This particular iteration of Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads I avoided on the stands and since it was very quickly a hit I knew a trade would sooner or later present itself. It has done so and now I can say that I am far removed from the tastes of modern comic readers. To say that these are not the same heroes created by Jack "King" Kirby is putting it mildly. This is the very essence of what has become the norm for modern comics telling I guess -- stories in which very little happens. There's lots and lots and lots of talking but the visuals are generally quite static and designed to focus attention on the faces or the body language. There is a decent humor in this one, especially a peace treaty meeting led by Kalibak of all things, but mostly there's irony.
There 's tons and tons of irony and social commentary as we see Scott and Barda deal with the deaths of friends and loved ones and confront the responsibilities of waging war on New Genesis and keeping up their upper-middle class family lifestyle here on Earth. This is a story about self-discovery and that's fine, but after a bit it gets tiresome.
Scott Free is a god with worries and frets about his personal mortality, and he's hardly the kind of fellow one would imagine filling out the costume of Mister Miracle. Orion and Lightray come in for some extremely rough handling -- one cold and villainous and the other a feckless toady. (I didn't detect the Forever People but Funky Flashman and Metron are both on hand.)The bold and earthy forthright bravery of the original Fourth World stories is supplanted here by an attempt to make the heroes more like us instead of inspiring us to be more like them. Sad that really.
Here the covers.
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