60 – OMEGA RED

Subject: Omega Red
Real Name: Arkady Rossovich
Height: 6’6″ Weight: 300lbs.
First Appearance: X-Men #4, January 1992

Power Ratings:

• Energy Projection: 3/7
• Mental Powers: 3/7
• Strength: 2/7
• Fighting Ability: 7/7
• Intelligence: 2/7

Omega Red was just about THE COOLEST villain to me at the height of my X-mania (you can see why from when he debuted). The problem with Wolverine as he got more and more popular was he kept getting softer… yes, he still slashed and disembowled enemies, but more often he was just the scrappy rascal. In fact,  even good ol’ Sabretooth would start getting the treatment. It was time for a new villain that took us back to those roots. Omega Red was that villain (for the year or so when he actually appeared on the books).

I’ve mentioned many times how much I loved X-Men #5 as a kid (for the record, I didn’t love it any more than the other issues I had, it was more like it was the only comic I had at the time that had Wolvie on the cover). I still have the issue, and it is worn to shreds. Great articles have been written since then that highlighted how ridiculous and nonsensical the storyline actually was, but it was all catnip to me as a young’un.

I’m a little disappointed by the art on the card because the circle-ish silhouette makes Omega Red seem less of a badass. I’d've loved to have seen a shot of him attacking, maybe strangling some law-enforcement officers with his tendrils. I like the side-b portrait more in concept, I love the shadowing and the brooding look, but it’s a little too messy and Omega Red looks far too… thick? in it.

His Power Ratings I guess make enough sense, though I don’t know if his mutant “death factor” (which allows him to drain the life force of his enemies using… pheromones for some reason) should really account for a 3/7 in Energy Projection and certainly not Mental Powers. Otherwise, his ratings match him pretty evenly with Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Maverick, his contemporaneous cohorts.

Btw, his X-Tra fact says that Omega Red’s tendrils are “flexible like graphite but fused with adamantium” is completely contrary to the source material, which reveals that his body was implanted with carbonadium, which is essentially Russia’s flexible but less durable version of adamantium. For christ’s sakes, the entire X-Men arc in which he debuted revolved around the quest for carbonadium… were the actual scripts really developed so late into the game!?