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Omega Men #6
Book Released: 21 Mar 2007
Posted 04 Apr 2007
Writer: Andersen Gabrych
Artist: Henry Flint
Letters: Pat Brosseau
Colors: Dominic Regan
Publisher: DC Comics
5.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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In this miniseries’ finale, the cosmic blockbuster wraps up
as a divine comedy. The majors have been trying out a few high-profile
space operas lately, like Marvel’s Annihilation,
but it’s often under the galaxy-sweeping radar that you find
the books that are truly taking the cosmic epic and giving it back its
good name.
Omega Men has been such a book, with intricate concepts to match
its eye-popping art. Concerning a race against spacetime by
several star-spanning scoundrels to stop the universal takeover of
a false goddess, the book has progressed from grim, gritty
’n’ galactic tropes through mind-blowing space-war
set pieces to existential dilemmas, as a would-be deity who offers
supreme comfort at the price of individual personality is opposed by
the vulgarian Omega Men, the pure-of heart but homicidal warrior
princess Lianna, the ethical but calculating cyberpunk lawman Vril Dox
and a lovesick, malfunctioning blob of shape-shifting
artificially-intelligent jelly.
The final chapter leavens a cosmic struggle for existence with
unexpected humor, for a thoroughly exciting yet genuinely amusing
climax. The absurdity of the situations is played up as much as the
scary surrealism, and there’s survival-vs.-morality
side-dialogue straight out of Action
Philosophers in the middle of pitched battles.
In its own sardonic way, Omega Men belongs to a recent genre
which views spectacular conflicts from the
The final chapter leavens a cosmic struggle for existence with unexpected humor.
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standpoint of their intimate stakes, as vivid individuals contend with
cosmic forces. This genre, a kind of “quantum folklore,”
also gives a fairy tale-ish feeling to adventures based in
theoretical physics, sounding the right note of wonder and worry at
the discoveries we’re making about how the universe works and
the strange ways these concepts seem to converge with old myths.
As with the bittersweet apocalyptic odysseys of Marvel’s
underrated Silver Surfer maxiseries by Stacy Weiss and Dan
Chariton and Warlock mini by Greg Pak and Charlie Adlard, and
the hallucinatory transformation narratives of the cult hit Godland
and the big event Seven
Soldiers, Omega Men conjured not just the outer space
of old sci-fi or the inner space of self-searching fantasy,
but an “inter-space” where the boundary between beings
as actors in the universe and forces in its very fabric seems to keep
blurring back and forth.
The creative team was up to this task, with a good ear for outlaw
sarcasm and unearthly shades of personality from writer Andersen
Gabrych, a tumultuous sense of energy and ornate imagination for
otherworldly detail from artist Henry Flint, and a tour de force from
colorist Dominic Regan, a major new talent who conveyed the alienness
of the book’s atmospheres and environments with a trippy palette
that was audacious and grand but never confused or overpowering.
This is a comic I didn’t expect to enjoy, given the heavy
’80s baggage of characters I never picked up the first time, but
it didn’t take long to hold me like a black hole and is highly
recommended for either a time-traveling trip to the back-issue
bins or a future sighting on the trade-collection shelves.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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