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 confirm 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 decent humor in this protracted yarn, especially a peace treaty meeting led by Kalibak of all creatures, 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 who actually kicks off this story by attempting suicide, 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 yet still cruel toady. (I didn't detect the Forever People, but Funky Flashman and Metron are both on hand.)
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 who actually kicks off this story by attempting suicide, 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 yet still cruel toady. (I didn't detect the Forever People, but Funky Flashman and Metron are both on hand.)
The bold and earthy forthright bravery of Kirby's 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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Here the covers.
Rip Off
I remember seeing this in my local comic shop but it despite some nice covers it didn't intrigued me, on a few quick scans of the pages there were too many "talking head" panels for me. I did enjoy the late 1970s Marshall Rogers Mr Miracle though .
ReplyDeleteYou and me both, though Rogers was not on it long enough. Michael Golden was a decent replacement.
DeleteI couldn't agree more! This story garnered one of the very few negative reviews I've ever posted at Amazon, in fact - I much prefer to review what I've enjoyed. What especially angered me is that King's story was said to be a "love letter to Jack Kirby" even as it went against everything that was Jack Kirby's original & deeply personal vision. If King wanted to write the story that he wrote, he should have used characters of his own. I find that I don't really care for his overall worldview, which seems to be more in line with what modern comics readers want, I suppose. You can count me as being just as out of touch with such bleak sensibilities as you are & quite happy to be so.
ReplyDeleteThe world needs heroes who inspire a desire to rise above our failings.
DeleteThanks for the warning. I often wonder if the reason why comic publishers keep recycling the old, original super-heroes is because they don't have the imagination or talent to pull off something new to knock readers' socks off like they used to. I keep trying to like a new comic well enough to buy it, but every time I read a few pages in the shop, I usually say (to myself) "This sucks". The last new comics I laid down the bucks for were some of the new EC titles. At best they were fair and none were what I would consider above average. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling that they won't last long.
ReplyDeleteI've been intrigued by those "new' EC titles, but not enough to drop dimes...yet.
DeleteThe other big reason the companies keep recycling the characters-- even when they're not characters who were ever especially popular-- is that the raconteurs working on them can make no claims to owning the properties, since each has already been established as a DC IP. I mean, how else can one explain not one but TWO revisions of the unsuccessful humor comic ANGEL AND THE APE? I suppose the companies might also be motivated by the "lightning in a bottle" theory. that on occasion something strikes a chord-- and therefore the company wants to harness that possibility.
ReplyDeleteOn occasion I can admire this or that aspect of a revision. Morrison's DOOM PATROL was highly imaginative, though he did an almost standard "Alan Moore Hit Job" on the heroes, so that they bore no relation to the originals. But the Morrison version, not the Arnold Drake version, got the HBO adaptation, because Morrison's was "edgy."
I have a hard time with Morrison's Doom Patrol on TV. It was nice to see some level of adaptation of some of my favorite classic heroes, but I've not been able to get into it beyond the intro phase.
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