Omega Men # 8 Review *SPOILERS*

Writer: Tom King

Penciler: Barnaby Bagenda

Colorist: Romulo Fajardo Jr.

Letterer: Pat Brousseau

Price: $ 2.99

Release Date: 27 of January, 2016

There’re three things everyone should know about comic books: Tom King is a fantastic writer, Kyle Rayner is the best Green Lantern and Batman once had a sidekick called Batman Jones. Now the last fact has nothing to do with Omega Men, but the first two should clue you in to my expectations for this book. I like Omega Men, I like it a lot and the first few issues have all met or exceeded my expectations; so I’m hoping for greatness. That being said, as I learned during my time in college, there’s always room for more failure in the world. So let’s forget about all the fluff and butter of the preamble and get to the review…

Explain it!

Kyle Rayner, White Lantern/man-whore/artist for hire, is currently none of those things as he has been dragged into the middle of a civil war between the Omega Men and the Citadel. Now, normally this would be a simple matter for your average comic book hero, but as Rayner finds out there isn’t exactly a good guy in this conflict. Last issue ended with Kyle just having come to this realization and holding the members of the Omega Men at gunpoint (Tigorr, Scrapps, Kalista and DC Comic’s version of Wall-E). This issue begins with a flashback tale featuring a young Scrapps…

Scrapps as we find out, was a young child when the Citadel attacked and basically committed Genocide over her entire planet. How she survived we don’t know, but what we do know is that for the first time in the entire series Tom King shows us the humanity behind the Omega Men. Before this point every member of this team had been treated as a well… a terrorist. Though we saw some of the Citadel’s atrocities they were nothing more than what you would expect from an army fighting an small guerrilla contingent. Now we see the true depth of their evil.

Then we flash forward to the present were Kyle Rayner is being shown the graves of the billions of people who died for the Citadel’s goal (which is explained in the issue, but I won’t spoil, because of how awesome it is). Kyle wants to know why the Omega Men kidnapped him and lied to him. The answer is simple; they want him to murder the Citadel’s prime minister with a lantern bomb. This new information shocks Rayner and he cannot help, but lower his weapon. Conveniently, Tigorr chooses this moment to insult Kyle’s God and like any good Catholic would Kyle’s realizes his patience has run out. What follows is a beat-down of Spanish Inquisition proportions as Rayner explains to the pagan why his God can beat up Tigorr’s Gods. Let me tell you, after issues of Kyle being lied to and imprisoned it feels good to see him let loose like this.

Unfortunately, Rayner still doesn’t know what to do; and sensing his weakness Kalista tries one last time to turn him into her side. Will he join her in killing thousands in exchange for the freedom of billions? You’ll have to tune in next issue to find out.

Bit’s and Pieces:

I don’t really think that I have to defend the plot or characters of this story, but I will anyways. The plot doesn’t hold back or try to sugar coat any of the atrocities of war and the characters are all fully formed people. There isn’t a single person in this book who is just a good guy or bad guy (except Kyle, but that’s why we love him). Of course, the most important thing in any story is the execution and Barnaby Baganda’s layouts complement King’s narration and dialogue incredibly well in these scenes. It might sound like I’m full of nothing, but praise for this issue, and that’s because I am. I don’t really know what story you could tell with Kyle that would be better than this and there’s nothing in this story that really bothers me.

The one thing that I will note is that some times the art is not as detailed as it should be; such that even when we have a close up of Kyle Rayner we cannot see into his eyes or facial features. That said, all the alien species and environments look great so it’s not like the art is sub-par in any way.  With all that in mind this book earns a sold 9.4 from me.

9.4/10