Miracleman: The Silver Age: Worth the wait, or too little too late?
Is trying to complete decades-old unfinished projects ever a good idea?
Miracleman: The Silver Age
Written by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham
Art by Mark Buckingham
Colors by Jordie Bellaire and D’Israeli
Published by Marvel Comics, 2024
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Miracleman is something of a sacred cow in the world of comics, at least for those who have been reading superhero stories for several decades. However, it’s possible that it has aged out of relevance. That is, it was a big deal back in the 1980s, and due to legal issues, it gained notoriety as something that was hard to track down and read. Those who did manage to track it down were rewarded with a narrative that broke down the nonsensical elements of superhero stories, examined the effects that super powers might have in the real world, and took an adult approach to these ideas.
However, while these ideas were groundbreaking at the time, they’re probably not as compelling these days. We’ve had so many superhero stories in so many mediums that what may have seemed like a fascinating examination of these ideas is now just another approach that may be taken. What’s more, the world of comics has expanded exponentially, and while superheroes were once the dominant genre, they’re now just one of many types of stories that may be told. What once may have seemed like an essential examination of the plots and tropes of a dominant type of comics storytelling is now kind of a curiosity, an interesting look at what seemed important several decades ago but is less compelling in the 21st century.
With Miracleman: The Silver Age and the upcoming next installment, The Dark Age, readers will finally get to experience the next chapters in this story. But do we really need to return to this milieu? Not necessarily, but for those who have been waiting several decades after the abrupt end of an unfinished story, it’s exciting to find out how it would have played out.
However, before we delve into this book, it’s worth taking a step back to explain what led up to this point. Miracleman has a long, convoluted history, and those who haven’t been paying attention to the ins and outs of the industry for multiple decades may not know why it’s a big deal.
Miracleman started out as Marvelman, a British knockoff of Captain Marvel (the one who has since been renamed Shazam to avoid confusion with the comics company that bears the same name). It was published in the 1950s and 60s, and then it was revived in 1982. The new series was written by Alan Moore, with art by people such as John Totleben and Rick Veitch, and it was an early example of his deconstruction of superhero comics. When the series was brought over to the United States, it was retitled Miracleman, and it continued through the 80s and early 90s.
The series gained acclaim due to its examination of many of the tropes of superhero comics and its adult approach. Moore tried to take a realistic approach, looking at how super powers would affect people and the world at large. He focused on adult concerns and the psychological impact that superheroic conflicts would have on their participants. He also took some of the ideas of adolescent power fantasies to their logical conclusion, providing some extreme violence in a climactic battle between the main character and his young protege, who had become corrupted by absolute power. It was fascinating stuff, with ideas and images that people had never seen before.
Of course, that problem with influential works of art is that people who are influenced by them will take their ideas and run with them, making what was once groundbreaking seem pretty commonplace. Many comics have built on the concepts Moore came up with here, examining superheroes from every angle and exhausting all possibilities. The surprising level of violence in the series has also become pretty common, even in mainstream Marvel and DC books. The original stories have lost their power to shock and surprise, and while they’re still interesting, they’ve almost become historical curios rather than foundational works that must be experienced.
After Moore left the series, Neil Gaiman took over as the writer, with Mark Buckingham providing the art. Their first story arc, “The Golden Age,” was a series of stories examining a world in which Miracleman had built a utopia, solving all of the world’s ills, ending scarcity, and granting wishes to people who climbed to the top of the tower where he lived as something of a god. They began to follow this up with another story, “The Silver Age,” but their work was cut short when the publisher of the comic went bankrupt. The comic and the character of Miracleman then fell into something of a legal limbo as various people fought over the rights, and fans were left wondering what Gaiman and Buckingham would have done if they had been able to continue.
