Mary Skrenes

My forty-year-old memory of this series obviously forgave a lot of crap...or I had a much higher tolerance for it. Or it was the promise laid down in that very first issue that kept me hanging on. I honestly don't know what the right combination of answers is.

What does tend to stick out in my mind, now however, as I think back to some of the Marvel issues that I got excited over... Nova, Bloodstone, Skull, Deathlok, Star-Lord (well, okay, the second issue of that one was actually better), and on and on...they tell me that Marvel was really good at spitting out that first issue, or the first few, but never really had a long-term plan for them.

That was never more evident that with Omega the Unknown. I absolutely loved the first issue, when a stranger from a distant planet, who doesn't speak, lands on Earth and is somehow tied to 12-year-old James-Michael Starling, who's parents were robots and seems to be manifesting the same powers as Omega himself.

What a great set-up. What lousy follow-through. I'm guessing that Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes, the writers, were likely hamstrung by the editors to include some recognizable heroes and villains, such as Electro and the Hulk, but they did so at the expense of that all-consuming central mystery. So, we had a killer first issue, eight issues of mostly the villain-of-the-week battles, then finally, on the last issue of the series, we started to get back to the central mystery when James-Michael finally got back home.

Then there was the clumsy wrap-up a few months later in two issues of The Defenders that spun completely off the rails.

As for the art...well, Jim Mooney was a competent enough artist, never an A-lister, but he was capable of creating the muscular heroes and the lovely ladies that populated every issue of every Marvel comic through the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Overall, it's just a case of a great set-up and a lot of wasted potential. Too bad.

Well, now I'm off to see what Marvel did with the character thirty years later.

UPDATE - November 6: Having completely forgotten I'd read this three years ago, I stumbled across a cheap trade paperback and re-read it. And nope, it's no better than I remember.

Marvel had a bad habit of starting a series interestingly, but then shuffling various writers through the book (I'm looking at you a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3025737837">Skull the Slayer). I still stand by my "villain-of-the-week" observation. I think they were trying to draw the mystery out, and some of the interim writers had no idea where to go with it...but seriously, for James-Michael and Omega to finally get together something like six issues in, and all Omega can say is "secret"?

Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Gerber was a great idea man, but my god, he overwrote far too much.

I think I'm gonna remember I've read and reread this...and not read it again.… (mais)