Comic Book Review: Miracleman Issue #1 (March 1982) to Issue #19 (November 1990)

Writer(s): Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman

Artist(s): Garry Leach, Alan Davis, Mark Buckingham

General Summary

Michael Moran is an everyday working class husband, unspectacular in every sense of the word. He's fat, getting old, and incapable of having a child with his wife. He's a journalist plagued by migraines and dreams of flying, only to wake up every night to reality of life. He is haunted by images he cannot understand, but most of all, by a word that he cannot remember.

One day, while on assignment at a nuclear power plant, the crowd of people he is within is attacked by masked men with machine guns. Suddenly, suffering from an intense migraine that debilitates him, he is dragged by the men, only to pass a sign. On the sign, he reads the word "atomic." Only he sees it upside down. Cimota...Kimota. Suddenly, it rushes back to him. He whispers the word, and with a flash of lightning, he becomes Miracleman!

Blessed with flight, super speed, super strength and invulnerability, he is the living incarnation of the superman. He is perfect, all that Moran wasn't. Things seem to finally be looking up.

This, however, is when his problems begin. The world's "first" superhero is not alone. He finds a formidable and terrifying enemy in his former sidekick, Kid Miracleman, whose alter ego has become more powerful as a result of never having reverted back to his secret identity of the young Johnny Bates. Also, as Moran continues to unearth his past, he begins to realize that his comical and fantastic origins were lies, discovering that the truth is more disturbing and chilling than expected. Men and former friends from his past begin to reappear left and right, and his marriage begins to strain from the weight of Miracleman. Add that to a growing inferiority complex, and we have a man who's blessings have begun to look more like curses.

But like any great hero, he gradually overcomes these obstacles one by one, but not without great sacrifice. After one final horrifying battle with Kid Miracleman, we see not the death of a man, but the birth of a god.

What I Liked About It:

So I was debating as to which comic I should start my comic book guide with. I consulted with my friends, all of which gave me sound advice, but I decided to start off with the most recent book that I have read. Technically, I am still reading it, but I've read enough to be able to give my critique on it. But I've also decided to start off with this book to prove a point: the superhero genre can be amazingly deep with social critiques and themes.

And this book is incredibly dense. You can read issue 1 and not realize that it's only one issue. Sometimes it feels that a whole story arc can play itself out in just one issue. In the first issue, we are presented with a backstory in the form of a 1950s-styled comic, an reintroduction of Miracleman (like Captain America, he had been forgotten), a possible origin story and the first major villain in Kid Miracleman.

Alan Moore writes in the manner that Charlie Kaufman wrote his movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind": sometimes dialogue and scenes don't make sense in the beginning, but the twists and turns start to make sense as you finish the issue. There were many nights where I could barely get passed an issue because I had to reread pages. I could barely get passed the first three issues for almost a week.

This, however, isn't necessarily bad. Just 'cause you have some critical analysis in a comic book doesn't mean it's boring. On the contrary, the amount of analyzing provides with some real questions about life. What is power? Who has it? Would one really be better if one were powerful? Or is this just a reflection of one's own self-worth?

The story ends with an examination of power. Even if intended for "good," is it justified?

Spoiler alert: Kid Miracleman has also become one of my favorite supervillains. Ever. Period. He is batshit crazy. And when I mean crazy, I mean way crazier than the Joker, the supervillain standard for insanity. Let's put it this way. While waiting for Miracleman to confront him, he passes the time by destroying a city and killing and mutilating all its inhabitants. And I do mean everyone: men, women, children, the elderly. Everyone. In one scene, he spares a woman, claiming that she was the only one to be kind to him. One panel later, he reappears and pounds her head in, saying, "I'm sorry. They'd say I was going soft, wouldn't they?" Holy shit.

Recommendations:

I would recommend this to fans of Alan Moore. And by that, I don't mean fans of Watchmen. I don't mean this as a condescending remark. Watchmen is by far Alan Moore's greatest work, his magnum opus, but it's also one of his easiest to read. If you've read his other works like V for Vendetta, Tom Strong or even Swamp Thing, you'll find that this man loves to place multiple layers in all his words and dialogue. His stories jump from one perspective, time period, and theme to another, which can make it hard to focus. Later in the series, it passes off to Neil Gaiman, which is a great writer himself, and the stories become more focused but broad in scope, focusing on not just Miracleman but everyone impacted by his appearance.

I wouldn't recommend this book if you're just looking for a fun superhero story. I highlight "just" because this is a fun superhero comic book, but it's also quite depressing and scary at times and extremely thought-provoking. Also, the artwork isn't as fun as, say, Todd MacFarlane's run on Spider-man. It's still beautifully drawn, but not quite as dynamic, focusing on a more realistic take of the superhero.