Category: Miracleman
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Here’s the concept for the issue (Gaiman loves his concepts)–Miracleman sells his sperm. Women without children can get the sperm and have star children. Saves the trouble of monoliths and killer computers. You can get a star child real easy. Some of the issue is about this woman who has a star child and she…
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Well, it’s easily the best Miracleman from Gaiman so far. Still no Miracleman, but the comic is pretty solid. It’s pretending to be high concept but isn’t (it’s actually the template for lots of the standard, and acceptable, Vertigo series of the early nineties). Gaiman tells the story of Hades in Miracleman’s Golden Age… it’s…
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Funny thing about this issue of Miracleman–Gaiman lets his didactic storytelling take it over. The issue has a couple stories, both showing the lives of “regular people” living in Miracleman’s “Golden Age.” How regular? Well, one is a lighthouse keeper who has a secret affair with Miraclewoman. He’s a dumpy British jackass who only wants…
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Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham. Will it be the classic always promised? Given how much Marvel butchered its reprints of the Alan Moore issues, will Neil Gaiman–when finishing the comic after twenty-five years–tone it done to make the Mouse happy? And what do we–the readers–get for a happy Mouse? Not Miracleman, the movie. Do we…
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Moore bites off a lot for this final issue to the arc. It isn’t enough Miracleman and company will turn the world into a utopia, Moore has to sell it. He uses great detail–like the Warpsmiths liking the Inuit language the most–to make things process. He also throws in a lot of personality. Heavy metal…
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What’s incredible–and possibly singular–about how Moore approaches Miracleman is his distance. There are moments this issue where another writer might wink at superhero comics. Moore doesn’t. Even in those moments, he’s only writing this one. More so, he’s only writing this moment, even though it’s technically a flashback. London is destroyed, decimated. There is no…
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As far as the art goes, it’s near perfect. Moore’s script (presumably with panel arrangement), Totleben’s art, it’s outstanding. And most of the issue is excellent too. The stuff with the Moran family, the stuff with Miracleman and the other super-powered beings setting up their club… well, actually that decision is Moore’s second most questionable…
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It’s an awesome issue. Not just in the flashback plotting and reveals, but with how Moore structures Miracleman’s narration from the present. Even though the present day stuff is all static and all summary, Moore manages to get in an amazing finish for this issue. Moore doesn’t try to frustrate the reader with foreshadowing, he…
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More hints at what’s to come–both in the bookends and in the present action. Moore’s pretty slick with one of the reveals–so quiet maybe it’s a typo–but the other, revealed on the last page but suggested much earlier… Well, things might just get really dramatic here in a bit. This issue reveals Miraclewoman’s back story.…
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Wow. Even with Moore’s overcooked prose–it’s from Miracleman’s memoirs–wow. It opens five years later, with Miracleman somewhere above the Earth in a floating castle. I think (about the location, not the time). Moore opens with these grandiose images and then brings things down again. New–and lovely–artist John Tolteben can do both fantastical and mundane with…
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John Ridgway returns to ink Veitch and it works out nicely. Veitch has fine composition, with the Ridgway inks the panels all have a lot of personality. I love how Mike looks so ancient and tired. Most of the issue is spent with two aliens who have come to Earth to check on the miracle-people.…
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John Ridgway returns to ink Veitch and it works out nicely. Veitch has fine composition, with the Ridgway inks the panels all have a lot of personality. I love how Mike looks so ancient and tired. Most of the issue is spent with two aliens who have come to Earth to check on the miracle-people.…
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That is one ugly baby. Sorry, getting ahead of myself. This issue features Moore’s returns after a reprints issue and fresh artists. Rick Veitch pencils, Rick Bryant inks. It’s a major improvement over Austen–the panel compositions are once again ambitious–but it’s not particularly great art. Veitch and Bryant do a little Mick Anglo homage and…
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The issue opens with Cat Yronwode apologizing for the following reprints. She ought to doubly apologize as there’s a mention of the reprints being what Miracleman is thinking about after the end of his battle with Gargunza. Except none of the reprints feature Gargunza. Apparently when Miracleman thinks about his past, he thinks about unrelated…
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I wonder how Alan Moore felt about seeing these finished pages. He turned in a great script, sent it off, got back these Chuck Austen pages. It’s a shock he didn’t quit comics then. Oddly enough, Austen is better this issue than last. He’s still terrible though. He can’t do a subplot about some former…
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And here we have the first appearance of Chuck Austen on the art. And wow. Wow. I complained about Alan Davis–who does the first chapter–I complained about his work on faces. But he got the mythic quality of the story. He got how people, even if they aren’t beautifully drawn, do look different. Austen doesn’t…
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Really, the art’s Alan Davis? Mostly, I mean–John Ridgeway’s back to finish the flashback story–but Davis does the art on most of the issue. And it’s not good. It’s really rushed, really loose with detail. There’s definitely some decent composition, but I just thought whoever came on the art had good composition and not good…
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And here’s the first mention of Miracleman as a superhero. He’s hanging out in a park, runs across a kid who’s terrified of a nuclear attack, they bond. Great scene from Moore. Alan Davis does most of the art this issue. It’s very well composed at times, but his figures feel a little two dimensional.…
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It’s a nice issue, sort of finishing out the main questions about Miracleman–how can a fifties-type superhero actually have existed in the modern world Moore operates the series in. The answer is predictable, but Moore’s presentation of the explanation is good. The setup for the reveal, including a fight with another super-powered individual, cuts between…
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And here’s a great cliffhanger. Again, Moore’s not plotting these stories for a full issue, but it shakes out very nicely this issue. Miracleman is an odd comic. Moore runs headstrong into the relationship problems between Mike and Liz, he deals with Mike’s strange duality with Miracleman–the way Mike’s able to talk about Miracleman’s rather…
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There’s something magnificent about the way Alan Moore starts Miracleman. Of course, given the issue is a compilation of shorts from Warrior, it must have been even better to read them in that series. He opens with a retro superhero comic strip, full of fifties silliness and plays it through to the end of the…
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