Look! In the Stores! A Black Action Figure!

He’s dark and handsome. He leaps stereotypes in a single bound. And he’s on his toughest mission yet: muscling his way off the pages of a comic book onto the shelves of major toy stores.

Meet Omega Man, the creation of Alonzo Washington, a civil rights and social activist whose 5-year-old company, Omega 7 Inc., publishes comic books featuring socially conscious superheroes of color.

The comics are distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors Inc., of Timonium, Md., the world’s largest distributor of English-language comic books.

Fast gaining favor with comic book collectors, Omega Man is the first of Washington’s characters to take three-dimensional form.

A 6-inch Omega Man action figure, available in dark- and light-brown skin tones, is currently being introduced at Toys R Us stores across the country, said Glen Geisler, Toys R Us advertising manager for the Denver-to-St. Louis region.

“The figure is in different skin shades from what is normally happening out there,” Geisler said. “It’s kind of a new and exciting venture that we think other manufacturers will take notice of.”

For Washington, who was approached by Precision Design Workshop of Hong Kong in 1996 about creating an Omega Man action figure, production of the figure fulfills something of a childhood dream.

“At a young age, I used to take my action figures and paint them. I’d get some clay and change their features, give them an afro or something and turn them into superheroes that I’d make up--a black Superman or something,” said the 30-year-old Washington.

But, he said, “I never really thought seriously about doing my comic book work as action figures.”

It’s not just facial features and the braid down his back signifying African royalty that distinguish Omega Man from other bodysuit-clad men of supernatural powers. There are, after all, other black action figures on the market.

Many of those, however, are sidekicks to white superheroes or began as white characters whose skin was later darkened by their creators or marketers, Washington said.

“A lot of these black superheroes that are sidekicks are ex-cons, ex-athletes, something stereotypical. Omega Man comes from the future. He’s intelligent,” he said. “He carves out his own destiny. He travels through time, so that means he knows a lot about history.”

Omega Man does have a recurring enemy--the evil Kuhl. They are shapeshifting characters jealously bent on preventing creation of the peaceful, racism-free future paradise in which our hero dwells.

In one issue, the Kuhl seek to create racial havoc by attempting to kill O.J. Simpson. Revealing Judge Lance Ito as a shapeshifted Kuhl, Omega Man dispenses with the alien (“Kiss me. I’m the winner,” he tells the dazed creature) and sets history back on course.

In another, Omega Man is zooming into the middle of the Million Man March, just in time to stop white supremacists from assassinating minister Louis Farrakhan. And through it all he makes points about tough social issues--AIDS, black-on-black crime, disrespect of women.

But getting into the hands of fans and collectors as an action figure has taken a skill beyond even Omega Man: marketing.

Washington sold about 3,000 of the figures by taking orders during appearances at comic-book and cultural shops, comics expos and churches. The orders are processed by his wife, Dana, and his mother, Millie.

Media coverage has helped create demand. A story on Christmas toys in Ebony magazine called attention to Omega Man, and the monthly White’s Guide to Collecting Figures featured him in an article on limited-release figures.

Diamond Comic is also distributing the figure to the 4,500 retail stores it supplies nationwide, said purchasing manager Mark Herr.

“There are some relatively small publishers out there taking a big gamble and creating action figures of their own without going through big [toy] companies like Kenner and Hasbro,” Herr said.

“Alonzo’s one of the first. And for a small guy he’s actually done very well in getting this toy distributed.”

He’s “nothing if not persistent,” Herr added.

Even if the little figure doesn’t make it as big as Washington hopes, Omega Man will continue his physics- and convention-defying feats in the comic books.

“The book is really an extension of my activism,” Washington said. “I’m trying to raise consciousness among young African Americans, build self-esteem. So I’m not 100% about trying to make money.”