Blogathon 30: Dreaming Us Part Two

[Continuing my discussion of Omega the Unknown.]

Who is 'Omega the Unknown?' Drawing upon the original series, the version by Jonathan Letehm, Karl Rusnak, and Farel Dalrymple never explains who he is. He looks human, but doesn't speak. He goes about his business and refuses to eat anything he didn't kill himself, preferably a bird of some kind. He has some sort of connection to Alex that we assume later is that they're both Omegas. In the first issue we see that his ship has crashed on Earth... but does that make him an alien? The first narration caption of the comic says "You've been here before, however much you might like to pretend otherwise."

Is this Omega Alex from the future come back in time to save the world? That's what makes sense to me. Is that a spaceship or a time machine? Who built the robots? Are these the robots that Alex builds at the end of the series and they follow him back in time -- or maybe go back in time themselves? There's probably no right answer. It reminds me of the theory someone came up with that Woody Allen's character in Anything Else is actually Jason Biggs's character come back in time to make sure his younger self moves to Los Angeles and gets away from the soul-crushing people that destroyed his own youth. Is this Alex from the future come back to change the past? To give his younger self and his friends the tools they need to defeat the robots? The two look incredibly similar.

If that theory is correct, how much of a bummer is the ending to the series? It's already a bit of a bummer with the broken down Omega homeless and suffering flashbacks, but to end up in a wheelchair as part of an underground homeless version of a game show all because you came to the past to save the world?

Then again, look at the title: he's the unknown Omega. We don't know who he is. He's the hero the world needs and the inspiration Alex needs. He sacrifices himself and his mind for the world and, given the choice, would do so again. He's pretty much the definition of a selfless hero. He asks for nothing except the means to fight the good fight. Who he is doesn't really matter, because he's just the job as far as we see. (But, he's totally future Alex...)

In 30 minutes, I'll look at at the polar opposite of a selfless hero...

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