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 has a boyfriend who has a regular child. If there’s some deeper message in Buckingham drawing the lady and star child as white and boyfriend and boyfriend’s son as black….

I mean, Gaiman’s Miracleman is on the nose. For what should be an indie comic book, it’s really on the nose. But I can’t believe it’s so desperately on the nose. And, if the comic didn’t go terribly bad at the end, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about the interracial romance aspect as far as Gaiman’s protracted symbolism goes. There’s so much of it elsewhere in the issue, one can only look for so much.

Most of the issue is this “in-world” storybook (with really lame interludes of the lady reading it to the two kids–the star child being, you know, a little flying god) about Miracleman’s baby’s journey across the universe. It’s kind of fun. The storybook aspect. Gaiman does a lot better at writing a pseudo-storybook than he does doing a pseudo-Moore.

Then the reveal. The dude is leaving the lady and her star child told her because her star child has superpowers. It’s all about how this woman thought having a baby would make her life whole and it hasn’t because she had a Miracleman-brand star child.

It’s offensively dumb. When Gaiman was just doing lame characterizations to get to the storybook insert, it was fine. But when he’s doing that storybook to kill pages and take a load of Buckingham and he’s really got some message? One he tries to get through with inept manipulation. At least competent would’ve been interesting to experience. Inept just makes it annoying.

I might be done with Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham.

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 where the aliens bring back famous dead people.

The lead is the sixth Andy Warhol android. Gaiman avoids the “mystical” skillfully, maybe more skillfully than anything else he does in the comic. A big character reveal in the last few panels changes the comic a little. For the better.

Unfortunately, Gaiman’s Warhol is a weak narrator. The story of an Emil Gargunza android hanging out with Warhol–and Gaiman doing some really obvious looks at how “celebrity” functions–is actually something. Gaiman’s choices are interesting, because Buckingham is more than willing to indulge–and Warhol’s so technically predictable (as an artist), it works for a comic. It’s all on the nose, but it’s a good nose.

Gaiman’s writing of the characters in scene–not that narration–is good. His reserved approach forces involvement and investment from the reader.

It’s a good issue. Even if a solid quarter of Buckingham’s full page spreads are technically wonderful but narrative eye-rolls.

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 to date supermodels and has to dump women as they age, or when he discovers any physical imperfection.

Gaiman’s trying really, really hard with it. Does Miraclewoman cure him of his problem? Sure. After giving him superhero sex on multiple occasions and once with her alter ego. It’s painful, watching Gaiman go for something so desperately. The obviousness makes it awkward.

The second story is about kids living in the Miracleman future. There are a couple fun ideas, but nothing for a story. Though Buckingham certainly has a good time with it.

So far, Gaiman isn’t bringing anything special to Miracleman. By not telling Miracleman’s story, he gets to delay any significant action and judgement.

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 even get Miracleman the quality collection, with unedited original writer issues?

I am not a Gaiman fan. I am a Moore fan. Going into Gaiman and Mark Buckingham’s Miracleman, I am slightly disinterested. I had forgotten they were going to do it. I had forgotten Marvel had been reprinting Miracleman. They’ve done such a bad job of it, the company clearly stretching its britches past the point of public appropriateness.

What does any of the above have to do with Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham? Not much. A little maybe. But definitely not much. Because, so far, there’s nothing to the comic. Miracleman is the granter of wishes. Gaiman writes about people who go see him. Miracleman makes it hard for people to come and ask wishes. But he installs toilets.

Buckingham’s art is cool. It’s an odd pairing with a superhero, but the comic isn’t a superhero book. It’s a pretentious outside-the-mainstream mainstream comic. And an okay one. But, if I were reading it twenty-five years ago, my thought would be the same–there’s only so much time Gaiman can ride on Moore’s steam.