Monday, January 9, 2017

Marvel-ous Monday: "Cats and No Dogs" by Gerber, Skrenes, Mooney, and Marcos

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! With Omega the Unknown #4 (July 1976), writers Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes made it pretty clear that Omega and his battles with super-villains might be what the Powers That Were at Marvel wanted, but they weren't going to waste too much energy on 'em. El Gato, the big bad of this ish (and believe it or not, the next!), is, well...lame. His powers are weird (strong? tough? can control cats...?), his costume is dull (artist Jim Mooney didn't spend a whole lot of time designing it, either, from the looks of it), and he's very, very forgettable. No, the regular creative team's (joined by guest-inker Pablo Marcos who made Mooney's decidedly DC style look more Marvel-ous imho) heart and energy was definitely into James Michael-Starling and his circle of acquaintances. That's where the interest (for both the writers and the reader), the drama, and, yes, the horror lie. Page 22 still makes Ol' Groove shudder...
Cover art by Howard Chaykin (!) and Frank Giacoia


















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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2017 at 1:00 AM

    Domo arigato, Senor El Gato.

    M.P.

    ReplyDelete
  2. GrahamJanuary 9, 2017 at 6:50 AM

    I had this issue and the next one. I didn't buy this one though...I ended up with it when the seller (a local grocery store) had extra inventory he was getting rid of...you know, when they would tear the cover or part of the cover off. He gave me about a dozen different comic books and Omega #4 was one of them. I liked it enough that I bought #5 when it hit the shelves. Unfortunately, there must have been distribution issues at the time, because I never saw another copy of the Omega series.

    I enjoyed the two issues I had because of the story. It was so different from other stories I was reading at the time. The little town I grew up in (and still live in) was a million miles from where James Michael-Starling lived.

    ReplyDelete
  3. keythd23January 11, 2017 at 8:02 AM

    Mooney and Marcos looked great together. After 3 issues of silence it was so cool when Omega asked "why?".

    ReplyDelete

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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