Miracleman Book Four: The Golden Age
Written: May 24 '06 (Updated May 24 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: It's still Miracleman and it's still the best.
Cons: Too little Miracleman in "Miracleman".
The Bottom Line: If you have to replace Alan Moore, you could do a LOT worse than Neil Gaiman.
|
|
|
| cdm72's Full Review: Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham - Miracleman Book ... |
When Alan Moore stepped down from Miracleman, the book with which he’d practically rewritten everything it was possible to do in comics, the job of finding his replacement had to have been a daunting one. I don’t think there could possibly have been a better choice than Neil Gaiman. The problem is, as great a writer as Gaiman is, his first go-round with Miracleman, Book Four: The Golden Age, reads a little too much like any of his myriad Sandman arcs, a bunch of short stories about people other than the title character, all of whom come together in the last chapter, but none of which really makes much of an impact.
The focus of this story, as the title suggests, is life in the golden age of Miracleman’s new world. Up to this point, we’d focused mainly on Miracleman, but Gaiman switches things on us and we finally get to see how the rest of the world is dealing with these changes. It’s a good arc, a great read, I just think it reads too much like a Sandman story and there’s not really enough of Miracleman in it to properly distinguish it.
In the first story, “A Prayer and Hope”, we follow a group of four who are ascending Miracleman’s palace so that they might ask him to answer their prayers. This story reads very much like Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”--or maybe it doesn’t but because of the similarities I see between the stories, I think it does. Anyway.
The second story, “Skin Deep”, deals with a man who’s reminiscing on his love affair with Miraclewoman who was his idea of perfection until she showed him her real self.
Story three, “Notes from the Underground,” is about the resurrection of Emil Gargunza by one of the Qys who has perfected the art of bringing back the dead. Gargunza is befriended by the sixth Andy Warhol (there are 18 of them) only to find Gargunza was just using him to escape the artificial underworld beneath Miracleman’s palace.
In “Winter’s Tale” we meet a woman who’s daughter was conceived when she requested a sperm sample from Miracleman (he’d offered his help to any woman who wanted a child like his own daughter Winter who has all of Miracleman’s powers and more). In this story we learn of how Winter spent her years away from her father, the years between when she was born and when Miracleman and Miraclewoman, with the help of the Qys and the Warpsmiths, turned earth into their Utopia.
In part five, “Spy Story,” we learn Mr. Cream, the secret agent who befriended Miracleman in Book Two and later died at the hands of Gargunza’s Miracledog, is alive and in charge of watching over a false world inhabited by all the spies of the world. It seems they’re the only ones unable to deal with this new perfect world, so they’ve all been moved away and made to forget the outside. Their lives inside are an endless cycle of secrets and codes except for one woman who sees past it and asks to be let out, back into the real world.
Finally, in chapter 6, “Carnival” all of these characters come together in that way Gaiman characters come together, each unaware of each other, but we see the connections because we read their stories and saw into their lives. It’s all very interesting and pleasant, but it’s just not a Miracleman story, you know? And originally the book was on a bi-monthly schedule which means all 6 parts took a full year to come out and if I’d been one of the ones who was reading this series as it was being published, I’d be pretty disappointed if at the end of the year this was all I had to show for my patience.
My complaint with Gaiman’s Sandman arcs was that they never really made much sense until you read the entire thing; those stories just don’t hold together too well from month to month in 20-page installments. They’re so disconnected, one issue to the next, that until you see the thing as a whole, you really can’t tell there’s any kind of STORY there. Luckily I read them all at once. And I’m still a bit let down. I wanted a Miracleman story, not a bunch of other people in his world only to see MM in flashes here and there throughout. Dammit. Sometimes I think Gaiman takes this whole “comics as literature” thing a bit too far.
For Book Four, Mark Buckinham has taken over the art from John Tottleben. Bucky’s good, very clear lines, great lighting, but a little too scratchy in places, especially in part one. He got better as the installments progressed, but Tottleben is still my top pick for Miracleman Artist Supreme.
The biggest shame with Miracleman is that it’s been left incomplete. Gaiman published 2 more issues, the first 2 parts of Book Five: The Silver Age, before the company went bankrupt and so we’re left with only part of the story. I’m still holding out hope, though, that some day soon the world will finally be treated to the rest of the greatest comic book ever published, anywhere at any time.
Miracleman Book One: A Dream of Flying
http://www.epinions.com/content_231478169220
Miracleman Book Two: The Red King Syndrome
http://www.epinions.com/content_232120094340
Miracleman Book Three: Olympus
http://www.epinions.com/content_232697466500
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
cdm72
|
 in Music, Movies, Books |
 - Top 500 |
|
Location: St. Joseph, MO, USA
Reviews written: 755
Trusted by: 112 members
About Me:
That's me in front of Trent Reznor's house in NOLA several years ago.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.