Monthly Archives: June 2005

In this issue Thor and Sif continue their battle with the hordes of Pluto while in teh time funnel surrounding the Atomic Research Center, where a mysterious being of power is found within a cocoon.

I like Thor’s indignant “Thy words blaspheme” at the suggestion that anyone claim to have powers to match Odin. He’s such a daddy’s boy.

Speaking of Odin, he sends Balder, heartsick over his feelings abou the Norn Queen Karnilla, down to Earth to fetch Odin and Sif, so he’s on hand, with the army, when Thor finally breaks them out of the time funnel, and great battles ensue until Zeus decides to pay attention and enforce the covenant eternal that keeps Pluto in the netherworld. Meanwhile, the cocoon opens.

Action filled issue, very heavy on the big images (four full page splashes), with a few interesting moments. It’s one of those issues where you get a bit of a feeling that the plot was somewhat altered, as was the case for many THOR issues of this period, though I don’t recall any specific examples of unused pages from this story. Still a lot of fun. One thing I noticed was that, rather oddly for such an action filled 1960s Marvel, there were almost no sound effects in the issue. Kind of weird how back then one issue could go overboard on the sound effects and another could not have them at all.

Vince Colletta inked the cover and 20-page story.

Published 1969

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Brace yourselves for “The World That’s Coming”.

OMAC ##1 is some strange stuff even by 1970s Kirby standards. What can you make of a book that opens with a full page splash of a disassembled robot woman “Build-A-Friend” in a box saying “Hello — Put me together and I will be your friend”? Just plain weird.

Also, kind of an unusual story structure for Kirby, as he opens with the climax of the story, then has a flashback to the origin building up to the first scene and then the conclusion. It works pretty well, as it moves the action right up to the front and sets up the rest of the issue nicely.

Anyway, after seeing OMAC bring down the Build-A-Friend shop, we flashback to his origin, as the faceless Global Peace Agency tell Dr. Myron Forest that they have selected Buddy Blank to be the subject of the OMAC Project, leaving Forest to activate the sleeping satellite Brother Eye. After a view of Buddy’s life at the offices of Pseudo-People, Inc. and some bizarre scenes of their “psychology section”, we see that he was befriended by the previously revealed to be a Build-A-Friend Lila, as part of an experiment in making lifelike beings. As Buddy stumbles onto the secret section and finds out the secret of Lila and the nefarious assassination plans she’s to be part of, Brother Eye transforms him to OMAC.

A wonderful issue, brilliant in its almost pure oddball insanity, if Kirby comics were drugs this issue would be the equivalent of mainlining uncut Kirby. Even the artwork seems like a heightened pure version of Kirby. Not for the faint of heart or uninitiated.

Mike Royer inks the 20-page story and the cover (which is a flipped version of the original art Kirby did for the cover). Kirby also writes a text page about how rapidly the world has changed and will continue to change, including the mention that part of the inspiration for this issue comes from seeing the “autitronic robots” during a trip to Disneyland with his granddaughter.

Published 1974

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