Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Silver Age #5-#7

I realized I only had three issues left of "Miracleman," so I decided to prioritize them as a break in making my way through my backlog.

Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham:  The Silver Age #5:  This issue is a slog.  Gaiman forces Buckingham into employing densely paneled pages so we can get through the mounds of dialogue and exposition that propel Dicky and Meta-Maid's search for Dicky's identity.

After leaving Jason in the Himalays to go find a person he left at camp (clearly a romantic interest of some sort), Meta-Maid convinces Deadlock to take her and Dicky on his mega-bike back to England.  They stop in several cities along the way, and, when Dicky comments on some sort of social ill he witnesses, such as kids living on garbage heaps in India or a man with skin cancers in Budapest, Meta-Maid explains their plight as an honor or privilege.  It sets up a binary where either children really do apply to live on the garbage heaps or Miracleman's Utopia isn't really one.  Dicky clearly believes the latter is true.

Upon finally arriving in England, Dicky and Meta-Maid search the British Museum for information about orphanages or the Spookshow (the government agency behind Gargunza's project) but find nothing.  A librarian recommends they go to the Memorial Museum, and Meta-Maid enters it alone when they discover it's located at the foot of Olympus.  She tracks down the remaining Spookshow records to a town in Yorkshire, the one where the man and his nephew from issue #4 run the church dedicated to Miracelman.  There, they work with an archivist, Professor Porter, to go through the records on microfilm.  (Interestingly, Porter refers to Bates as "little rascal," which seems like a pretty mild way to refer to the Butcher of London.)  Eventually, Meta-Maid recognizes the name "Joyful House," which Dicky muttered in a dream on the train to the town.

At Joyful House, clearly the abandoned orphanage where he lived, memories overwhelm Dicky, and he collapses.

Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham:  The Silver Age #6:  Unsurprisingly, Joyful House wasn't really all that joyful.

An eight-year-old Dicky arrives at the orphanage in 1949 clutching his mother's photo and a vinyl recording of Ruddigore, a Gilbert and Sullivan opera he attended with his mother before she died.  Dicky's father died in the war, a member of a Polish RAF squadron.  When Mrs. Maul — Joyful House's Miss Hannigan — tells Dicky that she can't pronounce his name, he adopts the name Dicky Dauntless.

Mrs. Maul takes the photo and record, the last vestiges of his previous life.  He's forced to bathe, and they burn his clothes, leaving him with the same "grey ill-fitting second-hand clothes" the rest of the kids wear.  When Dicky turns 12, he discovers that Mr. Maul pimps out the boys to various wealthy men, and Buckingham does an amazing job showing the melting ice-cream cone that signifies the end of each "encounter."

It changes for Dicky in 1952, at the age of 14 years old, when Gargunza appears.  He shows Dicky comic books, and Dicky confesses that he wants to fly one day.  Later, Mrs. Maul sends Dicky to get some fish and chips, where he's chloroform-ed and enters Gargunza's experiment.  (We're never told why Gargunza selected Dauntless, though it seems like he was going through all the orphanage's boys and Dicky fit the bill.  Buckingham certainly makes him the definition of a strapping English lad here.)

In the present, Dicky awakens, his memory restored.  Meta-Maid lays him on the bed and asks if she can kiss him; they kiss, and Dicky confesses it's the first time he's kissed a girl and the first time anyone asked him if it was OK.  (Oof.)  Later, she asks his real name, and Dicky says that it's Dicky Dauntless, the name he gave himself, "the only one that matters."  Then, Dicky announces he's ready to face Miracleman and transforms into Young Miracleman.

Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham:  The Silver Age #7:  For how long Gaiman has vamped, we finally get somewhere here.

Dicky takes over the world's television broadcasts to invite Miracleman to meet him in Petra.  Once Miracleman arrives, Dicky tells him that Meta-Maid is broadcasting their discussion lest he murder Dicky.  He then more or less orders Miracleman to lay out the futures he sees for him, which Miracleman does, reluctantly:  1) accept Miracelman's world ("embrace the miracle") and join the Pantheon; 2) go the same route as Caxton and give up his power; or 3) die.

Dicky then challenges Miracelman for the fourth option that he claims Miracleman's body language is screaming as his preferred option, which Miracelman does:  he reveals they've "retro-engineered" the Gargunza machine, so Dicky could live forever in their 1950s world.  Dicky asks if it's all Miracelman has.  When Miracelman doesn't respond, he tells him that this world sucks (a world that's jarring to see him use).  With Buckingham showing him as a beautiful young man, Dicky tells Miracleman that he's going to be his adversary:  "If this is Eden, I'm going to be the serpent."

In Sydney, a few weeks later, Dicky meditates under a tree while Meta-Maid spreads the world about him.  Eventually, more and more people gather around him, while, inside his head, a voice speaking in dark word bubbles — clearly Johnny, as seen in issue #3 — tells Dicky that he can't avoid him forever and to let him out.  Then, we're told the story will continue in the "Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham:  The Dark Age."  Dun-dun-DUN!

Final Thoughts:  Despite (or because of) this series' wordiness, I think it would've benefitted from a few more issues.  Gaiman hints at certain things at various points but never fleshes out the thought.  For example, I'm still uncertain if Dicky was attracted to Jason, and we never really get a good sense of when Meta-Maid started falling for Dicky.  After all, she joins him essentially because she's bored with the party she's attending, and it seems a lot to ask of her to abandon her partying ways (to which she alludes at the end of issue #7).

Continuing on the theme, Gaiman draws explicit parallels between Johnny and Dicky here, as Dicky suffered the same sexual abuse that led to Johnny release Kid Miracelman on his rapists in "Miracleman" #14.  But I'm not sure how far Gaiman is going to take that.  The implication at the end of issue #7 is that Dicky is going to become the villain like Johnny was.  But I have to hold out hope Gaiman doesn't go that route, as it seems more like Dicky to find a way to process that trauma and oppose Miracelman's authoritarianism on his own.

Even with these questions, I'm a lot happier with this series than I was.  Something about the Qys and Warpsmiths never really sat well with me, so I'm happy to have Gaiman focus more on the humans and their struggles.  Given the accusations against Gaiman, I find it hard to believe that we're ever going to see "Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham:  The Dark Age," but we'll see.