A new Blue Beetle clip has teased the arrival of some familiar comic book cyborgs.
The brief action clip debuted on Twitter to give Blue Beetle fans a glimpse of the Latino superhero’s super suit in action. However, it also gave us a glimpse of one of his adversaries. “OMAC incoming, Jaime,” warns the voice of the suit as a cyborg bursts through a nearby wall.
It’s time to power up, Jaime Reyes. ? #BlueBeetle - Only in theaters August 18. pic.twitter.com/XL7wkJeNN5
— Blue Beetle (@bluebeetle) July 15, 2023
That’s right! Blue Beetle features the OMACs, who are a line of enhanced, battle-ready cyborgs designed to tackle superheroes. They’re also straight from the pages of DC’s comic books.
OMACs or Observational Metahuman Activity Constructs were introduced in The OMAC Project, a six-issue mini-series from 2005 that originally led up to DC’s Infinite Crisis. Interestingly, Infinite Crisis is where Jaime Reyes made his comic book debut as Blue Beetle.
Obviously, the upcoming film is an origin story. We’ve already seen Reyes, played by Xolo Maridueña, acquiring his powers through the activation of the Blue Beetle itself, which is an alien artifact that attaches itself to the unsuspecting teenager and grants him the use of an Iron Man-style super suit. However, this new clip hints that his origins may be more closely tied to the comics than we thought.
Although the Blue Beetle character dates all the way back to 1939, Reyes was introduced in Infinite Crisis #6 in 2006, shortly after the death of the previous Blue Beetle, Ted Kord. In fact, Reyes was a key figure throughout the Infinite Crisis event series, helping the Justice League find and destroy the rogue satellite Brother Eye which was created to control the OMACs. As for the cyborgs themselves, they were created by the U.S. Department of Defense and Lexcorp using a form of nanotechnology taken from Brainiac-13. Their goal? Assassinate any metahumans they come into contact with.
How much of Infinite Crisis will be incorporated into the DC universe remains to be seen. However, the addition of an OMAC threat in Blue Beetle gives us a nod to this classic comic book run at the very least.
Want to read more about Blue Beetle? Check out why fans are worried about Blue Beetle’s new trailer as well as how Blue Beetle is unapologetically Latino.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
