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. Continue reading
THE AIR BATTLE: A VISION OF THE FUTURE (1859) – Written by an unknown author using the name Herrmann Lang. (Ignore the misspelling on the cover to the left.) Speculation has it that the author was British despite the German pseudonym and despite the narrator’s claim that he is a black man. 
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog will look at the stories in which Marvel’s licensed toy I.P. the Micronauts interacted with established Marvel characters. My look at the early Micronauts stories can be found 
MICRONAUTS Vol 1 #15 (March 1980) 
Meanwhile, back in the Microverse/ Quantum Realm we join the current roster of the Micronauts – Commander Arcturus Rann, Princess Marionette, Bug, Acroyear, the roboids (Biotron and Microtron), Cilicia (Acroyear’s wife, at right) and Jasmine (Bug’s girlfriend). The escaped Psycho-Man shows up in his vessel which dwarfs their own, called the HMS Endeavor. 
A VOICE FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1874) – Written by W.S. Lach-Szyrma. The 1874 date marks when a selection of stories that Lach-Szyrma had written beginning at some point around 1865 in untraced magazines were finally collected in novel form. The author penned more novels in the series as the years went by. 
Eventually during his years traveling among human beings, “Dr. Posela” rescues a friendly Englishman who is among those trapped in the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. The Earthling gets returned to England, and is delighted with Dr. Posela and his philosophical observations about humanity and his theories that life certainly exists on many other planets.
CAPTAIN BRITAIN Vol 1 #16 (January 26th, 1977) 
Reluctantly, Captain Britain uses some of his super-strength and agility to break free of the cops before they can unmask him. The other police on hand start shooting at C.B. when – out of nowhere – Captain America intervenes. He’s used to authorities in the U.S. often being wrong about superheroes so he offers to fight off the cops while Captain Britain escapes. 
DEADWOOD DICK – In general, the Dime Novel period of westerns, detective, science fiction and horror tales lasted from 1860 to around 1919 or the early 1920s. Pulp magazines took over from there. Many Dime Novels were very loosely based on real-life figures like Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and others. Many more were purely fictional, like Deadwood Dick. 
UN AUTRE MONDE (Another World) – This 1895 story was written by Belgium’s revered pioneer in science fiction – J.H. Rosny, real name Joseph Henri Boex. I went with the French title because a while back I reviewed another work of ancient science fiction that also bore the title Another World. 
Yes, before Batman, before Captain America and even before Superman himself, came the Clock, written and drawn by George E. Brenner. The Clock was the first masked crimefighter in comic books, debuting in 1936, while the much more popular Batman didn’t come along until 1939. I’m not pointing that out to diss Batman, but to point out what a shame it is that the Clock seems to have been forgotten by most of the world. The figure is pretty much the middle character between Pulp heroes like the Shadow and the Moon Man and comic book superheroes. The Clock’s influence on 
FEATURE FUNNIES Vol 1 #17 (February 1939) 
MEMOIRS FROM A JOURNEY WITH THE FLYING FISH “PROMETHEUS” (1870) – Written by Danish author Vilhelm Bergsoe. I shortened the title in the heading for this blog post. Some editions shorten it even more, to just Flying Fish Prometheus. 
William’s American colleagues send the new airship Prometheus to fetch him. The Prometheus is cigar-shaped (like so many UFOs would be described decades later) and sports wings plus propellors. Our man Stone boards the airship in Koege, along with other passengers including his love interest Anna Blue. 
THE CABALLERO’S WAY (1907) – This was the original short story written by O. Henry in which he introduced the character called the Cisco Kid. The Caballero’s Way was first published in the July issue of Everybody’s Magazine, then was included in the anthology The Heart of the West later that year. 
The communities in the Cisco Kid’s territory between the Frio River and the Rio Grande help hide the kid from his Texas Ranger pursuers out of fear, NOT out of any fondness for the violent killer. Also unlike later portrayals of the Kid as a good guy, Cisco is an American whose surname is Goodall and he loves to shoot Mexican men.
Balladeer's Blog 