Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham #6 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Gaiman brings his short-story anthology to a close in this issue, as all the characters that we've previously seen in this "book" arrive in London for the Carnival that concludes five days of mourning from the victims of the Battle of London.  Meanwhile, at some similar point, Dicky Dauntless is resurrected.  Young Miracleman lives!

I recognized some of the anthology characters immediately, like the mother of Mist or the guy that climbed Olympus to get his daughter healed.  I'm pretty sure that the guy selling t-shirts was the one who lost his virginity last issue, but it took Gaiman's note at the end of the issue to remind about the existence of windmill guy.  At any rate, we watch them on their individual journeys through Carnival, and Gaiman reminds us that some diversity exists in the opinions of the people of this new world.  (It's not all a "Brave New World" Utopia.)  Mist's mother spends five days in the Killing Fields, and she refuses to put aside her grief, as you're supposed to do for Carnival.  Conversely, the father that climbed Olympus finds relief, realizing that his grief has turned into regret that his daughter isn't there to share in the moment.  Others, like the teen selling t-shirts, show little emotion of any sort:  he's just there to capitalize (literally) on the moment.  (I have to say, I loved the random Captain Britain cameo:  I totally gasped.)  If I had to try to identify a thread that runs through these stories, I'd say that Gaiman is showing us that, nine years after Johnny Bates destroyed London, people have come to grips with the fact that the world that they knew is gone.

It's the ending of the "Retrieval" back-up story that sets the stage for where we're going.  If you've spent the last few issues wondering, "Hey, if Miracleman can do all this amazing stuff, why can't he resurrect Young Miracleman?", you get your answer here.  The problem is that this story only make sense if you read Gaiman's script at the end of this issue.  Initially, I thought that the deformed corpse and the other guy in a similar uniform were random bus drivers.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out their connection to Dicky Dauntless.  It's only in reading the script that we learn that the deformed corpse was Dicky Dauntless.  (I don't get why he's deformed in his delivery-boy uniform.  Wouldn't the atomic explosion have destroyed his Miracleman body, not his "normal" body?)   Miracleman has instructed the aliens to clone Dicky from his corpse.  For reasons that I still don't understand, they're able to create both a normal body -- the other "bus driver" -- and a Miracleman body for him.  In the end, it's not essential that you follow all the gory details since you can't miss the end result:  Young Miracleman is resurrected.  But, given how easy it was to miss those details, I have to wonder what else I'm missing.

At this stage, I think the most burning question is why Miracleman resurrects Dicky now, nine years after the events in London.  Have they been working on it the whole time?  If not, is there a reason that he waited?  I'm intrigued to see how Dicky handles his return to the present, particularly since he's getting the full Captain America experience here. 

** (two of five stars)

Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham #5 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Of all Gaiman's "Golden Age" stories, the two stories that appear in this issue are my favorites.

It's probably because they're the stories where the protagonists -- an exhausted spy and devirgined teenager -- seem the most real. At the very least, they're in the most "real" situations.  After all, previous stories in this book involved a guy climbing the enormous pyramid that Miracleman built seeking him to grant a wish and babies genetically engineered to be superhuman.  But, here, the spy realizes that she doesn't want to be part of the game anymore and the teenager recounts his past to his lover.  The spy eventually learns from the ghost of Evelyn Cream that all spies were segregated in their own world -- called the City -- because the Miraclepeople couldn't get them to adapt to the new "happy" world.  The teenager tells his lover that he had been sent to his aunt's house outside London during the attack; Kid Miracleman killed all his friends (and presumably mother).  You can tell that his relationship with this woman -- established through Miraclewoman's program -- gives him the first hint of life that he's felt in a while.

These stories are so effective because Gaiman's builds to the connection to Miracleman; for a while, they just seem like "normal" people, since they seem to exist in the pre-Miracleman world.  For the first time, I think, it allows the reader to put himself in the character's shoes.  It's hard to imagine what it would be like ascending Olympus, but it's easier to put yourself in bed with a lover feeling confessional.  As the introductory comments to the second story say, we worry about the bomb, but we don't worry about Superman taking over the world.  Gaiman uses this issue to show us why it would be so shocking if it actually happened.

**** (four of five stars)

Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Gaiman continues telling stories of the post-"Destruction of London" world here, and I have to say that this one is probably the strongest of the bunch.  It's from the point-of-view of one of the mothers of Miracleman's babies, a program revealed a few issues ago as part of his and Miraclewoman's transformation of the world.  It's a sad story, since the protagonist, Rachel, had her daughter, Mist, in part to fill a void, but Mist -- as something more than human -- is unable to need Rachel the way that she needs her to need her.  (I know it's a lot of "needs" in that sentence, but I think I got them in the right sequence.)  As compelling of a story as it is, though, I continue to feel like it's time to get to the point.  Something has to happen at sometime, right?

*** (three of five stars)

Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

It's hard to know where to start here.  The reason for that uncertainty should become clear as I try to summarize this issue.

