Miracleman: The Complete Original Epic

by Alan Moore

Middle-aged reporter Michael Moran always knew he was meant for something more. And when an unexpected event leads him to reclaim his destiny, Miracleman is reborn! But the hero's emergence prompts the return of an old friend who, beneath his success and smile, has become something terrifying. Disturbing secrets about their origins will lead to actions that fundamentally change humankind, leaving Moran to question the value of his own life. After all, what is the worth of a man when his other self is a god? MIRACLEMAN is nothing short of a revelation. The series reinvented the super hero, and forty years later stands as one of the single most influential works in the comic-book artform. This edition collects the complete original epic (A Dream of Flying, The Red King Syndrome and Olympus) - plus tales of the Warpsmiths and rare Miracleman stories! Collecting MIRACLEMAN (1985) #1, #3 and #6-16; and material from WARRIOR #1-18 and #20-21; MARVELMAN SPECIAL #1 and A1 (1989) #1 [as presented in MIRACLEMAN (2014) #1-16] - plus ALL-NEW MIRACLEMAN ANNUAL #1.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Fantasy

472 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2023

About the author

Alan Moore is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire, and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

As a comics writer, Moore is notable for being one of the first writers to apply literary and formalist sensibilities to the mainstream of the medium. As well as including challenging subject matter and adult themes, he brings a wide range of influences to his work, from the literary–authors such as William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson and Iain Sinclair; New Wave science fiction writers such as Michael Moorcock; horror writers such as Clive Barker; to the cinematic–filmmakers such as Nicolas Roeg. Influences within comics include Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Bryan Talbot.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ye gods.
"The Original Writer" is a pseudonym for Alan Moore due to a vast list of publishing disputes over the years. In the 80s he wrote this dark, sometimes brilliant version of the character Miracleman, who was originally known as Marvelman back in the day.
I was 100% on board with this story for a good bit, especially the first 1/3 of it. Man, I was riveted!
This originally campy character finds out that his whole life has been a lie. All of these superhero adventures he remembers (he had amnesia at first) were completely fabricated due to spoilery stuff.
It's emotionally raw, and the comic doesn't shy away from graphic details.
Violence, gore, and even childbirth
are depicted in very in-your-face ways throughout.
I loved it. <--but that might not be the case for everyone



The middle of the comic starts to get a bit...ish. Still somewhat interesting, but not quite as good as the opening act. There are these aliens and politics and...whatever.
I didn't know who the hell the Warpsmiths or the Qys were, and to be very honest, nothing in this made me want to dig around and find out.
This part of the book was ok. I think this is the Warrior's stuff?



The last part of this thing was a full-on struggle to hang in there.
Just complete pretentious bullshit. I shit you not, at one point, Miracleman is living in some sort of knock-off version of Olympus and doing an interpretive dance while recounting the past.
Walls upon walls of meaningless text, which only served to make me question the life choices that had led me to download this thing.



So basically it was half genius, half insufferable.
If I were to recommend this to anyone, I'd recommend they only read the first arc written by Moore and then call it a day.
5 stars for the first arc that's included, 2-3 stars for all the stuff with the Qys & Warpsmiths, and 1 star for the shit after that.
This is a seriously mixed bag.

[Rod Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reread in anticipation of finally reading the rest of the Neil Gaiman story I've been waiting on since 1993 after reading Miracleman #24. I didn't know at the time that the finished material for issue #25 would not show up in comic book stores for decades, mired in a twisted and frustrating legal battle over IP ownership.

I'd forgotten how short the original serialized chapters were, causing the plot to unfold so quickly and abruptly. Still, it's amazing to take this in again and remember how exciting it was to see everything you thought you knew about comic books permanently changed in real time. So many shocking turns, so many indelible lines and images.

I have all the Eclipse issues and some of the original Warrior magazines, but it was easier to get this new collection from my local library instead of moving around all those boxes in my basement looking for them in the many boxes in which they are probably scattered. I was sorry to see this collection cuts out all but one of the Mick Anglo stories that were embedded in the story in the original comics -- though keeping the framing sequences that surrounded them -- so it's not a complete collection, but good enough.



