Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes THE OMEGA MEN

I let myself be lured in by the promise of Dox (and potential appearances of other L-dot members, but - natch), but can't say I'm all that impressed yet. For one, the rough, confusingly detailed art style, the radioactive colouring - just not my thing.

On top of that, it seems you really have to know your DC Comics to follow the plot. Spider Guild? Amazons (or Zamarons)? Blue Space nuns in the Philippines? I don't even know what is new to the title and what is established DCverse (after all, the Guardians seem to be romping around in there as well).

Then there's the hints of things to come - people feeling as if they have met before and so on - which are certainly meant to keep the reader in suspense, but which only serve to annoy even more in a title which already has such obscure story-telling that it's hard to make out what is going on.

Anyway, I liked Andersen Gabrych's work on Batgirl, so I'll give the Omega Men another chance. I just wish the way Tigorr is drawn wouldn't give him such a horrible resemblance to Hulk Hogan.

The belief in the Goddess? Is this a new Goddess?

Anyways the Spider-Guild is not new. They tangled with the GL Corps a few times I think.

Blue space nuns in the Phillipines protected by an under cover Zamaaron? I like it. Zamarons work for the Guardians of the Universe. I love obscure cosmic/mystical mumbo jumbo. It was a tad scattered...or hard to follow? Don't know but I know what you mean IG.

The Omega Men can use some cooler characters. Tigorr and Starfire's brother are cool but the robot? eh. The rock guy? He's no Blok.

The got my interest.

Thanks for clearing up some of my confusion about the protagonists, Ultra Jorge (and if only I had read the thread from the beginning, I wouldn't have been confused about the Spider Guild, at least. Ashes on my head.)

I think right now I actually like the robot Doc best, he seems to be a bit of a smart aleck and provides sight gags like hanging upside down or having question marks in his monitors when he doesn't know something. I think that sentinent energy cloud is an interesting concept, as well, even if it probably won't be possible to make something like it terribly likeable.

I read 1 & 2; I did like that the deceased members were acknowledged but the jury is still WAY out.

I do, however, like the weird art (but I usually do like weird art).

Ditto. I welcome them stopping with the purposely cryptic storytelling and explaining what is going on by issue two, though. Art's growing on me.

I'm reading this mostly because I've been an Omega Men fan from the beginning. However, somehow I missed the various deaths that occured during the Invasion debacle. To me, it's really not an Omega Men book without Primus and Kalista.

I do agree that the Omega Men are a team that needs a strong enemy. They're freedom fighters. Once they have freedom, they go home, right?

Anyone still reading this? I only flipped through it in the store, but why is Darkfire being called "WILDFIRE" again??

Re: the latest issue of the 'Omega Men' (#4) -

Let me get this straight - Andy Diggle practically single-handedly reinvents interest in the Omega Men with his deft and interesting take on them in the excellent 'Adam Strange' series. To this end he invents 4 or 5 new members who have astoundingly cool and unique visuals (thanks to all the hard work of the amazingly talented Pascal Ferry) and are ripe for characterisation.

Then along comes Anderson Gabrych who not only kills off (OFF-PANEL!) every single one of these cool new characters but a whole host of popular long-standing members of the team too - like Kalista, Harpis, Artin, Auron, etc. for seemingly no purpose.

He then brings back every one of these deceased members as an evil zombie, holding out the carrot of hope to fans of these characters that they can somehow be saved from their ignoble off-panel deaths, only to have every single one of them be blasted to bloody pieces by some new character of his own creation that he is trying to force onto the team.

Memo to comic book writers - you don't get people to like your characters by having them viciously kill off all the characters we already cared about.

WOW! Judd Winnick may have a rival at the top of my Most Hated DC Writers List - and that's saying something.

What are other Omega Men fans' opinions of this series?

Just looking through it, I've been too scared to actually read it. I know I'm not going to like any of it.

Just read issue 5. Way too much gore for my taste.
The plot is a religioscientific eschatological sci-fi amalgam that's rather confusing.
Vril Dox's characterisation is ok, and Tigorr's seemed consistent. <span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">When he found Felicity alive, though, he'd do anything not to lose her again, but the Felicity who emerges from all that gory, bloody flesh is a twisted, dark version of her former self. Tigorr takes that completely in stride and all he thinks about is smoking a cigar!</span></span>

The series is not bad all in all and the art is really good, except for all this blood and gore, but it doesn't really feel like the Omega Men.

