Nerding Day: OMAC One Man Army?

Sometimes bin diving at your local comic book shop is a real waste of time, and sometimes you discover Jack Kirby’s cautionary tale about the dangers of exploding sex dolls. I don’t know what it’s like to have a penis, but I get the impression that it makes you look at a lot of stuff and think, “what if I put my penis in that?” And then immediately, “oh no, what if it exploded?” OMAC One Man Army? Was built on that most basic of thought.

Jack Kirby is an amazing comic book artist, but most people agree his writing isn’t on par with his art. So it’s especially funny to me that to advertise the first issue of OMAC One Man Army, they filled the page with a bunch of enormous words and a tiny picture of a superhero launching a dismembered lady in a tiny little hot tub at the viewer. I mean, sure, this cover did make me immediately buy it, but not for the reasons I should want to buy a comic. It was because I wanted to see if there was an ad for the tiny hot tub inside.

OMAC was made toward the end of Kirby’s career, during a time at DC where he wasn’t especially proud of some of the stuff he did. He wanted to see a take on Captain America in the future at Marvel and decided to rework it into OMAC while at DC. The result is something that feels off-brand, like an Admiral Countries doll for sale on Wish. The protagonist, Buddy Blank, is a nerdy peon working at a company called Pseudo-People Inc., and his job seems to include wandering around and getting his ass kicked by his coworkers.

There’s a big stink made at the beginning of the comic about how this world “can’t afford violence,” which I’m assuming is a reference to the nuclear bomb and having all of this destructive technology, but there’s also so much violence. Poor Buddy can’t walk to the pencil sharpener without getting throat punched by Irving the Office Wormslayer.

The Peace Agents working for an unnamed global organization chose Buddy Blank as the recipient of a power held by a satellite called Brother Eye. They explain to the inventor of the satellite that they’ve chosen Blank because they think something suspicious is going on at Pseudo-People Inc., and he already works there. That is the only reason the comic gives for how Buddy Blank got the One Many Army job. He’s not an especially good guy; he’s not smart or talented in any way. His only superpower is that he’s super available for new work due to the MMA fighters roaming the halls at his current job.

There's only one person Buddy likes at Pseudo-People Inc.-- his very much not-a-robot friend, Lila. She works in a super secret part of the facility and only emerges occasionally to tell Buddy how long it's been since they last spoke and stare at him with dead robotic eyes. She also has bangs that appear to be modeled after Hitler's mustache, which is something only a robot woman would stand for.

You're going to be so shocked to hear this, but when Buddy visits Lila's section looking for her, he discovers that his one friend is, in fact, a robot woman. Pseudo-People's master plan is to sell "female bombs" to the highest bidder. It turns out if you mail a guy a disassembled sex doll, he will, without hesitation, bring it into his home, assemble it, and attempt to have sex with it, no matter what.

Pseudo-People inc. figured this out by exploding a random literary agent. And I love that when Jack Kirby thought of a powerful person someone would want to murder, his first choice was literary agent. It was truly a different time.

Just think about it, since this was published in 1974, roughly everyone in a position of power was a man. No politician, banker, or judge was safe. The scientists at Pseudo-People Inc. determined no man on Earth could resist assembling a woman like an Ikea coffee table and then making sweet love to her.

"They could simply choose not to fuck the robot," some nerd probably suggested. "They could not even put her together, and our weapon would be useless." Oh, how the other scientists must have laughed and laughed at him as they carefully determined whether they should give their latest model normal bangs or tiny ones in the center of her head like a Hitler mustache.

I would also like to discuss the packaging situation for the exploding sex dolls. I don't think making her look like she's giving birth to herself is the sexiest choice. Also, why do they have to put it together? Do we really want to skimp on shipping for this? I feel like if someone can afford a lady bomb, they can give up an extra hundred bucks to ship her fully assembled. I don't want to put on my project manager hat, but we shouldn't be cutting corners here. Think of all the things that could go wrong. For instance, what man would make love to a Hitler-banged bomb with cricket legs and upside down hands? Barely most of them.

Anyway, Buddy Blank gets so upset by the unbelievable revelation of Lila being a robot that it triggers his transformation into OMAC. We know this both because we see it happening, and, in true Jack Kirby dialogue style, everyone seeing it also explains out loud it is happening.

A fight ensues, during which we learn Pseudo-People Inc maintains a fire vat just underneath the floor of the room where they store all of their lady bombs. So, apparently, OSHA doesn't exist in this peaceful future. The comic claims it's used in the production of the robots, but I don't think they need to have a forever fire right underneath a tearaway floor used to store walking, fuckable explosives. Can you imagine what the maintenance on the fire vat must be? How many janitors have been consumed in the forever fire?

During the battle, OMAC pauses to have a clunky two panel chat with Lila about the nature of humanity. After all, with his consciousness and the Brother Eye satellite merged, Buddy Blank is now also part machine. So, isn't it kind of wrong for him to judge all of these robots as less than human? No, it's not. We've seen the cover. He yeets those robots straight to hell. Slam dunks all of their asses into the emergency fire floor. It rules.

OMAC declares that the makers of the girl boss bomb will pay because they've done more than trifle with human life. They've made a mockery of the spirit. He doesn't say directly that horniness is the human spirit, but it's heavily implied. I really thought that exploding sex robot was going to become his sidekick or something, but no, she's super dead.

The comic closes with a conversation between Brother Eye and OMAC where he's sent the target for his next mission: Mr. Big! Carrie Bradshaw's about to have the worst week ever. And despite the events of this issue, the Pseudo-People continued to be major antagonists in the series. I guess they're able to overcome their one weakness, the expense of the US postal system.

If you ever feel down about any art you’ve created, OMAC is a great cure for that. Not everything you make is going to be great. Some days you co-create Captain America, and some days you're beaming super powers into a mannequin fucker to stop a penis bomb corporation. So hang in there, mannequin fuckers.

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