The Batlord

You know you felt it hard when Clark was talking about people in town looking at Lex like he was an alien.

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The Batlord

So did you ever read Miracleman? I've been badgering these ignorant ****s on this site for years to read it and NO ONE has taken me up on it. You want the ultimate superhero deconstruction done perfectly the very first time, Miracleman is it. Watchmen was basically Moore building on the ideas of Miracleman to deconstruct American comic book history and 2000th century American history into one literate atom bomb of commentary. And in Watchmen he really only touched on the pure superhero deconstructionism of Miracleman because he had explored it so thoroughly and so painfully in Miracleman that there wasn't anything left to explore without bringing those ideas to an even wider conceptual basis than he already had.

And Miracleman arguably did better what even Watchmen did on a conceptual level because Moore's conceptual reach on the former title was already so all-consuming. Watchmen is probably the better written and more sophisticated title, but Miracleman is pure and primal in a way that Watchmen is not.

God damn it, read Miracleman.

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The Batlord

https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Miracleman-1985

I honestly don't know who owns Miracleman. It was originally published by an obscure British company and its legal rights issues kept it out of print for decades until a few years ago. Which is why nobody but obsessives have ever read it.

Oh wait, I guess Marvel owns it. I do seem to remember hearing that the original publisher was a Marvel imprint.

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The Batlord

You know Miracleman's weird publication history actually makes it the perfect storm of a superhero deconstruction. Miracleman is called Miracleman because of copyright issues with Marvel Comics. Before that he was called Marvelman. Even while Moore was writing the series it was called Marvelman. And Marvelman was a character from the 50s/60s who Moore was reimagining who was a knockoff of the original Captain Marvel from the 40s who was a knockoff of Superman so blatant that DC sued and won and eventually obtained the rights to and renamed Shazam because by the time they had the rights Marvel Comics had created their own Captain Marvel and I guess a copyright infringement character doesn't have rights to their own name.

So Miracleman is essentially Superman, the basic concept of the superhero, but is also a second cousin knockoff with absolutely no originality to speak of to set him apart from the basic concept of the superhero idea. So a deconstructionist story about him is deconstructing the origin of the idea of the superhero while also having a cartoonish knockoff avatar to express everything that is ridiculous about the idea of the superhero even while the character is essentially an in-story god.

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The Batlord

And then you meet Kid Miracleman, Miracelman's former sidekick in all corny ways of what a sidekick can be, and any ideas about friendly metaphors and dispassionately literate ideas go out the window because the most purely evil supervillain ever has upended any notion of this being some cutesy version of a prequel to the idea of deconstructing superheroes.



Oh my god I'm glad I'm rereading Miracleman.

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Epikouros

The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell is the best epic/fantasy comic ever made. The story of the famous opera on the hands of one of the best illustrators. A must for fans of the genre.

The Batlord

Yes. Yes to this. I often find myself wary of collecting reprinted versions of old school comics for exactly the reasons in this video. They might not even look the worst, and the bright colors can be neat, but it just never looks right. I sense a dark future ahead for me where I spend ungodly amounts of money on original issues of old school comics.

I need to get some of those Teen Titan collections that were reprinted on more old school paper and look like they're probably supposed to look. I think the Alan Moore Swamp Thing reprints might be the same.

@DWV: and check 15:45 of the potential problems with color on comic art.

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The Batlord

Is this not working for you? That site in general is the best resource for reading comics online that I know of.

https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Miracleman-1985

I do have some of the physical issues but they're modern reprints and per the above post they're not really visually the way to see the series and I'm not actually willing to lend them out anyway. Any physical version of Miracleman is staying with me. It's too obscure and out of print a series for me to take any chances even with bland looking reprints.

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The Batlord

Copped original issues of the four issue West Coast Avengers mini-series that got extended into a long running comic. $12 including shipping. I love eBay and am hype for B/C-list superhero nonsense.

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The Batlord

Holy **** I just realized that might be Graviton on the covers of the last two issues. What a schmuck. Now hype for C-list villain nonsense as well. Please be Graviton.

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