The OMAC Project #6

Loss of Signal

Greg Ruck – Writer
Jesus Saiz – Artist pg 1-3, 7-9, 13-15, 16-18, 21
Cliff Richards & Bob Wiacek – Artists pg 4-6, 10-12, 19-20, 22
HiFi Design – Colorist
Phil Balsman – Letterer
Rachel Gluckstern – Asst. Editor
Joan Hilty – Editor
OMAC created by Jack Kirby

Our cover by Ladronn shows Batman fighting the OMACs, which are normal people, who have essentially been transformed into mindless, powerful robots due to a nanobot injection. This is a pretty cover with unique coloring. This fight could be taking place at sunset or up in a sandy sky above a desert.

The OMAC Project was one of four miniseries created to lead into Infinite Crisis. It tells the story of how Batman became even more paranoid after the events of Identity Crisis and created an all-powerful computer satellite called Brother Eye. But the villain Maxwell Lord hacked into Brother Eye's programming and set it on a mission to kill every metahuman on Earth — villain and hero, alike. And Brother Eye is setting out to accomplish this task by activating all 1.3 million OMACs around the world.

So Batman and the last remaining members of the Checkmate organization send out a call for help to frantically find a solution to this problem. They contact Amanda Waller of S.T.A.R. Labs, Director Bones of the D.E.O., and many more, including our old friend Ray, who is now with Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters.

Eventually Batman finds a massive EMP generator invented by the late Blue Beetle, which he believes can deactivate all the OMACs. So he asks the Green Lanterns to round up all the heroes they can to create one large, irresistible target for the OMACs in the Sahara Desert. So in a couple of hours, we have the bait set of a large group of heroes — most of the JLA, JSA, former Titans and Freedom Fighters. Even Wally West and Jay Garrick are there. But for some reason the current Teen Titans are not there, and they're being attacked by their own group of OMACs in San Francisco.

Beast Boy turns into a literal dragon to help fight the OMACs in the sky, but before too long, the EMP is activated, the OMACs are deactivated, and the innocent people inside the robotic shells begin falling to the Earth. At Cyborg's order, Kid Flash manages to catch most of these people. The mission is largely a success, but before all the OMACs can be deactivated, Brother Eye manages to counteract the EMP and maintain control over 200,000 OMACs. The sentient satellite also counteracts by playing a video of Wonder Woman killing Maxwell Lord on every television screen in the world.



I don't have much to say about this issue. It's one component of the many lead-in stories to the biggest  event in the DC Universe in a decade. Kid Flash is just one of the hundreds of little pieces that will be brought together before everything is blown up.

Next time, we'll begin a quick Flash story that takes place before this big crisis.