Last week I mentioned cooking up a sort of magnum-opus of DC and unleashing it upon the comics blogosphere.  This is not that post, although it’s getting closer.

I have the feeling, and maybe you do too, that between the Countdown Special and the hardcover collection, all of this OMAC/Brother Eye “reinvention” which started back in March ‘05 is finally building to the (re)introduction of a more traditional, Kirbyesque setup for those characters.

Personally, if OMAC has to be shoehorned into DC’s main line of continuity, that’s about as good a treatment as he and his satellite guardian may get. I don’t quite like the thought of Batman being part of a Kirby character’s origin, but who knows what the mists of time will eventually end up obscuring? After all, nothing much came of that “Kamandi = Tommy Tomorrow” development, unless Countdown or Final Crisis is headed that way.

Besides, the surface is arguably more important to DC than the details are. Not only will a Kirby-style OMAC attract (at least in theory) the original’s fans, but DC can then claim to be “honoring” Kirby’s work more directly than does the Infinite Crisis/Countdown version. In fact, by then the IC/CD OMAC (sorry) may be, in story terms, the prototype for OMAC Classic. Thus, when its revised origin is complete, this OMAC’s roots in the Batcave and Max Lord’s Checkmate might well be too trivial for its Big Gulp synopsis. I don’t fully believe that’ll happen (for such is the allure of Batman), but you never know.

The surface matters more than the details, by the way, because the surface must be recognizable. You don’t get Electric Superman on Big Gulp cups … or, for that matter, headlining a TV show, movie, or All-Star series. Electro-Supes might be a big deal for a while, but eventually it becomes a footnote, because it doesn’t fit the template. I think we’re all pretty familiar with the kinds of restrictions companies place on the characters they own.

Accordingly, I tend to think of DC’s big picture in more impersonal terms. Getting into the nuances of its characters’ personalities means specifying a particular approach. The Elliott Maggin/Curt Swan Superman acts differently from the John Byrne Superman, who acts differently from the Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely Superman, and on and on. They are all Superman, but none of them can claim exclusively to be the “real” Superman. Some might consider the only “real” Superman to be the product of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s collaboration. Others might say it’s whatever DC publishes in the main line of comics.

Either way, Superman’s history, like the histories of many other DC characters, lacks a single continuous chronicle by which the comics of today may be connected directly to Jerry & Joe. The current creative teams aren’t trying to present Siegel & Shuster-esque adventures. Instead, they’re drawing on almost 70 years of multimedia. It kind of reminds me of the debate over who got ownership of the old Cleveland Browns’ records — the Baltimore Ravens, who were the Browns until their 1995 move; or the Browns 2.0, a 1999 expansion franchise. The Browns 2.0 have the records and archives now, although the Ravens’ “genealogy” is linked directly to the original Browns.

However, DC also owns some intellectual properties, such as the original OMAC, which, perhaps by virtue of their lack of exploitation, remain fairly discrete. Yes, there have been other OMAC series; and yes, OMAC has previously been tied into main line DC. Regardless, it’s much easier to look to Jack Kirby’s original comics for the “real” OMAC, and then judge how closely the Nu-OMAC resembles it.

DC actually has a fair amount of these “genuine articles.” The Charlton and Fawcett characters were — and perhaps still are — preserved wholesale via the Multiverse. Characters who only go back to the Silver Age (Ray Palmer, Barry Allen, etc.) are likewise pretty easy to follow from then to now. Even the past forty years’ worth of Batman stories are, in a certain respect, homages to the first year or so of Bob Kane/Bill Finger/Gardner Fox/Jerry Robinson originals. Still, another step in determining the “real thing” is the presence of a continuous chronicle. I’m not necessarily talking about an over-arching storyline (or series thereof), just the sense that the stories being told are consistent enough with each other that they describe the same character.

Over its publishing history, DC has not exactly dedicated itself to this concept. The introduction of the Multiverse not only divided the chronicles among Earths-1, -2, etc., it made possible the existence of duplicate stories on each Earth. Moreover, it allowed the stories assigned to Earth-2 to be set in stone there, preserved in as close to their original forms as a nominal amount of consistency would allow. From that standpoint, the Earth-1 characters couldn’t claim Action Comics #1 or “The Case Of The Chemical Syndicate,” and therefore became echoes of their Earth-2 predecessors. However, for all practical purposes, the real action — i.e., with the going concerns — was on Earth-1, so therefore it must have had the “real” characters. Whether the Earth-1 Batman had a “Chemical Syndicate” story fairly early in his career (and in fact, there were a few different retellings over the decades) was up for debate.

It’s a fractured way to look at DC’s history, Multiverse or not. Regardless, it’s hard to avoid. DC tells stories set largely in the eternal now, but grounded in comics from decades ago. Marvel does the same thing, of course, but Marvel has the advantage of a single continuous chronicle. It is possible to follow the Marvel characters consistently from their beginnings, and get a sense of their development, even without an over-arching storyline.

At DC, though, the characters might remain fairly constant, or even get retroactive personality transplants consistent with their current portrayals. Thus, the current Batman has always been antisocial; and Green Arrow was a flaming liberal even clean-shaven and rich. Sometimes this smooths over some bumpy-but-intriguing aspects of the character’s history. As much as I have enjoyed Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern, his work seems to hint that Hal’s big consciousness-expansion in the early ‘70s — which I thought was a nice addition to his characterization — “actually” allowed him to be controlled by an evil space-bug. Similarly, Superman and Wonder Woman’s early social-awareness messages have been downplayed or otherwise redirected over the years.

Often this is just the product of a modern story superseding one which had become disconnected from the main line of continuity. With Green Lantern, though, Johns needed in-story ways to restore Hal’s old status quo. Because the Silver Age Green Lantern and his associates had (since 1959) been the subject of their own continuous chronicle, there was no nebulous area of GL history from which Johns could pull a retcon or reset button. Therefore, he had to invent one, which of course became another element of the continuous chronicle. (Ironically, Wonder Woman had a continuous chronicle going from 1987 to 2006, but that’s been monkey-wrenched by post-Infinite Crisis developments.) Again, I doubt that the details of GL: Rebirth will make it to the Big Gulp cup, but really, that’s the point. If you can express the character in simple, Big Gulp terms, on one level it doesn’t matter how many twists made that possible.

Getting back to OMAC, then (thought I forgot, eh?), that’s what DC seems to be doing, except on the front end and over a period of some three years. The continuous chronicle of the Nu-OMAC may well lead into a revival of OMAC Classic, and from there who knows? Maybe Final Crisis will find some corner of the Multiverse in which OMAC Classic can thrive. If so, DC can claim to have revived the “real” OMAC in a way that satisfies fans of both versions. And that … wait for it … is the “real” trick.

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