Ahhh, Infinite Crisis—two words that have caused more excitement in the world of comic book fans than pretty much any other event in DC history. It’s rare to see such fervent discussion about a storyline. Similarly, the Infinite Crisis expansion is one of the most daring and special sets in the game, and Justin Gary did an admirable job of leading the R&D team on a mission to turn a storyline that for the most part didn’t even exist yet into one of the most exciting collections of characters in the current comic world.

So, just what is this “Infinite Crisis” you’ve now heard so much about? To answer this question, I bring you a new series of Voices from the Past articles designed to teach you all about this DC epic. Over the next few months, I will try to cover the Crisis inside and out, starting with a rundown of each team and then looking at the Crisis itself, how the Crisis connects the teams and their storylines, and how it fits into DC’s “Crisis History.”

I begin with Checkmate, as their story—and, through them, that of Brother Eye and the OMACs—is a cornerstone of the Infinite Crisis.

The U.S. government had set up several agencies to deal with metahumans, culminating in the Department of Extranormal Operations, or DEO. Like a metahuman NSA, it was created to keep tabs on metahumans—people with super powers or powerful technology—on domestic soil. However, terrorism on foreign soil also became a worry, particularly if said terrorism disrupted U.S. interests, and more particularly if it involved any form of foreign metahuman activity. Thus, the government ordered one of its top people, Amanda Waller, to set up joint agencies that would deal with such issues. One was Task Force X—also known as the Suicide Squad—which was an agency that would blackmail super-villains into performing black ops for them, often rewarding them with pardons. The other agency, known simply as “The Agency,” was designed for covert operations in foreign countries—specifically, taking out potential terrorists (or anyone the Agency designated as such).

The Agency didn’t last very long, eventually succumbing to internal reorganization. Waller rebuilt the Agency with a stricter set of guidelines and a clearer hierarchy. She was the top banana as the Black Queen, with longtime NYPD officer and government liaison Harry Stein running the operation as the Black King. Working under Stein were former Doom Patrol hero Valentina Vostok ◊ Negative Woman and Harvey Bullock, a GCPD officer familiar to Batman fans.

The Checkmate hierarchy was from the King and Queen downward. The Bishops, like Vostok and Bullock, were in charge of operations. The Rooks, collectively known as Rook Control (though they were originally called “Bishop Control”), were liaisons between the Bishops and lower operatives, doling out missions and keeping in contact with operatives on the field. The Knights were the primary field operatives. They were highly trained, wore Checkmate gear known as Knight Armor, and were supplied with enough high-tech gadgets to make James Bond jealous. The Knights were the ones who carried out the missions. They were originally led by Gary Washington, a.k.a., Knight One, who was originally Harry Stein’s partner on the NYPD. Finally, the Pawns were support personnel, often Aspiring Pawns hoping to become Knights, assisting them in the field—from surveillance, stakeouts, and reconnaissance to driving them around and supplying necessary equipment. This tight operational system was a far cry from the Agency’s haphazard methods of mission control.

Checkmate often worked with operatives such as Adrian Chase ◊ Vigilante, a District Attorney whose family was killed by the New York mafia. A severely troubled man, he initially sated himself by capturing criminals. However, as time went on, he turned more and more violent, until he eventually caved into his guilt-ridden conscience and committed suicide. Another Agency operative was Christopher Smith ◊ Peacemaker, a mentally unstable man whose extreme ideals drove him to use force to attempt to create peace in the world. He was haunted and driven by the ghosts of his past, namely that of his father—a concentration camp commandant during World War II.

Checkmate was more of a spy vs. spy organization, one-half John Le Carre and one half Tom Clancy: lots of intrigue and espionage, with a heapin’ spoonful of action on top. Operatives like Winston Churchill O’Donnel were charismatic and dashing, and their charm was as important as their skill in martial arts or interrogation. However, the new covert agency had its own share of problems, beginning with the Janus Directive storyline, in which Kobra (a terrorist on Checkmate’s watch list with a cult of followers) set the various intelligence agencies against each other. The fallout from the Janus Directive included the replacement of Amanda Waller as head of Checkmate by Sarge Steel, one of the top Knight operatives in the organization.

