OMAC (comics)

Publication history

The OMACs first appeared in The OMAC Project #1 (June 2005) and were created by Greg Rucka.

The OMAC Project

The OMACs are cyborgs, human bodies transformed by a virus into living machines to assassinate any and all beings with superpowers. The virus was created from Brainiac-13's nanotechnology, which had been acquired by the U.S. Department of Defense and Lexcorp, and was then secretly introduced into general vaccine supplies. The OMACs are featured in the mini-series The OMAC Project that leads up to the Infinite Crisis series.

Brother MK I

The new OMACs are controlled by the Brother MK I satellite. Brother MK I was created by Batman and programmed by Pseudopersons, Inc., scientist Buddy Blank, who in this retelling of the story is a partner of Wayne Industries. Its sole purpose was to gather data on all metahumans, both villain and hero. Batman had grown distrustful of metahumans after discovering that the Justice League altered his memories following an altercation with Doctor Light in Identity Crisis. Alexander Luthor, Jr. later gave the satellite sentience as part of his plans. Maxwell Lord, recently promoted to the top rank of Checkmate, subverted the original mission of the Brother MK I satellite by inculcating a fear and suspicion of all metahumans. The first OMAC test subject was renamed "Buddy Blank", after the scientist who programmed the satellite.

The OMACs' history may be more recent than Brother MK I's itself. Equus and Pilate, formerly featured in Superman: For Tomorrow, are later denounced as former iterations of the OMAC concept. In JLA: Classified an all mechanical OMAC is an enemy of the Metal Men. Since then, the design has improved to the current form, with little to no changes to the base model.

Brother Eye

When Maxwell Lord brainwashed Superman to kill Batman, Wonder Woman, and possibly the rest of the JLA, Wonder Woman broke Lord's neck to free Superman from his control. Because Lord proffered this solution while held by her Lasso of Truth, Diana believed this was the only course of action possible; she was fiercely criticized from many quarters.

Brother MK I, rechristening itself Brother Eye, initiated the "KingIsDead" protocol. Specifically designed to be used in the event of Lord's death, it ordered all of the OMACs (all 1,373,462 of them) to attack and kill all the metahumans on Earth and destroy Checkmate. A group superhero effort stopped the attack, using an EMP blast as well as a "Shut Down" command given by Sasha Bordeaux, who had become a third-generation cyborg linked to Brother Eye, now designated Blacknight 1. These measures effectively freed the majority of the OMAC hosts from their nanotech forms and reduced the number of OMACs to roughly 200,000.

Truth and Justice

In response, the satellite broadcast footage of Wonder Woman executing Maxwell Lord, preceded by the word MURDER, to media outlets all over the world, destroying her reputation. After this, Brother Eye initiated the final protocol, "Truth and Justice", by having all the remaining OMACs invade and attack her homeland, Themyscira, to wipe out all of the Amazons.

It was revealed that Alexander Luthor was the one who wrestled control of Brother Eye away from Batman. He used it to program his multiverse tuning fork and redirect its energy to where he needed it as part of his attempt to re-create Earth-Two, and in turn, a perfect Earth. Brother Eye continues to aid Alex Luthor by remapping out the multiverse and helping to guard the tuning fork with its OMACs, reasoning that it would eliminate the need for heroes like those who Batman had created it to monitor by aiding in the creation of a perfect Earth.

Downfall of Brother Eye

Batman leads a collection of superheroes, consisting of: Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Green Arrow (only because Batman is attempting to trust people again and contacted him to see if he would come), Mister Terrific, Black Lightning, Black Canary, the new Blue Beetle, Metamorpho, Booster Gold and Sasha Bordeaux, to Earth's orbit using Intel from Booster Gold and Ted Kord's spaceship. Blue Beetle's scarab allows him to find and reveal Brother Eye's hidden location above Earth by negating its vibrational frequency. Brother Eye sends OMACs and the two groups clash.

