on the place where Jim Starlin and Steve Skeates lived.”
Marty’s partner taunts the caped man as he charges at him with a knife, telling him, “Hell’s Kitchen’s no place to make your rep as a superhero… it’s just a place to get dead.” But the intended victim deflects the knife’s blade with one of his wrist-bands, as a sequence of narrative captions reveals his own thoughts about his attackers: “The decay, the brutality, overlay their features like a greyish glaze. Their mouths move and twitch… they are more vocal than he about their pain and emotion…”
After the cops haul off the would-be robbers, “Gramps” invites his unexpected protector to come out of hiding. It turns out that he has a “first-class first aid kit” on hand, a souvenir of his service as a Corpsman in World War I. Thankfully, the bullet doesn’t seem to have done much more than graze the silent stranger’s arm, so patching it up is well within the scope of Gramps’ skills, as well as of his supplies…
Uh oh. Even if the Hulk hadn’t already been featured on the cover, we’d recognize that shirtless dude in the ragged purple pants anywhere, right, fellow Marvelites?
As we previously noted in our most recent post concerning Steve Gerber’s other regular superhero writing gig of this era, Defenders, issue #35 of that title had made a plot point of having the Emerald Behemoth suddenly go missing in Manhattan, with a footnote promising readers that they would find the answer as to how the Hulk had so thoroughly vanished if and when they checked out Omega the Unknown #2. Frankly, I’m not sure that this scene completely answers that question; still, we can reasonably infer that, after angrily leaping away from the Central Park Zoo, the Hulk eventually came to ground in Hell’s Kitchen — where he promptly decided to, um, take a little nap, with the end result being his reversion to Bruce Banner. Sure, whatever. But now let’s get back to our story, picking up with Amber’s response to James-Michael’s earnest question regarding the charitable services available to “winos”:
Yep, that is indeed our man of mystery. Presumably, Gramps has taken him on as a security guard/custodian/whatever, though I’m not sure why he’s wearing a hardhat.
For the record, this first on-panel appearance of Bruce Banner’s less easygoing, but more entertaining other self comes on page 13 of our 17-page story.
Tony Stark meets Richard Rory in this panel from Iron Man Annual #3 (1976). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Sal Buscema and Jack Abel.
Our storytellers are being coy here, but “the man” referred to in the last panel above is Richard Rory — a fictional stand-in for none other than Steve Gerber himself, with whom Ruth had shared several bizarre adventures in the author’s Man-Thing series a couple of years before this. As regular readers of this blog may recall, the perennial sad-sack Rich had indeed been on his way to jail the last time we saw him in that now-cancelled title; and just one month following the release of Omega the Unknown #2, a cameo appearance in Iron Man Annual #3 (which guest-starred Man-Thing, and was, naturally, scripted by Gerber) would offer on-panel confirmation of the unfortunate ex-DJ’s currently-incarcerated status. Clearly, the author hadn’t forgotten about, or given up on, his old alter ego.
Yeah, ya gotta have that cross-promotion going both ways, y’know? After all, there could be someone reading this issue of Omega the Unknown who wasn’t already following Gerber’s Defenders (though it’s honestly kind of hard to imagine such a person, circa 1976).
That shot of the dazed Hulk trying to shake off the effect of Electro’s blast is the last we’ll see of ol’ Greenskin in Omega the Unknown — although the next month’s issue of Defenders (#36) sees him show up unexpectedly on a roof in Midtown, while a caption notes that he’s come “fresh from his confrontation with Omega, Electro, and the police”, and an accompanying footnote refers the reader to OtU #2… thus leaving no opportunity for a plug behind.
As for the suddenly stricken James-Michael Starling, back in ’76 we’d have to wait not just one month to learn his fate, but two. That’s not an issue for us today, obviously; still, before we proceed, let’s pause to take a look at this issue’s text page — a sort of companion piece to the essay by Steve Gerber that appeared in Omega the Unknown #1, written this time by his co-author, Mary Skrenes:
It’s an interesting read for several reasons, including its fairly detailed description of how the Skrenes-Gerber writing collaboration worked; Skrenes calls their method “the ‘Skeates Style'”, indicating that it’s more or less the same way she’d worked with her previous comics writing partner, Steve Skeates.