Things would get worse for Checkmate as Lex Luthor became President of the United States and corruption leaked down throughout all of the agencies, landing several government heads on the chopping block. Harry Stein was long gone, Amanda Waller ended up in the Belle Reve prison in Louisiana (ironically, the former headquarters of the Suicide Squad) on charges of treason, and a White King and Queen were added to Checkmate’s “board” to increase the balance. Maxwell Lord would consolidate his power within the organization and become Black King. Maxwell Lord, Black King was not much different than Maxwell Lord, Financier; as “leader” and backer of the Justice League, he had set up a Staged Attack on the U.N. to gain his team notoriety, and then he used every angle he could to make money, network, and gain in power. With Checkmate, he took it to another level.

But first, a little background. In Identity Crisis, Sue Dibny, wife of Elongated Man, was killed. Although innocent of the murder, Dr. Light was the primary suspect. Years earlier, Dr. Light had been caught assaulting Sue Dibny in The Watchtower by various members of the Justice League. In order to prevent this from ever happening again, Zatanna was convinced by several other Leaguers (they put it to a vote) to use her powers to give Light a Magical Lobotomy. With the now-infamous word “tegrof,” Arthur Light’s evil tendencies were removed forcibly by Zatanna’s magic. It was at that moment that Batman arrived, and, seeing what was happening, he blew up. Always the paranoid one, he was immediately wary of the dangerous threshold they had crossed by doing what they did to Light. Where would it stop? Who else would they target? What right did they have to force their will on anyone, even a villain? To quell Batman’s rage, Zatanna used her power on him to remove the previous ten minutes from his memory.

How does this relate? Well, Batman figured out the truth of what happened (as always), so he built Brother Mk. I, or Brother I—a satellite that could not only monitor the Justice Leaguers no matter where they were, but could also receive commands and store and transit data. He created a huge database of information about his fellow heroes; in case they ever posed a threat to him, he could keep watch over them and move first if he needed to.

Unfortunately, Maxwell Lord discovered the satellite and database (through the machinations of Alexander Luthor, we would later discover) and slowly gained control of it, corrupting its programming and setting up the OMAC Project, which would change the face of the DC Universe forever. At the same time, Lord was also infiltrating Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle’s company, Kord Inc., and laundering money through it. Lord discovered that Kord had unknowingly developed the one thing that could severely hamper Lord’s plans: a prototype Mass EMP Generator.

In the 70s, Jack Kirby (creator of New Gods, Forever People, The Demon, Kobra, Kamandi, and other great comics) also created OMAC—One Man Army Corps. The comic was about a typical corporate grunt, Buddy Blank, who was going nowhere fast in a world full of corporate grunts—until he was suddenly turned into OMAC by a satellite named Brother Eye. He would work for the Global Peace Agency, which used him to try to force its pacifist ideology on a world filled with militant strength.

While the OMAC Project started by Maxwell Lord has no direct relation to Kirby’s OMAC, the idea for it is a tribute to the original. (Note the names of the satellites are even the same, though they are not the same satellite . . .)* The OMACs of Maxwell Lord’s OMAC Project are similar. They are essentially a nanobot virus. The nanobots are spread into various unknowing people, and when a certain transmission is downloaded into them by Brother I, they become OMACs. They are suddenly surrounded by a polymer-metallic armored shell, becoming powerful constructs under direct control of the OMAC program. The victims of this virus are unaware of what they are doing as OMACs and have no memory of it once they revert to their human form.

Maxwell Lord’s plan was to use these OMACs to destroy every metahuman in order to save the planet from what he deemed was its biggest threat. The EMP Generator was a danger because it could disrupt the neural functions of the nanobots, and the nanite technology itself. This would disrupt the transmissions from the governing satellite and could potentially stop the OMACs cold. However, when Lord sent operatives to break into Kord’s warehouse to steal the generator, it hadn’t arrived yet, so they stole a hundred pounds of Kryptonite instead to deflect blame.

