To fans of Marvel's latest series...
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...well, all I can say is that Daniel Raven's review (below) is brilliant and right on the money, with little that anyone could add to further paint what this collection achieves.
However, if you're looking at coming to this book after reading Marvel's latest series of Omega: The Unknown (an outstandingly effective re-imagining of the story by Jonathan Lethem and illustrator Farel Dalrymple) I just wanted to add that the original comics don't dissapoint.
While at times the original's overly verbose narration can get a little grating, it still adds a lot of background to the gentle charm of the new iteration.
Plus, in an unexpected manner that the new series hasn't yet explored, the original's script really tries to challenge some Marvel conventions. For one, the vocabulary used here is way more demanding than anything printed in Marvel's mainstream titles of the time.
But, more interestingly, in one instance Omega lets a villain get away who's only robbing a bank to get money for his son's future; he saves a woman committing suicide and is then racked with guilt about the idea that maybe he had no right to stop her if that was what she, or our planet's laws really meant for. And, with the day to day life of the residents' of Hell's Kitchen being of such importance in the series, it really deals with the notion of the "downfall of Western Society" in quite a mature way for its time.
I loved these characters after only discovering them in the new series, and it's quickly grown to be the one comic book I'd buy regularly if I couldn't afford the 20 or so I'm currently hooked on; this book only compounds my beliefs that they're some of the most criminally overlooked characters in Marvel's canon.
Buy it; you won't regret it.
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One day, you'll think you only DREAMT it...!
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For Marvel Comics the 1970s were characterised by unchecked expansion and mad-as-a-box-of-frogs experimentation, but even in the context of a company working on titles like HOWARD THE DUCK and DEVIL DINOSAUR FEATURING MOON BOY, OMEGA THE UNKNOWN looks well weird. The story of a mysterious young boy whose parents are killed in a car accident (actually, `destroyed' would be more to the point as it soon transpires they were robots all along) and his mysterious psionic link to an even more mysterious (mute, in fact) super-guy from some other world comes on like a hippyfied update of SHAZAM! but quickly develops into something considerably darker, as the lad finds himself living in an almost absurdly undesirable area of New York where life is cheap, the streets are paved with broken dreams, etc., etc. Meanwhile, and in stark contrast to the prevailing mood of gritty social realism, Omega (the super-guy) battles a series of standard issue supervillains, including an unusually articulate Electro (`We've struck a bargain, your lead-headed friend and I!') and Nitro the Exploding Man. The best/ weirdest thing about these fights is the style of the captions, which often seek to reflect the conflict in purely abstract terms; the results are absurdly pretentious at times (`Singularity of focus... detrimental on a world with so diverse a catalogue of hazards!' = Omega getting zapped in the back by Electro after being distracted by the Hulk), but occasionally - like in issue 10, where the captions for a fight between Omega and a purple demon appear to be describing the breakdown of a romance - it is disconertingly (if inexplicably) effective.
Omega's regular monthly series ended with that issue, but all the loose ends were tied up in a two-part DEFENDERS story, also included here. The explanations, when they come, are brilliant and baffling in equal measure, but the helpful inclusion of Omega's entry from the Marvel Universe Handbook clears up a lot of the grey areas. This is definitely one for the `selective appeal' pile, but any reader with an interest in just how off-message a mainstream superhero series can get should have a good time with it.
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