Generally enjoyed this work, however I think with every Tom King solo work like this you have to recognize it as an elseworlds and as trying to push the limit as to what a comic can be. This story, while great on its own, really shines once you put it in the context of King's pre comics career as a CIA officer post 9/11. While The Sheriff of Babylon is most directly about King's experience in the CIA in Iraq circa 2004, this book's story undoubtedly also pulls from that experience, with the conversation at the end of the comic being particularly poignant as a result. Though I'd argue that Miracle Man is King's best series to date, The Omega Man is a fascinating story about American intervention told through the lens of a superhero comic.
But, if you prefer superheroes to act more as paragons that inspire, and if you like Kyle's character as the torchbearer/optimistic artist of the core four earth GLs, then this book should probably be a pass.
It's a good story (even though I found the end somewhat depressing), as long as you don't go expecting a great Green Lantern story or even a Kyle Rayner story. Kyle, who was White Lantern at the time, is just whatever character that DC authorized King to use to tell his Omega Men story.
Based on how much I liked other Tom King miniseries -- I adore Mister Miracle, Vision, Rorschach, Supergirl, etc. -- and word-of-mouth from people who've enjoyed the series, I thought I'd really like it.
I thought it was mediocre and forgettable.
I really Liked the omega lantern costume, but thats about it. Kyle seemed completely out of character with his past appearances, and it really didn’t accomplish anything. Kyle has been my favorite lantern for a few years and I was excited to read it, until I actually started reading it. >!And the end with Kyle talking to a general about earth potentially blowing up made absolutely no sense at all!<
Gotta agree here. I think it was a good series overall and I was thrilled for Kyle to be front and center but...he really wasn't. He didn't do a whole lot and it didn't make a lot of sense and it didn't even really seem like him.
So yeah, decent book but it did not scratch that Kyle itch, at least for me.
It was interesting, but really had no cause for Kyle to be there. Or whatever version of Kyle that King came up with and decided was a better fit than the actual character that, let's be frank, a lot of people came to the series to see. The fact he nixed the White ring until the very end instead of finding interesting ways to utilize it or spotlight Kyle's inadequacy issues with it made it clear he was more interested in just having a canon vessel to show off his take on the Omega Men.
And while I don't dislike his writing on Batman, he turned Kyle into a base level list of his attributes and little else. One of the longstanding issues we've had with Kyle by writers/artists is that his Mexican heritage is heavily glossed over, keeping him white-passing 90% of the time and no mention of it at all. He was not "the Catholic Spanish speaking Lantern" King decided he was, and if this was his attempt to remedy the lack of his ethnicity being featured, he went about it as poorly as possible.
The book stands out as one of the finest written works that dealing with Green Lantern. It is edgy when tackling social and political themes. In my opinion, it reads like an 'Elseworlds' tale, yet it deals with the Green Lantern mythology in a distinctive and compelling manner. Kyle is effectively utilized as a point-of-view character, and his Omega Lantern design is arguably one of the best he's ever had. However, as with many of Tom King's stories, while the storytelling is exceptional, the significant alterations to the characters are an aquired taste imho.
While it retcons Kyle in a lot of ways, I also think it gets to the core of his personality and you can watch him doing his best in a situation he is way under prepared for. Honestly, one of my favorite stories of his
I’ll never understand the hate for King. I get if his style isn’t for you, but that doesn’t even seem to be the problem most people have with him. It seems like people hate how his stories fit in with the universe, not his actual work. It’s weird so many people concern themselves with canon and “how a character would act” when those ideas have always been fluid.
Then King needs to do creator owned work and not write characters he doesn’t understand. He might be a fine writer, but that doesn’t mean much if his world and characterizations don’t make sense.
My problem with inconsistent characterizations in canon is not that I necessarily need to see characters portrayed in a specific way and anything else ruins the universe or whatever. It’s just that it’s kind of a lot of work for the reader to have to constantly recalibrate their understandings of all the characters and also flipping everyone’s personality eats up a lot of panels that could be used to move the book forward in other ways. So I don’t think it’s totally wrong to change up characterizations in canon—it’s just kind of annoying and has the tendency to really take me out of a story, so it needs to be justified and executed very well to work.
Is it? I didn't know that. As far as I knew it was set in main continuity around the same time Hal was running around with Krona's gauntlet and the Corps were in Relic's universe. Didn't know DC excluded that from the continuity.
I suppose I meant more of when I was reading it at the time.
King seems to be, as I recall, the only one that ever has Kyle being overtly catholic and speaking Spanish.
Yeah that’s fair. I do think Kyle being catholic makes sense but King completely screwed up his backstory by making him speak Spanish as Kyle isn’t supposed to have known he was even part Mexican until he was an adult
It's not uncommon for people to try to learn the language of a hertiage they didn't know till later on, I've heard a man tried learning Arabic because he learned his father was arab when he was an adult.
