OMAC: ONE MAN ARMY CORPS (1974-1975)

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog looks at Jack Kirby’s creation OMAC during its 1974-1975 run at DC Comics. 

OMAC Vol 1 #1 (October 1974)

Title: Brother Eye and Buddy Blank

Villains: Pseudo-People, Inc.

Synopsis: The setting is Earth of the future – many years from the present but before the Great Disaster that caused the post-apocalypse world of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi series. The Global Peace Agency, secretly run by aliens called the Visionaries, covertly intervene on Earth to try preventing said Great Disaster.

The GPA’s attention has been drawn to a shady corporation called Pseudo-People, Inc. which manufactures and sells lifelike programmable androids to provide human customers with companionship. To launch an investigation of the company, the agency recruits Pseudo People, Inc. employee Buddy Blank to infiltrate the organization.

Because of the danger of this assignment, Buddy is first used as a test subject for Operation OMAC (One Man Army Corps). The test is a success and when needed, the everyday Buddy Blank can be infused with superpowers by the GPA’s orbiting satellite called Brother Eye.

As OMAC, Buddy’s body is so altered that he can battle the villainy of PPI without giving away his secret identity. In this original incarnation of OMAC, the Brother Eye satellite was eventually revealed to be the long disused Justice League satellite. (Remember, this is the far future.) Later versions of the OMAC series gave Brother Eye different origins.

In this first issue, Buddy Blank learns that an entire line of female “friend” androids are really booby-trapped to assassinate unsuspecting targets by blowing up in their presence. Caught by PPI security troops, Buddy becomes OMAC and takes them on.

OMAC can lift 70 tons, project energy blasts and alter his density to make himself light enough to fly on air currents and winds, or dense enough to be invulnerable. Our hero totals the high-tech security troops, then blasts Section D, the assassin factory, to bits.

NOTE: Section D should not be confused with Command D, from which Buddy Blank’s grandson Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth takes his name on Earth after the Great Disaster.

OMAC Vol 1 #2 (December 1974)

Title: Blood-Brother Eye

Villains: Mr. Big and Major Domo

Synopsis: OMAC’s destruction of Section D has been a significant setback for the cabal of future Corporate Barons. Mr. Big, one of the senior executives, rents Electric City, a futuristic technopolis used by Earth’s oligarchs. 

Having rented the city for a night, Mr. Big enacts a plan to lure OMAC to Electric City, then use an army with high tech weaponry as well as the built-in defense systems of the city itself to kill OMAC and eliminate the threat posed by him.

OMAC Vol 1 #3 (February 1975)

Title: A Hundred Thousand Foes

Villain: Marshal Kirovan Kafka

Synopsis: The GPA has learned that a military dictator in Central Europe of the future – Marshal Kirovan Kafka – is about to launch a war of conquest at the head of his hundred thousand strong army.

OMAC is sent to stop him, and of course he does ultimately triumph over Marshal Kafka’s forces against all odds. 

OMAC Vol 1 #4 (April 1975)

Title: The Busting of a Conqueror

Villains: Marshal Kirovan Kafka and his Multi-Killer

Synopsis: With Marshal Kafka and his army defeated by OMAC, he must stand trial for his war crimes. However, since no Earthly court is qualified to try a malefactor of Kafka’s scale, the GPA has OMAC take the fallen dictator to Mount Everest.

At the top of Everest, the alien Visionaries have formed a high-tech Court of Justice. While Kafka’s trial drags on, he covertly summons his ace in the hole creation called the Multi-Killer. OMAC must battle that huge, multi-limbed and atomic powered construct. He prevents it from freeing the Marshal and even destroys it. 

OMAC Vol 1 #5 (June 1975)

Title: New Bodies for Old

Villains: Fancy Freddy Sparga and the Crime Cabal

Synopsis: Our hero gets wind of a criminal operation run by Fancy Freddy Sparga. Freddy has his thugs traffick in “beautiful” male and female abductees from around the world, then has the brains of criminal cohorts and amoral tycoons transplanted into those bodies.

To the public, it seems that Sparga’s New Bodies for Old business actually transforms its elderly or diseased clientele into perfect physical specimens. OMAC fights his way through Fancy Freddy’s entire criminal network and manages to prevent the villain’s latest client – the Godmother – from getting a new body.

NOTE: As you could guess, the Godmother, the most powerful criminal chief in the world, is Kirby’s joking play on the Godfather.

OMAC Vol 1 #6 (August 1975)

Title: The Body Bank

Villains: Tough Tully Morgan and the Crime Cabal

Synopsis: With Fancy Freddy Sparga and the Godmother taken down by OMAC in the previous issue, Tough Tully Morgan has assumed leadership of Sparga’s international body trafficking organization.

Our hero and the GPA locate the group’s Body Bank and Transplant Terminal concealed underneath the subway system of future New York City. OMAC succeeds in shutting down the entire heinous network of criminal activity.   

OMAC Vol 1 #7 (October 1975)

Title: The Ocean Stealers

Villain: Dr. Sandor Skuba

Synopsis: Brilliant Marine Biologist and Oceanographer Dr. Sandor Skuba and his minions are stealing large bodies of water and holding them for ransom. As a side racket Dr. Skuba mutates human guinea pigs into grotesque creatures able to live underwater.

The mad doctor deduces that Buddy Blank is an agent for the enigmatic GPA (the world does not know it is secretly run by aliens). He targets Buddy, who eventually turns into OMAC and takes on Dr. Skuba and his creations.   

OMAC Vol 1 #8 (December 1975)

Title: Human Genius vs Thinking Machine

Villains: Dr. Sandor Skuba, Seaweed and Apollo

Synopsis: Picking up from last issue’s cliffhanger, Buddy Blank is stranded at the bottom of the now-dry Indian Ocean, Dr. Skuba’s latest theft. Skuba brings him into his nearby lab and explains he has blocked Brother Eye’s beams which grant him the ability to turn into OMAC.

Skuba’s daughter Seaweed and her husband Apollo give Buddy a guided tour of the facility. They even do the Villain Rant about Skuba’s plans for Buddy while the mad doctor himself wages remote controlled warfare with Brother Eye, which is trying to break through the villain’s defenses and turn Buddy Blank into OMAC.

Eventually the satellite succeeds, and OMAC manages to defeat Dr. Skuba, Seaweed, Apollo and the mutated sea creatures. He also restores the stolen oceans before all sea life has died. 

NOTE: This original OMAC series was cancelled as of this issue. Future reboots would significantly change certain story elements over the decades. Jack Kirby went back to Marvel Comics and launched his series The Eternals, which basically cannibalized Kirby’s own New Gods and Forever People series at DC. The Eternals also reused aspects of Jack’s earlier Marvel co-creations the X-Men and the Inhumans.     

FOR MY REVIEW OF JACK KIRBY’S KAMANDI SERIES CLICK HERE.