And now, on to April, 1976, and Omega the Unknown #3 — where upon turning to the opening splash page, we find that, despite the dramatic ending of the previous issue, James-Michael seems to be recovering nicely…
This first page provides some other choice info as well — particularly, that our Amber isn’t just any old freelance photographer, but does in fact work (at least sometimes) for the Daily Bugle — which of course makes her a professional colleague of Marvel’s most popular solo hero, the Amazing Spider-Man, in his civilian guise of Peter Parker.
The nest page confirms that our young co-protagonist is just where you’d think — back in a bed at Dr. Barrows’ clinic. The good news, however, is that he’s about to be released — though before that happens, he has to take another meeting with the doc in the latter’s office. There, he’s informed that he’s tested negative for diabetes, epilepsy, and every other potential organic cause for his blackouts known to medical science; if the clinic’s staff is ever going to figure out a way to prevent these incidents, they’re probably going to need more information from James-Michael himself about what’s going on with him…
Electro tells his prisoner that all he has to do to be free is to agree to get the inert robot up and running again. In response, our man of mystery — or, as the Daily Bugle has dubbed him, “Omega” — reacts angrily to the supervillain’s attempt at coercion, giving him a swift kick that sends Electro stumbling into the robot. Unfortunately, the robot in its turn falls off the subway platform onto the tracks — and lands on the third rail, which sends a jolt of electricity through its metal body, unexpectedly reviving it. Uh oh. Meanwhile…
Per Mary Skrenes’ Masterworks intro, Dian — whose last name, we’ll eventually learn, is Wilkins — is another major supporting character who, like the older Amber, has a personality largely based on that of the writer herself.
John Nedly — a little overweight, wears glasses, aspires to be a writer — is likely to remind some readers of the slightly older Edmond Winshed from Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 (May, 1975); and, like that character, may be assumed to have at least some of Steve Gerber’s DNA in him.
Meanwhile, James-Michael has managed to survive his first day of school, although the 3:00 p.m. bell doesn’t quite put him in the clear. Standing at the top of the school’s entrance steps, J-M sees Nick and a couple of other boys waiting for him. Dian and John warn him that if he goes down there, those guys will (in Dian’s words) “beat the crud” out of him. Having arranged to meet Amber here, however, James-Michael doesn’t want to change his plans. “Besides,” he says, “what possible motive would he have for –?”
James-Michael is stunned by this turn of events, as well as completely flummoxed as to how he should respond. As they walk back to the apartment, he asks Amber, “How am I supposed to deal with that character, that situation?!” “I dunno,” replies his streetwise companion. “Have you considered… hitting back?”
Recovering quickly from Omega’s surprise assault, Electro tells his adversary that if he takes another step towards him, he’ll use his powers to fry the charity telethon’s poster boy…
I’m unaware of any widespread criticism of charity telethons circa 1976 on the grounds that they overemphasized pity for “victims” in their approach to fundraising (though I’m sure there must have been some). But the points made here by Skrenes and Gerber would be echoed in the early 1990s, if not earlier, when former poster children for the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s annual Labor Day Telethons (hosted for many years by comedian Jerry Lewis) rebelled against their previous role as “Jerry’s Kids” to protest what they felt to be stigmatization of the disabled, as well as an overemphasis on future cure-seeking versus current services, under the banner of “Jerry’s Orphans”.
Setting the subtle social commentary aside, however, there’s not a lot to distinguish Omega’s battle against Electro from any other dust-up between costumed superpeople — something which could be said about our titular hero’s scrap with the Hulk, as well. Indeed, the most intriguing part of the whole scenario, narratively speaking — i.e., the mystery of the murderous robot’s origins and motivations — is abandoned after this issue. One gets the impression that Gerber and Skrenes were a good bit more interested in James-Michael Starling than they were his costumed co-star; certainly, the scenes featuring J-M and his friends were more involving to me as a reader (then and now) than those focused on Omega. That dichotomy would become only more pronounced as the series proceeded, and the “known Marvel characters” Stan Lee had supposedly insisted on at the beginning gave way to new villains created out of whole cloth by Skrenes and Gerber… but that’s a topic for another post.
I missed the opening 3 issues of OtU, although I got the remaining 7 to go. Even for Gerber, this series comes off as very unusual for its era. Something more akin to a Vertigo series of later decades than a typical Bronze Age mainstream comic book. I fully agree that the segments devoted to James-Michael are much more interesting than Omega’s scenes. Interesting that Gerber didn’t give the title character any sort of Superman-like vulnerability to bullets, and he hardly seems adept at handling common street thugs, never mind super-powered costumed cut-ups like Electro. Very peculiar. And presumably meant to echo James-Michael’s own confusion in dealing with violence directed at him, whether from a clearly-stressed out and jumpy teacher or the school bully.
