Barry Reese came out with several new books earlier this year, strangely under his own imprint, Reese Unlimited, instead of Pro Se Press. A standalone novel that was part of this is Omnium Gatherum, which is set in his overall universe of works.
Unlike others, this one is inspired more by comic book and anime series, in particular Gatchaman (or more accurately Science Ninja Team Gatchaman), which was brought over to the U.S. in the 1970s as the highly edited Battle of the Planets. It tells of a team of five highly trained superhero teens with high-tech devices fighting against a secret alien invasion. Since then, there have been several follow-on series, both animated and live action, as well as recent U.S. comic books.
Set in the 2020s, the team, called “Earth Force”, is still five, but now three boys and two girls. And they are a little darker in personality than the originals. They are joined by Nature Boy and Nature Girl, created by Jerry Siegel and John Buscema at Charlton Comics during a brief time in the late 1950s when they tried to do superheroes.
Nature Boy was saved by a group of gods, who granted him their powers, which he used to fight crime. Nature Girl only appeared in one story by herself. But in this incarnation, the two are artificial humans created by the government. They had previously done this with the Black Terror, who was a long-running Golden Age comic book character from Nedor Comics. But in the ’70s, Project: Cicada put them in suspended animation until they are awoken by two teens in the 2020s.
Now the Nature twins, joining the Earth Force, are fighting against aliens called the Phantasma. They are led by the Shining One, who has taken on the appearance of actor Michael York. I was surprised that in this case, the war against Phantasma is fairly public, with the E-Force kids being recorded for broadcast, doing interviews, etc.
They eventually defeat the Phantasma in this story. But what does the future hold for these characters? The whole purpose of E-Force was to fight the Phantasma. Will they show up in further works? There are several books in the timeline that follow this, and there are other superheroes in the Reese universe. We’ll just have to see.
The timeline at the end of the volume has been updated, with several new and upcoming works. However, it really needs to be better formatted for reading. For instance, years and book titles should be bolded and the like.
There are several other new Reese books out recently: volumes three and four of The Straw-Man series, and volumes one and two of Dark Society (with more planned) and Grimalkin. Reviews of these will be coming soon. Also, coming soon will be the next Lazarus Gray volume.
