As much as Kevin wants a regular life, Brother Eye has a much bigger plan in mind.
What They Say:
Brother Eye gives Kevin Kho the ground rules to their new “arrangement.” New players are introduced to the game as Sarge Steel and Checkmate begin their hunt for the One Machine Army Corp, but O.M.A.C.’s appearance may be short-lived when he faces the incredible threat of Rocker Bonn, the Amazing Man!
The Review:
While I thoroughly enjoyed the opening issue of OMAC for what it was, it wasn’t a series I felt comfortable paying full price for with a same-day digital release (or print, as local stores offer no discernible discounts). So when the second issue came around on the DC Comics +1 plan where it dropped by 33% to just $1.99, it hit the right threshold for me because the book is just plain fun. And while I do agree that it has a lot of Jack Kirby feel about it with the way Keith Giffen and Scott Koblish handle the art chores, this book again reminded me a whole lot more of John Byrne’s work since his stint on Next Men and beyond with the organizations, the character designs and the movements of it all. Taking that kind of style and applying it to the panel layouts that I adore Giffen with (Five Years Later fan here!) and it’s just a winning visual combination for me. It’s a comic book that’s great to read for both words and visuals.
While the opening issue was all about the action for the most part, this book goes more for a half and half approach which slows things down just right, letting things sink in a bit. It opens with a brief info dump that’s useful as Brother Eye makes it clear that Kevin Kho doesn’t really exist anymore but is little more than a tool that Brother Eye is using for its own plans, which we later learn is to deal with the double threat of both Cadmus and Checkmate. OMAC, its One Machine Attack Construct, is the physical tool that it will use to achieve its goals of being fully independent and kept safe from the machinations of these two organizations. Which in turn makes you want to know more about Brother Eye’s potentially revamped origins and what lead to events just prior to the start of the series.
This issue covers a whole lot of ground and really expands the scope of it. While the initial issue could be seen as a piece that really focuses just on OMAC itself and whatever the plan Brother Eye has, here we get to look at the extra-national organization that Checkmate is with how it operates without fear of blowback because of the agreements signed with the member nations. And that they’re operating at a higher level than expected, which means they have long range plans and will deal with problems very carefully but fully. There’s a good deal introduced here that merits a couple of readings to put it all into perspective, and especially upon re-reading the first issue again with a slightly different perception of things due to what’s revealed here, which makes it a great deal of fun. Like a few of the other new series from DC Comics, you can easily see events here building for some time to a much larger work that could have some thoroughly engaging ripple effects.
Release Notes:
This comiXology edition of OMAC comes with the main cover as released with the print edition and no other extras.
In Summary:
One of the reasons that I had fallen out of comics for such a long time came down to so little of it was fun. The 90’s killed a whole lot of that enthusiasm and then with all the real world drama of the last decade, the publishers brought in even more of those events to the books and it was just getting depressing. There are certainly dark books to be had in the new DC Comics relaunch, and there needs to be those books and I’m enjoying several of them, but the balance was hard to find. OMAC is definitely one of those really, really fun books that has so much content to it that you look at it and wonder how Giffen gets it out every month. There’s a great structure to the layout of the book that helps to make the large but very enjoyable amount of dialogue and narrative here feel perfectly natural. It may not be deep – yet – but this is one of those books that I really find that with just two issues, I treasure and enjoy and already want to reread.
Grade: B+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