When I finally did start collecting OtU, the same month I happened to turn 14 and just a couple of months before I started high school in the small central California town of Lemoore to which my family had moved to from Treasure Island Naval Station, San Francisco, during the summer of 1976. During that summer, we also took a road trip to Mineola, Texas, for the wedding of my cousin, David Stevenson — which also happened to be the last time I ever saw him; he died a few years ago of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He was the son of my mother’s elder sister and was about 5 years older than me. Unlike me, he lived his entire life in one small town, in north-east Texas, and fathered five children.
Me? I moved around so much i felt like a perennial outsider. Hence, while my situation wasn’t nearly as severe as that of J.M., I could empathize with his situation.
Thinking about it, Omega the Unknown seems the sort of mag that would never have gotten the green-light for publication at any other era at Marvel when as publisher, Lee seemed willing to give just about anything a chance and before Shooter became editor-in-chief and for the most part was much more strict as to what he thoght was suitable for the market. Even if it had too short a run, I’m glad that it had a run at all, as “something completely different”, as the Monty Python gang would have put it.
I agree with your thinking that this is much more akin to the sort of material that DC would later publish under its Vertigo imprint. In a way, I guess Omega the Unknown was about 15 to 20 years ahead of its time.
To the extent the authors are interested in Omega, it’s more his status as a baffled stranger in a strange land than actual crimefighting.
While I don’t regret not buying Omega off the rack back in the day, I’m glad I have the complete run in reprint now.
Interesting, but not compelling enough to make me buy it, then or now. Solid visual storytelling from Jim Mooney, but there are some occasionally strange choices in solid black shadows. The kid in the splash page of no. 3 looks like he’s sporting a solid black beard! 😉
I agree that the “sub-plots” with the child/children really are the heart of the story.
I loved this book at fourteen and love it still. I was never quite as abused in school as James Michael but I never had it good either. Fifty years ago, a young teen male coming to realize he was gay was living in a hellscape at school. Add in that I was not a jock and while smart, things that people valued didn’t interest me and there were repressed memories I wouldn’t access for years driving self-destructive behavior and Omega was the perfect comic for me. I like Steven Grant’s other stuff but that awful ending in Defendres is something that still haunts me. Has anyone ever come across what Gerber’s end game was? I searched online years ago and found no hint of it. In my own head canon, I decided long ago that Omega survived his supposedly fatal fate, replace James Michael with a robot, and he and Amber raised the boy elsewhere.
I LOVE your head-canon ending.
My impression is that Gerber and Skrenes didn’t have a clear answer to the mysteries — I’m not sure, though, if that’s something they’ve said or the prevailing fan opinion.
I recall reading about Mary Skrenes relatively recently, probably in a Twomorrows mag, and I’m fairly sure she mentioned that she will never reveal what she and Gerber had planned for the series, presumably out of respect for her late collaborator. Can anyone confirm this?
I’m definitely a fan of Steven Grant’s writing. He’s commented on more than one occasion, in detail, about the circumstances that led to him writing the wrap-up of the Omega storyline in Defenders, and his thinking on how he approached the assignment. I’m sure Alan will be touching upon that in a future blog post. I’ll just say that I feel that no one, no matter how good a writer they were, could have done justice to properly concluding Omega other than Gerber & Skrenes, so I’m willing to cut Grant some slack for taking on what was literally a thankless task.
I’d cut him more slack if it didn’t come off as recycling the end of the Korvac saga (stupid super-heroes destroyed someone who would have made the universe better). I agree nobody besides Skrenes and Gerber were ever going to give us a good finish
I read that Defenders story, getting the issues new off the racks, and I still have them. I remember not particularly liking them, but by the time that story came out, the Defenders had long devolved into the comics I was buying more out of habit than genuine enjoyment. And I can’t remember any details about the story other than that James-Michael Starling came to a bad ending. And I wished Gerber and Skrenes had gotten the chance to at least do a mini-series to give their story whatever conclusion that may have been closer to their original intent. Appears now that even if Skrenes was given the opportunity to do so, she’d decline. So it’ll remain their unfinished little graphic symphony.
