Steve Gerber (1947–2008)

My forty-year-old memory of this series obviously forgave a lot of crap...or I had a much higher tolerance for it. Or it was the promise laid down in that very first issue that kept me hanging on. I honestly don't know what the right combination of answers is.

What does tend to stick out in my mind, now however, as I think back to some of the Marvel issues that I got excited over... Nova, Bloodstone, Skull, Deathlok, Star-Lord (well, okay, the second issue of that one was actually better), show more and on and on...they tell me that Marvel was really good at spitting out that first issue, or the first few, but never really had a long-term plan for them.

That was never more evident that with Omega the Unknown. I absolutely loved the first issue, when a stranger from a distant planet, who doesn't speak, lands on Earth and is somehow tied to 12-year-old James-Michael Starling, who's parents were robots and seems to be manifesting the same powers as Omega himself.

What a great set-up. What lousy follow-through. I'm guessing that Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes, the writers, were likely hamstrung by the editors to include some recognizable heroes and villains, such as Electro and the Hulk, but they did so at the expense of that all-consuming central mystery. So, we had a killer first issue, eight issues of mostly the villain-of-the-week battles, then finally, on the last issue of the series, we started to get back to the central mystery when James-Michael finally got back home.

Then there was the clumsy wrap-up a few months later in two issues of The Defenders that spun completely off the rails.

As for the art...well, Jim Mooney was a competent enough artist, never an A-lister, but he was capable of creating the muscular heroes and the lovely ladies that populated every issue of every Marvel comic through the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Overall, it's just a case of a great set-up and a lot of wasted potential. Too bad.

Well, now I'm off to see what Marvel did with the character thirty years later.

UPDATE - November 6: Having completely forgotten I'd read this three years ago, I stumbled across a cheap trade paperback and re-read it. And nope, it's no better than I remember.

Marvel had a bad habit of starting a series interestingly, but then shuffling various writers through the book (I'm looking at you a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3025737837">Skull the Slayer). I still stand by my "villain-of-the-week" observation. I think they were trying to draw the mystery out, and some of the interim writers had no idea where to go with it...but seriously, for James-Michael and Omega to finally get together something like six issues in, and all Omega can say is "secret"?

Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Gerber was a great idea man, but my god, he overwrote far too much.

I think I'm gonna remember I've read and reread this...and not read it again. show less

Not a good issue. Moon Dragon shows up and gives us like 8 pages of backstory, all of which feel out of place in a Daredevil comic. The plotting makes no sense—why was Moon Dragon surprised Daredevil found her when she transported Matt to her lair? how did Broderick show up there? why did Moon Dragon trust him when she's supposed to be so smart and learned? how did Matt beat her in a physical fight so easily when she's got mental powers and is a great athlete? why are we suddenly getting a show more seeming Paul/Natasha romance? There's not a single thing that happens in this issue that doesn't also come with a heaping of non-sense on top of it. I don't care for psychedelic if it means losing the ability to have a logical plot with actions and consequences from those actions. show less

I have an ongoing frustration with the Guardians of the Galaxy. I love the idea of them, but for the most part, I have not truly enjoyed the actual stories that have been written for them.

I should also say that, while the world knows the GotG as Star Lord, Drax, Gamora, Groot, and Rocket, that's never been my GotG line up. Mine was always Major Vance Astro, Martinex, Charlie-27, Yondu, Nikki, and Starhawk.

Which brings me to this collection. Unfortunately, while there was some brilliant stuff show more coming out of Marvel in the mid-to-late 70s, there was also an awful lot of crap. And unfortunately Steve Gerber produced more than his fair share of it. The storyline presented here is...well, it's a hot mess. Gerber does a trial run of his Omega the Unknown character with Starhawk who constantly says something along the lines of "Take the word...of One Who Knows!" but never explains how one happens to know. And when it came to providing the origin of the One Who Knows, he started it, then handed the entire mess over to Roger Stern with the admission that he really didn't know where he was going with it.

Which is the central problem, right? Someone who doesn't know what he's doing is writing a character who's defining characteristic is to be the One Who Knows.

Gerber's other problem is, despite having an entire universe as his sandbox, he rarely plays with anything that doesn't seem to tie back tightly to NYC. The imagination just wasn't there.

Roger Stern fairs a little better, steering the storyline away from hamfisted social commentary and Really! Deep! Stories! about very little toward more of a space opera.

I do think, had Stern had more time, he probably could have turned this iteration of the GotG into something fantastic. Unfortunately, he'd taken over a ship that Gerber had purposefully and wantonly kicked holes in.

I'll never understand why Marvel thought their Steves...Gerber or Englehart...were good at cosmic, galaxy spanning stories. They weren't. show less

Enjoyable even though it was also very bad in some ways. Natasha is horrible, jealous in a way that speaks to how extremely misogynistic the writing is towards her. I can't take Moon Dragon seriously after she got taken in by the villain of the last arc—you're telling us she's so smart and otherwordly but she got got by a very obvious scam. The art is frequently f'cking ugly, especially in how Natasha and Moon Dragon are drawn. Despite all that, this feels like a return to form for show more Daredevil. Foggy is back, Matt returns to New York as soon as he hears Foggy is hurt, and there's a new shadowy organization afoot for Matt to match wits against. So, three stars despite the bad. show less