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A review by billyjepma
Mister Miracle by Mitch Gerads, Tom King
5.0
"We look to find ourselves, to see our own face. And we find the face of God."
(Minor thematic spoilers may follow)
"Mister Miracle" is one of those comics that made me rethink what comics can be. Tom King and Mitch Gerads are arguably the best creative duo in the industry right now, and this 12-issue series takes all of their collective talent and vision and compiles it into one dynamic, haunting, mystifying narrative that I won't ever be able to get out of my head.
I walked into this series knowing next to nothing about Mister Miracle, Big Barda, or even the New Gods. I knew of Darkseid, of course (Darkseid is), and was vaguely familiar with the New Gods from a couple animated movies and television episodes, but that was it. And that was okay. King's script does a miraculous job at imbuing these strangers with immediate charisma, personality, and suggested history that even though this was my first exposure to many of these characters, I quickly latched onto them and their stories.
The overarching narrative is...difficult, surreal––and somehow––spectacular. It grapples with depression, war, religion, suicide, parenthood, marriage, grief, childhood trauma, and so many other themes that it shouldn't work as a cohesive narrative. And when you add all of that to a choppy narrative structure that often ping-pongs you between a gory battlefield in space and the living room of a Los Angeles condo, you should, by all accounts, have a recipe for nonsense.
But you don't.
"Mister Miracle" is a whiplash of a comic book, but it works. Somehow, King and Gerads have used their black magic creativity to craft a story that is at once overpowering in its scope and stakes and simultaneously gentle with its presentation of real emotions in real people who are struggling with how very real they are.
Maybe none of that makes sense. Maybe none of "Mister Miracle" makes sense, but maybe––as King and Gerad seem to suggest in the end––that not making sense is okay. You never know if what you're seeing on the pages of this comic is a reality, a vision, a dream, or the hallucinations of a man bleeding out on his bathroom floor from self-inflicted wounds. And that's okay. Reality is the experiences, the emotions, the fears and joys of being alive. Reality doesn't have to be *real,* this story says; because maybe the story is real enough to overpower reality.
Again, maybe this doesn't make sense. I'm still grappling with this comic, and I imagine I will be for some time. But that's also okay. This isn't a story that you––or, at least, I––can read once and move on from. It festers, and nags, and nurtures your frustrations and excitements, but never fully giving you the answers you think you want. Yet, it always respects your experiences, your intelligence, and your questions.
As poignant and effective as King's script is, "Mister Miracle" succeeds as well as it does thanks to the unbelievable artwork of Mitch Gerads. His character work, the evocative expressions, body language, and emotion he extracts from each and every nine-paneled-page is nothing short of incredible. His colors are equally amazing, and it's due to his mastery of vibrant and muted colors and visual distortions that the contrast between the casual normality of Scott and Barda's home life and their lives on a cosmic battlefield never feels jarring or inappropriately disruptive. His work is destined to become iconic, and likely to be spoken of in the same way that Dave Gibbons' art in "Watchmen" is.
"Mister Miracle" is an unreal experience of a comic book. It's deeply mature, genuinely moving, viscerally unsettling, and painfully ambiguous in all of the best ways. This won't be for everyone, but it was definitely for me, and I'm not going to be letting it go anytime soon.
(Minor thematic spoilers may follow)
"Mister Miracle" is one of those comics that made me rethink what comics can be. Tom King and Mitch Gerads are arguably the best creative duo in the industry right now, and this 12-issue series takes all of their collective talent and vision and compiles it into one dynamic, haunting, mystifying narrative that I won't ever be able to get out of my head.
I walked into this series knowing next to nothing about Mister Miracle, Big Barda, or even the New Gods. I knew of Darkseid, of course (Darkseid is), and was vaguely familiar with the New Gods from a couple animated movies and television episodes, but that was it. And that was okay. King's script does a miraculous job at imbuing these strangers with immediate charisma, personality, and suggested history that even though this was my first exposure to many of these characters, I quickly latched onto them and their stories.
The overarching narrative is...difficult, surreal––and somehow––spectacular. It grapples with depression, war, religion, suicide, parenthood, marriage, grief, childhood trauma, and so many other themes that it shouldn't work as a cohesive narrative. And when you add all of that to a choppy narrative structure that often ping-pongs you between a gory battlefield in space and the living room of a Los Angeles condo, you should, by all accounts, have a recipe for nonsense.
But you don't.
"Mister Miracle" is a whiplash of a comic book, but it works. Somehow, King and Gerads have used their black magic creativity to craft a story that is at once overpowering in its scope and stakes and simultaneously gentle with its presentation of real emotions in real people who are struggling with how very real they are.
Maybe none of that makes sense. Maybe none of "Mister Miracle" makes sense, but maybe––as King and Gerad seem to suggest in the end––that not making sense is okay. You never know if what you're seeing on the pages of this comic is a reality, a vision, a dream, or the hallucinations of a man bleeding out on his bathroom floor from self-inflicted wounds. And that's okay. Reality is the experiences, the emotions, the fears and joys of being alive. Reality doesn't have to be *real,* this story says; because maybe the story is real enough to overpower reality.
Again, maybe this doesn't make sense. I'm still grappling with this comic, and I imagine I will be for some time. But that's also okay. This isn't a story that you––or, at least, I––can read once and move on from. It festers, and nags, and nurtures your frustrations and excitements, but never fully giving you the answers you think you want. Yet, it always respects your experiences, your intelligence, and your questions.
As poignant and effective as King's script is, "Mister Miracle" succeeds as well as it does thanks to the unbelievable artwork of Mitch Gerads. His character work, the evocative expressions, body language, and emotion he extracts from each and every nine-paneled-page is nothing short of incredible. His colors are equally amazing, and it's due to his mastery of vibrant and muted colors and visual distortions that the contrast between the casual normality of Scott and Barda's home life and their lives on a cosmic battlefield never feels jarring or inappropriately disruptive. His work is destined to become iconic, and likely to be spoken of in the same way that Dave Gibbons' art in "Watchmen" is.
"Mister Miracle" is an unreal experience of a comic book. It's deeply mature, genuinely moving, viscerally unsettling, and painfully ambiguous in all of the best ways. This won't be for everyone, but it was definitely for me, and I'm not going to be letting it go anytime soon.