TRADE RATING: How Mister Miracle by Tom King & Mitch Gerads Defies Escapist Entertainment
Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads is out 2/13/2019.
By Brandon Evans — The collected edition of Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads released this week, giving us all the change to read it collected in its entirety. I, like many others, first read this book at a pace of pretty close to once a month, with a few agonizing delays. Although, in retrospect, I think this periodical format may have added to the experience, helping me to better sympathize with Scott Free, aka Mister Miracle himself, who is unsure of his circumstances and surroundings, just like I was unsure what was happening in the overall narrative of the story at each chapter’s conclusion. That disorientation felt right in a way, given that Scott as a protagonist is unsure what the days he’s experiencing mean to the story of his overall life, or anti-life.
I could easily write a piece all about the qualities that make this 12-issue maxiseries so amazing, but I’m hesitant to go through that boom tube because I’d hate to spoil the series for the fortunate souls who get to read it with fresh eyes. To them I say just be ready to look at the mythic components of the Fourth World with a surprisingly fresh perspective—the Life and Anti-Life Equations are explained in such a simple, yet profound ways—you’ll see. It’s really hard to understate how well Tom King writes these concepts and characters. He shows us the atrocity of war and the toll it takes on those who are on the front line, via the graphic violence in the fire pits of Apokolips juxtaposed with the family lives it interrupts. Thanks to the beautiful art of Mitch Gerads, a conversation about redoing a condominium is entertaining and thrilling, even at the expense of many unfortunate parademons. Gerads grueling adherence to a mostly nine-panel uniformity is impressive, and after awhile you realize how strong his sequential storytelling is. His art pairs incredibly well with the story, a union enables the book to be, dare I say, miraculous.
Mister Miracle does something that is unusual for the comic book medium, it takes the idea of escapism entertainment, and inverts it. Instead of a man trying to escape the monotony of normal everyday life, we see a superhero and celebrity escape artist doing his best to escape his life. A cliched phrase that the tired and bored often use is, “I’m dying to escape this place.” Well, what Tom King literally gives us is an escape artist who attempts dying at the start of the story to escape his life of escapism. While we as the readers are trying to get into his world, Scott is actively trying his best to get out, to get a piece of our normal lives. It is on the epic battlefields that Mister Miracle truly looks bored, but when changing diapers, he seems…happy.
Scott Free is arguably every new dad trying to be better than his father as he battles falling victim to the same impossible choice his own father did. Will Scott give up his son to a life of torture on Apokolips or will he damn every fellow New God to continue the endless war that has been plaguing Scott and Barda their entire lives? This story culminates in Scott making the impossible choice. There are no easy answers in life, and Scott’s actions show that he understands this. Fortunately, he isn’t alone. The series features Big Barda too, Scott’s wife, and in all the ways that Scott fails, Barda picks up the slack. She is the strength to his weakness, the reason against his insanity, but most of all Barda is the decisive confidence to his indecisive insecurity. Any fan of Barda will love her strength in this book, watching Scott benefit from it as he battles his depression and makes his eventual escape.
From Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads.
The reason that King and Gerads’ Mister Miracle is such a touching tale is because it is the very embodiment of us, the reader. We’ve grown up to find lives not as the superheroes or celebrities we so desperately wanted to be when were children, but as parents and normal people we swore we’d never become. We endure the scars of perceived—or actual—childhood traumas and live in a world that we don’t exactly recognize every day. While we may not see the embodiment of our doubts and/or depression in quite the same way as Scott—Darkseid is.—we do contend with our own doubts, worries, and fears.
As a new father, myself, it has been clear to me throughout that Tom King and Mitch Gerads really infused this book with their own very personal insights into the heroic business of parenthood. Raising children is exciting and scary, but at the end of the day, far more important than interstellar wars on Apokolips, or any other planet for that matter. Though we may throw ourselves head first into those conflicts, we know the best things are at home with our wives, children, families. Those are the things that keep us going. We can’t forget the problems we face, even when we are on the couch playing with our young children. The dread of the real world is there. We can never really deny that Darkseid is, we merely use it as a footstool and focus that much more on our own little New Gods.
If you’re looking for a comic book that is truly grown up, then this collected work belongs on your shelf.
Brandon Evans is a freelance writer and comic book lover from St. Louis, MO. He is currently working to find his way into the comic book industry. You can find him on Twitter as @writingbrandon