The series DC saved from cancellation at least reaches its final issue. It was worth it.
Tom King's unique perspective was instantly evident in the sneak preview that saw Kyle Rayner seemingly executed. Anyone who read further knew that Kyle survived, and that King had done that deliberately, and evoked what he evoked just as deliberately.
Yeah, this was always a story about the Iraq War. This conclusion makes that, if it wasn't before, completely obvious. King is also writing the Vertigo series Sheriff of Baghdad, which addresses the war far more directly (drawing from King's own experiences), by the way. One way or another, everyone has a strong opinion about the Iraq War. I don't know if that alone will help people finally discover Omega Men, but maybe it should, because as a commentary, it's probably worth reading for that alone.
This issue is the story of what happened after the war ended. King's Viceroy was Saddam Hussein, all along, the strongman uniquely capable of containing the madness of a Middle Eastern kingdom that stood apart, but somehow represented, the madness of the terrorism age. That Hussein was originally put into power by the very people who later eliminated him isn't lost on King, and isn't dismissed as a conclusion in and of itself, as so many detractors of the war liked to make it. No, this is a story of nuance. It always was.
Kyle is forced to face the fact that all of the allies, the Omega Men, he aligned himself with during the course of the series, don't have happy endings. Each of them become embroiled in the chaos caused by the elimination of the Viceroy who created his own kind of order in the Vega System, which the Guardians of the Universe had sealed off from its Green Lantern Corps ages ago, preciously because of this kind of scenario.
Kyle is left to try and make sense of it all. He's asked, by an anonymous military figure, where he views his allegiances now. I mean, that was the whole series right there, Kyle struggling with his conscience.
King concludes that there are no easy answers. All the William James quotes he ended issues with support this, that as humans, we're bound to find ourselves in traps of our own making, that to be human is to be faced with situations that are bigger than us, and that we're morally bound to confront them, that being human means we must.
It's superhero storytelling on a completely different scale. Thirty years ago, Alan Moore produced the parable of the Nuclear Age we call Watchmen. Now, we have King's parable of the War on Terror, and called it The Omega Men.
It's that simple.
His partner in crime, Barnaby Bagenda, is as uniquely suited to bring this vision to life as Dave Gibbons was for Moore. The style of Watchmen has been as commented on as its story. With Omega Men, Bagenda's mastery of the grid ends up speaking directly to Kyle's conclusions. Moore wrote an indictment of the superhero genre. King, and Bagenda, leave the conclusion up to the reader. Life isn't never that easy to interpret anyway.
I'll probably read it someday. I never thought Rayner was dead. Not even comic book "dead."
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