Rick Veitch

The second volume of Miracleman is very attention-grabbing—it contains both gruesome violence and an extraordinarily detailed rendering of a birth, as Michael Moran's wife gives birth to their baby. In the post-Watchmen, post-Authority era of superhero comics, the violence isn't so striking, but I still can't think of any other superhero comic I've read in the following four decades where a baby's head emerges from a woman's vagina in close-up detail.

Outside of that, though, this feels show more like the weak link in the chain of the Miracleman saga. Not that it's bad, but in terms of story, what happens in the two volumes on either side of it are more significant and more interesting; in a classic middle-volume-of-trilogy situation, we need this volume to get from book one to book three, but it doesn't have as much to say on its own. We need the birth, we need to see Miracleman investigate his origin, and there's some important themes and resonances here, but they're not so interesting as what the other two books do.

Thankfully, given it's by Alan Moore and some talented artistic collaborators, how it says what it says is always interesting. Interesting writing as always (though some of what it does with race is very dated now), and Alan Davis and John Ridgway in particular are always great illustrators worth reading. (This might be the first time I've seen John Ridgway art with color and not felt it diminished by the coloring, so kudos to Steve Oliff.) Highlights include: Miracleman's conversation in the woods with a kid scared of nuclear war, the flashback chapters about Gargunza manipulating the dreams of the "Miracleman Family," and the way the malignant government agent ends up helping Miracleman in the end.

There are two extra stories here: one a kind-of-funny story about Young Miracleman trying to hit on a receptionist in 1957, and a frame story by Cat Yronwode to a set of Mick Anglo Marvelman reprints that had to be run in Miracleman #8 when a flood damaged the Eclipse offices, which I guess is nice to have for completeness's sake but pretty meaningless on its own.

Most of the extras in this volume are pages of uncolored original art, which is less interesting to me. Two things I find frustrating about the otherwise detailed archival presentation of these volumes are 1) there are no individual art credits (which chapters did Alan Davis draw? who knows) and 2) there is no original publication data given. Where did these stories originally appear? This is particularly frustrating as the extras will say things like "this is the cover of Warrior #16"... but you have no clear indication of which story originally appeared in Warrior #16! show less

It doesn’t require a lot of thinking to come to the conclusion there’s something weird about the superhero sidekick. The fact that brooding crimefighters prefer to hang out with boys and girls in their early teens, gladly putting them in mortal danger, is rather unpleasant when you think about it. Also, the sidekick is more expendable than the hero, and is often killed off to inject new life into storylines, or just to prove that danger and suspense is real. Batman is ticking off Robins, show more and in a famous example from the early nineties, a poll was held among readers whether Jason Todd, the second Robin should be killed or not. The reading audience wanted blood – Jason died in the next issue.

The potential abusiveness of the hero / sidekick relationship has been explored several times in post-modern superhero comics like Top Ten or Astro City, but Rich Veitch goes all the way with it in this album, creating a grotesque, distorted superhero world. A generation of sidekicks, the so called “Brat Pack” have just been killed off, and merchandise calls for a quick replacement. A quartet of starry eyed teens are recruited through a church and the process of being “broken in” starts. Veitch’s story is pretty crude and aims for deconstruction and low blows. One of the heroes is a pedophile, one a white power sadist, one is teaching sex as a woman’s best weapon and one is a drug addict.

There are interesting things in here, but the story doesn’t quite work, and it pretty quickly becomes evident that some of the storylines are much more developed than others – a problem because most of the spreads are divided into four parts, one for each sidekick. All in all, the setup is way better than the execution. show less

This is not Rick Veitch at his best, it's often pretty clumsy because it was the '80s and it was Marvel Comics trying to be like Heavy Metal, so maybe this is just for obsessive fans... but some of these stories are kind of lovely and some are funny, and I'm just a sucker for his idiosyncracies. (Obsessive fans of Alan Moore may also want to check this out: it has one tiny Moore story that's probably the grossest thing he ever did, and the afterword has a hilariously over-ambitious plan for show more a whole cycle of stories that this little throw-away joke was supposed to be part of.) show less

I'm fully on board with this one. Total social commentary time. Sure, Swamp Thing just saved the freaking universe from the Mother of All Darkness, comes home to find that his honey has been thrown in jail for consorting with him. It's sick and unnatural, folks. She works with autistic kids. What's *wrong* with her??? Outcast, barely on bail, she runs to Gotham under a new name, gets picked up with hookers and thrown in jail and now it's a media sensation.

Now bring in the Greenie.

Greenie: show more Let her go!

Law: No! It's the law!

Greenie: The law is stupid, I can burst you all apart from the inside out before you can sneeze. I just want my woman.

Abs: Hey, honey, it's okay. We better not kill all of Gotham today. Let's try to work this out peacefully.

Greenie: Screw that. I'm gonna go all nonviolent on their asses and turn Gotham into a perfect Eden until they give in.

Batman: Uh, I kinda agree with Greenie, but he is acting like a terrorist. I better get my defoliant.

Greenie: You're an idiot. (Pounds Batman to shit.)

Lex Luthor: I've got an idea. Napalm.

Law: Wait, wait, I think we'd best just give him his woman. Someone just mentioned that this same law would apply to Superman, wouldn't it?

Other Law: Oh crap. We're so sorry. We didn't mean it. Sorry.

Lex Luthor: Fuck this. (Supersciencey harmonics napalm missile slams into Greenie's head. He's dead. Again.)

Everyone else: Oh, god, what have we done! We didn't mean it! Sorry.

Abs: (Looks at them all.) Gotham's full of morons.



Great story, no? Fantastic story. :) We even get more psychedelic stuff and a shift in the wavelength to Blue. Neat, huh? Oh, and Greenie is kinda a god now. This is the stuff I expected from him from the start, but only now get to see in all his glory. This is the awesome Swamp Thing I've been waiting for. :)

Yay! show less