Omega The Unknown #2 (1976)
written by Steve Gerber & Mary Skrenes
pencils by Jim Mooney
cover by Rich Buckler
Electro was the villain the second issue of Daredevil, and now he’s on the second issue of Omega The Unknown.
The title is a subtle hint to how memorable this is going to be; even Electro had the good sense to skip the cover!
I’m not gonna lie, Omega is completely impenetrable to me. So I’m just going to focus on the Electro stuff, and he’s introduced by IMMEDIATELY zapping the title character.
See Electro, it wasn’t THAT difficult to zap Daredevil!!!
Electro just steals the robot that Omega had previously defeated because… hey free robot!
At the end of the issue, where Hulk has been fighting Omega, Electro steals the win too.
What is more amazing, that Spider-Man regularly fights a guy who can stagger the Hulk?
Or that he’s been beaten multiple times by Daredevil?
Omega The Unknown #3 (1976)
written by Steve Gerber & Mary Skrenes
pencils by Jim Mooney
cover by Gil Kane
Feeling the hype from knocking out the Hulk, Electro is now bold enough to show up on the cover.
And he didn’t make it to front page!!!
For some reason Electro decided to kidnap Unknown despite knowing nothing about him.
Which isn’t that far from what the readers know either.
Electro is typically shown to be not very bright and only have very basic knowledge of science, but sometimes he’s randomly able to build advanced devices.
Things you can use to defeat Electro:
A) water
B) curtains
C) his feet
D) throwing something in his face really hard
E) YOUR feet
This also re-powers the robot.
Turns out that Electro has been working WITH the robot this whole time.
Not really sure how, considering the robot NEVER TALKS.
Their master plan is to… take over a TV station during a charity event and take all the money.
After all that buildup, the robot is taken out IMMEDIATELY by Omega.
Fighting Electro takes a bit more effort.
The narration tries to give some gravitas to this battle…
…but it’s kind of hard considering how basic everyone’s characterization feels.
I covered the Omega stuff, but MOST of the book actually follows a kid who has some sort of link to him… feeling pain from his injuries and so on.
If you remove him entirely, these two issues would probably be eight pages in total.
Historical significance: ???/Ω
Silver Age-ness: ???/Ω
Does it stand the test of time? ???/Ω
I don’t think it would be fair to give this a proper score… I just can’t get into this one.
The series has a cult following and I can sometimes see what Gerber was going for… but sorry, this is just too boring for me.
I wanted to do a series about a real kid who was nobody’s sidekick, facing real problems in what today would be called a ‘grim ‘n gritty’ setting, Hell’s Kitchen in New York. ‘Omega’ predated both the Teen Titans and X-men explosion and the ‘grim ‘n gritty’ movement by a few years. If it had come later, it probably would have been deemed a little quirky but mainstream.
STEVE GERBER
Marvel Team-Up #56 (1977)
by Bill Mantlo & Sal Buscema
cover by John Romita Jr.
Better stick to the classics, Electro.
This is a weird setup because in addition to featuring two heroes, this issue features two villains.
And not by mixing villains from their respective rogues gallery, because Blizzard is an Iron Man villain, not a Daredevil villain.
The two villains, who I remind you have nothing in common (they don’t share the same enemy, they don’t have the same powers, plus Blizzard’s powers come from his suit), decide to team up to pressure two newspaper publishers into giving them money.
I believe this is 100% coincidental, but I’m equally sure that JJJ will still say it was his idea.
Okay to be fair, we DO learn how Electro and Blizzard met.
Still makes no sense for them to team up.
This being the Daily Bugle, of course the superhero showing up to tackle the villains is Daredevil.
If you ever wondered why superheroes only fight their own supervillains and don’t switch all that often, this is why.
Guys, you’re in an enclosed space and you have both electricity and freezing powers… why did you IMMEDIATELY escape and not even TRY to kill the heroes!?
I mean, you’re so powerful that even two middle-aged civilians don’t stand a chance!
Still, a good show of how dangerous Electro can be without even trying.
But still…
Things you can use to defeat Electro:
F) a solid punch
Historical significance: 0/10
I don’t think he even meets Blizzard again.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
It’s fine. A bit too quick on the resolution, but typical for Marvel Team-Up.
Defenders #63 (1978)
by David Kraft & Sal Buscema
cover by Dave Cockrum
If you thought that was rough for Electro, he even shows up in the “Defender For A Day” storyline.
And nobody who sticks to this thing for more than a couple of panels (a list which includes like 30 superheroes) gets out with his or her dignity intact.
Electro is one of the random supervillains encountered by one of the fifty Defenders.
Things you can use to defeat Electro:
G) trash
Again, NOBODY gets out of this with their dignity.
