It’s now Day 21, three full weeks of Howard Simpson’s month-long Jack Kirby Tribute! You can find people’s Kirby Tributes on your favorite social media platforms by the hashtag #KirbyArtTributes.
Today’s prompt: “Draw a character or scene from Jack Kirby’s OMAC series.” I went with Omac himself, the One Man Army Corps.
Of all the post-Fourth World titles Kirby created for DC, OMAC unfortunately was the shortest-lived. It lasted for only eight issues, and the last issue came to a very abrupt forced ending that was jolting and highly unsatisfying for readers.
The length of the book’s run should not be taken as any kind of indication of the book’s quality. This title was where Jack put out some of his wildest sci fi conjectures about what The World That’s Coming might be like. In the first issue, he had a room where a corporation encouraged employees to go in and destroy things, get all their aggressions out. This was well before such things came about in real life!
Maybe some of the ideas were just a bit too out there for some readers? The rest of us were captivated, and wished Jack had been allowed to continue.
Hope you like, and feel free to tune in again tomorrow!
OMAC: I remember it well not because I bought it, but because it was sort of a breaking point for me. With a new child and being a teacher, money was tight enough that if the income was a drum skin and someone dropped a dime on it, it would be in orbit. All I needed was another book title to start spending money to aquire. There were carrots and milk to buy.
Having said that and having just read Jack’s own introduction to the short lived series, I have regrets not buying the books. I would not be suprised once I get the trade collection that I might push this character and series to the top of Jack’s late era stuff at DC. And of course having students with mohawk hairdos in the 70’s also will have an affect as to my coming decision. Looks like some predictive material out of Jack. You capture OMAC’s intensity nicely. Thanks for your daily efforts.
Glad you liked it.
For those who don’t know, this book apparently also had a tie-in with Kamandi. It was never stated explicitly in the comic, but my understanding is that Jack had it in mind that Kamandi’s grandfather who raised him in the Command D bunker was none other than Buddy Blank (who was transformed into Omac in OMAC #1).