The OMAC Project was part of DCs Countdown to Infinite Crisis and came after their previous event Identity Crisis. A brief background note to understand this book: in Identity Crisis, Doctor Light, a super-lame villain, somehow manages to get into the JLAs Watchtower without being seen or stopped by anyone and rapes the Elongated Mans wife Sue Dibny who is conveniently on her own. Some members of the JLA walk in on this scene and are so shocked they decide to permanently alter Lights personality so he will never again do anything so heinous, nor remember what he did. They (Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Black Canary) force Zatanna to perform a magical lobotomy on Light but just as theyve done it Batman walks in on them (I know, the timing right?) and demands to know what theyre doing. Zatanna, unable to stop, decides to wipe Batmans memory of the last 10 minutes so they will be able to keep their terrible act secret. Identity Crisis was a horribly contrived and overblown book that tried desperately to make DCs superheroes appear relevant by aping a more thoughtful and artistic book - Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons - and failed.
Later, Batman gets his memory back and naturally feels betrayed by his teammates. The revelation leaves him more paranoid than usual so he creates a spy satellite - Brother Mk I - to observe and collect data on every superhero on the planet in order to find out their weaknesses if he should ever need to face them in battle. In The OMAC Project, Batmans lost control of Brother Mk I (or Brother Eye at its now calling itself) to Maxwell Lord whos randomly dispersed nanites that have infected over a million ordinary people and, when activated by Brother Eye, will turn them into ruthless killing machines called OMACs. The first part of the book features Ted Kord aka Blue Beetle, a character for whom I really dont care about but his story is strangely the best part of the book - though seeing as the rest of the story is a messy blur, thats not saying much. It feels similar in tone to Identity Crisis in that Kord seems to be doomed and hes only in the spotlight because this is his final bow - and that turns out to be right. But Greg Rucka, a very average writer in my opinion, is joined by more capable writers Geoff Johns and Judd Winick which is probably why this reads better than the rest of the book which is just written by Rucka. Kord follows a trail that leads him to Maxwell Lord, the bad guy behind this books story and who has all the trappings of a classic Bond villain. He has this majestic castle hideaway in the mountains of somewhere picturesque and a small army of uniformed minions styled after the board game chess called Checkmate where he is the self-styled Black King. And of course he plots to take over the world through his army of super-powered blue robots, the OMACs. Its funny in a cheesy way. But after the Blue Beetle story we get into the main OMAC Project story and things take a nosedive. One of the biggest problems I had was regarding Batmans character, or more specifically the mistreatment of his character. I never liked Identity Crisis but I especially didnt like what the events in it did to Batman, turning him super-paranoid where he feels isolated from everyone else and his story becomes Batman Vs. Everyone. I know Batman has always been the lone wolf in the JLA and will always be the character who prefers to be alone regardless, but it just felt too much to have him go so off-base as he does in this book.
This increased paranoia leads him to create a spy satellite in order to gather information on his fellow superheroes weaknesses, which turns out to be so sophisticated that it becomes sentient! Im not one of those people who insist on leaving Kirbys stuff untouched but having Batman be the progenitor of Brother Eye just felt stupid. Batmans a genius, hes the worlds greatest detective, I get that - but to create something so profoundly futuristic as Brother Eye all by himself?! Its too much. Especially as this whole situation can then be laid squarely on Batman as he created Brother Eye in the first place thus giving Lord the trigger mechanism for creating his army of OMACs. Or you could go back further and point the finger at "Identity Crisis" for making Batman so paranoid he'd want to create something like Brother Eye in the first place (yet another reason to hate that stupid book!). So all the people that died in this book? Batman's fault. So much for the "no killing" rule, eh Bats? And then we have Batmans forced love interest in Sasha Bordeaux, a former girlfriend of his no-one remembers because she was so bland and uninteresting. Her inclusion here is, I suppose, an attempt to give Batmans story some pathos, a personal angle, but it just doesnt work because Sasha simply isnt that woman whos Batmans one and only true love. She just isnt compelling enough. The rest of the book is tolerable, the story follows its course but its really nothing special. So then we get to the big moment in this book that involves Wonder Woman snapping Maxwell Lords neck and killing him. This is a supposedly shocking moment because its a superhero taking a life, something superheroes are not meant to do. But to be fair to Wonder Woman, she didnt really have a choice. The events leading up to Lords death are that Lord takes control of Supermans mind and has him try to kill Wonder Woman. WW just barely manages to subdue Superman long enough to tie up Lord in her lasso of truth and try to get him to break control of Superman. Lord refuses saying hell never relinquish control of Superman which would mean WW and who knows how many other characters will die at the hands of mind-controlled Superman (like Batman in the issue not included in this book where Superman nearly beats Batman to death before WW stepped in). Desperately, she demands to know how to free Superman from Lords control to which he answers - kill me. So she does. And apparently this is a terrible thing - except it isnt.
If she hadnt killed Lord she would be condemning herself to death as Superman would almost certainly have continued fighting her, thus killing her, and then moving on to whoever else Lord wanted dead. She had no choice but to kill Lord to save her life and numerous others. Also, Lord is a psychopath. He is a supervillain hell bent on world domination. Imagine if Lord were replaced with Hitler - would killing Hitler make Wonder Woman a bad person? Nope! In fact people would probably be cheering her. And while Lord is essentially Hitler in this book, the reaction at the end when the people of the world are shown video footage taken by Brother Eye of WW snapping Lords neck, is that theyre all disgusted and shocked. It makes no sense! Lord was clearly the bad guy and WW took out the threat, so why wouldnt the general public be happy about this? They would be which is why the ending makes no sense. I also thought Superman and Batmans behaviour to Wonder Woman after Lords death to be a bit sanctimonious. Theyre outraged and disgusted that WW would kill when they really shouldve accepted that she really didnt have a choice and recognised that sometimes a death sentence is necessary and deserved. The book doesnt really end as it kind of tapers off thanks to the OMACs. OMAC is an acronym that stands for One-Man Army Corps, meaning they are pretty damn powerful, and we get to see that power as a single OMAC manages to hold off not just the Martian Manhunter, a pretty powerful being himself, but also Guy Gardner/Green Lantern, Booster Gold, and a handful of other superheroes. One single OMAC does this. So when Brother Eye activates all the sleeper agents and turns them into OMACs, there are literally 1.3 million OMACs suddenly flying about the place!
Batman (of course) comes up with a plan to disable a big chunk of them but by the end of the book there are still 200,000 OMACs left! If a single OMAC could do what he did to half the Justice League, 200,000 OMACs should obliterate every remaining superhero with ease. Anyway, we dont find out what happens next because the book ends on this ambiguous note so theres no real conclusion - I guess that's the problem when reading a book that's part of an Event, you're only ever going to get part of the story no matter what. That said, if it were successful, it should make me want to read the rest of the Event, which this book doesn't. It also doesnt make sense why Max just didnt set off all the OMACs to start with instead of faffing about with his softly-softly approach. You can control Superman AND 1.3 million OMACs at once? Why not start with that, doofus? Then you wouldnt have to die! The OMAC Project is a pretty terrible book. The best part of the book is Blue Beetles story, which is only kind of ok anyway, while the rest is uneven at best, written in the dreary, bland style that Ruckas perfected over the years. Most of the major plot points make no sense and Batmans character is really strange throughout. I wouldnt recommend this book or most of the DC Event comics from this era - theres just no sense of fun to them and they all feel overly serious to an absurd degree. At least the only crises DC are doing these days are trying to keep up the number of published titles to 52. Come on guys, cheer up - seriously!