A PORTION OF A REVIEW I WROTE IN THE 1990s:

One of Eclipse's shining jewels was the MIRACLEMAN comic. Back in the eighties, writer Alan Moore revived the 1950's British comic book character Marvelman for a British magazine called WARRIOR. Marvelman was a transatlantic rip-off of our own Captain Marvel (the SHAZAM! guy, not the Kree warrior). Eclipse Comics brought Marvelman to the states and rechristened him Miracleman to avoid a lawsuit with Marvel Comics. We were thus treated to one of Alan Moore's deconstructions of the superhero mythology. Miracleman was no Superman. In MIRACLEMAN, things got a bit bloody when a couple of villains set out to achieve world domination. Then things got bloody unpredictable, when the hero actually attained world domination himself. At that point, Alan Moore left the book in the hands of a minor writer named Neil Gaiman.

[Tobin Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, The Original Writer...I mean...Alan Moore. I think he's trying to be as spiteful and tempermental as Harlan Ellison, but no one can out-Harlan Harlan.

I have to admit, I have a love/hate relationship with Moore, and it typically rears both heads within the same series.

- Watchmen? Loved most of it, hated the ending.
- From Hell? Well researched, not bad, but Moore truly defecates on the mattress at the end. Completely ruined it.
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Absolutely loved this...until Moore decided to test the patience of his readers by getting more and more ridiculous.

I could go on, but you get the drift. It feels like Moore starts out with a great idea, and is gung-ho, pedal to the medal with writing like we've never seen before, being taken places we've never been before...

...and then...

...and then it feels like Moore either thinks, something along the lines of, "well, I got away with all of that, let's see exactly how much they'll take before the project falls apart" or else it's simply the case of, "no idea how to end this, so let's just through in some unexplained/really bizarre/left field stuff and walk away from the smoking ruins."

This starts out very well. It doesn't bring comics into a more dark, adult sphere of storytelling, it takes the entire genre and pretty much upends it. Which is good. And then Moore unleashes the darkest, unholiest hell imaginable with a truly unrepentant villain. Also good, though it's something can only be done occasionally.

And then, Moore gets weird. The Warpsmiths. The weird talking aliens. The long long long long long long long screeds of quasi-poetic word jumbles that really add nothing to the plot, but they fill pages.

And then Moore decides to paint in his new world as gods would remake it, which goes really hard with the heavy-handedness.

I guess what I'm saying is, in the beginning, Moore is there to show you his chops, and to entertain the heck out of you. But then he turns into that homeowner who's held a party but now decides he wants everyone out so he starts acting obnoxious and petty and loses all interest in entertaining you. Instead, he'll just annoy you until you leave.

So, yes, this was absolutely the game-changer everyone says it was, but then Moore...well, I guess the best way to say it is, he got Moored to the idea that he could do anything he wanted and we'd love it.

Some probably even do, but not this kid.

Four stars for the game-changing bits. And one star off for all the bits I had to basically skip over because they were dumb.

[Jason Grote · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not really Alan Moore’s fault that his schtick—which he himself has admitted to loathing these days—has been so widely aped. It’s also not his fault that the Thatcher/Reagan triumphalism he was debunking with this, Watchmen, and V for Vendetta has long ago been replaced with the vulgarity and overt cruelty of Brexit and Trump. No need to unearth the fascist subtext in goody old Captain Marvel comics when it’s right there in front of us.

It was also hard for me to read John Totleben’s masterfully rendered theater of cruelty—Johnny Bates’ massacre of London—as a high school student in the late 80s. Watching a genocide unfold on Instagram hasn’t made it any easier.

Part of what made comics such a weird hobby was the lengths one had to go to assemble the story. This version of Miracleman began with a UK publisher and went through several US publishers. There was no way for teenage me to ascertain what stories even existed (many of them were world-building shorts published in anthology titles and featuring supporting characters), let alone for me to buy them. The later, grimmer issues were published at a time I could get to a specialty comic shop under my own steam, and someone published a trade paperback of the initial run. I managed to pick up an issue from somewhere in the middle at a convention, and I read a few stray panels in a fanzine. That was it. I had to fill the gaps with my imagination, just like I’d been doing with comics since I was four years old. Cut to some time in the past decade, in our current age of Everything Being Available All The Time, when I would comfort myself during my years in the showbiz trenches by buying comics that would pile up unread. At some unknown point in the recent past, probably involving a lawsuit involving Todd McFarlane, Marvel acquired the rights to publish Miracleman—ironic because he used to be called Marvelman until Marvel sent a cease and desist letter—and gave us this edition. Finally I got the whole story of Emil Gargunza molesting the girl alter ego of Miraclewoman, just in time for the Epstein file drop! It might be time for me to start getting into Moore’s more recent eldritch magick bullshit instead of the early stuff, if only for the sake of my mental health.

