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PUBLISHER-Eclipse
Having recently found a second copy of issue #24 of this series I wanted to go back and start reading it again from the beginning. Sure I could read those nice new reprints from Marvel,which while very nice have way to high a cover price.But instead I dug out the old Eclipse run.
Coming out in the summer of 85 I was fairly young when Eclipse started publishing this UK series. Thankfully the comic shop I went to was run by a guy who had lived most of his life right outside Blackpool. So his shop always had copies of 2000 AD and even Warrior. Which back in the mid 80s wasn't that common.Around the time issue 3 hit the stands I was in the comic shop. I had 3 bucks left over after grabbing my normal monthly stack,and the owner handed me issues 1 and 2 of Miracleman. From then until it ended when Eclipse went under I read every issue.
Starting off with a reprinted 60s story of Mike Moran and the rest of the Miracle Family,by chapter 2 we are in 1983 England. Mike is a freelance reporter that is having the same dream over and over. After he is taken hostage by some terrorist at a nuclear plant,Mike remembers the magic word that turns him into Miracleman. And for the first time this world has a legit superhero.
Moore took a character that is basically the bastard grandson of Superman and made him into a much more nuanced and thought out person that Supers has ever been.And even in this first issue there are pieces of what Moore kept doing and brought to the forefront of the comic issues later. The idea that superhero comics are a very childish genre. And in the early 80s and hell even now most of the superhero comics published are written to appeal to kids/middle age man childs. These are reasons I think that some people hate this series. They can't accept that the genre they have loved since they were kids is at it's very core kind of silly and stupid. But being the great writer he is Moore manages to take this childish genre and by injecting a bit of realism make it into something that broke most of the genre rules. And by the end of his run a title that was more science fiction/religious based than just a silly comic with guys in colorful tights punching each other.
Right now is the best time since the early 90s to get into Miracleman. Marvel has reprinted most of the 24 issues Eclipse put out. And what isn't reprinted currently will be out soon. Plus finally Neil Gaiman,he took over the writing of the series after Moore left,will be able to finish his 2 and 3rd stories lines.
Miracleman #01 gets a buy.
