DCU Comic Book Reviews

OMAC #8

Fair Play

April 2007

Written by Bruce Jones

Pencils by Allan Goldman

Inks by J. J. Marriero

Cover by Renato Guedes

Synopsis

Vienna Barstow has just turned into an OMAC and is coming after her boyfriend, Mike Costner.  He tells her that Brother Eye is simply using her and then if she kills him, Brother Eye will kill her...and her baby.  This stops Vienna long enough for Mike to convince her to pretend to kill him.  Thinking Costner dead, Brother Eye diverts his attention elsewhere, giving Costner the chance to turn into an OMAC and attack the satellite.  Although he is able to free Superman from his Kryptonite prison, Brother Eye strikes back, nearly killing Costner.  Superman then tells him that while they are battling Brother Eye, the satellite is targeting Vienna.  So, Superman flies to Earth, whereupon Vienna starts to battle with him.  The fight spills back out to space.  Costner goes to defend Vienna, fighting Superman.  Using that distraction, Vienna destroys Brother Eye, but kills herself. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

This was not a bad ending to the book, although some of the pages were extremely exposition heavy for my taste.  Even with that exposition, man, there are a lot of questions regarding the actions of some of the characters that I do not know where to begin.  Such as, Brother Eye decides to terminate Vienna, but misses the laser shot.  He misses?  First, I can’t believe it would miss and second, wouldn’t he realize he missed and take a second shot.  Later, Costner talks about how he is able to ignore Brother Eye’s commands.  Well, only moments ago Vienna was able to do it by pretending to kill him.  It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.  When they are fighting Brother Eye, why didn’t it occur to Superman to get others to help him, like the Justice League, especially Hal Jordan?  And if Superman was truly caught in OMAC, don’t you think the other heroes would come to the rescue.  Don’t you think someone would’ve noticed he wasn’t around? 

I also must mention how Superman pulls a flat screen out of the sky to show to OMAC.  That was just so out of left field that I had to laugh at it. 

I think it was the last issue where I discussed how much I really, really don’t like to be jerked around scenes that turn out to be not real (such as dreams or visions).  You read it and say, oh wow that is so cool/weird/messed up and then you realize, it is not real.  Well, another thing I don’t really like is being jerked around by the writer who devises a plan to defeat the bad guy that involves not only fooling the character, but also the reader.  In this case, the entire duel between Vienna and Superman was faked by the characters, but Jones also kept the reader in the dark.  Again, it is one of the situations where what we are reading is not true.  They are fighting, no, wait, they are pretending to fight.  Man, I just hate that.

What happened to Renato Guedes?  It can’t be good when you are the artist for the first seven issues, but not the artist for the final issue. 

 

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