3 out of 5

Reading ‘Miracleman’ has been an interesting experience in expectations.  I knew not to go into it expecting the holy grail, as Moore has had years since to hone his craft and – while certainly a noteworthy addition to his oeuvre – that the built up years of controversy were more about the battle over rights than any kind of scarpering over content.  Still, it wasn’t what I expected.  Standing back from it, I can see the general structure of Book One origin, Book Two discovery of self and Book Three an evolution of types, but the varying artists and extended timeframe over which the project was completed lend it something of an uneven feel, maybe over-relying on gregarious pulling-out-the-rug moves and a sense of in-story history that doesn’t quite get the setup it needs.  Which goes back to my initial qualifier: that Moore has gotten better at this stuff.  As has been commented in probably a million elsewheres, within Miracleman you can see the template the writer would apply to many of his tales, whether within the drama of Watchmen or the pop comic attack of Tom Strong.  And true to a lot of his pre-ABC years (and non-2000 AD stuff), these templates are often pairing reality – a grim, bleak reality for Mike Moran and those suffering at the hands of Young Miracleman – with fantasy – that of Gargunza’s dream hero world through which Miracleman was ‘raised.’  In ‘Olympus,’ this pairing of classic comic cheekiness with the downtrodden human experiences necessitates the famous battle of issue 15 between heroes and villains, Totleben splashing much blood about and Moore narratively romancing the whole ordeal, until our new god – Miracleman – can save the world from itself.  Issue 16, taken on its own, is a masterwork of scope and pacing, stepping bit by bit through the new world and somehow satisfyingly summarizing massive changes within a few pages.  Combined with the whole arc, though – despite the pains Moore took to weave in themes and characters via flashbacks and flash-forwards – I’m still left with feeling like it was an uneven experience.  The jaw-dropping effect of book 16 (moreso than the gore in 15, which stacks against the birth in the last arc and splashes of violence throughout as interesting excursions into overkill of the reality vs. fantasy concept) was enough to make me waver, and thus it’s definitely likely that, now knowing the gist, a reread will improve my take, but I can’t ignore that I just didn’t feel wrapped up in things too much until that point.  Again: Moore has improved on this over the years.

I read a few reviews to see how the rest of the world feels / felt, and as expected, it’s hard to find dissenters.  One of the fairest one that I read, though, is here, as it admits to the somewhat bumpy ride and overwroughtness of Alan’s writing (another thing he got better at weaving into his style – here it settles into an effective beat by the end but is very often, especially at the beginning of the arc, just way too many words, regardless of maybe indulging that to capture Miracleman’s ‘voice.’) but respects the expansion of the concept and world over the course of the books.

Was it worth the wait?  Certainly.  This is an important piece of the Moore puzzle, but it’d be interesting to see how history would’ve treated it without the ownership issues.  It feels like an early work, I think, however you cut it, but like Watchmen, I’m certain anyone reading it now or then would / will be surprised at the level to which Moore attempts to elevate things while staying rooted in comics, regardless of how successful we can argue he was with that in Miracleman.  To the Marvel reproductions, same complaint applies: the extras of the penciled pages and original MM stories are nice, but generally feel like filler without some extra editorial.  A couple of books in this arc get some extra sketches, which is nice, along with some rare visible notes from Totleben in the original artwork.  The reproduction quality is still top-notch, with excellent recoloring / lettering and that handsome black-backed cover design, but the 4.99 price tag is equally still something of a sucker move ’cause you know we have no option.