Countdown to QB50 2015: September

18 DAYS #3 (Graphic India)
In which I realize Grant Morrison will not actually be writing the series.  But turns out not to drastically affect its quality.

ATOMIC ROBO AND THE RING OF FIRE #1 (IDW)
New home, same great storytelling.  Very glad to see Clevinger and Wegener back in print.

BATMAN #44 (DC)
Snyder and Azzarello make for a potent combination.  Out of current continuity, this flashback tale made the news thanks to its commentary on the spate of police shootings making news.

ROBIN: SON OF BATMAN #4 (DC)
If Deathstroke (with all due apologies to Tony Daniel, etc.) were as awesome in his own comic as here is here, I'd read that, too.  Reminds me how awesome it was to see him in The Shade, too.

BLOODSHOT REBORN #6 (Valiant)
In which Bloodshot realizes there's a bad guy who's also attempting to absorb all the stray nanites...

CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHITE #1, 2 (Marvel)
Seven years in the making, Loeb and Sale finally return to this latest collaboration.  I'm ecstatic to see this happening.  Curiously, the first issue reprints the long-ago zero issue, but after the contents of the new material.

CIVIL WAR #4 (Marvel)
Black Panther turns out to be a Skrull.  And suddenly the follow-up to the original Civil War, Secret Invasion, seems less random.  Yet another thing this reprise gets more right than the original.  Thanks, Soule.  Again.

DAREDEVIL #18 (Marvel)
I assumed all along that Waid was headed to a quasi-rehash of the classic Daredevil narative, and in this finale that's exactly what he does.  The comic itself is not so bad, but then Waid writes in his going-away thoughts how this run has been his most creatively-rewarding to date.  How he forgotten writing Wally West?  Even if the style was more deliberate, I'd hold the best of that run to anything Waid has written in a regular superhero comic since...

DIRK GENTLEY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY #4 (IDW)
I've settled in to really enjoying the random pleasures of this experience.  Viva Douglas Adams!  Who makes a cameo this issue!

DOCTOR WHO: FOUR DOCTORS #4, 5 (Titan)
Cornell concludes the crossover epic.  Eventually gets around to explaining why the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) wasn't included.

DOOMED #4 (DC)
The only objection I have to this series, as it turns out, is the poor choice in style for the lead's narrative captions.  Otherwise, more solid material from Lobdell.

E FOR EXTINCTION #4 (Marvel)
The conclusion to this Secret Wars tie-in seems to be a comics version of X-Men: The Last Stand's final encounter between Wolverine and Jean Grey.  Nice save, Burnham.

EARTH 2: SOCIETY #4 (DC)
I love, love, love how this series has completely embraced the full potential of being its own continuity.

FIGHT CLUB 2 #5 (Dark Horse)
Finally had a look at this.  That's about all I've got to say about that.

THE FUSE #14 (Image)
I'm settling in as a regular reader.

GRAYSON #11, 12, Annual #2 (DC)
Yeah, I've finally decided to read this series more regularly.  It's just too darn good to continue overlooking.

GREEN LANTERN Annual #4 (DC)
Venditti promised, or someone promised, answers.  But there are frustratingly few.  Darn you, Venditti!

IMPERIUM #8 (Valiant)
Divinity, the guy from Divinity (no, seriously!) pops up in something other than Divinity.  Although this is kind of more or less a rephrasing of Divinity except in an Imperium context...

JUSTICE LEAGUE #44 (DC)
Don't tell anyone else that Darkseid dies in this installment of "Darkseid War"!

JUSTICE LEAGUE 3001 #3, 4 (DC)
Don't tell anyone that I snuck back into this series because I realized all over again, this is supposed to be Legion of Super-Heroes territory.  But Giffen/DeMatteis have managed to create yet another platform for their genius instead...

MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER #12 (Dynamite)
I caught up with this release from earlier in the year because it concludes a story I finally got around to seeing in its inception from a first issue I read in my comiXology account (don't tell anyone I'm still working away at that!).  I don't think the muted impact (the first issue was better) is because I skipped, oh, ten issues.  But it's still fun seeing Van Lente in something I actually wanted to read again.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #4 (DC)
Through no real fault on my own, I missed the previous issue.  But I still love this series.

MIRACLEMAN #1 (Marvel)
This new first issue marks the start of the reprints as they reach the Gaiman material, having concluded Alan Moore's The Original Writer's.  Turns out to be very similar to Sandman, somehow...

MS. MARVEL #18 (Marvel)
Kamala's mother knew!

NAMELESS #5 (Image)
Morrison's weird comic (his latest weird comic) finally saw another issue published.  Burnham shows restraint (for a change).  Reads a lot like the first issue.  Made me interested again.

THE NEW DEAL (Dark Horse)
See thoughts elsewhere.