I do not regret passing this one up fifty years ago at all. I knew it existed, but to my knowledge, never even flipped through an issue to see if there was anything in there worth checking out. I think maybe if we as readers were made more aware of what the connection between Omega and James-Michael were, it might have made it more interesting, but as it was, it was almost like I was reading two completely different books, one about a mute alien and another about an odd, but intelligent teenage boy and I found neither of them terribly interesting.
And, I hate to disappoint Stan, but the guest-stars didn’t hook me either. This book took place in Hells Kitchen, right? Where was Daredevil? Spider-man co-starred in every Marvel book at this point in time, where was he? Outside of the Defenders, I had no interest in Hulk at all, and didn’t care about wherever it was he woke up this time. I cared even less about Electro, but I will say that, even though most Marvel villains seem to have some sort of scientific background, I don’t remember Electro being one of those guys. Am I forgetting something (very possible, I’m extremely old)? Since when does Sparky have the tech experience to be rebuilding an alien robot? I have no memory of Electro’s origin outside of what they did to Jamie Foxx in Amazing Spider-man 2, so I’m sure someone will tell me he did, but I don’t remember.
By the way, even though it was obvious that Amber was going to work for the Bugle the second she said she was a photographer, I loved that Gerber couldn’t be bothered enough to give the character a last name for her photo credit on her front page pic of Hulk/Omega. Just “Photo by Amber.” How very “Cher-like” of her. I will say I didn’t recognize Ruth as Richard Rory’s old girl friend until you mentioned it, Alan. Does that ever come into play in this series? Do we get to see Man-Thing throw down with Omega?
Anyway, thanks for the run-down, Alan. It’s fun finally reading these fifty-year old books, even if it’s just to confirm my original opinion of them in the first place. I apologize if I’m being especially crotchety today, but I didn’t sleep well. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.
I feel compelled. to note that the notion of Daredevil being “the hero of Hell’s Kitchen” was a retcon which hadn’t yet come about 50 years ago. Yes, it was based on the origin story by Lee & Everett (although the name Hell’s Kitchen was never used in Daredevil # 1). For most of his superhero career in the 1960s and 1970s, DD was simply yet another Manhattan based super-hero, albeit having moved to San Francisco for a few years in the early 1970s before moving back to Manhattan. I don’t have every single issue of Daredevil from prior to 1976, but of what I do have I don’t recall any reference to Hell’s Kitchen at all and I seriously doubt any of his prior scribes referred to that being his home turf. Actually, the first time I even heard of Hell’s Kitchen was in reading Omega the Unknown (or maybe it was in a letters page in Howard the Duck). It wasn’t until well into Miller’s famed run on Daredevil, still a few years in the future in 1976, that any reference is made to DD residing in Hell’s Kitchen. Over the last decade or so, however, I have read many discussions about Daredevil, mainly focused on the tv series, referring to Daredevil having been conceived as the “hero of Hell’s Kitchen” which is clearly just so much baloney. Yes, it makes sense to think it is so simply based on word association — aha, the red devil in Hell’s Kitchen! Perfect sense. But apparently that never occurred to Lee, Thomas, Conway, Gerber, Isabella, or Wolfman. Per Google AI, the first writer to refer to Hell’s Kitchen in an issue of DD was Jim Shooter, in issue 148, but it still wouldn’t become cemented as DD’s regular haunting grounds until it was Miller Time starting about 20 issues later.
Just my thoughts on that particular comment, Don! Having seen references to Stan Lee having conceived Daredevil as a hero for Hell’s Kitchen, I couldn’t help but think they couldn’t have possibly read anything of Lee’s run aside from maybe that first issue, as I never noticed anything in any of those later issues that even looked like the sort of gritty, rundown urban hellhole Hell’s Kitchen once was and the main reason Lee created Daredevil was at the behest of his boss, Martin Goodman, to both create another hero in the “style” of Spider-Man as well as to snatch the comicbook copyright to the name “Daredevil” which had been languishing since the cancellation of the Golden Age era comic about 10 years earlier.
Thank you for the DD history lesson, Fred.
You stole my thunder by posting that. And you posted with much more detail and clarity than I would have, darn it!
Well then, it just goes to show how pervasive the retcon was when it hit, because I would have sworn to you before today that DD had always been based out of Hell’s Kitchen. From the very beginning. I guess that’s another no-prize down the flusher!
