Kimota! – With A Word, The Value Of Your Back Issues Tumble: Review Of Miracleman #1

This week, Marvel comics began selling reprints of Miracleman. Miracleman #1 includes the eleven page prologue story “The Invaders From The Future”, originally published in 1985, along with “A Dream Of Flying”, parts 1 and 2, which were originally published in 1982 by Warrior magazine. Miracleman creator, Mick Anglo, wrote the prologue. Alan Moore, who chose to have his name stripped from this reprint, wrote “A Dream Of Flying”. Indeed, if you look at the inside cover where the author typically is listed, it instead says “The Original Writer”. It’s like Moore has never heard of Alan Smithee.

I’ve never read any of the Miracleman books before. My only exposure to them was watching Rob one night in a drunken Ebay war to track down the fabled 15th issue, where I gather one of the good guys goes bad and does something truly heinous to the city of London and it’s received more poorly than when Superman and Zod do the same thing in Man Of Steel. However, having read much of Moore’s other work, I can see the appeal the Miracleman story must have had for him: Golden Age hero whose story he re imagines in the early 80s, when the apple cheeked Boy Scout heroes of the 50s could be more thoroughly examined for their dark undersides. It is a theme Moore has visited often since, in Watchmen and as recently as the Image Comics, originally as Awesome Comics, reboot of Supreme.