Writer: Andersen Gabrych
Artist: Henry Flint
Company: DC Comics

The space heroes of DC and Marvel have been making a comeback in the past couple years, with books like Adam Strange, Rann/Thanagar War and Annihilation. The latest space heroes on the comeback trail are the Omega Men, but unlike Diggle’s relatively faithful take on Adam Strange, I suspect long-time fans will find these new characters harder to recognize. Not just because of Flint’s oddly intriguing but occasionally befuddling artwork, but because they’ve added new members and seemingly taken up a new cause, one that pushes them past anti-hero status into darker territory. It’s clear even at this early stage that there’s more to the story than that, though, and while I’m not entirely clear on the story as a whole or even the characters, there are a number of nice moments and details that make this a worthy read for those who have been digging the space hero resurgence.

Andersen Gabrych’s script carries with it the worrying overtones of work from writers like Keith Giffen, Joe Kelly and Brian Azzarello, guys who are more concerned with mood and atmosphere than whether or not the reader can easily understand the story. There are a lot of hints dropped in this issue about a universal religion with a sinister secret, the trials and tribulations of the Omega Men, the dispassionate detective skills of Vril Dox and the involvement of the Spider Guild, but Gabrych never clearly lays out his story. That’s all well and good if he can sew it up more clearly in later issues, but this could easily turn out to be one of those stories where it looked good at the beginning and turned basically unreadable by the end.

What makes it look good to me, though, is less the over-arcing plot and more the small moments and details. The opening page, introducing a universal church that united a world embroiled in religious warfare and re-introducing Green Lantern knockoffs the Darkstars as religious emissaries, is promising. Actually, Gabrych makes good use of a lot of DC Universe elements, from Vril Dox to the Spider Guild to a nice use of a Zamaron as a “battle nun.” Omega Men, like the Adam Strange mini, comes across partially as a fun tour of DC’s space subset of characters and backdrops.

The artwork also draws a mixed reaction from me. At a glance, 2000 AD vet Henry Flint looks a lot like Simon Bisley, with a little bit of Legion-era Keith Giffen thrown in, and that’s not the best pedigree for clear storytelling. Indeed, there are pages, especially those with explosions, where it basically looks like someone just splashed color on the pages. Some of his storytelling choices, such as the discovery of the heartstone on Earth or the last few pages, are so poorly laid out that it is literally impossible to figure out what was supposed to be happening.

And yet… his use of Matrix-esque infostreams playing across Dox’s face are a clever and nifty visual. His Spider Guild scenes carry a claustrophobic, creepy feel as hundreds of spiders crawl over one another with abandon or, in one particulaly effective scene, fall to Earth and blacken the sky over the Philippines. Like Gabrych’s script, I’m inclined to give the artwork a pass given the potential in this first issue, but not without some qualms over where the book might go from here.