Miracleman on the side

I won't believe that there is actual proper new Miracleman until I've got chapter three of the Silver Age in my sweaty little hands. I've been burned before. 

I got the first issue of the renewed Silver Age, even though I bought the original of the shelves at Bag End Books back in the day, and it's fascinating to see how mark Buckinham has updated the art (they still should have done something with the original BWS cover), but I won't believe there is a new story to get until I've got it in front of me.

But I am grateful that Marvel have already kicked off some side projects, with other writers and artists taking a stab at the world of Miracles, because while they are rarely any good, it always interesting how wrong they get it.

They did it with the original Eclipse run, with the three-issue Miracleman Aprophyca series, which featured writers trying so hard to copy Moore and Gaiman's voices and always coming up short.

With talented creators like Matt Wagner and Kurt Busiek, the stories in the Aprophyca series are usually entertaining, and occasionally great. But the kind of whimsical poetry needed for new Miracleman stories is a lot harder than it looks, and most fall over. (His appearance in Total Eclipse, an ill-advised attempt to bring all that company's characters together is a particularly cringe portrayal of the big man.)

Marvel really missed a trick by not going this route earlier and assuming people wanted dozens of pages of the charming but crude originals, but did kick off the long-delayed Silver Age series with a new Miracleman #0, which has some current creators take a stab.

And again, even with great writers and artists, they struggle to maintain the tone and invariably fall into clumsiness. Even the framing sequence by Gaiman and Buckingham seems to be making slight fun of how ham-fisted they are.

There just feel like part of the whole Miracleman thing to me, as much a part of it as the shocking gore of Johnny Bates at his worst and the even more shocking legal shenanigans that have surrounded the character in the real world.

Miracleman must be coming back, if all this clumsiness is forming around the edges. I look forward to chapter three of the Silver Age.