Miracleman: The Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham

Miracleman: The Silver Age

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 1990-2024
Acquired: May 2024
Read: August 2024

Writer: Neil Gaiman

Co-Writer & Artist: Mark Buckingham

Color Art: Jordie Bellaire, D'Israeli

Lettering: Todd Klein

This volume finally extends and continues the story of Miracleman from where Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckinham left off in the early 1990s; my understanding is that it contains a few issues they completed then (though with alterations to the art and coloring) and a few issues only published in the 2020s (mostly or entirely written in the 1990s, I think, but not illustrated until the 2020s). Even though Marvel began reprinting Miracleman back in 2014, it was only this year that they finally wrapped up Gaiman and Buckingham's second volume in single-issue format and thus finally released a collection—its release finally being my impetus to sit down and read all the Miracleman comics I'd been picking up.

While book one of the Gaiman/Buckingham run gave us a series of one-off snapshots of Miracleman's utopia, this volume consists of one continuous story. Or rather, half a story, as it ends with a declaration that the story is "TO BE CONTINUED IN THE DARK AGE." But given it took us ten years to get The Silver Age, which had largely already been written, I'm not optimistic that we'll get The Dark Age anytime soon. Maybe in the 2050s?

Anyway, as part of his project to bring the dead back to life, Miracleman revives Young Miracleman, who died before the events of Alan Moore's first book. Richard "Dicky" Dauntless is thus thrust from the world of the ordinary(-ish) 1950s straight into Miracleman's utopian 2003. The book covers his difficulty adjusting to this new time and place, as well as to his discoveries about his own history. How does someone with 1950s attitude toward gender, sexuality, and other social constructs fit into a benevolent libertarian dictatorship?

The story moves slowly but strongly, especially thanks to the work of the always dependable Mark Buckingham. While The Golden Age saw him working in a number of styles, this volume keeps him what I think of as his "default" style (as seen in works such as Dead Boy Detectives); he's good at capturing emotion and character, which works well for the highly contemplative tone of this volume. The best material, in my opinion, was Richard's trip to the mountains, where he seeks out a man who was given powers by Miracleman but voluntarily gave them up, and this causes him (as well as his traveling companions) to think about his place in this new world.

Moore's original run hinted that Young Miracleman was gay; Gaiman picks up on that here, but in a way that made me a bit uncomfortable with its implications. I'm curious to see where this goes in The Dark Age, however. 

Overall, I found this interesting but unfinished. It very much depends on The Dark Age. It seems like it could have some interesting things to say, but it also seems like it might end up being a reactionary take on utopias, undermining what made Olympus and The Golden Age so interesting. Hopefully we find out before the 2050s.

Also, I have to complain that while the first four Miracleman volumes were originally released in hardcover, this one only came out in trade paperback. C'mon Marvel, what the hell is this? Your target audience for releases of long-lost 1990s comic books is also the exact kind of people who want their collected editions to go together and will pay for a hardcover! The release strategy of this whole series has left a lot to be desired... I fervently hope they don't end up doing a hardcover later, though; I don't want to have to fight off the temptation to rebuy this.

Miracleman: The Golden Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham

Miracleman: The Golden Age

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 1989-91
Previously read: March 2012
Acquired: March 2016
Reread: August 2024

Story: Neil Gaiman

Art: Mark Buckingham

Color Art: D'Israeli

Selected Painted Art: Mark Buckingham

Lettering: Todd Klein

Back when I originally got into Miracleman, this is the one volume I was actually able to source via interlibrary loan, so this is the one volume I have read before, in a 1993 trade paperback published by Eclipse. But, of course that time I lacked the context of the preceding three volumes by Alan Moore.

What Alan Moore did in the final issue of Olympus was genre-shifting: take the premise of the superhero genre to its logical conclusion. If superheroes use violence to improve the world, isn't their ultimate goal to force a utopia? In his continuation, Neil Gaiman extrapolates from that, telling us stories of what that utopian world might actually look like. The Golden Age contains a number of short stories from around the world of Miracleman; these issues were originally published 1989 through 1991, though it was two issues after this that right issues would result in the series fizzling out, only to be continued decades later.