OMEGA MEN: THE END IS HERE

(Originally published as Omega Men #1-12 from 2015 to 2016, then collected as a trade which was released August 30th, 2016.)

The sleeper hit of the year, writer (and real-life former CIA Agent) Tom King's ambitious re-imagining of the cult favorite team of outer-space freedom fighters is that rare space opera that demands to be taken seriously, and comes damned close to earning it! If, in the end, I found it too flawed (especially in the second half) to take it completely serious, I will at least accord it the proper respect. Because it is worth mentioning in the same breath as such illustrious company as Jim Starlin & Peter David's "Dreadstar" series, Timothy Truman's "Hawkworld" mini-series, and, of course, the opening 6-issue arc of the original "Omega Men" series by Roger Slifer (R.I.P.), Keith Giffen, and Mike DeCarlo -- each and every one imperfect, each and every one redefining the genre.

And the cherry on top is that, thanks to this series, Kyle Rayner finally gets to be his own man. I freely admit that I did not support the Green Lantern comic when Kyle was headlining it, and, yes, at the time it was partly because I wanted Hal Jordan back -- however, the main things that kept me away were how awful Ron Marz's scripts were (lest we forget, they were the original inspiration for the term Women in Refrigerators), and the horribly rude attitudes towards Hal fans displayed by the people most closely involved in bringing us Kyle's adventures: Marz himself, his editor Kevin Dooley, and DC's then-executive-editor Mike Carlin. Kyle himself always had potential, as I've come to believe the saying that there are no bad characters, only bad writing. And whether he was appearing in his lame solo book or in Grant Morrison's egregiously overrated JLA run, he never seemed destined to live up to his potential. When Hal was brought back as Green Lantern in the mid-2000s, Kyle's life was spared, only for him to continue to flounder without finding a niche all his own.

It should have been obvious all along that Kyle, who has never allowed the extreme peaks and valleys of his life experience turn him hardened, nor bitter, nor nihilistic, would make a perfect counter-balancing odd-man-out addition to the team of hardened, bitter, nihilistic space pirates known as the Omega Men, the candle in the Vega solar system's accursed darkness. Better late than never, I guess.

King is generous enough towards the Omega Men's small but loyal fandom, and respectful enough of casual readers, that the story arc manages to be wholly accessible while still having the complexity, density, and substance of a good prose novel. Most of the core Omega Men are here -- Primus, Kalista, Tigorr, Broot, Doc -- along with Kyle, as well as another recent addition, the spunky but deadly Scrapps. The old favorites are very much themselves, yet very new in the sense that there is more to them than we got to see in previous OM iterations; King makes it clear from the start that one community's freedom fighter is another's terrorist, and that one community's oppressor is another's provider. Shades of grey, more shades of grey than ever before...Kalista, now more a ruthless yet admirably focused dragon lady than a storybook princess, is particularly impressive in the way King re-invents her and fleshes her out while not betraying her essence.

War, be it earth-bound or inter-stellar, is never pretty, nor is it ever divided into good/evil, black/white, right/wrong, et cetera. As a former real-world intelligence agent, King knows these things better than most writers currently working in comic books. And that is why this story resonates like it does, coming very, very close to reflecting the totality of human existence, as I believe the best genre stories should. That it doesn't quite do so comes down more to some intrusive and muddled religious themes (always an iffy, tricky prospect in genre stories, IMHO) and a few bait-and-switch plot twists too many.

In the end, "Omega Men: The End Is Here" is best described, I think, as a diamond in the rough. It may invite nit-picking (and Gods know that it will probably take me several re-reads to fully appreciate King's achievement and how it stands in relation to the aspects that don't quite come off,) but I think history will be kinder to it than to most dark, dense works of sequential storytelling in the genre of space opera. May it be enormously influential, and open the floodgates to all the inherent possibilities and potential within that misunderstood genre.