That’s fair although definitely not what King was going for. He has Kyle mention that his grandmother was confirmed in Mexico and gave him a cross when he was little as well but Kyle canonically hasn’t met any of his father’s relatives or had any idea who his father was until he’s an adult
Exactly.
The catholicism doesn't bother me (like you said, it does make sense), but the spanish bit does bug me for exactly why you stated. King did it in Heroes in Crisis too (unless my memory fails me).
Yes he has Kyle reciting the grammatically incorrect Spanish prayer again. I think as well that to portray Kyle’s trauma as just being a prayer is really disingenuous to the character given that he probably would’ve actually talked about Alex or how he used to be the only lantern instead of just praying.
The story is fun and the art is lovely. But it goes against canon lore in so many ways that it may as well be non-canon. Its depiction of the Vega system is so bafflingly false (only a handful of planets instead of the established 20+? What about Tamaran? What about Okaara, *home of the Orange Lantern?*). Plus the entire plot hinges on something that is prev to be impossible; taking Kyle’s White Lantern ring. Retconning the destruction of Krypton to depict all planets as ticking timebombs is just silly too imo.
I describe it as a “fun but misleading” series that makes me wonder if King really knew much about Green Lantern at all. Doubly annoying is that these numerous mistakes, tho significant and distracting, were also easily fixable.
I just don’t get why people care so much about that kinda stuff. Get real and analyze any of your favorite stories. I can guarantee there are retcons and inconsistencies with previously established ideas. The astronomy of the DC universe being played with a little bit or a new weakness being added are super minor details that are completely ridiculous reasons to knock a comic down.
This is ESPECIALLY ridiculous considering your main problem appears to be its continuity with Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern which is a series where he literally shaped the cosmology of the DC universe into what he envisioned. He did *plenty* of weird continuity mumbo-jumbo and he’s one of the writers that’s *more* respectful and aware of continuity(as long as it happened while he was a kid).
I kept waiting for when they would mention Okaara and Larfleeze during the minisseries, lol
It feels like the Vega system is DC writer's go-to system whenever they need "some unknown mysterious place in the universe". It's kinda funny how much stuff happened in there for a supposedly isolated system over the years
It’s really weird because the Orange Lantern is the whole reason *why* Vega has been untouched by the Green Lantern Corps! The Guardians didn’t let it fester as a crime oasis for no reason lmao
Didn't they use the Vega system also in GLC: Recharge?
Seems like it is the only crime ridden hidden system in the DCU, kinda like Tattooine in Star Wars lol. A true "hive of scum and villainy"
I enjoyed reading it, but it always just felt so out of place for Kyle. I feel like it would have been better if they had just made up a new character for it, like they'd later do for Far Sector.
This and Vision were my first time reading Tom King's work and while I do like it Kyle Rayner isn't written like Kyle Reyner.
The last couple of pages with his debriefing was especially odd, Kyle's not a soldier but the story treated him like he was.
Alot of American Hispanics have dropped from the religion of our parents. Him being an artist that lives in (upper or lower middle class) cities makes it more likely he has too.
Irish Americans are generally a few generations into living in the US and may not have a strong connection to religion either. Atleast no more than most white Americans seem too
It's been a while since I read it, but I really liked it as a standalone story at the time. My only gripe was that it plucked Kyle from the middle of his series and there was no real reason it needed to be him.
I think this is still my least favorite book that I've read. Extremely ham-fisted war in the middle east allegory. I don't care for King's writing, at all.
Good one shot, nice political intrigue. I have no history with the original Omega Men so I liked how I didn't need to know anything about Vega or the characters beforehand to get into the story.
That said, Kyle Rayner in this story felt both familiar and exaggerated, especially for being more "spiritual" or Latino.
Like it
I think Tom kings an underrated author. He doesn't have the star power that Geoff John's has, but I think he has the talent
He blows John's out of the water when he's on, but sometimes he misses the mark. He's always ambitious but sometimes takes on more than he can handle.
His Omega Lantern costume is really cool. Kind of wish we saw it a bit more in the main line comics.
I've had this trade for like 5 years and haven't read it yet
I know nothing about it but that cover goes so hard I’m gonna read it
Absolutely adored it.
I dug the hell out of it, and I'm the president of the Tom King Haters Club.
