Friday, July 29, 2011

OMAC #5 (May-June, 1975)



A brave Peace Agent uncovered video evidence of the Crime Cabal’s plans to offer old racket bosses the chance to transplant their brains into the bodies of helpless trafficked humans at substantial expense. So far, only dry runs had been done using fibroid dummies, but it was only a matter of time before the true atrocity would begin. OMAC would have to put a stop to that, with his target being regional manager Fancy Freddy Sparga. However, the Peace Agent had himself been detected and targeted, as a missile struck the building where OMAC was receiving his orientation.

Slightly dense, OMAC had to be asked to remove the debris that trapped the still intact Peace Agent. “Thanks… my chances of survival have greatly improved.” Aware that sarcasm was alive and well in the world to come, OMAC chastised, “Don’t gripe, friend.” After all, Brother Eye’s protection of OMAC from the rocket had extended to the agent. “We are linked as one, OMAC. I was created to react when danger threatens you. I threw a heavy element beam shield around you both when the missile struck…” Brother Eye also created fake bodies and “solarized” the room to provide OMAC +1 with a cover story. OMAC could continue his investigation unimpeded by the immediate threat of Sparga, supplied with the information that the “body-snatchers” held their victims at a location dubbed “the Terminal.”

OMAC visited a 3-D video arcade to bust the suspect Buck Blue, but his fellow gamers were all in on the racket, and tried to gang-up on “Brush-Head.” That worked about as well as one would expect, the last assailant turned into a human skeeball. “Bull’s-eye! You win a hernia! As for you, Buck, I’ll recite your constitutional rights on the way to our destination! We’re going to the scene of a crime!”



Buck mugged people, and OMAC wanted to see where they ended up. The combustion engine had been discarded following the energy crisis, so the pair made off in a two-seat “magnetic flyer with computer drive.” From a distance, GPA field agents followed in a larger carrier, wearing protective equipment and loaded with “all non-violent containment gear,” as they were “in the course of any action… never to harm a human being.” Their craft was “timed in step with OMAC’s movements. Success will depend on how well OMAC handles this.”

The sublimely obese Godmother maintained an expensive sun-palace where she was visited by Fancy Freddy Sparga, selling his wares. Buck Blue was horrified to learn his own girlfriend had been kidnapped to serve as a prospective host body for the Godmother’s brain. At first, Buck expressed his outrage to Sparga, but when offered a quarter cut of a two million dollar fee, his tone changed. Now it was OMAC’s turned to be outraged, as he tossed Buck around the room, chastising him about the rights he had gained as an informant that would be utterly denied his soon to be deceased girlfriend. “But… f-five hundred grand…! That’s money, man!! …Don’t lecture me! It’s a jungle out there! It’s everyone for himself!! Nobody’s gonna cry for Buck Blue!”

Blue knew where the Terminal was, and there was no way the Crime Cabal would allow him to live with that knowledge, so his safety was dependent on spilling to OMAC. Fancy Freddy tried to ice the kid right there and then, but he was gassed by a Peace Agent. “This gas is harmless, painless and odorless. It’s only a mild inconvenience. He’s asleep OMAC.” The troop following OMAC took the Godmother and Sparga into custody, while Buck and OMAC continued on…

“New Bodies For Old!!” was by Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry.

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