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Back in the 1970s both Marvel and DC experimented with
different new characters, some made it, most didn't.
One of the more successful series was Nova, despite
his comical bullet-head look. One that didn't do so
well was the character I'm playing with today.
Omega the Unknown was created by Steve Gerber and Mary
Skrenes in 1975 and ran for 10 issues. Jim Mooney
provided the artwork for this series which featured an
alien super-man in blue and red, a refugee from a
hostile (if not dying) planet, who travels to Earth
for mysterious reasons. Like many immigrants, he
doesn't speak the language, in fact, we don't even
know that he can speak. All we know is that he is the
sole survivor of his race and that he is menaced by
mechanical beings who destroyed his people.
We follow Omega as he flees from his attackers and
boards a small starship, headed for Earth.
The scene shifts to Earth, where a young boy awakens
from dreaming Omega's escape. He is James-Michael
Starling. He and his parents are moving to the city
from their remote home in the mountains in hopes of
improving the boys social skills. On the trip, the car
plunges off the road and both his parents are killed.
It is at this point James-Michael learns that his
parents are actually robots. Naturally, he falls into
a coma, who wouldn't?
A month later, he awakened from his coma, with an
unusually detached attitude regarding the deaths of
his parents. Later,the hospital is attacked by one of
the mechanical creatures that had killed Omega's
people. Omega appears, to defend James-Michael, but
the boy manages to destroy his assailant with energy
blasts from his palms.
The strangest thing about Omega the Unknown was that
the book spent most of it's pages on James-Michael and
his problems, with a bit of Omega thrown in to spice
things up. During the series Omega fought the Hulk,
Nitro and Blockbuster, which puts him in the upper
range of superpowers in the Marvel Universe. So why
wasn't more done with him? Low sales killed the book
and the creators killed off Omega at the end of the
series. Years later, Steven Grant wrote the epitaph on
James-Michael Starling in The Defenders, where he
immolates himself with his own power.
Recently, there's been talk of a revival, with a
different creative crew and a different vision, but I
won't address that.
What I've done is work with the elements and styles I
like and produced a minor redesign of a classic
'iconic' costume. The truth is, Omega's costume varied
from cover to interior pages and from artist to
artist. I added a belt, because I like belts. In
places, the lining of the cape is shown to be yellow,
but I never liked that and kept the red. The headband
and armbands remain.
Next month I plan to bring to like some of the
characters from Robert Mayer's "Superfolks", which is
now available once again. Those of you under 30 will
probably need to bone up on 1970s politics and news
media to get all the jokes.
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