A lot happens here, and it mostly serves as a (welcome) primer for people not intimately familiar with the New Gods. I'm appreciative of that, because I fall into that category. After I read last issue, I vaguely remembered that Mister Miracle isn't Darkseid's son, because he was traded for Darkseid's real son as part of a peace agreement with Apokolips' "good" counterpart, New Genesis. Mister Miracle is somehow aware of that this issue as well, though we never see anyone tell him that and he didn't seem to know it last issue. He just asserts that High Father, the ruler of New Genesis, is his real father. If I'm reading between the lines, it's because he believes anyone born of Apokolips to be evil, a conclusion that he draws after Barda and Fury betray him in this issue. He's not evil, so he assumes that he's not from Apokolips? I'm stretching on that one. If he does believe that, he's seemingly proven wrong when Fury shows that she didn't betray him at all. In fact, he's proven doubly wrong, since the allegedly "good" High Father has agreed to allow Darkseid to absorb Earth 2. A horrified Mister Miracle comes to the conclusion that none of the New Gods deserve his allegiance, and he and Fury throw in their lot with the humans. (He's probably solid on that assertion.)
The only thing left unclear to me is how and why Barda betrayed Mister Miracle. Barda seems to have done something to the Boom Spheres to free Darkseid and not destroy him, but we don't get any clarity on that front here. Darkseid makes mention of eating the heart of Apokolips to power him, relying on Miracle's rage to free him, but we don't learn why it was necessary for him to do that in the first place. Was he facing some sort of challenge from other New Gods? How did he know that Miracle would travel from Earth and try to kill him just in time to save him?
It feels like we skipped a few steps here. We really needed to see Miracle learning about his true parentage and not just guessing at it. We also need some more clarity about Barda's and Fury's motives, since we don't really know them well enough to make said guesses to understand their actions. That said, I have to give the authors credit for doing what I asked them to do last issue, namely focusing an issue on just one of the many sets of players that they have in action. It really helped to clarify where we are in terms of Apokolips, and I hope that they do something similar for the Geneva-based team and the Avatars in coming issues.
It feels like we skipped a few steps here. We really needed to see Miracle learning about his true parentage and not just guessing at it. We also need some more clarity about Barda's and Fury's motives, since we don't really know them well enough to make said guesses to understand their actions. That said, I have to give the authors credit for doing what I asked them to do last issue, namely focusing an issue on just one of the many sets of players that they have in action. It really helped to clarify where we are in terms of Apokolips, and I hope that they do something similar for the Geneva-based team and the Avatars in coming issues.
*** (three of five stars)
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