Miracleman Book One: A Dream of Flying

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant portrayal of a superhero in the "real" world
Review: In "MiracleMan" (UK vt. "MarvelMan") Alan Moore places a classic superhero type in the "real" world - a world very much like this one, in which people who see a man in tights are not going to think "super".

During a terrorist hijacking at a nuclear plant news photographer Michael Moran suffers a debilitating headache and mutters a word he sees from the wrong side of a glass door. And is transformed.

But people don't know what to make of a man who is invulnerable and can fly, and that includes Moran's wife. She asks why she'd never heard of MiracleMan and his now-remembered superfriends, and he has no answer. And the truth of the matter is world-shaking, literally.

This is just an outstanding book. The series hit a very dark spot in a later volume, one which I found personally distasteful, and it seemed to lose its focus by the time Neil Gaiman took it over; unfortunately it was never finished. Nonetheless, an excellent and enduring deconstruction of the idea of the superhero.

I'd recommend Moore's "V for Vendetta" to those who like this book.

One point: the graphic novel edition (the one that I have anyway), is missing several pages which were included at the beginning of the original comic. The comic began with a deliberately cheesy Captain Marvel-style story about time travel, but suddenly froze at the end of the story and zoomed in on MiracleMan's face, panel by panel. "Behold I teach you the superman: he is this lightning, he is this madness!" -Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". The next page was the beginning of the graphic novel, with a far more realistic art and writing style. A very effective demonstration of what Moore planned to do to the cliches of the superhero genre. I don't know why it was eliminated.

Rating:
Summary: SHAZA--I mean, KIMOTA!!!
Review: There is a weird feeling you get, reading Alan Moore's Miracleman stories-the feeling that you're not reading a comic book. The story takes place in the real world-not the comic book universe. As the story opens, we find middle-aged Mike Moran being haunted by dreams of flying. During a terrorist raid, he is taken hostage and suddenly remembers his magic word and becomes a super-hero again. Having forgotten his past for twenty years, it all comes flooding back to him: which presents him with his biggest problem-how to explain things to the misses! As he does, she (famously) begins to laugh at him! The inconsistencies of his super-hero past begin to become apparent to him. Of course something is wrong here. Just what that something is, and how Alan Moore explains it are left for you to be seen.

Of course Miracleman (Marvelman in England) is the British version of Captain Marvel. In reincarnating him, Alan Moore (as is his want) completely reinvents him for a new age. Miracleman is `aufgehobened' for a new era. For me, the best superhero comics like this, The Watchmen, and Marvels, try to portray their larger-than-life heroes as realistically as possible and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, put them in the real world, populated by real people, with real consequences for their actions. In Mike Moran's universe, Superman is well-known...as a comic book character. When Miracleman bursts onto the scene (literally) we imagine what it would be like if a super-hero really appeared in our world. But then, the adventure begins...

Rating:
Summary: SHAZA--I mean, KIMOTA!!!
Review: There is a weird feeling you get, reading Alan Moore's Miracleman stories-the feeling that you're not reading a comic book. The story takes place in the real world-not the comic book universe. As the story opens, we find middle-aged Mike Moran being haunted by dreams of flying. During a terrorist raid, he is taken hostage and suddenly remembers his magic word and becomes a super-hero again. Having forgotten his past for twenty years, it all comes flooding back to him: which presents him with his biggest problem-how to explain things to the misses! As he does, she (famously) begins to laugh at him! The inconsistencies of his super-hero past begin to become apparent to him. Of course something is wrong here. Just what that something is, and how Alan Moore explains it are left for you to be seen.

Of course Miracleman (Marvelman in England) is the British version of Captain Marvel. In reincarnating him, Alan Moore (as is his want) completely reinvents him for a new age. Miracleman is 'aufgehobened' for a new era. For me, the best superhero comics like this, The Watchmen, and Marvels, try to portray their larger-than-life heroes as realistically as possible and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, put them in the real world, populated by real people, with real consequences for their actions. In Mike Moran's universe, Superman is well-known...as a comic book character. When Miracleman bursts onto the scene (literally) we imagine what it would be like if a super-hero really appeared in our world. But then, the adventure begins...

Rating:
Summary: This isn't your father's Superman...
Review: There's a hint of disdain in Moore's Marvelman (renamed Miracleman for distribution in the US, for obvious reasons) for virtually every aspect of the comic "super hero". His response? Laugh a bit, have his fun, and then go on to analyze what a super hero would REALLY mean to our world.

His hero isn't some rock-jawed alien or identity disassociative with a predilection for flying rodents. He's a normal person, and Moore doesn't forget this for a second; when Moran, or Miracleman, is being laughed at by his wife (obviously the voice of Moore in this instance) as he describes his absurd past as a superhero, he shatters a table in frustration.

This book, along with it successive volumes The Red King Syndrome and Olympus, are Moore's legacy to the world of the super hero. Neil Gaiman ties up the package nicely with The Golden Age. In the end, you're left with a lot more questions than answers...but then, that's the point, now isn't it?

Rating:
Summary: An amazing story of a real life super-hero!
Review: This is a great story of what it would be like to have superpowers, a great twist on superhero stories!

Rating:
Summary: Total garbage
Review: This is the kind of comicbook writing done by men who can't write "real" literature but want to be taken seriously despite working in the comicbook field. They take a fun concept and brutalize it in their misguided belief that extra-violent and depressing is the equivalent of "serious" and "mature." I hate to break it to ya, kids, but comicbooks are a genre that defies being taken seriously. I love comicbooks, but they're not serious literature, nor were they ever meant to be. They are escapist fantasy at heart, and wretched attempts at relevance (such as most of Alan Moore's ouevre and all of Neil Gaiman's) are pointless exercises in futility.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome, awesome start to a very memorable series
Review: This was a great turn around for a lame, third-generation Superman ripoff character, and it's genuinely tense. Moore has always been great with redefining how superheroes, and this book is no exception. If you can actually score copies of this (it's out of print), I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Beginning of a very bad trend
Review: This was one of the first attempts to make a superhero comic in which the characters displayed the realistic psychology we expect from "serious fiction". The stories were darker, and the author tried to imagine how people would authentically react to the appearance of fantastic beings with extraordinary powers.

I never understood the point of this exercise, still less why it became so popular and was attempted so many times. Superhero stories became popular precisely because they were so far removed from reality. It was the color and variety that made them appealing. If you found yourself questioning why Lois was so comfortable palling around with a god-like being of an alien tempermant, it was time to move on to a different kind of literature.

Yet some just had to keep asking, "What would a more realistic Lois say to a Superman?" And this spawned the ridiculous genre of the realistic super-hero.

Rating:
Summary: Beginning of a very bad trend
Review: This was one of the first attempts to make a superhero comic in which the characters displayed the realistic psychology we expect from "serious fiction". The stories were darker, and the author tried to imagine how people would authentically react to the appearance of fantastic beings with extraordinary powers.

I never understood the point of this exercise, still less why it became so popular and was attempted so many times. Superhero stories became popular precisely because they were so far removed from reality. It was the color and variety that made them appealing. If you found yourself questioning why Lois was so comfortable palling around with a god-like being of an alien tempermant, it was time to move on to a different kind of literature.

Yet some just had to keep asking, "What would a more realistic Lois say to a Superman?" And this spawned the ridiculous genre of the realistic super-hero.