Omega Men: The End Is Here trade

I’m glad I didn’t pick up the single issues. It’s a story that works far better in one sitting. Its cinematic vignettes are nice, but I would have breezed through each issue too quickly. Overall, I think I got very good value for my pennies.

The characters are close parallels to the 1980s series. Their backstories have been refined, they have more focused arc as you’d hope for in a limited series, and in more modern character arc driven times. They have been given more license to express themselves. It’s a general shift in what’s acceptable in comics, and works well with the moral quandaries the series poses. The Vegan (as in Alpha Lyrae, not that they all don’t use animal products) setting has also been updated to provide reflections of current world affairs.

The TPB handily allows for a reflection on the character arcs of the main cast. Considering a number of these consist of shifting their ethical stances, it’s a lot easier to do after issue 12, than it would have been while they were on the cusp of such changes earlier on. A final point on a finite story, is that the characters can become more expendable. It provides some strong character moments, from those gone and from those who remain to fight on. That’s tough to do in an ongoing series on a regular basis.





Super Moby Dick Says:-

“Here Be Spoilers Worldtreaders!”




The Viceroy’s position provides some room for reader understanding, if not sympathy, from fairly early on. King provides clear depth to the cast and the, as importantly, number of cultures vying for position/ support/ to sustain their own corruption.

He is shown right from the start as having a close connection with Tigorr. This is dealt with more thoroughly in the finale, where further connections are made to the others. The reveals when they come, and importantly, when the Viceroy is shown as being aware of every one of his decisions, provide a payoff to the book.

The Viceroy has had his hand around the neck of the Vegan system. But in the end he is just a pawn himself. I thought that this servitude undermined him a bit. I’d have liked to have seen him as a bit more ruthless, rather than a facilitator.

But perhaps then, he would not have been able to make those decisions, those connections, to the others in the first place. The difference between his actions and character came through darkly at the faked shock the wider worlds had at his planetary genocide. You can almost see the smug smiles of their plausible deniability of their pocket dictator’s actions.

In the end, this seemingly power obsessed killer, is the one whose scope is broader than just the Omegan system. He has created his own fall and demise through the Omega Men. Kalista doesn’t have that depth of view, and that additional relentless focus she has is what makes the Viceroy weak. It could also make her more of a despot in the end.

The Citadel’s weakness is something that bothered me about the book. The final push of the rebellion seemed to go very easily. The populations rose up against the faceless hordes of the Citadel. Over a long number of days they pushed on and succeeded. The Viceroy ends up in an Inertron cube for self-protection. But is it that focused hatred from the Omega Men & the populations that’s the deciding factor? Or is it the Viceroy’s knowledge that the rebellion is inevitable and that part of him wants it to happen?

Perhaps it’s simply because that’s the way the book had to go to, in order make it’s point in the pages it had. So no divisive factions were portrayed, no counter attacks and no external brokering and peace making were imposed beyond a failed and violet summit.

As they whisk Rayner away from the deaths of 4000, they use the excuse that had they intervened thousands more would have been killed elsewhere. But it’s a threat that the Citadel don’t use when the uprising actually begins.

In the end, it’s a strong book that can show the villain as every bit the Omega Man as the rebels who sought to take his place.

While he’s committed genocide at the behest of his superiors, they have already shown a number of similar attitudes to the populations they have liberated. The book actually goes further, tying in Tigorr, Doc and Kalista into the very acts of genocide that end up sparking the rebellion.

That raises the question of keeping reader empathy, which has been a LW topic of late. Like the Viceroy, and the planetary rulers, King shows plenty of difference between the outlooks of the Omega Men.

The clear difference between Tigorr and Primus is a strong example that’s presented early on. Primus’ voice of non-violence, Doc taking instructions and Broot’s brooding priestly from provide a contrast to Tigorr’s instinctive aggressiveness and Scrapps’ Harley Quinn-like psychoses.

The reader knows that there’s more than one motivating factor at play, and this along with the good ear for dialogue allows the group, and empathy, to work.

The spotlight issue with Kalista was a strong one. I did feel that the actions in it, the kidnapping by the rebellion, was undermined in that the secret of her affiliation doesn’t last very long.