With the two Green Lanterns fighting off most of the OMACs and Brother Eye's defenses, the heroes' ship crashes into Brother Eye. Metamorpho provides an oxygen supply as Blue Beetle and Booster Gold stay with the ship to guard it, but Blue Beetle later assists in the destruction of the device that Brother Eye used to hide in orbit and the rescuing of some of the other heroes. Batman goes to distract Brother Eye by shutting off the central computer, although Brother Eye tries to distract him by showing him Nightwing's confrontation with Superboy-Prime. Sasha, linked to Oracle, goes to upload every computer virus on Earth into Brother Eye's system as well as trying to prevent the artificial gravity from shutting down. Black Canary goes to the surveillance room to use her sonic scream to blind the Eye. Black Lightning and Mr. Terrific go to the memory banks so that Black Lightning fries as much circuitry as possible while Mr. Terrific, invisible to machines and electronics, delivers the fatal blow by knocking Brother Eye off orbit using its orbital thrusters.

The plan works, and Brother Eye is deactivated, and begins to fall apart. All of the remaining activated OMACs shut down, releasing their hosts. As the heroes evacuate the falling Brother Eye, it tries to take Batman down with it, telling him he can never trust the costumed heroes again after what they did to him. Batman, however, says that he will take his chances, and accepts Hal Jordan's aid in getting to safety.

After crash-landing in Saudi Arabia, Brother Eye tries to download its system into Sasha as a means of self-preservation. However, Sasha manages to destroy the satellite, freeing herself from the nanobots infecting her.

DCU: A Brave New World

On June 28, 2006, DC released DCU: A Brave New World, which was the epilogue to the OMAC limited series.

Brother Eye has not been fully decommissioned and lies in a NORAD facility. Michael Costner is the last OMAC unit, kept as emergency backup, and Brother Eye calls to him.

This Brother Eye has corrupted programming and now believes that all humans need to be subjugated and/or exterminated, whether metahuman or not. It has also recently begun to manifest disassociative behavior with at least two "personalities" now being heard in the OMAC's internal conversations.

OMAC limited series (2006)

The 2006 OMAC limited series (not to be confused with the 2005 OMAC Project limited series) follows "the last OMAC" Michael Costner. Brother Eye attempts to make Costner rebuild itself, but is forced to face his wrath when Costner regains control of both his forms, human and OMAC, and subsequently destroys Brother Eye again; although a tiny fraction of it is still active.

Countdown to Final Crisis

A portion of Brother Eye was later retrieved and rebuilt by Buddy Blank, a former scientist from Wayne Industries. This portion meets the time-traveling Karate Kid who is seeking a cure for the Morticoccus, a 31st-century illness that evolved from the OMAC virus. Announcing that "the Great Disaster has come to me", Brother Eye directs him to Blüdhaven. Soon after, it reactivates its offensive protocols and assimilates the hangar it is being held in, turning the people within the hangar into new OMAC cyborgs. It then travels to the ruins of Blüdhaven and assimilates the city's infrastructure and the people within it using the Atomic Knights and Firestorm as power sources. Later, it activates a Boom Tube and travels to Apokolips, where it assimilates the entire planet and attempts to obtain the Morticoccus virus from Karate Kid, who has also been led there. However, it is forced to flee Apokolips when attacked by the Pied Piper using the Anti-Life Equation.

Later, Brother Eye transforms Buddy Blank into a modified OMAC resembling Kirby's version of the character. Buddy uses this power to save himself and his grandson from starvation in the Command-D bunker beneath Blüdhaven. Brother Eye implies that it will contact Buddy again for a future need.

Batman and the Outsiders

A modified OMAC is shown as a part of the new Outsiders team in the 2008 Batman and the Outsiders series.

When a team from the Justice League attempts to seize a partially active OMAC, a leftover from The OMAC Project events, Batman takes the opportunity to reclaim it for himself—having Dr. Francine Langstrom (the long-suffering wife of Dr. Kirk Langstrom) create a clever forgery to leave in care of the League.

The OMAC, aptly renamed ReMAC, appears to be "an iPod with its tracklist wiped." Dr. Langstrom is unable to discern who ReMAC was before being infected by the OMAC virus; finding ReMAC a mere husk, devoid of any personal identity. This complete lack of personality makes ReMAC the perfect infiltrator, using its advanced shapeshifting abilities and its unquestioning obedience for the Outsiders' sake.

