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.
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?
Either the reader is going to buy into Gaiman’s setup for this issue or the reader is going to reject it. Even before Gaiman gets into the “meat” of the issue, which is basically a lengthy monologue from Dream about the importance of Death. Both as a natural event and as Dream’s sister.
Ah, the big fight issue. Doctor Destiny versus Dream for control of the Dreamworld. Or whatever it’s called. After the two stand-off in the diner, after some glimpses of the world going mad, Doctor Destiny has a trippy dream he’s Caesar and then the big fight. It’s the two of them against a white background. Not the most visceral setting for a comic book fight scene.
The issue takes place over a day at a diner. Doctor Destiny is trying to bring about the end of the world and he traps a bunch of people in the diner and slowly drives them mad. Or not slowly.
Gaiman’s strings show a little too much this issue. The Justice League guest stars–well, just Martian Manhunter and Mister Miracle. Turns out while Dream was away, someone became a supervillain with one of his gadgets. It ties things into the DC universe a little too much. There’s a great bit where Mister Miracle is dreaming of Apokolips and Kieth and Malcolm Jones III do a fantastic Kirby homage.
Dream goes to Hell, which requires the Demon as a guest star. Gaiman doesn’t have anything for him to do, past rhyme a little for the protagonist and cause some mischief. It’s a pointless cameo, though Kieth and Dringenberg do fine on the Demon. They don’t do so well later, when they have to draw every demon in Hell. Actually, they do fine on the demons… they lose their hold on Dream at that point. He feels too out of place.
Dream’s quest brings him into a John Constantine story–and with Constantine comes a return of Kieth’s improbably proportions for people’s legs–but it’s the strongest issue so far. Gaiman writes Constantine really well, with enough nods to his adventures and the DC universe but never to the point he’s just filling in.