“Sorry, Honey, but I can’t talk now. No, I’m not working on my Iron Man blog. I’m busy offering commentary that no one asked for about a 50-year-old comic book. No, it’s not Spider-Man or Thor or the Avengers. We’re talking about…Omega the Unknown #3! Honey? Honey? Where are you going?”
With that bit of silliness out of my system, a couple more serious thoughts come to my mind. First, these two issues underscore why this book worked as well as why it failed. James-Michael’s story was indeed far more intriguing than that of his silent partner. Sampling bits of their experiences, Gerber and Skrenes painted a vivid backdrop for the innocent, enigmatic young man.
Unfortunately, balancing that with a non-verbal superhero worked against the series. It not only left us unsure of his powerset or abilities but also required a considerable amount of verbiage in the captions to make up for what he wasn’t saying or thinking. That also made it difficult to find any attachment to his character.
(On a side note, I appreciate Alan sharing Skrenes’s background on having both the Hulk and Electro in the early issues. Although both most definitely felt “shoe-horned” into each issue, they also provided a familiarity that out-weighted any contrivances.)
The other serious thought is how much I appreciate the sharing from several of you on this this blog. Each of our lives took varied paths to where we are today with certain comic books impacting that journey. That’s another reason I look forward Alan’s latest post each Saturday morning.
It goes without saying, my thanks to our host for another excellent review!
Sorry but I wasn’t impressed.
I’ve said before that I liked that Steve Gerber was trying to do something more than run of the mill superhero stories, and it seems that Mary Skrenes had a similar mindset, but I felt that all too often he (or they in this case) didn’t entirely succeed.
The plot across both of these issues seems driven entirely by coincidence (one could even say contrivance):
• Electro just happens to be ‘slinking through this very alley’ to witness the Omega/Robot fight?
• Omega just happens to break into a pawn shop that’s already being robbed (digression: why did he need to break in if others already had? Did the first robbers repair the padlock and grille or did this seedy little Hells Kitchen pawn shop have multiple entrances?)
• Bruce Banner is being hassled right outside the candy shop/ice cream parlour that James Michael gets taken to? (Digression II: does it look like Marie Severin redid some of Bruce’s faces at this point?)
• Omega, having (questionably) obtained employment at the same pawn shop, happens to be moving bins around right outside that same parlour?
• Electro just happens to have a hideout in a subway station with a convenient third rail, and it’s never occurred to him to make use of it already as a source of electrical power?
Agree totally with everyone above who says that it’s difficult to work up much enthusiasm for a superhero with a fluctuating power-set and a lack of communication skills.
I think even back then I realized that there was more to James Michael Starling than met the eye, so I was awaiting the reveal rather than feeling any empathy for his situation (which, I agree, was given more development than the titular character).
Dare I say that I was also less than overwhelmed by the Jim Mooney art? I respect his professionalism and very much liked his inking (shame he never had a series where the subject matter was appropriate to that), but his art overall lacks any kind of impact. The Hulk rampages through central NYC and it’s all a bit ‘meh’? The lightning bolts of Electro against whatever force it is that Omega used should have exploded off the page… but it didn’t.
I was fortunate enough to come across an issue of the fine magazine Comic Book Creator from just a few years ago which had features regarding Steve Gerber, including an interview with Gerber from 1993 or 1994. He discussed the Omega the Unknown series at length in this interview. Of course he did not provide any information regarding the link between Omega and James Michael and as far as I have been able to find, he would never provide any information as to what his and Mary’s ultimate plans were for the Omega series or any secrets regarding Omega and James Michael. However…he did make something very clear. He stated that the series was always intended to be the story of James Michael Starling. Period. But given the requirements of comics series at this time he had to (somewhat reluctantly) include Omega as part of the series, or the series would never have been green lit. This explains a lot, since as others have noted, what was happening to James Michael throughout the series was a lot more interesting than what was going on with Omega. By the way in the same issue of Comic Book Creator, there was an interview with Mary Skrenes, and she also steadfastly refused to reveal any secrets regarding Omega and James Michael, but she did say she knew what those secrets were as co-plotter and co-writer. She just wouldn’t say. (IN later years Marv Wolfman noted that writing a mute hero can be very difficult as he found with Jericho in New Teen Titans.)
