The Omac Project

(DC, 2005-2006)
™ and © 2005 DC Comics, Inc.

In the 1970s, Marvel legend Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four) moved over to DC Comics and created some of the most inspired series of the decade, including the New Gods, The Demon, and OMAC, an agent of the World Peace Organization who protects humanity with the aid of an all-knowing orbiting satellite called Brother Eye in the not-too-distant future. The concept was revisited by second-generation legend John Byrne (Alpha Flight) in a 1991 Prestige Format limited series.

This six-issue limited series is set very much in the present-day DC Universe, picking up just seconds after the shocking and tragic conclusion of Countdown to Infinite Crisis no. 1. Here, Brother Eye was built by Batman to catalog and monitor every super-hero on the face of the earth—just in case, you know, he ever had to take them down; this paranoia may be the result of the mind-wipe orchestrated some time ago by his fellow JLA members and revealed in the Identity Crisis limited series. However, the orbiting satellite has been pirated by the espionage organization Checkmate and its Black King, Maxwell Lord, who has more sinister plans for its implementation. What’s the Dark Knight to do when he’s at war with his own technology? Writer Greg Rucka (Gotham Central) and artist Jesus Saiz (JLA: Black Baptism) put Batman at the heart of a conspiracy that’s set to blow the DCU wide open.

— Thomas Moudry

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