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The OMAC Project #5

Scheduled to arrive in stores: August 24, 2005

Cover date: October 2005

Writer: Greg Rucka
Penciller: Jesus Saiz and Cliff Richards
Inker: Jesus Saiz and Bob Wiacek

"...Long Live The King"

Reviewed by: Nick Newman

Click to enlarge

Around the world, OMACs neutralize their enemies as Brother Eye says goodbye to Batman. In space, the Brother Eye satellite continues to monitor the heroes. In Russia, an OMAC is about to terminate Martian Manhunter, when the rest of the old Justice League shows up. Guy Gardner tells everyone to attack.

They blast away at the machine, saving J'onn from certain death. From space, Brother Eye activates more OMACs. Just as the League seems to be winning, two more attack. One quickly subdues Mary Marvel by calling down her magic lightning and changing her back. Guy is helpless as they blind him, and Martian Manhunter is quickly put down again. As Fire and Metamorpho go down, Booster tries to sacrifice himself to take them out, but he's knocked out before he can try. Taking Booster's lead, Rocket Red soars into the midst of the three OMACs, orders Guy to put a bubble around them, and detonates his nuclear core. The League stands around, looking at the smoldering crater that was their friend.

In Checkmate headquarters Sasha attempts to get up as the OMAC attacks the White Knight. As the OMAC prepares to strike, it is knocked aside and stabbed. The White Knight looks up to find Sasha transformed into some strange type of machine. Sasha tries to think, but the machine interrupts her thoughts. She is not an OMAC, she is designated Black Knight 1. Sasha moves to the computer terminal and attempts to stop the total OMAC conversion, but she is too late.

Sasha contacts Batman in his cave, telling him that he has to alert everyone. Brother Eye is activating every one of the OMACs. Bruce asks how many. 1,373,462.

Across the planet, thousands upon thousands of people fall to the ground, crying out in pain as they change into OMACs. They launch into the sky, engaging their annihilation protocol.

Story - 5: The OMAC Project continues to be the most impressive of the four minis currently in progress. I have to admit that I'm not too excited about the idea of Sasha turning into some type of uber-OMAC, but I reserve judgment until I see what Rucka does with her next issue. That aside though, this was a great issue.

Seeing Max's supposedly-incompetent League tear an OMAC apart was great. Rocket Red though. Why do they need to keep killing my League? Back in my Countdown review, I commented that Dimitri was probably going to be the only one left by the end of this. I guess I spoke too soon. At least Guy, Booster, and Fire are still alive, and evidently Captain Atom is alive in the Wildstorm Universe. However, by this time next year who knows if I'll still be able to say that (and that's not the half of it, I've got my own theories about who'll be dead by next year, and they're a lot more important than Booster Gold).

The obvious high point of this issue was, of course, the OMAC conversion. Greg talked about this in Chicago a few weeks ago, and the moment lived up to expectations. Almost 1.5 million OMACs the world over. Finally we can fully appreciate this threat. This issue also gave a plausible explanation for how Max would have spread the OMAC virus all over the globe, B13 technology. This was a nice way of tying OMAC into the established DCU. It does not explain all of the incredible powers these guys have. I'm fine with heat vision and super strength, but how in the world does B13 technology call down Shazam's magical lightning to convert Mary Marvel? That was really my only problem with this issue, and it was a minor one. I really liked this issue, and I am looking forward to the climax next month.

Art - 4: Like Adventures of Superman this week, I have to dock the score a bit for using multiple artists, but they really did a fantastic job of it. I didn't even notice the change on my first read-through. Saiz does a very nice League, particularly Fire and Booster. I was disappointed that the OMAC page wasn't larger. It was still a great page, but it could have been truly spectacular as a two-page splash.

Cover Art - 3: The one part of this series that hasn't done much for me has been the covers. This one was far too dark, and for some reason is half-covered with binary code. I like the idea of the toppled chess board, but this cover had so much potential. A picture of eighty-five OMACs would have been far more impressive than this.