Sep 1983
The Once-and-Future War!
by Len Wein, George Perez, Pablo Marcos, Rick Hoberg, John Costanza
OMAC (One Man Army Corps) aka Buddy Blank follows Murdermek (a killer robot) back in time to prevent him from assassinating his ancestor: Norman Blank. OMAC arrives in Metropolis in the year 1983 minutes after the robo-assassin. He teams up with Superman, after a brief misunderstanding, to track down and destroy Murdermek who finds some allies of his own.
The final battle between the two sides occurs at Metro Centrsl Station. Murdermek's allies have been outfitted with high tech deadly armored suits but prove to be no match for the One Man Army Corps. Superman deals with the killer droid who caught him off guard in their previous encounter.
The idea behind this story sounds similar to the plot of the original Terminator movie which was released a year later in 1984.
The image on the cover is clearly a loose homage to Flash 123, Flash of Two Worlds.
George Perez art work is beautiful as usual. A number of moments stood out for the way they were told visually. The panel arrangements on page 3 do an excellent job of telling the story efficiently and imparting a lot of information from different perspectives. OMAC's origin story on pages 10 & 11 was subtlety used to forward two different scenes, simultaneously. The OMAC/Brother Eye moment on the bottom half of page 18 was a neat little visual trick in the way it was split between the two characters. I really liked how the panel of Superman thinking in the bottom left corner of page 21 fades into a moment for Brother Eye in the following panel.
Len Wein also deserves much credit for the way in which the story was told. The ending is brilliant: Superman is left scratching his head, wondering what just happened. The answer to his question didn't disappear with OMAC it is right behind him but he is looking the wrong way and misses it as it shuffles past him.
Len Wein died less than a month ago as I write this. This might have been the first story of his that I read. I bought this issue last year or maybe the year before at Baltimore or Heroes Con. I read this story originally in Best of DC Digest 50 (Jul 1984), which also reprinted the Lex Luthor story from Action Comics 544 and which I bought in a drug store or comic shop off the racks. It was my introduction to OMAC. I remember enjoying this story quite a bit. I am very happy to find that it still strikes me as a fun read, with some depth to it. It is a masterfully told tale by Wein and Perez.
Prior to this story OMAC (or his alter ego Buddy Blank) had only appeared in a few issues of Kamandi, the 8 issues of his own series from 1974, and the 8 issues of Warlord in which his story ran as a back up feature (1980-81). His next story was the 1991 mini-series by John Byrne which I read 10-15 years ago and remember enjoying.
Dick Giordano's Meanwhile… column gives a brief preview of things to come from D.C. comics in the next 6-12 months.
The Pair Mail letters column is devoted to reactions to DC Comics Presents 57. Superman teamed up with the Atomic Knights in that issue. Some people loved the issue and some hated it. I have not read that issue or any other stories of the Atomic Knights. I remember Kenley Davis, a friend of mine, telling me about the Atomic Knights when we were in 6th grade. I'm not sure if he had read any of the original issues or just this issue of DC Comics Presents. I don't recall anything else that he told me about them but the concept and the name are still stuck in my head. According to my research they appeared 15 times in the pages of Strange Adventures between issues 117 (Jun 1960) and 160 (Jan 1964). They also appeared in Hercules Unbound 10, 11 (1977) prior to DC Comics Presents 57.
