DC Comics’s Cosmic Corner Is Missing One Final Piece (and It Makes the Green Lantern Mythos Look Tame)

DC Comics has been hitting levels of success that the publisher hasn’t hit in my lifetime and I can remember most of the ’80s. Marvel basically made the top of the sales charts their home for most of the last few decades and has only recently been knocked down from that lofty perch. DC was able to win the sales battle for two reasons – the Absolute Universe, a new version of the DC Universe that has brought in loads of new fans and created a line of bestselling comics, and their main line comics rebuilding the legends of the past. It started with “Dawn of DC”, which made Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Hal Jordan, Green Arrow, and the Justice Society important again, leading into the success of the current “DC All-In” era.

The publisher has brought numerous corners of the DC Multiverse back to prominence, with classic characters like Jonah Hex and the Demon getting another chance at stardom. The publisher is rebuilding their under card, for lack of a better term, and one place that has been a wasteland for a long time is the cosmic corner of DC. Sure, we get a lot of Green Lanterns/New Gods content, but even that doesn’t have anything on what sci-fi DC used to be. Crisis on Infinite Earths changed DC forever and it closed the door on a certain type of sci-fi DC story. However, there’s a relic of old school cosmic DC that could make a return, one that is perfect for DC and opens some very interesting doors – the Vega System.

The Vega System Is the Wildest In the DC Universe

So, once upon a time, comics were very different. Superheroes were the dominant comic paradigm of the Golden Age, but comics also printed all kinds of other stories throughout the Golden and Silver Ages. You’d still get the sci-fi anthology books, Western comics, horror stories, romance books, and war comics. DC kept publishing superhero comics throughout the ’50s, when everyone else stopped, but they also published other kinds of comics as well, including loads of sci-fi comics starring characters like Tommy Tomorrow and Space Cabbie (I’m not joking about either of those; I spent a lot of nights in the ’00s reading The DC Encyclopedia to unwind; I am, after all, old).

Vega first appeared in 1958’s Detective Comics #256. This was during that much maligned post-Seduction of the Innocent era of Batman where he went on weird sci-fi adventures and had multi-colored costumes and made Robin jealous with Batwoman, basically doing everything but what you’d want Batman to do. It was just a sci-fi setting back then for a one-off Batman comic, but like all things DC, someone would remember it and it would become the setting for other sci-fi DC stories.

Eventually, Vega would become the wild west of space in DC. It was home to the Psions, a group of aliens experimented on by the Guardians of the Universe, which led to a conflict that would see Vega closed to the Green Lantern Corps. The Spider Guild controlled a vast amount of space in the system and it became home to the Omega Men, which would introduce readers to Lobo, and the L.E.G.I.O.N., a mercenary superhero team created by Vril Dox to help save the people of the universe from the evil and the powerful.

The Omega Men would become home to adventures in the Vega System, with it also related to Starfire’s race, the Tamaraneans. Issues of The Omega Men would have back-up “Vega” stories, taking readers to the various worlds of the star system, with several memorable tales from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen team of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill among bangers from the mid ’80s talent pool, which was stacked (I like “A Man’s World” the most). It was an interesting way to flesh out the setting and it hearkened back to the pulp roots of sci-fi, when short, clever sci-fi stories were the order of the day.

Lobo would become more popular than the rest of the Omega Men and migrate over to L.E.G.I.O.N., which would become the home to Vega stories. DC did great in the ’90s, but the cosmic side of things suffered. L.E.G.I.O.N. was cancelled, the Green Lantern Corps was destroyed, and the Darkstars couldn’t step into the void. Eventually, Green Lantern (Vol. 3) became the lone sci-fi DC ongoing. The return of the Corps in the ’00s would bring back cosmic DC, but it was very much Corps-focused and Vega was nowhere to be seen.

The New 52 was another big DC reboot, with the publisher trying to diversify their line in various ways that didn’t involve Vega until 2015, with writer Tom King put out a new 12-issue Omega Men series. This series recast Vega as the ultimate corrupt star system, with the Omega Men acting as freedom fighters. It was very much about the ugliness of an insurgency, and it was the last time that Vega would be important in the DC Multiverse. Since then, we’ve seen the Green Lantern mythos get another refresh, but still no Vega.

We’re seeing DC take their comics in all kinds of directions right now. We have Doom Patrol, we have Legion of Superheroes, we have Lobo, The Demon, Batwoman, Fury of Firestorm, Deadman, and various other old school DC comics. Jonah Hex is getting another series. It’s past time for Vega to come back, whether in Lobo or in a new Omega Men. For too many years, DC fans have thought that the extent of cosmic DC was the Green Lantern mythos, but this was never the case. Bringing back Vega would go a long way towards re-establishing why cosmic DC is worth reading.

Vega Is the Next Big DC Frontier

Everyone loves cosmic Marvel, but you rarely hear anyone talking about “cosmic DC”. You hear plenty of Green Lantern talk, but for the most part, no one has talked about cosmic DC outside of them in any serious way in a long time. Sometimes, we’ll get a Strange Adventures, but for the most part, it’s multi-colored Lantern Corps’ all the way down, with the New Gods showing up to add spice. Where are the Khund? Where are the Dominators? Where is the Spider Guild? Where are the Psions? Why haven’t we been back to Vega?

DC seems serious about rebuilding their old school multiverse and we’re reaching the time when bringing back Vega would be perfect. It’s a whole new frontier for fans to discover, one that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in recent years. Vega is calling and hopefully DC will answer; fans could use some of the sci-fi thrills you can only get from the Vega System. Sometimes, it can only happen in Vega.

Do you want the Vega System back? Am I too much of a DC geek? Sound off in the comment section below.

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