'Omega Men' a bit of risky space business

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Even before his new The Omega Men comic-book series is out, Tom King is already killing off major DC Comics characters.

The apparent death of Kyle Rayner — seen in an eight-page preview last month — sparks the first story line in the reboot of the 1980s sci-fi Omega Men title (debuting Wednesday) and is one of many risks excitedly being taken by King, a co-writer on DC's hit Grayson series.

If he's not writing scared, he's not doing it well, King admits. But there is a definite air of confidence to go along with the fear.

"A lot of companies have told the greatest cosmic stories over the past 20 years in comics using concepts invented for DC," the writer says. "With this story, DC's going to take back its stars. We're going to tell a cosmic story that's better than anything Marvel or Image can do."

Created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Joe Staton's run on Green Lantern in 1981, the Omega Men are a group of intergalactic renegades from the Vega star system. In their new take on the team, King and Indonesian artist Barnaby Bagenda infuse the book with a rebels-vs.-empire concept a la Star Wars but grounded in an impactful reality inspired by King's work in the CIA as a counterterrorism operations officer.

The Citadel rules the Vega system with an iron hand — King figures it's akin to somewhere between the height of the British Empire and occupied Europe circa 1943. The Green Lantern Corps are cosmic cops protecting the universe but the Citadel is off limits to them thanks to some shady dealings.

In an act of revolution, the Omega Men use a video to broadcast the death of Rayner — although the screen turns to fuzz during the killing blow, and we never actually see the White Lantern's body — and that causes all sorts of problems. The Lanterns are incensed that they can't come in and investigate, and the power players of the Citadel take it upon themselves to apprehend the outlaws.

"Everything is at stake for the Citadel to find and kill the Omega Men," King says, "and everything's at stake for the Omega Men to stay alive."

The writer served overseas and watched firsthand people warring against an empire, but he is quick to point out that this isn't a metaphor for al-Qaeda fighting against America.

"It's uninteresting for me to rant on using a comic book to talk about Middle East policy," King says. "But I wanted to write a story that was grounded in those those real-world risks that we're seeing in TV, those real world threats. If you don't take advantage of them, it's not going to feel real to a modern audience. It's going to feel something entirely distant."

King loves the cast of characters he's working with because mainly each one is a deconstruction of a superhero cliché, especially the three returning members from the classic team.

Tigorr is a tough, Wolverine-like hero who's big and strong, has claws and usually boasts the best one-liners. Yet he's also the one dude who knows the Citadel well and is usually the smartest guy in the room. "That contradiction of having the berzerker be your best strategist is awesome," says King.

Primus is what King calls "that boring, bland, blonde hero who's the star of every '80s sci-fi adventure when Omega Men was an '80s sci-fi adventure." But he also was a very complicated guy back then who was full of doubts, and King wanted to play with the idea that he's even less confident this time around.

And while Broot is what Groot is for Guardians of the Galaxy — the comic relief of sorts — King's twisting that a little, too. Broot comes from a planet of religious extremists, the writer says, and instead of being a gentle giant, "he's a gentle killer. Underneath his kindness is this hardcore belief in his religion he can't shake."

The robot Doc is also back, and Scrapps, the newest member of the squad, is "the muscle and guns of the team" who's based on King's own child: "She kills a lot more people than my daughter — like at least 70% more — but her personality, her refusal to be anything anyone wants her to be, comes straight from the wonderful frustration that is my daughter."

On the opposite side, King is introducing a new villain in the Viceroy, an imperialist member of the Citadel who is "based all on the worst parts of myself," he says, adding there's a bizarre sense of power that comes with being a representative of the United States abroad and isn't always a good thing. "It's this idea of when you're out there by yourself, you feel like you can push on the world and it can move. It becomes this sanity that leads to all sorts of horror, and I put that all into this character."

With Bagenda's realistic cosmic art that's "not ethereal" but "almost perfect," King says the first chapter of Omega Men has a huge action sequence where readers won't be able to pick out the good guys from the bad ones, and it begins a "12-issue sprint to a climactic moment, and every issue and every panel has to move forward to that point."

The Omega Men is definitely an ambitious project for King on the whole. He remembers having three editors on the phone when writing Rayner's death: "It was like, 'Oh, you can use Kyle Rayner,' and I'm like, 'Great, I'll kill him!' "

But DC has a lot invested in the writer as well and given him a lot of freedom — the first line of his Omega Men pitch was "Let's do something great," and King wants the book to have just as much an impact on fans as Star Wars and Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan had on him back in the day.

"They can distract you from the miseries of life and inspire you," King says. "I've always wanted to write one of those stories when I was 6 years old and when I was 11 years old and when I was 30 years old.

"So I'm taking that opportunity to write an incredible, epic sci-fi adventure that kicks you in the gut and keeps going."