Rereading my original review, I have to saw, I largely agree with my past self. Each of the stories here examines some aspect of what it might be like to live in a perfect world—and who are the people who might not fit, what are the ways in which people might be left behind. The only story I didn't really rate in my old review was the spy one, about how Miracleman sets up an artificial city for spies to play out their dramas because there's nothing for them in the new world; I dismissed it as derivative of The Prisoner. And maybe that's true, but the twist isn't the point. The point here is that the spies are all of us. So many of us would rather exist in comfortable but destructive routines than embrace an uncomfortable but perhaps redemptive way of living. (It reminds me of that Jameson canard about the end of capitalism versus the end of the world.) 

Perhaps it's a hot take, but Mark Buckingham is probably the best artist on Miracleman so far, a series that has been blessed by a succession of admittedly strong artists! His beautiful work is well suited to the utopian vibes of the post-Miracleman Earth, but I also really like how adaptive he is, with lots of varied artistic styles across the book's eight chapters, always choosing one suited to the particular story being told.

It's almost a shame the series was continued. At the point I write this review, I've already read The Silver Age, and I kind of agree with something I wrote back when I read The Golden Age on its own a decade ago:

It's a shame that we'll apparently never see more of this story to come, but in a way, I like that. The Golden Age explores the sadness that comes with the passing of a way of life, but if what comes next is a genuine utopia, it really would be impossible for there to be a sustained series of stories. The Golden Age really only succeeds at that by using Miracleman as a god, not a character. Without Gaiman's planned next two volumes, we'll never see the degeneration and corruption of Miracleman's utopia, and we'll be able to forever stop on that image of the people of Earth floating away on balloons. It makes The Golden Age a much more unconventional work than it might otherwise have been, one that shows a utopia that though it has cause for sadness, has much larger cause for joy and wonder.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Houses of Mystery and Secrets, Part XVIII: House of Secrets Omnibus

Comic hardcover, 733 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 1996-2001)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2016

House of Secrets Omnibus

Writer: Steven T. Seagle

Artists: Teddy Kristiansen, D'Israeli, Guy Davis, Duncan Fegredo, Christian Højgaard, Dean Ormston, The Pander Bros.
Colorist: Bjarne Hansen

Letterer: Todd Klein

About two years ago, I read Foundation, the collection of the first five issues of the 1990s revival of House of Secrets. At the time, the omnibus of all 25 issues plus assorted extras had recently come out but I was unable to source it via interlibrary loan, but on this pass back through Sandman tie-ins I was able to finally secure it. It's a mammoth work: at 733 pages of story, plus unnumbered behind-the-scenes pages, you could really do damage to someone else with this book. Or to yourself if you carry it around in a backpack.

There's a lot to take in here, so probably this review will spiral out of control; I'll begin by not reviewing the opening arc Foundation again, since I already have. (Click on the link in the first paragraph if you care.) I should note that the issues are reordered from publication order here, apparently hitting some kind of ideal reading order, and I read them in the order they're placed here. As a result, book opens not with Foundation, but with what was originally issue #7, "Blueprint: Elevation A," which chronicles the building of the house that eventually became the House of Secrets, intertwining tales of the architect who designed the house, the actual builder of the house and the owner's wife, the House itself, an Indian tribe who used to own the land it was built on, and the blueprint. As you might imagine if you've ever read a 1990s Vertigo comic, they're all dark stories that end in tragedy, but they entertain in a sort of macabre Twilight Zone fashion.

The story rotates through each story, one half-page panel at a time, each with its own distinctive style of lettering.
from House of Secrets vol. 2 #7 (art by Teddy Kristiansen)

Foundation is followed by The Book of Law, a six-part story that fills in the backstories of the dead souls who make up Rain Harper's fellow members of the Juris, the mysterious court in the House's pantry who judge people for the secrets they hold. These are Digol, a Babylonian warlord-turned-court-official; Ruby, a black woman from the 1960s South who gets involved with a white man; Pfaultz, a Middle Ages charlatan who exploits fears of the plague to get money and sex; NiAn, the wife of a dead Japanese warlord suspected of his murder; Clius, a young Roman who gets sexually involved with the Emperor; and the concept of the number five. I liked most of these stories on their own merits-- each draws a nice, one-issue tragedy, some about sweet characters (Ruby) and some about genuinely awful ones (Pfaultz). Though Teddy Kristiansen drew most issues of House of Secrets, The Book of Law lets some guest artists step in to enhance each story with its own distinctive tone, most successfully, Guy Davis (of Sandman Mystery Theatre fame) on Ruby's story. But it was a little weird for the narrative to swerve into covering five side characters after only five issues of the series's regular characters. I think these would have worked better interspersed throughout the series (like the "Times Past" segments of Starman) as opposed to all at once.