Overall- OK... This comic book has left me confused and conflicted, two things I don't really like to feel. Basically, the planet has gone to hell, and only a very, very select few people still have the willpower to fight off Darkseid and the anti-life equation. Mr. Terrific is working with Checkmate, but the entire Checkmate base winds up being overtaken, except for Terrific, Snapper Carr, an AI construct called Thinker, a woman, who Terrific seems sweet on named Sasha Bordeaux, who seems to contain the OMAC virus and some other guy, who doesn't really do much. Sorry, I'm really foggy about what Checkmate is so alot of this story kind of went over my head.
Mr. Terrific along with his motley crew hide in a bunker at the Checkmate base, while the Darkseid possessed anti-lifers try to get in unsuccessfully. Snapper Carr is apparently a teleportor now(huh?)and has been travelling the globe looking for help, and destroying any weapons Darkseid's forces might be able to get a hold of. While Snapper is out, looking for help, he runs into the criminal Cheetah, who thus far has been able to avoid being contaminated by the anti-life equation.
After a few friendly run ins with Cheetah, Snapper sleeps with her, hey, why not, the world's gone to hell anyway. After their tryst, they are discovered by a possessed Gorilla Grodd who attacks them, but they manage to teleport back to Terrific, at the cost of Snapper teleportation powers. Without Snappers ability to teleport, Terrific and company are basically stranded and surrounded by possessed Checkmate officers.
Terrific, in a desperate gamble decides to try to reactivate the OMAC's in the hopes that they will battle Darkseid's forces, since a Darkseid victory does nothing to help the OMAC's. Ultimately, Terrific activates the OMAC's after they agree to help, and with his army of meta-human killing OMAC's, Mr. Terrific escapes the Checkmate base, hoping to go on the offensive.
OK. I will say right upfront that I know practically nothing about Checkmate. I'm guessing they serve a similar purpose as to what SHIELD does in the Marvel Universe. This wasn't a bad comic, BUT, I thought all the OMAC's were destroyed... As a matter of fact, I can remember reading a mini-series not that long ago about a character named Michael Costner, who's entire mini-series revolved around the fact that he was the last OMAC. The key word in that last sentence is LAST.
If Mike Costner was the LAST OMAC, where did Mr. Terrific find all these other OMAC's. Either my definition of LAST is way off, or DC doesn't understand what the word LAST means. In case anybody at DC Comics is a little confused about what the word last means, I'll try to define it. Last means the only one, final. If there are millions of OMAC's running around out there, well then, Michael Costner was definitely not the LAST OMAC.
Little things like that really bother me. Don't promote a series as containing the last of something, and then have a million of the last something show up soon there after. The other thing that disturbed me, was since when did Snapper Carr become a teleporter? I guess I missed something somewhere, because when he was with Young Justice, all he could do was annoy people by snapping his fingers incessantly. These weird gaps in logic really hurt this comic for me, so I'll give it a 4 1/2 out of 10 as a score.
I'll be honest, I liked this book A LOT, but that comes from having read all of Rucka's run on Checkmate, and this book is pretty much a continuation of that series, so I can see that not having read that series that you wouldn't know what's going on.
ReplyDeleteAs for the OMAC thing, I don't know who Mike Costner is, but my understanding OMAC's in the DCU was that they were nano-machines that had infected millions of civilians that were only activated if given the go-code. I didn't know that they had been purged, but I didn't read Bruce Jones' series, so that could've been what happened.
Anyway, if you like super-hero based spy stuff, I'd recommend reading those Checkmate trades.
Oh well, there goes some more of my money! Yeah, I've always been a fan of super-hero spy stuff, like SHIELD, well at least when Nick Fury was running things, and Spyboy, which was a more light hearted spy book. Looks like I'll start hunting down those Checkmate TPB's. Thanks for the recommendation, I'm still trying to expand my knowledge of the DCU, being a life long Marvel fan.
ReplyDeleteUnless I misunderstood, the OMAC series written by Bruce Jones, which I kind of enjoyed, continually harped on the fact that not only was Mike Costner the last OMAC, but he was the only person who could create new OMAC's, since he was the only person left whose body contained the OMAC virus. That's why I was so mystified to see a whole army of OMAC's...
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read and comment Jason, I always love getting feedback.