Omega The Unknown #6
Omega The Unknown #6
It’s great to just drop into the middle of this story. It would have been a what the hell? experience to pluck this off the rack in 1977, and the digital experience in 2018 isn’t much different. What we have here is a Steve Gerber stew. (In collaboration with Mary Skreenes!) There’s a mysterious super-dude in a red-and-blue suit who is completely out of place in this street-level New York City story. No one seems to find him odd. Maybe they’re all too distracted by the usual host of grim Gerberisms. We’ve got old folks murdered with wrenches, crabby prostitutes, pushy drunks, dark hints that no one loves our (frankly) creepy twelve-year-old protagonist … and as if that weren’t all dark enough, we get a dream about some kind of science fiction ethnic cleansing operation.
Ah, Gerber. I remember reading this full run a couple years ago, and it is cancelled before many or even any of the questions get answered, so probably the best way to enjoy this is through a miscellaneous, out-of-context single issue. Gerber is deeply missed.
- Script: Mary Skreenes & Steve Gerber
- Pencils: Jim Mooney
- Inks: Mike Esposito
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Posted on June 25, 2018, in Marvel 1977 and tagged Jim Mooney, Mary Skreenes, Mike Esposito, Omega The Unknown, Steve Gerber. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
dangvozden
Paul O'Connor
Kris (not Chris)
markginocchio
miloapama
Dean Compton
Moya
ryanmcswain
Longbox Graveyard 
I loved this series. Such a shame about its premature demise, and the fact that Gerber never got to finish the story. Sorta like The Eternals.
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I always loved Omega’s costume. To this day I have no idea what his powers are. I bought an issue or two as a boy but never could puzzle out what was going on.
I get the feeling that Gerber would have loved to write stories without the all that fighting getting in the way; I have never read interviews with him but I wonder if he would have rather written in another genre entirely?
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That was definitely my sense in reading Gerber’s Defenders run … that traditional superhero tropes just bored him. He’d toss in a page or two of guys in capes punching each other out to satisfy editorial but he was really interested in slum lords or corruption or … etc.
I miss him.
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That Romita/Cockrum cover is all kinds of awesome! Romita Sr. had a knack for making even the goofiest Spider-man villains look amazing, and it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better rendition of The Wrench. The Wrench appears to be a Gerber satire of super-villains, but this cover plays it straight. The only regrettable thing here is that Wrench never got a chance to join the Wrecking Crew in a story featuring The Absorbing Man. Maybe Marvel will unite them all in a crossover event: Secret Hardware Wars.
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Now THAT is an idea that writes itself! And when the team falls apart, the can call in … the Fixer!
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Mooney and Esposito look like a nice combo.
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