{"id":26093,"date":"2022-07-04T14:57:13","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T14:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=26093"},"modified":"2022-07-04T14:57:13","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T14:57:13","slug":"omac-one-man-army-corps-by-jack-kirby-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2022\/07\/04\/omac-one-man-army-corps-by-jack-kirby-2\/","title":{"rendered":"OMAC – One Man Army Corps by Jack Kirby"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Jack Kirby<\/strong> with D. Bruce Berry<\/strong>, Mike Royer<\/strong> & various (DC)
\nISBN: 978-1-7795-1026-6 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a magnificent abundance of Jack Kirby collections around these days – but still<\/strong> not everything, so I reserve my right carrying on whining\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

This slim trade paperback\/digital collection re-presents possibly his boldest, most bombastic and most heartfelt creation after the comics landmark that was his Fourth World<\/strong> Cycle.<\/p>\n

Famed for larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, \u201cKing\u201d Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He experienced Pre-War privation, Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures, but always looked to the future while understanding human nature intimately. In OMAC: One Man Army Corps<\/strong>, he gave his darkest assumptions and prognostications free rein, and his \u201cWorld That\u2019s Coming\u201d has proved far too close to the World we\u2019re frantically trying to escape now\u2026<\/p>\n

In 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably tanking at DC, Kirby tentatively considered a return to Marvel, but – ever the consummate professional – he scrupulously carried out every detail of an increasingly onerous and emotionally unrewarding DC contract. When The Demon<\/strong> was cancelled, the King needed another title to maintain his Herculean commitments (Jack was legally obliged to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week!) and returned to an idea he had shelved in 1968.<\/p>\n

That was to re-interpret Captain America<\/strong> for a possible future where all Kirby\u2019s direst suspicions and fears could be made manifest. In 1974 he revisited those anxieties: producing a nightmare scenario that demanded not a hero but a warrior.<\/p>\n

Dubbing his Day-After-Tomorrow dystopia \u201cThe World That\u2019s Coming\u201d, Kirby let his mind run free – and scared – to birth a frighteningly close appreciation of our \u201cNow\u201d, where science and wealth have outstripped compassion and reason, and humanity teeters on the brink of self-inflicted global destruction. His thoughts then are represented here in the editorial that accompanied the premier issue\u2026<\/p>\n

OMAC<\/strong> #1 launched in September-October 1974, introducing the Global Peace Agency, a world-wide Doomwatch<\/strong>-style police force who manufactured a super-soldier to course-correct mankind and crisis-manage the constant threats to a species with hair-trigger fingers on nuclear stockpiles, chemical weapons of mass destruction and made-to-measure biological horrors.<\/p>\n

Base human nature was the true threat behind this series, and that was first demonstrated by decent young man Buddy Blank<\/em> who – whilst working at Pseudo-People Inc. – discovers that the euphemistically entitled Build-A-Friend division hides a far darker secret than merely pliant girls that come in kit-form. (I believe we even have those now, too\u2026)<\/p>\n

Luckily Buddy has been singled out by the GPA\u2019s resident genius Professor Myron Forest<\/em> for eternal linkage to sentient satellite Brother Eye<\/em>. His atoms shifted and reconstructed, Buddy is rebuilt to become a living God of War, and the new-born human weapon easily destroys his ruthless employers before their murderous plans can be fully realised. \u2018Buddy Blank and Brother Eye\u2019<\/em> was followed by a truly prophetic tale, wherein impossibly wealthy criminal Mister Big<\/em> purchases an entire city simply to assassinate Professor Forest in \u2018The Era of the Super-Rich!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Kirby\u2019s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing action, and #3 was the most spectacular thus far. OMAC<\/strong> fought \u2018One Hundred Thousand Foes!\u2019<\/em> to get to murderous Marshal Kafka<\/em>; terrorist leader of a Rogue State with a private army, WMDs and a solid belief that the United Nations can\u2019t touch him. Sound familiar\u2026? That incredible clash carries on and concludes in #4\u2019s \u2018Busting of a Conqueror!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

With #5, Kirby moved on to other new crimes for a new world. The definition of a criminal tends to blur when you can buy anything – even law and justice – but rich old people cherry-picking young men and women for brain-implantation is (hopefully) always going to be a no-no. Still, you can sell or plunder specific organs even now\u2026<\/p>\n

Busting the \u2018New Bodies for Old!!<\/em>\u2019<\/em> racket took two issues, and after the One-Man-Army-Corps smashed \u2018The Body Bank!\u2019<\/em> he embarked on his final adventure. Ecological disaster and water shortage was the theme of the last tale, but as our hero trudges across a dry, desolate lake bottom amidst the dead and dying marine life he is horrified to discover the disaster is the work of one man. \u2018The Ocean Stealers!\u2019<\/em> (#7) introduced scientific madman Doctor Skuba<\/em>, who mastered atomic manipulation techniques that had turned feeble Buddy Blank into an unstoppable war machine.<\/p>\n

Joe Kubert drew the cover to final outing OMAC<\/strong> #8. \u2018Human Genius Vs Thinking Machine\u2019<\/em>; was an epic episode seeing Brother Eye apparently destroyed as Skuba and Buddy Blank died together in an incredible explosion.<\/p>\n

But that final panel was a hasty, last-minute addition by unknown editorial hands, for the saga never actually finished. Kirby, his contract completed, had promptly returned to Marvel and new challenges like Black Panther<\/strong>, Captain America<\/strong>, 2001<\/strong>, Devil Dinosaur<\/strong>, Machine Man<\/strong> and especially The Eternals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hormone treatments, Virtual Reality, medical computers, satellite surveillance, genetic tampering and all the other hard-science predictions in OMAC<\/strong> pale into insignificance against Kirby\u2019s terrifyingly accurate social observations in this bombastic and tragically incomplete masterpiece.<\/p>\n

OMAC<\/strong> is Jack Kirby\u2019s Edwin Drood<\/strong>: an unfinished symphony of such power and prophecy that it informs not just the entire modern DC universe and inspires ever more incisive and intriguing tales from the King\u2019s artistic inheritors but still presages more truly scary developments in our own mundane and inescapable reality\u2026<\/p>\n

As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book includes Kirby pencilled pages.<\/p>\n

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you\u2019re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn\u2019t alter the fact that Kirby\u2019s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations and still wins new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human: and just plain Great.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 1974, 1975, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry, Mike Royer & various (DC) ISBN: 978-1-7795-1026-6 (TPB\/Digital edition) There\u2019s a magnificent abundance of Jack Kirby collections around these days – but still not everything, so I reserve my right carrying on whining\u2026 This slim trade paperback\/digital collection re-presents possibly his boldest, most bombastic and most heartfelt creation … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “OMAC – One Man Army Corps by Jack Kirby”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[76,102,111,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc-superhero","category-fantasy","category-satirepolitics","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-6MR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26095,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26093\/revisions\/26095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}