Well, fast forward to the 21st century, and we finally get to find out. In the mid-2010s, Marvel Comics managed to sort out the legal issues surrounding Miracleman, and they acquired the rights to reprint the old comics and begin publishing new stories. I think there has been some talk about bringing Miracleman into the Marvel universe, but the more interesting development has been the continuation of Gaiman and Buckingham’s unfinished story. This also took several years, originally being announced in 2016 and coming out in 2022 and 2023. The story that was cut short in the early 90s was finally finished (albeit with a cliffhanger ending promising another chapter) around 30 years later.
So, after that incredibly long prelude, we can finally look at Miracleman: The Silver Age and see whether it was worth the wait. The story starts with a wordless prelude in which Miracleman goes about resurrecting one of his sidekicks, Young Miracleman. A text piece helpfully reminds people like me who haven’t read the original series in a long time of the backstory in which Miracleman and his sidekicks, Young Miracleman and Kid Miracleman were given their powers as part of an experiment run by Dr. Gargunza, a former Nazi scientist, but all of their early adventures (the comics from the 50s and 60s) were actually computer simulations. The British government decided that they were too dangerous, so they used an atomic bomb to wipe out the program. Young Miracleman was killed, while Miracleman lost his memory and went on to live as a normal person until he rediscovered his powers, and Kid Miracleman escaped and eventually turned evil.
Having brought Young Miracleman back to life, Miracleman and his pantheon of allies begin reintroducing him to the world, which takes a good bit of adjustment. He still has a 60s mindset, so simply adjusting to the modern age (the story takes place in 2003) is difficult enough, but he also has to figure out how to navigate the utopia that Miracleman has built. There are some early difficulties as he seems put off by one of Miracleman’s allies being a “coloured gentleman” and Miraclewoman wearing a “filthy bathing suit.” It doesn’t help that he gets whisked along on a world tour where he attends multiple celebratory parades in various major cities.
Things come to a head due to a somewhat upsetting confrontation in which Miracleman questions Young Miracleman’s sexuality, leading the latter to head off on his own and experience the world as a regular person rather than a world-famous superhero. Somewhat by chance, he crashes in the Himalayas, where he joins a guy who is making a pilgrimage to meet a famous former superhero who lives up in the mountains, and he also befriends some other superheroes who are passing through. During these interactions, he begins to question what he thought he knew about his identity and his past, leading him to embark on a quest to discover his origins and figure out his place in this world.
That’s all generally interesting enough, and Gaiman and Buckingham convey the emotional journey that Young Miracleman is undertaking really well. He’s overwhelmed by learning that he was wrong about what he remembered of his past, as well as discovering what happened while he was dead and what sort of world he has been reborn into. Much of the utopian society seems positive on the surface, but flaws become apparent as YM begins to learn about what is happening at the ground level rather than the view from Miracleman’s citadel in the sky.
This is all a pretty good story, exploring the world that has been built and leading up to future chapters in which it will all most likely come tumbling down. However, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what Gaiman is trying to say with this series. Part of it may be a commentary on the Silver Age of comics, which took place from roughly the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. That was the era in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby built the Marvel universe that we know and love, creating flawed heroes with feet of clay who did their best to do what was right while still making mistakes and dealing with real-world problems. But at the same time, these stories featured lots of large-scale superheroic battles that had world-shaking effects, without really considering how common people would be affected.
Some of this history is reflected in the attitudes of the various superheroic characters that have sprung up in Miracleman’s world. We learn that he has sired thousands of children through sperm donations, and many of them have taken on heroic personas without much purpose other than playacting comics-style scenarios. We see some of them engaging in battles in an apparently unpopulated replica of Manhattan that has been built on an island in the South Pacific, punching each other through buildings and delivering overwrought dialogue, then rebuilding things so they can do it again another day. Because there are no reasons for actual conflict in a world where everyone has access to everything they could ever want, these characters and the thousands of others with superpowers end up doing whatever they can to stave off boredom, whether that means pretending to fight, engaging in casual sex, partying the night away, or zooming around the world on “superbikes” in search of something interesting to do.