[Norman Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Occasionally, I've read a book and then forget I've read it, only to pick it up later and read it again. Usually, it doesn't take long for a feeling of déjà vu to set in—the feeling that I've read this before, and I have! This is not one of those books. It turns out five years ago I read the first two collections of the three that make up this omnibus. At no point did I remember any of it, and you would think that at least the explicit drawings of a woman giving birth would be memorable (probably in a negative way). And then I reread my reviews for those two collections, and my thoughts now are exactly the same as then, so I'm reprinting those reviews and will add a review for the third collection afterwards.

Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying – 2 Stars

The publishing history of Miracleman is about as convoluted as the character's fictional biography. An English publisher was reprinting Captain Marvel (aka Shazam!) when legal issues forced them to slightly revamp and rename it Marvelman (which is why Marvelman began in issue #25). Many years later, Marvel Comics had legal issues with this name and for the reprints it was renamed Miracleman (somewhat ironically, Marvel Comics eventually acquired the rights and this is their reprint volume). But the essence of the story always remained similar to (if not exactly identical) to the original Captain Marvel. Someone said a magic word and turned into a superhero. Then the superhero acquired a "family" of younger versions of himself.

For much of its early publishing history, Marvelman was a fairly simple comic book. Almost 20 years after being canceled, in the 1980s, Alan Moore came in to revitalize the character. Characteristically for Moore, he made the series much darker and mature.

This volume begins with a short tale from the original run by Mick Anglo. Miracleman and one of his sidekicks travel to the future to prevent a villain from time traveling to his past (their present). I wonder why not just travel back in time to stop all villains!

Then, Moore's run begins. Miracleman had had amnesia for all those years but finally remembers who he is and begins fighting crime again. Miracleman's origin is explained as him having been part of an experiment with captured alien technology (it's not clear if this was the same explanation given during Anglo's run). In the process of trying to prove his abilities to his wife, we see that simple super-strength or super-speed can't explain all his powers. Later, there is a retcon of sorts and it seems that all of Miracleman's adventures were implanted into his comatose body. (And I've heard there is yet another retcon later in the series.)

Moore's storyline is full of violence (and some nudity). The artwork reflects this darkness with heavy shading and coloring. The tiny font size makes it difficult to read, however. Up to this point I was mostly onboard, if a bit confused.

Then the Warpsmiths and the Qys appear with little or no introduction (perhaps they were part of the original series?). My head began to hurt. I didn't know what they were doing or why, only that they could shift reality and time. Some of the aliens spoke in a weird, unintelligible slang, and had no obvious connection to Miracleman. [2023 update: apparently, the Warpsmiths and the Qys were characters in another book by the same publisher, with the intention of eventually combining all of these characters into a supergroup like the Justice League or The Avengers; their origins and original association with Miracleman occurred in those other books—the publisher went out of business before the full team could be implemented.]

There's no indication as to why Moore took his name off of this reprint (he is listed as "the original writer"). Moore has a history of disavowing projects that other people manipulate or change, but these stories seem to not have been rewritten. The art is apparently recolored, but I can't imagine that Moore would take his name off for that. Perhaps it's only because Moore hates the big publishers so much that he won't have anything to do with them, no matter what, and now that Marvel Comics owns the series, this is how he flips them the bird.

I've always heard that Moore's run on Marvelman/Miracleman was some of his best work, but based on this volume I don't see it. Perhaps Moore didn't hit his stride until later in the run. I'm not sure I'm willing to find out.

Miracleman, Book Two: The Red King Syndrome – 3 Stars

Mature content warning: this book contains extremely graphic images of a woman giving birth.