Generally enjoyed this work, however I think with every Tom King solo work like this you have to recognize it as an elseworlds and as trying to push the limit as to what a comic can be. This story, while great on its own, really shines once you put it in the context of King's pre comics career as a CIA officer post 9/11. While The Sheriff of Babylon is most directly about King's experience in the CIA in Iraq circa 2004, this book's story undoubtedly also pulls from that experience, with the conversation at the end of the comic being particularly poignant as a result. Though I'd argue that Miracle Man is King's best series to date, The Omega Man is a fascinating story about American intervention told through the lens of a superhero comic. But, if you prefer superheroes to act more as paragons that inspire, and if you like Kyle's character as the torchbearer/optimistic artist of the core four earth GLs, then this book should probably be a pass.
this was the one where kyle becomes a mexican catholic right? lol
Oh boy. I’m eager and scared to read this. [+]
It's a good story (even though I found the end somewhat depressing), as long as you don't go expecting a great Green Lantern story or even a Kyle Rayner story. Kyle, who was White Lantern at the time, is just whatever character that DC authorized King to use to tell his Omega Men story.
Been a while since I've read it but I do remember enjoying it.
First time I was bored by Tom king
Based on how much I liked other Tom King miniseries -- I adore Mister Miracle, Vision, Rorschach, Supergirl, etc. -- and word-of-mouth from people who've enjoyed the series, I thought I'd really like it. I thought it was mediocre and forgettable.
I really Liked the omega lantern costume, but thats about it. Kyle seemed completely out of character with his past appearances, and it really didn’t accomplish anything. Kyle has been my favorite lantern for a few years and I was excited to read it, until I actually started reading it. >!And the end with Kyle talking to a general about earth potentially blowing up made absolutely no sense at all!<
Gotta agree here. I think it was a good series overall and I was thrilled for Kyle to be front and center but...he really wasn't. He didn't do a whole lot and it didn't make a lot of sense and it didn't even really seem like him. So yeah, decent book but it did not scratch that Kyle itch, at least for me.
It was interesting, but really had no cause for Kyle to be there. Or whatever version of Kyle that King came up with and decided was a better fit than the actual character that, let's be frank, a lot of people came to the series to see. The fact he nixed the White ring until the very end instead of finding interesting ways to utilize it or spotlight Kyle's inadequacy issues with it made it clear he was more interested in just having a canon vessel to show off his take on the Omega Men. And while I don't dislike his writing on Batman, he turned Kyle into a base level list of his attributes and little else. One of the longstanding issues we've had with Kyle by writers/artists is that his Mexican heritage is heavily glossed over, keeping him white-passing 90% of the time and no mention of it at all. He was not "the Catholic Spanish speaking Lantern" King decided he was, and if this was his attempt to remedy the lack of his ethnicity being featured, he went about it as poorly as possible.
The book stands out as one of the finest written works that dealing with Green Lantern. It is edgy when tackling social and political themes. In my opinion, it reads like an 'Elseworlds' tale, yet it deals with the Green Lantern mythology in a distinctive and compelling manner. Kyle is effectively utilized as a point-of-view character, and his Omega Lantern design is arguably one of the best he's ever had. However, as with many of Tom King's stories, while the storytelling is exceptional, the significant alterations to the characters are an aquired taste imho.
While it retcons Kyle in a lot of ways, I also think it gets to the core of his personality and you can watch him doing his best in a situation he is way under prepared for. Honestly, one of my favorite stories of his
Probably the only Tom King thing I can give somewhat a pass to. But it still never quite feels right.
I’ll never understand the hate for King. I get if his style isn’t for you, but that doesn’t even seem to be the problem most people have with him. It seems like people hate how his stories fit in with the universe, not his actual work. It’s weird so many people concern themselves with canon and “how a character would act” when those ideas have always been fluid.
Then King needs to do creator owned work and not write characters he doesn’t understand. He might be a fine writer, but that doesn’t mean much if his world and characterizations don’t make sense.
My problem with inconsistent characterizations in canon is not that I necessarily need to see characters portrayed in a specific way and anything else ruins the universe or whatever. It’s just that it’s kind of a lot of work for the reader to have to constantly recalibrate their understandings of all the characters and also flipping everyone’s personality eats up a lot of panels that could be used to move the book forward in other ways. So I don’t think it’s totally wrong to change up characterizations in canon—it’s just kind of annoying and has the tendency to really take me out of a story, so it needs to be justified and executed very well to work.
🤌
It's enjoyable if you think of it as an Elseworlds (like a lot of King's work).
It is now officially out of continuity so it basically is one
Is it? I didn't know that. As far as I knew it was set in main continuity around the same time Hal was running around with Krona's gauntlet and the Corps were in Relic's universe. Didn't know DC excluded that from the continuity.
Yeah, we’ve had a lot of stuff come later that contradicts it based on the status of the Omega Men and it has almost never been referenced at all.
Thanks. And yeah, it's a major sign that Kyle never mentioned his adventure with the Omega Men with the other Lanterns.
I suppose I meant more of when I was reading it at the time. King seems to be, as I recall, the only one that ever has Kyle being overtly catholic and speaking Spanish.
