All-New Miracleman Annual #1 (Marvel)

via Marvel

writer: Grant Morrison

artist: Joe Quesada

Marvel's ongoing reprints of the long-out-of-print Miracleman have curiously fallen off the radar as far as I can tell.  I admit I haven't read an issue since the first one, after determining that perhaps "The Original Writer," Alan Moore, may have had his inner Garth Ennis a little too squarely in mind when he tackled one of the defining '80s comics.  Lately I've considered checking back in.

This isn't what I mean by that, by the way.  I read this one for one reason: Grant Morrison.

Ha.  For some people, this project is the culmination of a whole version of comic book history, the feud between Moore and Morrison, two giants of the form who embody the schism that inexplicably ended Moore's relationship with the mainstream.  Morrison originally wrote the script for the lead story in this annual in 1984 and sent it to Moore.  Moore had no interest.  Reports suggest that Morrison took it personally.  Maybe?  At the time, Morrison's career was still years away from its popular breakthrough, when he was part of the later British Invasion that followed Moore to American comics, along with Neil Gaiman, that helped form the genesis of the Vertigo imprint, which Moore's Saga of Swamp Thing had helped bring about but by which point Moore himself had...moved along.  Comics historians will have a lot of fun talking about this.  Fans have been talking about it for years already, and so have Moore and Morrison.  But the last word has yet to be written by either.  Morrison's recent The Multiversity: Pax Americana, a version of Moore's Watchmen, is surely one of the more direct creative responses between them.

And now Marvel has quietly entered the conversation.

The company must have known what it was doing, although by the strict sense of it seems to have considered rising above all the hassle, cutting through all the bullshit and just letting the material speak for itself.  It'd be nice if one or the two of the creators in question did the same.  Marvel's biggest testament to the material is that it is illustrated by Joe Quesada, who is the company's Chief Creative Officer.  Prior to taking on managing responsibility, Quesada was best known as an artist.  Every time he does such work now, it should always be viewed as significant in and of itself.

So really, you ought to consider this one as much for the unearthed Morrison script as the new Quesada art.

What about the story?  Not being completely familiar with Moore's Miracleman saga, only the broad strokes, I have to take it at face value.  Johnny Bates, the erstwhile Kid Miracleman who has been set up as the superhero gone rogue and mortal enemy of Miracleman himself, is on the verge of his worst deeds.  We're on the eve of Armageddon.  As such, Morrison evokes the Book of Revelation from the Bible.  A little over ten years after Morrison wrote this script, Mark Waid and Alex Ross took a similar approach to great success in the pages of Kingdom Come.

It might have come across as a little arty to Moore in 1984.  How am I to know?  Maybe Moore himself had made similar allusions in his own work.

For Morrison's later work, this kind of material is similar insofar as it's evocative, but it's a lot more deliberate.  Morrison is a writer who loves to make connections, and usually so many of them that he leaves a lot of readers frustrated.  When he simplifies things, his instincts are still evident.  Moore's Miracleman is ultimately not all that reflective of Morrison's storytelling, which does not tend to revamp so much as reflect prior material in ways that had not previously been considered.  He constructs more than deconstructs.  Even when Moore isn't deconstructing, he's basically goofing around.  The most world-building he ever did was for the Green Lantern mythos, for whatever reason.

At the back of the issue is a complete transcript of Morrison's original text, along with art breakdowns and commentary, all of which is valuable in properly appreciating what exactly you've just read.

There's also a Peter Milligan effort included, as Morrison's story is pretty brief, originally conceived in the the British fashion in which Miracleman and Morrison's own scripts at the time were approached.  Milligan was a supporting player in the British Invasion, and has been someone I've been trying to figure out, but with a lower profile, it's been harder to figure out where exactly I should start.  His tale here is a winking version of the original Mick Anglo Marvelman on which Miracleman was derived that considers at the end what it might be like if the good guys approached a more realistic worldview.  It's greatly aided in impact by Mike Allred's art.  Allred is best known for his indy creation Madman, one of the icons of that comics branch, and his work has been a constant throwback that never ages, if that makes any sense, in the best timeless tradition.  He's someone whose legacy could very well increase in time upon further critical reflection.

As one of the few comics release on the last day of 2014, hopefully All-New Miracleman Annual found an appreciable audience for its historic worth, in more ways than one.  It ranks among the year's most significant events.