This volume is a little more coherent than Book One, but I think Moore was more concerned with coming up with some kind of rational origin for Miracleman than telling a good story. The whole thing gets meta when the evil scientist references Captain Marvel as the inspiration for creating Miracleman. And the alien dudes who spout vague homilies are just bewildering.

This book is about half filled with the pencil and ink original artwork. A little of this goes a long way. One or two representative pages would have been enough, not a hundred. [2023 update: this artwork is thankfully excised from the omnibus, replaced with a bunch of variant cover art.]

Miracleman, Book Three: Olympus – 1 Star

Miracleman, aka Mike Moran, and his wife have had their baby daughter, Winter. Winter has inherited all of Miracleman's powers and more, plus is intellectually superior, although still stuck in an infant's body. This contributes to the breakdown of Mike and Liz's marriage; meanwhile, Miracleman discovers Miraclewoman, who has been hiding for years, and they go commune with some aliens. (And because the story isn't dark enough, Miraclewoman's origin features her getting repeatedly raped while unconscious.) After a devastating attack on London by the evil Kid Miracleman, Miracleman and his omnipotent friends decide to remake Earth into a utopia. At this point, Moore's overwritten, pretentious prose draws everything even remotely interesting to a complete stop. The Kindle guided view wasn't able to enlarge the font enough to be readable without eyestrain, so I skipped most of it, undoubtedly with no negative impact. This goes on and on for pages and pages.

There is at some point a subplot involving the Warpsmith and Qys aliens who seem to be at war with each other. In an effort to make some of the aliens seem actually alien, Moore provides them with almost unintelligible gobbledegook dialogue.

At the end of the day, both Earth's and the aliens' problems are solved by love and dancing.

Conclusion

There's a reason Alan Moore is regarded as one of the best comic book writers of all time. Even with all the dark pretentiousness of this title, he has had a profound impact on the industry. It's just that this title is so horribly overwritten that it is not at all entertaining, and not very enlightening, either. There's a good, interesting story hidden in this omnibus, but it's not worth trying to dig it out.

[Chris W · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely not for everybody. It starts off as a more adult version of Shazam/Captain then quickly and suddenly evolves into something completely different. It becomes an acid trip of a story with so much happening all illustrated in elegant prose. It has many clever themes, literally creating its own mythology with titans, gods and even a Mount Olympus but becomes so strange and obscure that it would lose me.

If you decide to read this, come with an open mind and don't expect a traditional superhero at all

[Robert Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been waiting to read this material for decades.

Sadly, I'm a bit disappointed. The legend of Alan Moore's Miracle Man first came to my attention in the 1990s. His re-envisioning of a fairly straightforward British Captain Marvel rip-off helped to make his reputation, and led to genre defining projects like V for Vendetta and Watchmen. Long legal battles over the publication rights kept it hard to find. I'm not sure if it's a reflection of those legal battles, or Alan Moore's general disgust with the large comic book companies, but his name is nowhere on this volume, despite his participation being the only reason it's being sold forty years after publication.

The battles are over, and Marvel has won. It was a pleasure to sit down and read these stories. But it's just not hitting this 45 year old as hard as it would have when I was 6, or when I was 15. Alan Davis is always a welcome illustrator. I've gotten a new appreciation for John Totleben from this volume as well. These stories are certainly influential. Alan Moore was the first champion of "deconstructing" super hero mythology. The strong influence of these pages on stories that I found mind-blowingly cool in my teens, 20s and 30s can clearly be seen. Reading it now, for the first time, after all of those stories, it strikes me as mostly being of historical value. And a little too violent for my softening middle-aged sensibilities. Glad I read it though. Alan Moore may have done more to form my world-view than any other writer, in any medium. It's interesting to see where it all started.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible to honestly review this in 2024. I'd read bits and pieces over the years, but lost touch with "comics proper" during its revival/reprint (with the attendant Alan Moore weirdness about being credited, of course). It's undeniably a great work, particularly for its era, but it's fascinating how much quality-of-life improvements in comics for older readers impact my perceptions of the material now at 42 (same goes for role-playing games that have loading screens, don't speed up leveling, etc.). Larger print and panels make a difference for this old duffer, and British comics were notoriously dense/tight in art and layouts; try reading a lesser work like New Statesmen now.

