That Sure Looks Fun – Miracleman #16

Back in my youth – a time period that simultaneously feels like a thousand years ago and just yesterday – I used to occasionally order comics from one of the mail-order businesses that advertised in the books.  If you’ve ever read a comic from the late 80’s and early 90’s, I’m sure you’ve seen the full-page ads for American Comics, which morphed into American Entertainment, which in turn morphed into Entertainment this Month, and finally I guess morphed its way right out of business.  I think it’s safe to say that buying those huge ads every month wasn’t the best of ideas for them, but, not having a true local comic store nearby, they were the only way I could get a lot of titles.

For whatever reason – I guess to sweeten the pot – they’d often toss in a couple of comics for free with a purchase.  Nothing of any great value, and it was usually stuff I had never heard of.  With one order Miracleman #s 1 & 2 from Eclipse Comics were included.  My first thought was probably the 11 year old equivalent of “What the hell is this crap?”  And then I read them.  I was blown away.  It was my first encounter with Alan Moore, and this revival of Miracleman (Marvelman in his original UK run, the British Captain Marvel equivalent) was unlike the other things I was reading.  It was serious and frightening – I still haven’t encountered a character as terrifying as the all grown up and completely evil Kid Miracleman.  The device of imagining “Hey, what if super-powered beings existed in the real world?” has been cliche for a long time now, but it felt right with this title.

Issue #2 (each of the early American issues collected short bits that appeared in the UK anthology Warrior) ended in a cliffhanger, and because of rights issues preventing widely available reprints and also due to my absence from the hobby for a long while, I had to wait until a couple of years ago to find out how Moore resolved things, resorting to scanned issues found on the internet.  And even now I’m still left in the lurch, since the series was cancelled midway through a story-arc from Moore’s replacement as scripter on the title, a young pre-Sandman Neil Gaiman. 

So I’m still hanging.

Now Miracleman stands as one of the great unfinished works in comics, but in spite of being stopped dead in its tracks there were so many fantastic facets to the story.  Miracleman forsaking the fragile body of his alter-ego, Mike Moran.  Kid Miracleman razing London to the ground while Miracleman is off-world.  Earth falling in line behind its new overlords.  The birth of the Children of the Damned-esque Miraclebaby.  The gradual distancing of Miracleman from Mike Moran’s wife and his coupling with Miraclewoman.  It was all just so well-crafted.

It’s that last moment, the consummation of the super-powered union, that generated the most memorable and most elegant cover of the series.  I’ve been able to pick up some of the individual issues in the last couple of years, and this one takes the cake:

It’s a gorgeous image from artist John Totleben – the Miracle Mates, Miracleman and Miraclewoman, over London.  Sex is great, but I’m guessing that Miraclesex would be a whole lot better.  Just a hunch.

The cover always gave me a little bit of deja vu – where had I seen this before?  Somewhere.  So I was thinking on it a couple of days ago, and then this popped into my brain:

I’m probably stretching a little bit here.  I’m not saying that Totleben was lifting from Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss.  I’m just saying that that’s what it evoked for me.  The tingly sparkling auras of Miracleman and Miraclewoman aren’t all that dissimilar from the blankets enveloping Klimt’s lovers, and the body positions, while not exactly alike, are analagous.  The placement of the man’s and Miracleman’s hands are very much the same – that might be the clincher for me.

Here’s the cover rotated and flipped, if that helps at all:

Maybe I’m just seeing things.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  I’ll shut up now, but someday I’d like to talk some more about Miracleman.  It’s a pretty rich topic – even the rights issues are interesting with this guy, and he was in the hands of two heavyweight comic book writers.  And to think, I have a defunct mail-order store with a terrible business model to thank for introducing me to him.