One Man Army Crap

OMAC: Omactivate!: written by Dan DiDio and Keith Giffen; illustrated by Keith Giffen, Scott Kolins, and Scott Koblish (2011-2012; collected 2012): One of the first cancelled series of DC's New 52, OMAC takes a quirky cult Jack Kirby character and turns him into a rather unpleasant Techno-Hulk. Keith Giffen is in full Kirby Kopy mode here, a style that's fun for a couple of issues but soon grows tiresome: the art looks like someone took late-period Kirby superhero art, squashed it, and then sanded all the edges off.

It doesn't help that the new character design for OMAC is terrifically ugly -- the original OMAC had a leaping Faux-hawk before we even knew such things existed; the new OMAC has a bristling, super-giant mane of a Faux-hawk that apparently works as an antenna for power beamed to him from outer space. It's both colossally ugly and sorta stupid.

The writing is worse than the art -- DiDio can only write characters who are either nebbishes or jerks. Creating sympathy isn't one of his strong suits. Lots of explosions and one- and two-page spreads put the focus on action, but it's action devoid of interest in those doing the action.

Originally, Kirby's 'OMAC' stood for 'One Man Army Corps.' That OMAC was a Techno-Shazam, complete with a non-powered secret identity with the initials 'BB' and powers that could come shooting out of the sky, not from a wizard's magic lightning but from a benign super-computer's satellite power generators.

Here, OMAC stands for 'One Machine Attack Construct.' Because that's way better than 'One Man Army Corps.' If you want to read an excellent, more modern riff on Kirby's 1970's character, seek out John Byrne's 4-issue OMAC miniseries from the early 1990's, a miniseries which manages to make its subject more 'realistic' while preserving the original concept in its entirety. This thing, though -- this thing sorta stinks. Not recommended.

This Ambush, This Bug

Comic:

Showcase Presents Ambush Bug, written by Robert Loren Fleming and Paul Kupperberg, illustrated by Keith Giffen, Bob Oksner and others (1982-92; collected 2008): Oh, Ambush Bug. From humble beginnings as a creation of artist Keith Giffen, he was a slightly nutty, teleporting villain in a 1982 issue of the Superman team-up book DC Comics Presents featuring the Man of Steel and the Doom Patrol, the Bug went on to become a postmodern superhero in appearances in other people's books and then in miniseries and specials of his own. His adventures were collected by DC just prior to his return in the 2008-2009 miniseries Ambush Bug: Year None.

While Ambush Bug's DNA clearly and explicitly shows the influence of Warner Brothers cartoon characters that include Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, he fairly rapidly became a vehicle for metacommentary on superhero comics themselves, with the Bug himself fully aware that he was a comic-book character. A typical Ambush Bug adventure can be pretty hit-and-miss, but Giffen and main writer Fleming keep things moving at a breakneck satiric pace. One will eventually hit something funny, though how funny depends a lot on how many comics one has read.

Most of the jokes are only funny for someone with at least some knowledge of the DC Universe and super-hero comics in general. The satire of the mainstream comic industry's growing obsession with continuity and quasi-realistic superhero universes rings truer today than it did in the 1980's (and it rang pretty true then!).

I think the whole thing's pretty funny, with the most telling standout being the repeated deaths and resurrections of Ambush Bug, either to finally remove him from continuity or to boost sales because death alway sells in comic books. Ambush Bug's boy partner, Cheeks the Wonder Toy, is also a surprisingly fertile source of parody, seeing as he's an inanimate baby doll that Ambush Bug confuses with a real baby. The Cheeks-centric parody of the then-ongoing Dark Knight Returns miniseries is spot-on ("The war is mine again. I feel alive again.") as are other short parodies of Rob Liefeld's drawing ability, war comics, DC's more bizarre characters, and even the Green Lantern Corps (herein spoofed as the Amber Butane Corps). Recommended for comic-book readers; mostly incomprehensible to others.

Legion

Comics:
Legion of Superheroes: An Eye for an Eye, written by Paul Levitz with Keith Giffen, illustrated by Keith Giffen, Steve Lightle and Larry Mahlstedt (1984-85; collected 2008): The Legion of Superheroes (LSH) were (and are) a thirtieth-century group of super-powered teenagers from a broad assortment of planets who made their debut in a Superboy story in Adventure Comics in the late 1950's.

When DC Comics reorganized its multiverse of superheroic Earths into a single universe during and after the Crisis crossover event, no major DC title suffered more than the Legion of Superheroes (LSH). Why? Primarily because Superman had no longer been Superboy as a teenager, and Supergirl simply never existed. As Superboy joined the LSH in their very first appearance and appeared in most of their major adventures, this presented something of a problem, as did the elimination of Supergirl from continuity.

This book collects the first six issues of the LSH's first 'direct-only' title, which premiered in 1984 as a result of the LSH reaching new heights of popularity under Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen and LSH uber-inker Larry Mahlstedt. The newsstand LSH title, in existence for more than a decade, ran new stories during the first year of the new title's existence before switching over to reprints of the direct title. In the direct title, things started off with a five-issue storyline pitting the LSH against its opposite number, the Legion of Supervillains. It's probably the second-best multiissue 'epic' storyline of the entire Levitz/Giffen era of the LSH, trailing only the 'Great Darkness Saga' in my estimation. Superheroics abound, along with nice bits of characterization and a couple of truly iconic LSH covers.

One of the fundamental weirdnesses of the Legion books of this time is that Giffen, whose popularity as an artist helped make the LSH a candidate for the direct/newsstand experiment, would leave the book as full artist by issue 3 and as designer/plotter/consultant a few issues later, though he would return a few years down the road. Young artist Steve Lightle stepped in and soon proved to be an able replacement, but it really does seem at times that what was supposed to happen with the direct book never quite happened. The Crisis, and a late 1980's shift towards 'grim and gritty' superheroes, were both coming, and neither would benefit the Legion. Years of retcons and reboots would follow -- indeed, until this day -- to deal with the issues arising from Superboy and Supergirl's elimination from continuity and much-later restoration.

At the time of this book, though, these things were still the future. I do wish DC had started this (relatively) new reprint series at the dawn of the first Levitz/Giffen era, though, and not at its twilight. That was when I first started collecting LSH, so I'm biased, but I'd also say that the whole run -- including this volume, which really acts as a 'conclusion' for that great collaboration -- represents, along with late 1970's/early 1980's Claremont/Byrne X-Men and the (mostly) contemporaneous Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans, the peak of superhero teams for the entire decade, and maybe for the entire history of that sub-sub-genre. Highly recommended.



Legion of Superheroes: The More Things Change, written by Paul Levitz, illustrated by Keith Giffen, Steve Lightle, Ernie Colon, Mike Machlan, Mike DeCarlo and Larry Mahlstedt (1985; collected 2008): The second reprint collection of the LSH direct-only title is a bit more low-key than the first, primarily because it consists of standalone and two-part stories and not a multi-issue epic. Standouts include the revelation of where the menacing Sun-Eater came from, and LSH member Timber Wolf's mission to fulfill the last wishes of deceased Legion member Karate Kid (who predated the Ralph Macchio character by about twenty years).

Superboy also makes what I believe is his last (or possibly second-last) appearance in 'classic' Legion continuity prior to the Crisis and John Byrne's Man of Steel Superman reboot, which would change him from a young Superman to the inhabitant of a pocket universe created by one of the Legion's oldest and most dangerous foes in an attempt to create a super-powered nemesis for the Legion. It's all now a lot like reading the end of an era that no one knew was the end of an era at the time -- enjoyable but slightly sad. Highly recommended.