Defenders #64 (1978)
by David Kraft & Sal Buscema
cover by George Perez
If there is a theme for all these Electro appearances, is that they all have covers by artists who really should be working on better books.
This entire storyline is FULL of mistakes and continuity errors.
Electro isn’t shown with the villains fleeing when the Defenders are arrested, then he shows up in a group shot later, but we don’t see him fight anyone…
…he’s just defeated by Hellcat’s randomly developed telepathic powers.
Things you can use to defeat Electro:
H) telepathy
Historical significance: ???/10
I hate this storyline so much that I can’t even gather the strength to look up if something does show up later.
Silver Age-ness: 8/10
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Seriously, I cannot emphasize enough just how dumb this entire storyline is. The Kraft run DOES get into interesting places later on, but do yourself a favor and skip Defenders #62-64.
ESPECIALLY issue 62.
But at least Defenders #62 provides a great visual representation of how I feel about this story.
Superheroes Electro has fought: 9
Adding the Hulk, Omega, Iron Fist and Hellcat.
Things you can use to defeat Electro:
This is a thing now.
A) water
B) curtains
C) his feet
D) throwing something in his face really hard
E) YOUR feet
F) a solid punch
G) trash
H) telepathy
Dissenting view: I liked Defenders # 62-64 at the time, though I haven’t read it in years. The story begins when Valkyrie’s college buddy Dollar Bill (yes, that’s his name) films and airs a documentary on the supposedly secret super-team and announces, without the group’s permission, that anyone can join. So, a lot of heroes show up out of curiosity, and a bunch of second stringers stick around, hoping to get in the super-team glory.
The story is analogous to the Beatles’ creation of Apple Records. They naively announced that anyone could submit musical projects to their new label, and virtually everyone did. None of the Beatles had the patience to sift through tons of submissions, so most went unheard. The Beatles did sign Badfinger and James Taylor (who went on to success at a different label), but they allegedly passed on Crosby Stills & Nash (what?!), showing that their musical talent did not extend to running a record label.
The Defenders story continues the wacky direction started by Steve Gerber. Serious things were happening, but the book didn’t take itself too seriously. I enjoyed Nighthawk’s frustration as he suddenly found himself leading a team of 50-odd heroes, and the bad coffee joke was fun. If I remember right, the coffee was made by Patsy (Hellcat) Walker, whose culinary skills left a lot to be desired.
Is it a great story or even a great Defenders story? No, but it was fun for what it was.
For just over 50 years now people are wondering who or what exactly the very appropriately sobriqueted Omega the Unknown was. We will probably never be certain, unless Mary Skreenes decides to reveal what she knows. Steve Gerber can be, well, very difficult to follow.
Many people, myself included, believe that the obvious connection between him and James-Michael Starling is key to the character in some unrevealed way.
My current hypothesis is that James-Michael is the true protagonist, and Omega – who is _very_ laconic and appears to be even less aware of his own past than James-Michael – is actually some sort of construct tied to the boy.
If I had to give a guess right now, I would offer that James-Michael may be actually an alien planted on Earth to learn about humanity, and Omega is a dream construct that he created instinctively without even knowing that he has that power.
By this point Electro has settled solidly into the role of generic supervillain with no particular need for a specific motivation. IMO it goes back to his latest Daredevil appearances; there is no clear reason beyond plot convenience for him to be in San Francisco right at the time when Daredevil was living there, nor for him to return to NY later. You almost get the sense that he is there on demand, because someone put out a classified ads in the general direction of “supervillains for hire wanted; some travel may be required”.
OTU was cancelled in 1977. Gerber vowed to end the story of James-Michael Starling in DEFENDERS, but was fired from Marvel in 1978 before he could do so.
Steven Grant wrote the canon end of J-M S in two issues of DEFENDERS in 1979. Apparently (and my memory is a bit fuzzy on this), Omega was the penultimate prototype of a human-like android life-form, who was drawn to James-Michael, who was the perfected prototype. Both were powered by the Earth’s “biospheric field” which was also the source of the “Omega beams” (sorry Darkseid, please don’t kill me) that they could fire. If I remember correctly, James-Michael had some kind of breakdown and tried to kill himself and everyone on Earth, succeeding only in the former.
Right. James-Michael and Omega were both disintegrated. Then, in a continuity error, their bodies were shown intact as they were buried in the sun an issue or two later.
Hot take, but I’ve never particularly cared for Steve Gerber. So much of his work is a nihilistic, aimless screed about modernity, with no particular point beyond ‘all of this sucks, but even worse is trying to find your own meaning or attempt to make the world better in any way, anyone who does is a fool and a chump who will inevitably be taken for a ride’.