I also felt a bit disappointed that she had to sleep with Kyle in order to make him emotionally connected to their cause. She was already doing a great job of converting him. I got the feeling that it was more of a handy shortcut to tie Rayner to the group, than it was an effective way of showing his shifting morality as the series progressed.

To be fair to King, points such as this are usually referred to as the story progressed, so it’s not as though they are throw away subplots.

Kalista is another example of clearly created character arcs. Her consistency is a strength that underpins the whole series. When circumstances change, there’s a clear link to the subsequent actions based on her established traits. Looking back from the last page, there’s not a moment where the steps haven’t led to that point.

Kyle Rayner, however, never clicked for me as a character here. He’s an everyman with/without a power ring tool of the Omega Men for the most part, shuffled around to give perspective on the others.

It’s not that he’s not given motivations. We’re shown how previous losses have shaped his worldview, and why he feels he can make a difference to the system. He, like a number of others, has his faith challenged. We see the Omega Men try and shape him, and his strength of will to resist and find another path, have that betrayed and then make his decision.

It’s not even as though I have any vested interest in any of the multitudes of Lanterns out there that makes me think less of him. But the summary above is more enjoyable sounding that the actual reading of it for me.

It’s written well enough, so I am struggling to think of what it is. There’s the contrivance that the Vegans don’t allow in Lanterns. Just like Earth doesn’t allow them in on Mondays in the future. &#61514; There’s a peacekeeping analogy, and Rayner as an ambassador is a way of getting around that.

There’s his shifting skills. He gets kidnapped by the Omegans, but is later shown beating them all up and holding a gun to their leader’s head. He is considered to be the most powerful Lantern. But even a standard Lantern has been shown to put force fields around half a planet and could shovel hordes back across battlefields. Instead, we see Rayner making little blasters and swords to fight as the others do, when he could be securing entire conflict zones in moments.

Perhaps its little plot contrivances. I’m still not sure how the team escaped their prison ship so easily after it crashes. Rayner and Kalista are forced into hiding, but join up with the others again without an explanation. It’s all planned, hints Kalista. Perhaps her previous confession that Broot’s death and their capture wasn’t planned, was a ruse. But it would have to be one involving the Viceroy or someone very close to him.

Kyle is allowed to punch someone out with a gun to his head from beneath a duvet cover. While his lover kills someone with a sword from the same bed. Rayner gets similar outs in the battle. We see him fire blasters and hold pointy ring constricts, but there’s nothing definitive about whether he’s killed. The armies of the citadel are conveniently either faceless or robotic. All the better to be murdered without the same level of morality.

Perhaps that’s what bothers me. Rayner gets an out that Primus doesn’t. In fact, Rayner is a stand in for the story of Primus. Primus seems to have been the last to join before Rayner. He started from a similar non-violent, apolitical stance and has been forced to change that throughout the series. Kalista seems to have manipulated Primus in exactly the same way. It would seem as though Rayer and his power ring have replaced Primus and perhaps something connected to X’Hal for the bomb/ring (Auron perhaps).

While providing emotional touch points in the series, there’s no reason why something else couldn’t have freed a device from a rock, saving Broot from dying. We see Doc drill down to a core later on using just such useful equipment.

Doc is sacrificed performing that function, but not due to the drilling. The Omega me move fairly freely for a lot of the book and have access to lots of weapons. But no remote detonators it would seem. Poor Doc.

In summary, it’s a worthy reboot of the original run, but has its own strengths and weaknesses. It’s a definite step up from books that maintain the status quo and it could easily have a sequel. Perhaps there, we will see Kyle use what he’s learned this time out.

The book gets its points across well without being preachy. All sides of any war are a mass of conflicting/ competing factions with varying agendas who will use similar techniques to the point that they are essentially indistinguishable in the long run. Rinse and repeat civilisation at work.

It's a well structured book for the most part, with a number of set ups and pay offs, of varying levels, along the way. The cast are tied into the story itself. one are simply just freedom fighters/ terrorists. King gives each a distinctive voice and an arc to go through. It's to his credit that some arcs produce more profound changes than others, and they are not tick box exercises in storytelling.

I found the art a little scratchy looking to begin with, but it was only a little bump before I was into it. Showing Rayner's history was also a weak point, suggesting that spandex isn't a strong point (not a bad thing).