Since its lack of personality allows villains to snatch control of ReMAC, turning it into an enemy, Batman rigs up a telepresence system turning ReMAC into an advanced drone for Salah Miandad, Dr. Langstrom's chief assistant, enabling operation from the Outsiders HQ, the Batcave, or other secret locations.

However, while testing a new neural interface, less dependent from his stamina, to control the former OMAC, Salah is knocked into a coma. His mind comes to reside in ReMAC, supplanting the missing personality of the drone for a while (one full issue), until, due to the machinations of the villainous Simon Hurt, ReMAC is fed a malicious self-destruct code that blows it to pieces, making the restoration of Salah's consciousness impossible.

Final Crisis

In Final Crisis, Darkseid and his prophets from Apokolips have taken new forms as humans on Earth after mass-distributing the Anti-Life Equation around the world. Batman has been captured; Superman is on a journey in the multiverse; and Wonder Woman has become a Female Fury. With most of the world's population under the influence of the equation, they are effectively under Darkseid's control seemingly making him the ruler of the Earth.

In the one-shot Final Crisis: Resist, Mister Terrific and the Checkmate organization are working to mount a resistance against Darkseid, but seemingly do not have the means to do it. Sitting in despair in a Checkmate stronghold, Snapper Carr, through his hopeless rantings, gives Mister Terrific an ingenious idea. Using Sasha Bordeaux to make contact with Brother Eye, he convinces the A.I. to help them, explaining that it will surely be destroyed if Darkseid indeed captures the world.

Realizing this, Brother Eye accepts Mister Terrific's terms and reveals that there are still millions of people infected with OMAC nanotech. These people, now mindless drones of Darkseid, are overwritten by Brother Eye and become OMAC soldiers under the command of Mister Terrific. This gives Checkmate and him the means to forcefully resist Darkseid.

During the Final Crisis events when all seems lost, Lord (Brother) Eye prepares to leave the doomed Earth with his OMACs and the people of Command-D, the bunker underneath Blüdhaven, and start a new society on another Earth in another universe. To this end, he asks Renee Montoya to serve as the head of a to-be-founded Global Peacekeeping Agency, her faceless appearance as the Question being an allusion to the faceless agents of the GPA from the original OMAC series.

Generation Lost

In the Justice League: Generation Lost limited series, the resurrected Maxwell Lord controls the squad of OMACs attacking Jaime Reyes's home and his family. The old Justice League International arrives and takes Jaime's family to safety.

After Max escapes from the JLI, Booster Gold's partner, Skeets informs the JLI that he has the locations of the four formerly-dormant Checkmate cells which he had placed inside robotics laboratories that Max has been in contact with. The JLI travel to Chicago beneath the hidden robotics laboratory and learns that the OMAC variants were pure robots that are human/machine synthesis of the originals. Skeets scans the fingerprints of the robotics laboratory and discovers that Professor Ivo was here.

When Captain Atom absorbs the energy from Magog's spear, he is propelled forward through time 112 years in the future, where Max, while long dead, has plunged humanity into a massive metahuman war ruled by OMACs. Captain Atom battled for survival alongside the future versions of the Justice League, however they all are eventually contaminated by a new version of OMACs and one by one become OMACs themselves. Captain Atom is eventually returned to the present, but not before Batman (Damian Wayne) tells him how to stop Max's ultimate plans.

Afterward, Max gains new abilities to transform his targets into cadaver OMACs. Max uses a device to enhance his mental powers, turning people around the world into OMACs to attack Wonder Woman and the JLI. Max sends the new OMAC known as OMAC Prime that he controls to attack the JLI. During the final battle, OMAC Prime takes Blue Beetle's power, causing it to be nearly unstoppable, but Blue Beetle mentioned to OMAC Prime that it cannot take control with the Scarab's power. Blue Beetle attacks and destroys the OMAC Prime.