Blue Beetle discovered a transmitter implanted in his goggles, and he traced the source to a secret citadel in Belgium where Checkmate’s elite were holed up. He broke in and discovered the computers and the database contained within. Lord found Beetle at the computer console, and Beetle tried to escape. Maxwell Lord, himself a metahuman with mind control powers, was able to stop him and put a bullet through his frontal lobe. Lord then began the OMAC protocols, setting up a chain of events that would lead to an all-out war between OMACs and metahumans.

Crisis Point! (Rxh7+)

With Amanda Waller in prison and Sarge Steel framed by Alexander Luthor, Lord had been able to take complete control of Checkmate. The one wrench in his plans was his own Knight, Sasha Bordeaux, who realized the danger he posed. While feigning utter loyalty, she smuggled Blue Beetle’s goggles to Batman. The other King, Ahmed Samsarra, and the two Queens were planning a coup to take down Lord, but he sniffed it out and assassinated them. Specifically, he used his mind control to force the Black Queen’s Knight, Jessica Midnight, to do the dirty deed, then he had her imprisoned for it. Meanwhile, Sasha snuck off to Chicago to fill Batman in on what was happening, only to have Lord find out and send some Retrieval Protocol OMACs after her. She would end up imprisoned right next to Jessica Midnight, but she was able to resist Lord’s mind-probing interrogation.

Meanwhile, moving to the next stage of his OMAC project, Maxwell Lord used Brother I to send a message through Clark Kent’s computer, taking control of his mind and eventually sending him on a Batman-mauling rampage. He then convinced Superman that Wonder Woman was Doomsday, causing him to attack Wonder Woman with death in his eyes. Realizing that the only way to save Superman was to stop Lord, she caught him up in her lasso of truth. When she asked him how she could free Superman, Lord replied, “Kill me,” and she did, snapping Lord’s neck and thus breaking the Justice League’s code of non-killing.

This set off the “Kingisdead” protocol, as Brother I gained complete autonomy, dubbed itself Brother Eye, and proceeded to activate several OMACs within Checkmate’s walls to destroy every member of Checkmate. Sasha also became activated as an OMAC, but not a typical one—she was Sasha Bordeaux, Autonomous Prototype and resisted Brother Eye’s protocols. She freed Jessica Midnight, and together they managed to stop the rampage—but only after most of the damage was done.

Brother Eye didn’t stop at Checkmate, however. It started up the Annihilation Protocol, activating over 1.3 million OMACs and sending them out in “wings” of assault platoons to take down every metahuman on Earth. According to the protocol, “All augmented humans and extraterrestrials are designated a threat to the survival of the species.”

Rocket Red was one of the first to fall, sacrificing himself to take out three OMACs and save his fellow former-JLI members. Sasha Bordeaux and Batman worked together to try to solve the OMAC problem from different angles. Batman discovered the EMP Generator and attempted to gather dozens of superheroes together to draw OMACs to an uninhabited island where he could safely set off the device. Sasha tried to bring dozens of former Checkmate allies and aligned agencies back into the fold, combining all of their knowledge to discover a way to transmit a virus into the satellite’s transmission system and therefore into the nanite technology itself. She succeeded, and between her disruption of several hundred thousand OMAC transmissions and Batman’s EMP efforts, they managed to whittle the number of OMACs down to about 200,000.

But it wasn’t enough—Brother Eye then set off its Vengeance Protocols, which began with a transmission of Wonder Woman’s murder of Maxwell Lord onto every television screen in the world, from Times Square to homes in rural Australia . . . and so began the OMAC and Brother Eye portion of Infinite Crisis!

NEXT WEEK: A look at post-Crisis Checkmate, and a character-by-character rundown of Checkmate in Vs. System—who they are and how they fit into the comics world.

Questions? Queries? Comments? Send ’em along and I’ll try to get them answered in the column! Email me at Kergillian (at) hotmail (dot) com.

* “OMAC” initially was written as standing for One Man Army Corps in the OMAC Project as well, though it was later changed to Observational Metahuman Activity Construct. When Brother Eye became fully autonomous, the name changed again to Omni Mind and Community.

Also known by his screen name Kergillian, Ben Kalman has been involved in the Vs. community since day one. He started the first major online community, the Vs. Listserv, through Yahoo! Groups, and it now boasts well over 1,950 members! For more on the Yahoo! group, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Marvel_DC_TCG.