Into The Unknown

Later this week, Jonathan Lethem's first issue of Omega the Unknown arrives at long last. Lethem, who wrote Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, among other novels, has won me over with those two works. His use of the English language is exquisite, so much so that I'll probably track down more of his previous fiction. When it was announced - a year or more ago - that he'd be re-imagining this Marvel Comics oddity from the 70s, I just knew that I'd have to re-read the original 10 issues sometime before the new series launched.

This past weekend, I did just that. In fact, I read the entire run Sunday afternoon, virtually uninterrupted (other than bathroom and meal breaks). I remember buying those Omega issues as a teenager - Hell, I faithfully picked up pretty much anything Marvel or DC slapped their logos on back then - just as I recall being mildly intrigued, but mostly non-plussed by the experience. The comic was bi-monthly, which in those days meant it either didn't, or wasn't expected to, sell well enough to come out on the more common, and more frequent, monthly basis. The challenge as a reader of any bi-monthly series at the time was that they required you to remember what had happened last issue for twice as long as normal, and often I just didn't. With some comics, that wasn't too big a deal (simple stories like two guys duking it out: how much did you have to recall from the last chapter?) Omega the Unknown had a whole lot more than that going on in it, though, and I suspect that I was pretty much lost for the better part of its run.

This time, though, I was a much older reader, and had only minutes (or seconds) between issues, both of which helped me appreciate it more. The series was created by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes, the former of whom was always a little too weird for my tastes (he also 'gave birth to' Howard the Duck; need I say more?) Despite Lethem's fannish love of the original material, I found that I enjoyed it but wasn't overly wowed by it. The mysteries of the series - why were young James-Michael Starling's parents robots? what planet did Omega come from? what's the connection between Starling and Omega? why does Omega speak as rarely as he does? and what were the "Kill! Kill! Kill!" robots all about? - are great puzzles indeed, but the fact that none of them were answered by the time the series was cancelled leaves me unconvinced that Gerber and Skrenes ever had anything especially satisfactory planned by way of resolutions. Kind of like Twin's Peak, now that I think of it.

However, I'm glad I read the original Omega, because I'll now have better context for comparing what Lethem comes up with. He's not doing a sequel, a prequel or a pure re-telling. Instead he's doing his own version of it, inspired by what Gerber and Skrenes did thirty years ago that affected him so deeply when he was a child. I'm looking forward to finding out what that is, and since - this time - it's planned as 10 issues right from the get-go, hopefully we'll get a complete tale. As this is Lethem's debut as a comic writer, though, I suppose there's also a chance it'll be complete crap. But I kind of doubt it.