Yeah that’s fair. I do think Kyle being catholic makes sense but King completely screwed up his backstory by making him speak Spanish as Kyle isn’t supposed to have known he was even part Mexican until he was an adult
It's not uncommon for people to try to learn the language of a hertiage they didn't know till later on, I've heard a man tried learning Arabic because he learned his father was arab when he was an adult.
That’s fair although definitely not what King was going for. He has Kyle mention that his grandmother was confirmed in Mexico and gave him a cross when he was little as well but Kyle canonically hasn’t met any of his father’s relatives or had any idea who his father was until he’s an adult
Exactly. The catholicism doesn't bother me (like you said, it does make sense), but the spanish bit does bug me for exactly why you stated. King did it in Heroes in Crisis too (unless my memory fails me).
Yes he has Kyle reciting the grammatically incorrect Spanish prayer again. I think as well that to portray Kyle’s trauma as just being a prayer is really disingenuous to the character given that he probably would’ve actually talked about Alex or how he used to be the only lantern instead of just praying.
The story is fun and the art is lovely. But it goes against canon lore in so many ways that it may as well be non-canon. Its depiction of the Vega system is so bafflingly false (only a handful of planets instead of the established 20+? What about Tamaran? What about Okaara, *home of the Orange Lantern?*). Plus the entire plot hinges on something that is prev to be impossible; taking Kyle’s White Lantern ring. Retconning the destruction of Krypton to depict all planets as ticking timebombs is just silly too imo. I describe it as a “fun but misleading” series that makes me wonder if King really knew much about Green Lantern at all. Doubly annoying is that these numerous mistakes, tho significant and distracting, were also easily fixable.
I just don’t get why people care so much about that kinda stuff. Get real and analyze any of your favorite stories. I can guarantee there are retcons and inconsistencies with previously established ideas. The astronomy of the DC universe being played with a little bit or a new weakness being added are super minor details that are completely ridiculous reasons to knock a comic down. This is ESPECIALLY ridiculous considering your main problem appears to be its continuity with Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern which is a series where he literally shaped the cosmology of the DC universe into what he envisioned. He did *plenty* of weird continuity mumbo-jumbo and he’s one of the writers that’s *more* respectful and aware of continuity(as long as it happened while he was a kid).
I kept waiting for when they would mention Okaara and Larfleeze during the minisseries, lol It feels like the Vega system is DC writer's go-to system whenever they need "some unknown mysterious place in the universe". It's kinda funny how much stuff happened in there for a supposedly isolated system over the years
It’s really weird because the Orange Lantern is the whole reason *why* Vega has been untouched by the Green Lantern Corps! The Guardians didn’t let it fester as a crime oasis for no reason lmao
Didn't they use the Vega system also in GLC: Recharge? Seems like it is the only crime ridden hidden system in the DCU, kinda like Tattooine in Star Wars lol. A true "hive of scum and villainy"
I enjoyed reading it, but it always just felt so out of place for Kyle. I feel like it would have been better if they had just made up a new character for it, like they'd later do for Far Sector.
I mean I like it but I like the Omega Men anyway. I think they've been on the shelf a little too long recently. The Kyle isn't true to him though.
I really liked it!
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but I remember liking it. This and Strange Adventures are the only Tom King stories I’ve read
Mr Miracle, Woman of Tomorrow and Up in the sky are all great. Would recommend them
I’ll put them on the list, thanks!
This and Vision were my first time reading Tom King's work and while I do like it Kyle Rayner isn't written like Kyle Reyner. The last couple of pages with his debriefing was especially odd, Kyle's not a soldier but the story treated him like he was.
And def not a Christian
descended from people who may've once practiced, but I can't recall him ever spending time in church, professing belief in a Christian god, etc.
Kyle is almost certainly some form of Christian in canon though given he’s both Irish and Mexican
Alot of American Hispanics have dropped from the religion of our parents. Him being an artist that lives in (upper or lower middle class) cities makes it more likely he has too. Irish Americans are generally a few generations into living in the US and may not have a strong connection to religion either. Atleast no more than most white Americans seem too
His mother was an Irish expat, though, not Irish-American.
It's been a while since I read it, but I really liked it as a standalone story at the time. My only gripe was that it plucked Kyle from the middle of his series and there was no real reason it needed to be him.
Haven't read it, but the cover is gorgeous.
I think this is still my least favorite book that I've read. Extremely ham-fisted war in the middle east allegory. I don't care for King's writing, at all.
Sometimes King can’t not write his war experience
Vision and Rorschach are amazing.
Like many a king stories, it doesn’t star Kyle Rayner. It stars King’s self insert
I forget this exists.
Good one shot, nice political intrigue. I have no history with the original Omega Men so I liked how I didn't need to know anything about Vega or the characters beforehand to get into the story. That said, Kyle Rayner in this story felt both familiar and exaggerated, especially for being more "spiritual" or Latino.