Great review, Thoth. It appears we are very much of like minds on this story, and I appreciate that you were able to express certain niggles which I was unable to fully articulate last night. In particular:



It does seem rather cheap with the clarity of hindsight. Good observation.



In my view, Kyle's presence in the story could be interpreted as a somewhat cynical attempt on DC's part to have a concrete selling point for the book, which in turn is understandable considering how bad the Omega Men's fortunes have been over the decades since their promotion to headliners. I can think of nothing good involving their Post-Lantern/Post-Titans apperances except for the early issues of the original series and their guest appearance in the mostly superb 2004 mini-series "Adam Strange: Planet Heist," which, in retrospect, appears to be the endpoint of the Pre-Dark Ages DC, and had probably already been in the works long before DiDio and his cronies co-opted it for its use in the carnival of horrors they subsequently unleashed. But I digress. My point is, Kyle has a large following, most likely larger than that of the Omega Men. And if the contrivances and inconsistencies involving his presence in this story are what it took to get the story green-lighted (no pun intended), then I can live with that.



Agreed 100%.

I would also like to take this opportunity to append something that I could kick myself for forgetting to post last night: Namely, that I think if Roger Slifer had lived to be able to read this story, he'd have been proud, and that if MLLASH had lived to be able to read this story, he'd have been pleased.

And one last thing, Thoth...the writer's name isn't Tom Day, it's Tom King. (King for a Day?) No biggie, just thought it needed to be mentioned.

Thanks. I was supposed to mention that, but went straight onto another point. I'm never sure just how popular Rayner is. I vaguely recall a lot of animosity, not only from the fate of Jordan, but the feeling that the new creators intended to make their Lantern the best by belittling his predecessor. Thanks for expanding on that. I've not read Adam Strange: Planet Heist. I 'll keep an eye out in case it ever passes my way. Speaking of Ways...



Corrected! I can't believe this guy calls himself one thing, waits for my review and then nips back in time to change his name for everyone else. The lengths some people will go to...

Remember kids. If you're reading a book in one room and reviewing it in another, you might want to take the thing with you. Worse, I was mistaking him for Way, as I picked up the Doom Patrol to join in that thread. I couldn't even get that right.

Now, if the guy behind the desk in the last scene* turns out to be King Faraday...

*I'm not sure why it seems like someone from Earth is controlling the fates of billions across the galaxy.

My pleasure. And to reiterate something that I said in my review, back in the mid-90s, Green Lantern's then-current writer (Ron Marz) and editor (Kevin Dooley), as well as DC's Executive Editor at that time (Mike Carlin) were all inappropriately and unforgivably rude towards any and all Hal Jordan fans, even the quieter ones like myself who expressed their discontent mainly by wearing T-shirts with the Hal design rather than the Kyle design, and, more importantly, by simply not buying the Green Lantern comic. I've never had anything against Kyle himself, only the knee-jerk negative attitudes of his creators and editors, and their ham-fisted methods of promoting Kyle.



Hope you find it soon, Thoth. I've re-read it several times over the years, and it's always held up quite well. I'm planning to re-read it yet again, for the first time in a while, this weekend. Hopefully it'll still hold up well.

I may not be popular for this opinion but I regret buying the trade of the recent series as I really thought it was clichéd, boring and the characters were truly appalling. Truly, truly appalling. I can't stress how badly written they were in my opinion.

I won't list all the faults I found with it, though a couple that really rankled were Primus being a cuckolded beatnik non event, Kyle beating Tiggor in hand to hand combat (while spouting "my God is better than your God" bile), the use of Chinook helicopters (outdated on Earth so why would a star faring civilisation use them?), So many random pointless deaths, the ladling on of moral shades of grey, the obvious dig at Christianity with Broots people's churches and corrupt bishops, and the one thing that almost made me send it back in utter disgust was Kalista being the manipulative self serving shrew that fucked Kyle to keep him on side. That one character put women in comics back thirty years. Very very very poor show of writing there Mr King.

On the positive, I quite liked Broot, and the colouring was well done.

Sorry guys I just don't see what the fuss is about.