PREZ #4 (DC)
The comics shop had a giant mix-up in its shipments that week.  So I panicked and got a digital edition.  I've had some fun digitally lately, but I'm not gonna tell you anything else.  Then the shop got the print edition.  And this becomes the latest comic where I have both, and don't mind.  Just two issues left, alas.

SANDMAN: OVERTURE #6 (Vertigo)
All along I've been reading how this whole story leads back to Sandman #1.  And that's exactly what happens.  This was probably my favorite issue of the series.  Sad to see it go.  Very, very gorgeous work, Williams (III).

STAR TREK/GREEN LANTERN #3 (DC)
Larfleeze on the cover...!

STAR WARS #9 (Marvel)
I thought they promised answers from Sana Solo this issue?

STAR WARS: SHATTERED EMPIRE #1 (Marvel)
Takes place concurrently with the Battle of Endor (at least during this issue).  Features Poe Dameron's parents.  No idea who Poe Dameron is?  Perhaps this prequel to The Force Awakens just isn't meant for you, son...

The, ah, misshipment issue prevented me from reading a new Star Wars: Lando...

STRINGERS #1 (Oni)
Guggenheim and Greenwood (Resurrection) started working on this years ago.  Guggenheim and Greenwood, meet Loeb and Sale...

SUPERMAN #44 (DC)
As far as I'm concerned, some of the best Superman storytelling...ever.

THIS DAMNED BAND #2 (Dark Horse)
Cornell's second issue was good enough to helped the series get a foothold in the QB50 running.

WE ARE ROBIN #3, 4 (DC)
In the fine tradition of the original Robin ongoing being the best thing about Jean-Paul Valley's stint as Batman, Bermejo has turned this one into the best thing about the Commissioner Batman era.  That second issue, which doesn't feature Duke, is the best one to date.

SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #21 (DC)
My periodic sampling of this series continues.  Superman is a dick.  But he kind of has a reason to be.

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.

Miracleman #1 (Marvel)

(via CBDB)

writer: Alan Moore

artist: Garry Leach

One of the things fans never thought they'd see was the return of Miracleman.

This requires a bit of explaining.  Miracleman is Marvelman, who is Captain Marvel, who is definitely not Superman.  But we have Miracleman because we couldn't have Marvelman because we couldn't have Captain Marvel, who was definitely not Superman.

And we have Miracleman thanks to Alan Moore.  Miracleman was Moore's first Superman, before "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?," before Supreme, before Tom Strong.  As far as I'm concerned, Moore seems to be typical of British creators who famously invaded American superhero comics in the '80s, but who didn't necessarily understand American superhero comics, and didn't necessarily care to understand them.

Point of evidence?  Miracleman.  

Like a lot of comic book fans, I had never read Miracleman.  I knew it was one of those seminal '80s characters, that it was part of how Moore developed his reputation.  But Miracleman was gone by the time I started actively reading comics in the '90s.  Long gone.

Miracleman became tied up, ironically and appropriately, in the same legal tape as every other...definitely not Superman version of the character.  And so he disappeared for years.  Not unlike, it would now seem, the Miracleman in Moore's stories.

So now he's back.  It's back.  Marvel has been working toward this moment for a few years now.  It started by resurrecting via reprint the old Marvelman comics, celebrating British creator Mick Anglo, as is done again in this reprint.  Anglo has become more famous than whoever it is who created Captain Marvel.  (And to further complicate matters, not the Marvel Captain Marvel.)  (Yesh.)  

In Moore's story, Miracleman has been away.  For decades.  Dude forgot he was even Miracleman to begin with.  But then he remembers.  And is definitely no longer to be mistaken for Superman.  In any way.  Like a lot of recent Supermen, he becomes the opposite of the Man of Steel.  He becomes a terror.  He becomes, well, the villain.

Moore's love of Superman stems from the Silver Age, the fun-loving Superman.  The one filled with whimsy.  That Superman hasn't existed since, well, the Silver Age.  And I think Moore was pretty upset about that.  Even though he was one of the creators who definitely made sure comics were never as a rule like that again.  Except when he later wanted them to be like that, so he wrote like that himself.  But not with Superman.  

Instead, he began the work of deconstruction.  His Miracleman is all about that.  It's about as cynical as anything Garth Ennis ever did in The Boys.  

I mean, I know what Miracleman was all about.  But it's quite another thing to be reading it for myself.  Knowing other things Moore did at the time, or even things he did after it, doesn't really prepare you for this one.  Well, maybe the callous crippling of Batgirl in The Killing Joke, a flippant twist of fate creators maintained although redeemed for decades.  

This is kind of different.  It's not bad reading.  It's, just, so cold.  So dismissive.  It doesn't seem to think superheroes make sense anymore.  As a rule.  That's the whole standpoint.  Which makes perfect sense, to some extent.

Is this really what some fans have considered one of comics' great Holy Grails?

If you excuse me, I'll be waiting for Zenith.  (Which apparently, will finally happen starting at the end of the year.  I'll be waiting with baited breath...)