While the idea that superheroes can make mistakes may seem to be less of a big deal in a world with no problems, we do get some exploration of the real-world concerns that may affect people. That is, does having superpowers solve everyone’s problems? Of course not, but that’s kind of the premise that Miracleman has built this world on. Anyone who wants them can get fantastic powers, and they can do whatever they want, but this won’t necessarily make them happy. Existing relationship problems, interpersonal issues, and personality flaws will still affect people, and amazing powers or near-magical technology won’t make that any better.
That’s one of the other main thrusts of this story, with Gaiman examining the emptiness of a “perfect” world. One of the most striking parts of the story involves Young Miracleman and some friends he has made visiting Tom Caxton, who used to be a superhero known as Mister Master. He was one of the first people that Miracleman granted superpowers to, and he became rich and famous, but he gave it all up to live on his own in his childhood home, which he moved to a location on a remote mountain. When questioned about why he quit being a superhero, he talks about why he became disillusioned by the whole idea. Once you’ve gotten everything you ever wanted, what do you do next? You’re still the same person with the same problems, and trying to paper over them with a colorful costume and codename will only work for so long.
Caxton also provides a pointed critique of Miracleman’s idea of a perfect world. He says, “At the end of the day, you are dealing with a world shaped by a Nazi scientist’s take on preadolescent power fantasies. And now all of us have grown up to be preadolescent power fantasies…even if some of us are now adolescent power fantasies.” Realizing that acting out childish scenarios and trying to be something you’re not is unhelpful, he asked Miracleman for “gold Kryptonite” that would let him leave the superheroic life behind and try to find some semblance of peace. Of course, trying to escape from one’s problems by living in comfort in a remote location may not be a real solution either, but in a world like this, finding some sort of meaning is possibly the best anyone can hope for.
It’s with Caxton’s help that Young Miracleman gets started down the path of exploring his origins. While YM goes by the name of Dickie Dauntless, it’s clear that this is not his real moniker, especially after Caxton connects it with a song by Gilbert and Sullivan. While YM hadn’t questioned his past before, he’s suddenly faced with the realization that he doesn’t know who he is or where he came from. With the help of a young woman who styles herself as a superheroine named Meta-Maid, he travels back to England, searches through various archives, and finds the orphanage where he lived after the death of his mother. This leads him to relive some especially harrowing memories of child abuse and exploitation, providing some context to his previous negative reaction to the question regarding his sexual orientation. It also galvanizes his resolve to find a place for himself in Miracleman’s world and create his own role rather than just fitting into the ideas that others have about him. As he continues to question whether all of this is a fantasy worth living, he begins to set himself up as the potential catalyst for the downfall of a utopia that seems increasingly empty.
Along with the solid story that Gaiman has created here, Buckingham’s art really brings everything to life. He’s great at conveying emotion, bringing the quieter moments of the story and the interpersonal interactions to life. But he’s also good at coming up with fantastical imagery that provides a sense of scale to the level of power and technology that Miracleman and his cohorts are working with. There’s some nice Jack Kirby-style technology, as well as a few trippy scenes involving aliens from other dimensions that function at levels that are barely comprehensible, even to the godlike Miraclepeople. It’s a great way to provide a human-level view of a world that has advanced too fast for people to keep up with. If the continuing story turns into something that involves large-scale action and destruction, I’m sure Buckingham will be up to the task, making sure we understand the ways individual characters are affected by cosmic-scale events.
So, back to the original question: did this book live up to the hype? I would say yes, at least for those who have been waiting to read it. It’s just the first part of a story that’s going to take some additional dramatic turns, but it’s a well-realized return to a milieu that had been put on pause, and it’s full of good moments and interesting ideas. Does it mean anything to people who aren’t invested in the decades-long Miracleman story? Probably not, but it’s still a fascinating examination of the failures of a “perfect” world, as well as a character study of someone who has suffered trauma and is ready to take control of their life rather than fitting into others’ expectations. It should be really interesting to see where Gaiman goes with this story next, and hopefully we won’t have to wait another decade or more for the conclusion.