Alan Moore and John Totleben's EPIC Miracleman finale!

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[@summerofsais]

Sometimes I think Alan Moore goes off on such a tangent to show how evolved the miracle people’s minds are. Like we weren’t supposed to keep up with the prose.

[@wesgriff1]

There should be a petition for Marvel to reprint Miracleman in its original color and lettering.

[@lorcannagle]

I'm with Ed on issue 16 being the real holy shit moment, I first read it in the early 2000s and was basically left wondering how anyone could keep making the same old superhero stories in a world where that comic existed. Utterly amazing and paradigm busting.

[@mgrasmugg]

Y’all should do Promethea! It’s amazing later era Moore and nobody ever talks about it. The story, the mysticism, the art! I’m tellin y’all: Promethea.

[@amirmalekpour4316]

Thank you fellas - this is definitely a great way to spend time watching talented people talking about talented people.

[@powerofpop8747]

Thanks for this. Read this series back in the 80s. Glad to see it being celebrated in the appropriate manner.

[@fad23]

I remember waiting like two years between #15 & 16. Still one of my formative reading experiences.

[@tysparks598]

Thanks for doing this, I read these about a decade ago (read the Gaiman issues as a teen but couldn't find the earlier issues) and I've never had anyone to talk to about it--it's wonderful listening to talented illustrators/storytellers on their take of this story, which to me is the darkest superhero comic ever written. Much appreciated.

[@canderson5098]

True story: I found my NM copy of Miracleman 15 in a quarter box in 1997.

[@russworks2882]

I hope you guys will get into the Supreme series; it's artistically shaky at first, but in a way it's part of Moore taking the character from being a cheap Liefeld knockoff done Image-style to being a loving homage to the Weisinger Superman comics that produced that "Superman Red/Superman Blue". Moore, of course, manages to find pathways into new and even perverse territory, but it mostly feels like a cleansing of the Miracleman stuff. I like it a lot more than the subsequent ABC heroes, which feel like an over-intellectualized advance on what Moore was building in the "Awesome-verse" with Supreme, Glory , Youngblood and Judgement Day. He was in sort of a period of discovery in the early issues and it feels really exciting. Plus, maybe the best caped dog ever.

[@russworks2882]

@Robert Negoesco I hadn't read the earlier books and had no trouble, but maybe I don't know what I missed. One thing that helps is that Moore did his usual move of starting out basically destroying the character's world and rebuilding it. In fact the whole idea of revision becomes a Weisinger-esque story element where various versions of the Supreme family all dwell in a kind of superhero Valhalla that Moore returns to a few times to great effect.

[@kgbaggins2941]

Such a great and much needed review. Thank you!

[@mangamegs]

You guys just sold me on buying the marvel reprints.

[@apexcomix3200]

This is the greatest analysis of Miracle Man. Today's Marvel can't hold a candle to these Miracle Man issues.

[@SuperMtheory]

This series on Moore is great. Please do a video about Supreme!

[@wallacelovecraft8942]

The johnny part is quite sad. I've just been listening to these while working but maybe I should be reading the comic then listen to them again.

[@ericthibodeaux3853]

Yeah, I was about to say I always read it as MM popping poor Johnny’s dome piece.

[@timothybarnett1006]

great episode, couple of thoughts - British Bulldog is a schoolyard game in the UK, think Red Rover, and the reference to comics as ballast, comics were used as ballast in trans -Atlantic shipping in the 40s-50s so would sporadically turn in the UK during Moore's formative years (Don't know if that was intentional, but to paraphrase my favourite idea from Brian Eno [An Alan Moore interviewee] & Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies, honour thy mistakes as hidden intent)

[@ericcantwell5582]

Just to touch on the discussion around 39:00 of Moore's tendency to get go off on wordy tangents that often somewhat deride the story (this is going to sound blasphemous to some) but I think Moore, much like Lovecraft, writes better when he has a stronger editor to keep him in focus. Even in Swamp Thing, which has its darkly poetic moments, the direction stays clear. Once you get into Moore's later works where there is essentially no editorial balance, his stories start great but then seem to abandon their plot structure and diffuse into esoteric mysticism and detached speculations. I thought was especially true with his Avatar work like Providence, and even back to Promethea.

[@ProuvaireJean]

Would love to see a series on The Golden Age by Gaiman and Buckingham. In my opinion it's the best work Gaiman has done across any medium, and the mutability of Buckingham's art is amazing. It's arguably better than Moore's run on Miracleman.

[@tumblrtwopointoh]

Would love to see some coverage of the America's Best Comics stuff, both a lot lighter in tone than Moore's eighties stuff but also really crazy amounts of worldbuidling to do work that begins from scratch as opposed to the "revisionist" work with established characters.

[@DocCivil]

Hey, guys, great retrospective! I just caught this, 3 years late. I bought these as they came out. Just curious, do you think the Abraxas word would have worked on Kid Miracleman?

[@inarticulate]

Miracleman 16 is my favorite superhero comic book story of all time. I gave up on superhero comics afterwards and prefer slice of life comics.

[@ericthibodeaux3853]

Miracle Man issue 16, The Quest for Peace

[@ericthibodeaux3853]

But, yeah for all the love issue 15 gets issue 16 is incredibly underrated

[@dennyawright21]

That death is so messed up. 😂 I read this but I need to read again

[@danle7022]

Mahfood mAh man!!!

[@realidaddarkpainter3.046]

42:39 o my god ....

[@blacktionjackson7133]

Love this series, but I always cringe at criticism of "The Male Gaze" Just because it's such a cliche for male artists like Moore to be completely self loathing. It's like a hot chick rejected Moore for the buff guy who looks like the superheroes he was into, so he got back at them by pretending that being buff and liking hot chicks is beneath him and unhealthy. Could you imagine how ridiculous it would sound telling a woman that she's stunted and unhealthy for liking abs?

[@Flintlockjaw]

Millar is Mill-ER! FFS