Possible Future

In Batman #700 (June 2010) in a vignette within the issue, Damian Wayne as Batman is shown having succeeded at what his father had failed: regaining control of Brother Eye.

Kevin Kho

In The New 52, a reboot of the DC Comics universe that launched in September 2011, a Cambodian-American man named Kevin Kho is introduced as the new O.M.A.C. and had worked as a genetic researcher at Project Cadmus Maxwell Lord is revealed to have had a hand in Kevin's transformation.

The series was cancelled after running eight issues, due to DC's introduction of a "Second Wave" of new titles. Additionally, O.M.A.C. joined the Justice League International in the title's final issue.

During the "Forever Evil" storyline, the Crime Syndicate of America has captured Kevin Kho's O.M.A.C. form and is planning to use him as a weapon. Harley, who is working for the Thinker, takes O.M.A.C. and activates him causing him to fire a laser on the mountain which collapses on the two teams inside it. Harley arrives at Belle Reve and drops O.M.A.C. near James Gordon, Jr. James Gordon Jr. also learns that the Thinker is planning to use O.M.A.C. While James Gordon Jr. is talking to Harley, the Thinker has taken O.M.A.C. and begins transferring his mind to it. Now activated, O.M.A.C. proceeds to attack Amanda Waller, James Gordon Jr., Harley Quinn, King Shark, and Kamo. King Shark begins to attack Kamo, until Amanda Waller is able to lie to both to get them to help her defeat OMAC. OMAC is fighting King Shark and Kamo while Amanda Waller attempts to activate Belle Reve's failsafe through the Thinker's computer. Before she is able to do so, Kevin Kho reaches out to her telling her he is trapped within OMAC. As Waller works with Kho, the team returns from the mountains, only to be dragged into the fight with OMAC. Having killed Kamo, OMAC is able to defeat Power Girl, Steel, Unknown Soldier, and King Shark and heads further into Belle Reve. Deadshot and Harley find "magic bullets" that will allow them to gain temporary super human powers. Deadshot fires them into Harley, Waller, himself, and Unknown Soldier and the Squad begins to attack OMAC. Kho is able to regain control of OMAC before Waller has to enact her last resort. But without knowing, Captain Boomerang knocks OMAC into a porthole, sending him to another dimension.

Powers and abilities

Brother Eye can activate the virus in any infected person, at any time, within planetary range. Once activated, the person is covered in cybernetic armor and becomes a thrall to Brother Eye's commands.

An OMAC unit has access to archives on almost every metahuman on file, and can simulate the powers of a variety of superheroes and supervillains in order to target its opponent's weaknesses. Among the powers displayed were the ability to fly, shoot fire, project needles of artificial cellulose (against Alan Scott; an approximation of his weakness to wood), dispense flame-retarding foam, and fire various energy beams from its eye and hands with caustic, concussive, or blinding effects. In addition, the OMAC unit can morph its extremities into blades and pincers. It once simulated Shazam's lightning power and forced Mary Marvel to revert to her human form. It can disable the Eradicator effortlessly.

The only weakness an OMAC has is that it is human beneath its shell, intended as a deterrent to prevent heroes from using lethal force against them. The OMACs are dependent on their assessment of individual heroes. When fighting multiple opponents, they require a few seconds to adapt their countermeasures for each hero. Atom Smasher was able to stop an OMAC that was attacking the JSA by stomping it before it could assess his threat level. OMACs are also very vulnerable to Mister Terrific, as he cannot be detected by technology.

In the Superman/Batman series, Brainiac temporarily occupies an OMAC body.

ReMAC, the OMAC possessed by the Outsiders, has the same powers and abilities of a regular OMAC. He greatly differs in his physical makeup, being redder in color and with a more human-like face even in his armored form.

Unable to contact Brother Eye and unable to access his former personality, ReMAC was controlled for a period by Dr. Salah Miandad. In this way, ReMAC retained his invulnerability and strength, but was limited by Salah's personal stamina and attention span, which was not always sufficient for a fight. Salah's mind was later trapped into the ReMAC body by a faulty mind interface, removing the limits of his below-average stamina.

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