Warning: Unmarked Spoilers Below
An Intrepid Reporter and her Superman Substitute
Omegaman is an audio drama podcast written and directed by Jason Chao set in an alternate reality of the United States where in 2008, a real life superhero appeared: Omegaman.
The story begins in 2019, with reporter Jennifer Jeane visiting a prison specially designed to house supervillains. Her assignment? To interview some of the more prominent villains (some super powered and some not) about their first encounters with Omegaman, in search of uncovering a secret conspiracy.
The first seven episodes of a "first season" were released on April 5th, 2020 and can be found on a number of platforms.
Shows Examples of…
- Anti-Villain: Elefente was brought to America as a child with his two siblings, forced to commit crime and never having a real choice in the matter, especially after getting his powers.
- Pastor Park turns out to be operating under the mostly-correct belief that Omegaman is actually engaging in Engineered Heroism by creating supervillians to fight via his research company, Dynasty International. She's only wrong in that Omegaman isn't in on the conspiracy to create supervillians; it's implied that his adopted parents are the ones pulling the strings.
- Anti-Hero: Omegaman turns out to be a Downplayed example, as he initially grew up helping to use his powers make money for his family making them very wealthy. Then he one day, without thinking, he saved a woman from a car crash and realized tha the was using his powers all wrong becoming a full-fledge superhero.
- Create Your Own Villain: Dynasty International is revealed to have ties to the origins of several supervillains and eventually shown to be funded by the (adopted) parents of Omegaman.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: Elefente was barely a supervillian prior to being arrested, and never got into a fight with anyone remotely on his level. This leads him to accidently crush an inmate's skull while trying to protect Jennifer and Kim during a prison riot.
- ET Gave Us Wifi: Downplayed and more "E.T. Gave Us Supervillains" as a number of them are the result of Freak Lab Accidents involving Dynasty International who secretly reverse engineer technology from Omegaman's ship.
- Expecting Someone Taller: Jennifer is surprised to meet Elefente and is shocked that he's quick short despite photos showing him much larger. He implies people either have this reaction or thinks he's taller then expected, blaming it on bad camera angles.
- For Science!: Cryonator's motivation both before and after his transformation in an Ice Person, though the point of the experiments are left unclear.
- Heel Realization: Omegaman had this when he used his powers to save a woman from a car crash after using them to help his family get rich.
- Intrepid Reporter: Jennifer Jeane.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Elefente was arrested by Omegaman after standing down without throwing a single punch. Although he was hypothetically powerful enough to kill him, he was also smart enough to realize that killing the world's greatest superhero would make him the enemy of the entire world, and his mutations would make it impossible to lay low. Or so he says. He actually stood down on the orders of Pastor Park, who was threatening his family.
- Mad Scientist: Cryonator, who doesn't even see his acts as crimes, but as necessary work for the sake of scientific advancement.
- Megacorp: Dynasty International is implied to be this though not much is known.
- Power Incontinence: Omegaman had a moment of this while fighting Cryonator, using Heat Vision to defeat him. While Cryonator thinks the hero is keeping this power a secret, Omegaman confesses that it was the one and only time it happened and has been trying to use it again to no avail.
- Reed Richardsis Useless: Played with and ultimately Justified. After the first person he saved as a Superhero died of Luekemia a year later, Omegaman decided to direct his wealth, connections and scientific research towards curing the world's ills. This proceeded to result in the creation of every supervillian but Pastor Park via botched attempts at harnessing the technology on Omegaman's ship to help fix the world.
- Samaritan Syndrome: Discussed. When called out for playing Pastor Park's riddle game for two weeks in order to disarm her bombs, Omegaman explains that any choice he makes, down to the choice to *sleep* or date Jennifer, is inevitably going to result in other people suffering because he didn't choose to spend the time helping them instead, and the best he can do is try to do the most good he can with each choice to balance out the times he needs to be selfish for his own sake.
- Superman Substitute: Omegaman who has the standard Flying Brick power set and later confirmed to have Superhearing and X-Ray Vision. He apparently has Heat Vision but it only happened on one occasion against an Ice Person villain but has been unable to use it since.