I stuck with Omega for all 10 issues but ultimately found it to be a very frustrating book. Omega himself was just not very interesting. He was essentially mute, barely saying anything and not having much of a supporting cast. We never saw his thoughts and knew nothing about him (except that red and blue costume and curly hair made some folks think..does this guy look like Superman?). And over the next several issues he would face some not very interesting antagonists.
In retrospect this was probably one of the most uncommercial books ever created. The setting in Hell’s Kitchen was very grim and James Michael’s situation seemed relentlessly depressing and would actually get worse in later issues. Jim Mooney had a nice clean style but I’m not sure it was right for this book.
A few other thoughts…Electro had appeared sporadically at this time and had several different personalities. He’d been kind of a thug with superpowers and then he was leading a supervillain team against Daredevil (DD Annual1), so I guess I could buy what Gerber did with him.
However I was startled and did not remember the scenes with the Hulk tossing around civilians in Omega 2. That was ridiculous. It’s one thing when the Hulk is fighting superheroes but when he’s throwing around normal people, they would be in a coma or dead. That was not well thought out.
I’ll be interested to see your further thoughts on this series, Alan. I stuck with it because of the Gerber name but was ultimately very disappointed.
I suspect Omega the *Unknown* was always meant to remain such in Gerber’s & Skrenes’ run on it, much like Robert Kanigher’s scripting on the Black Orchid stories at DC a few years earlier. Any “secrets” in these comics were just a tease. Their ambiguity was intended to spur reader interest – and neither lasted very long.
Black Orchid was Sheldon Mayer, and I don’t think she’s a good comparison. Omega the Unknown posed a mystery and a finish to the series required solving it. Black Orchid’s true identity was unknown but the stories worked even without ever learning it. For fans of the original series, the mystery was part of the charm. I much prefer her appearance in Super-Friends (E. Nelson Bridwell makes her more of a mystery by disproving some fan theories) to Gaiman giving her an origin.
It’s true, she wasn’t a big success either but the two series are way different.
Yes, you’re right, it was Shelly Mayer. Can’t solely rely on memory for these 50+ year old comics. 🙂
I’m obviously in a minority in that I like Omega’s side of the story. In many ways he’s the superheroic counterpart to Man-Thing: mute, completely baffled by the world around him, with a human friend and compassion for the weak and helpless. And with his thoughts, such as they are, transmitted in captions. I find him intriguing, even if James-Michael is more so; I can understand why others don’t.
To make it clear, this book wasn’t as good as even average Man-Thing, though it was certainly better than the worst of Man-Thing. Even so, I liked it.
James-Michael’s dark times ahead seem to reflect personal experience from Mr. Gerber. Someone wrote an LOC in a later issue saying he didn’t find the kid’s suffering realistic; Gerber’s response was the comics code wouldn’t let him get away with a realistic portrayal of life in that school district so he’d softened things.
Good point about Amber not having a last name, though she seems the type who might actually play the “just one name” game and make it work.
Now I’m imagining a story in which Omega, Man-Thing and Black Bolt are stuck in a vault. How long would they last before Black Bolt started screaming?
Such an odd book. I remember looking through Omega on the newsstand, but there wasn’t enough there to excite my 10 year old self… certainly not the serviceable but not exciting Mooney art. Reading the pages now and the scenes with James-Michael, Amber, and Ruth are compelling, but the whole endeavor has a “we’re making this up as we go along” vibe. Perhaps it would have landed on something interesting… but there’s still a sour blandness about the whole package. A very interesting review though. Thanks!
Omega was, in many ways, a re-do of Wundarr from Man-Thing, especially with Mooney drawing him looking so much like Superman.
I must be the only person who remembers that Gerber and Skrenes came back to James Michael in a variation on their DC series “Hard Time” in the 90’s. another boy bullied who is shocked to have some sort of power to fight back, and is then has to endure being studied to determine what’s going on. the “super-friend” in Hard Time was less physical in form, emphasizing the wish-fulfillment angle that Omega had in this book. Hard Time was part of a short-lived DC line of books – it lasted the longest of all of them – and it got a followup second “season” to sort of end the story that was set up – unlike Omega.
I got the Hard Times collection a year or so ago. I recognized that it continued themes Gerber (& Skrenes) had touched on in Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, with fantasy elements but no traditional super-heroics. I didn’t really think of it as a continuation to OtU, but certainly furthered aspects of that series that were important to Gerber in his creative endeavors and at least he was able to bring it to a reasonably satisfying conclusion.