A Qys named Mors is serving as a modern-day Hades, running an underworld beneath Miracleman's temple full of people that he's "resurrected."  To be clear, they're not fully resurrected:  they appear to consist of the person's memories implanted into a robot version of their old body.  However, it's not clear how Mors managed to save these memories or how he decides on the person to resurrect.  For a reason that becomes clear later in the issue, he resurrects Emil Gargunza here.  Mors assigns the sixth version (of the 18 versions that exist) of Andy Warhol (yup) to be friends with Gargunza, and the two of them spend most of the issue discussing their plight.

Warhol is particularly concerned over whether he has a soul and the fact that Miracleman's outlawing of money means that he can't assess his worth.  For his part, Gargunza is perturbed that their robot bodies are not allowed to leave the Underworld; in fact, Gargunza himself is restricted simply to the courtyard.  Randomly, Winter appears for a visit, because she wants to meet her grandfather.  In the end, Gargunza creates a portable sustaining field to try to escape, but Mors deactivates him instead.  We learn that this version of Gargunza was one of several that Mors created and that each time he engages in some reprogramming of Gargunza's mind.  His goal is to see if he can get Gargunza's "unique" mind to aid the "survival of others" and not just himself.

I can't say that I didn't like this issue, but I'm also not necessarily a fan.  If you stop caring about the series' larger plot, you can just enjoy as it really flirts with genius as an experimental piece of work.  Buckingham is particularly amazing here, clearly inspired by Warhol to tell this story in a way befitting his presence.  At some point, Gaiman will likely return to a traditional narrative, so I'm trying to enjoy these quirky detours on the way there.  The danger, though, is that I haven't found myself emotionally connecting with any of the characters that we've seen featured in these issues.  (I come the closest to Warhol here, particularly as he despairs when he realizes Gargunza didn't love him.)  If we go too long without caring about the character-of-the-month, I could see losing interest quickly.

*** (three of five stars)

Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

It's still unclear where Gaiman is going with this title, since he continues to focus more on building the new world that Moore left him than advancing a specific plot.  In this issue, he follows the theme of the last one, showing us stories from the point of view of the humans that live in this world.  Surprisingly (to me), Gaiman doesn't portray anyone as particularly shocked or upset by the changes that ushered in "the Golden Age."  Sure, the "Bates" gang might long for the day when Jonny Bates returns, but it shows that they still accept the basic parameters of this world -- that Miracleman and Miraclewoman are in charge.  One students mentions that his father remembers a world where sex education didn't actually involve sex and the other children scoff at this assertion.  It's hard to feel that more parents wouldn't object to the idea that their adolescent children would learn about sex by having it.  Gaiman hasn't really clarified how long it has been since the Miracles took over the world.  If it's not a long time, then you do have to wonder why everyone has accepted these changes so quickly.  I think that it's exactly those thoughts that Gaiman wants us to have in the back of our mind.  Mind control?  Could be.  That said, I think that we've had enough of setting of this stage; it's time for the actors to do something.

*** (three of five stars)

Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Despite the fact that the title of this series officially changed to "Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham," I'm keeping the "Miracleman" tag.  If I changed tags every time Marvel re-launched a series at issue #1, the Internet probably wouldn't have enough space to save my blog.

This issue is odd, though not necessarily in a bad way.  Gaiman picks up pretty much exactly where Moore ended, with a group of four pilgrims ascending Olympus to seek favors from Miracleman himself.  Gaiman brilliantly uses their days-long ascent to show us just how beyond humanity -- literally and figuratively -- Miracleman now is.  Moore's last few issues dealt mostly with Miracleman's relationship with his own godhood and to other gods; here, Gaiman takes the time to show us humans' relationship to his godhood.  We see the grandeur that Miracleman is capable of producing and, hence, why humanity understandably has come to accept him as "god."

My guess is that the next few issues are going to focus on some humans, somewhere opposing him.  But, for now, our supplicants believe in his divinity, because they really don't have any reason not to believe in it.  The end result of this belief is crushing, with Miracleman granting one woman's wish to become an artist but not the man's wish for him to heal his daughter with brain damage that the Battle of London caused.  (The fact that the remaining supplicant attempted to kill Miracleman before committing suicide goes to this point that not all humans are likely comfortable with his new status.)  Gaiman doesn't give any motivations for Miracleman's decision, leaving us to wonder if he's become a capricious and cruel god.

In fact, Gaiman gives us few hints about the direction of his story, so we're just going to have to walk the walk with everyone else to see who Miracleman really is.  I was initially frustrated with this approach; at the end of the issue, I definitely found myself thinking, "That's it?"  But, Gaiman himself refers to the burden of taking over someone else's story in the epilogue, and, sleeping on it, I realized that it was a necessary transition from the story that Moore was telling.  We needed a different perspective to understand the realities of this world.  With that done, the path is clear to focus on this new Miracleman.  In other words, away we go.

*** (three of five stars)