Thematically, much of what's here appears in other, better Moore works - the Superman stories, his incredible Supreme run (honestly, probably my favorite, including ABC material and Watchmen), etc. - with less "heavy lyricism" that characterized this and Swamp Thing. He's much less of an over-writer as time passes. Not that this style is bad per se, just the work of a younger man.

Still recommended, but messy, with ups and downs. The over-writing gets particularly intrusive, at least for me, as the story winds to a conclusion.

[Hogfather · Rating 4 out of 5]

After passing through the crucible of zines and indie comics in the 1970's, Alan Moore made his name as a writer of postmodern, self-aware stories in 2000 A.D.. From there he was given opportunities to write superhero stories by Marvel UK. This meant that in 1982, when Dez Skinn launched his legendary, star-crossed comic magazine Warrior, Moore was chosen by Skinn to reboot one of his favorite childhood superheroes: Marvelman. Moore's preternatural ability to place superheroes both in the context of their own canon and in the context of how we conceive of them was first made perfect here, in one of the most amazing comic books ever written. I won't pretend this story is utter perfection, but it gets pretty close for much of the run. The only serious demerit against this book is that it doesn't use Ron Courtney and Sam Parsons's original colors from the original publication of these stories, which are these amazing, expressive blasts of single colors. Instead, this book reprints Steve Oliff's more "realistic" color scheme used for the 2014 reprint of the series. Oliff's work is good, but I far and away prefer Courtney and Parsons's bolder work, and I wish this book had preserved their efforts.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Dream of Flying - brilliant. 5 stars

Fantastic art and a great spin on a silver age campy hero brought into the modern...uhh, then modern day of the 80s.

Red King Syndrome - still decent. 3 stars

A fairly good continuation of the story. Still good writing and decent story beats, art was a bit of a drop but still a good story.

Olympus (and additional material) - good grief. 1 star

It's been a while since I've considered something I've read a slog, but good lord, this was hard to finish. Absolute pretentious, over-written twaddle. Awful. Drags the whole thing down, and has left such a bad taste in my mouth for the entire story.

I was fairly curious to possibly read the Silver Age, despite the reviews, but this has killed my interest dead.

[GigiReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one took me forever to get through and was something of a game of two halves for me. The first two books were great and I loved the premise. I thought about the implications of the set up of miracle man a lot, mainly the two entities in one body as opposed to the more expected ‘super hero persona’.

I got a bit lost once we got to the out of space visitors section and then I found the story dragged a bit for me.

[Adam Fenderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just paged through the last bit, around the Warpsmith section; it got pretty out there at times and very bleak, not really something I enjoyed reading through. Reading on a mobile also was hard as the text was small and sometimes, when going panel to panel, it either missed panels or read them out of order.

[Troy-David Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although he does not want to be associated with Marvel, Alan Moore deserves to be recognized for his masterful re-engineering of the concept of super-heroes.
This volume encompasses his sixteen-issue run on the series, and it is brilliant: Full Stop.

There is so much at work here: the dream which is reality but actually false. The shared lives which are actually two beings joined together. The corruption of a super-being, and the birth of a super-being.
The destruction of one man’s life, the destruction of a being’s humanity, the destruction of a world’s entire way of life, and then the building of a new era and age.

Read this.

[Chris Tower · Rating 5 out of 5]

History. Excellence. But it is very dense. This may be only a read for die-hard fans. I liked it, but it took my over a month to read as I made slow progress and had to take breaks.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this. It's kind of like a superhero story on acid. Some of the same themes of watchmen are present here but it quickly changes into something else entirely.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt this was one of the finest examples of superheroes as art, and rank it nearly on par with Watchmen. It is art and poetry and an exploration of self, reality, and possibilities.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this when I was younger and I read scans of the issues because they weren't available but it didn't quite work as well for me this time.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Superhero revision mixed with Lovecraft bs. Better than Lovecraft, but still I cant stand that stuff.

[H.G. Santarriaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gran obra. Es la tercera vez que lo leo.
Me encantaría conseguir una edición con el color original.