Miracleman: The Silver Age #3: Escaping the Shadow

Miracleman: The Silver Age #3 marks an exciting time for readers. After three decades of waiting, readers will finally see where Neil Gaiman and  Mark Buckingham are taking Miracleman in the Silver Age. Even though the series was written all of those years ago, issue #3 and onward are completely new to us. I feel that it is appropriate that we are seeing this age through the eyes of Young Miracleman, or Dickie, who was brought back from the dead and is reawakened to a completely changed world. With the first two issues, Young Miracleman saw the world from Olympus, but with issue #3 he sets out into the world alone.

Despite Young Miracleman running from Miracleman and Olympus, both Jason Oakley and Tom Caxton have links to Miracleman. Jason recounts to Dickie that he met Miracleman just before the London incident, but he only remembers it because a stage play and film were made about the encounter. Caxton, however, has a much more recent connection. Under the guidance of Miracleman, Caxton became the first enhanced being: Mister Master. He eventually decides to renounce his abilities and live a simple life. To Miracleman, this meant that the experiment to enhance humans is a failure. I found the connections between Dickie, Jason, Tom, and Meta-Maid really interesting. For the most part, Dickie is the real deal and the closest to being at Miracleman’s level but he seems to be the only one actively not pursuing or rejecting it.

There is an interesting element introduced in this issue: Dickie is seeing Johnny Bates in his dreams. It is unclear if it is actually him or not, but knowing that Young Miracleman is technically a clone with implanted memories, there’s a good chance that part of Johnny is in him. Jordie Bellaire’s coloring for these sequences brilliantly uses monochrome coloring that gives a sinister sense while still signaling that this is a dream, or at least not in waking life. I was looking at the coloring for the original printings of issues #1 and #2 and comparing them to Bellaire’s work and her work is phenomenal. Bellaire is a phenomenal choice of a colorist. The work holds up as completely modern without alienating previous coloring styles and techniques. Gaiman’s and Buckingham’s work on the series really does stand the test of time. The Silver Age feels just as much at home now as it did thirty years ago, and even then things felt so close to Moore’s run. I’ve noticed that Miracleman: The Silver Age utilizes a lot of double spread pages. I can easily get a little mixed up following along with the dialogue on pages like these, but Klein’s lettering keeps the reader right where they need to be. Caxton retelling his story is dialogue heavy but Klein handles it with ease. During the dream sequences with Dickie and Johnny, Johnny’s dialogue has white text with black speech bubbles. His dialogue feels so precise and skillfully done, especially early in the issue where he is talking about the great theologies and mythologies of the world. Every great myth thrives in the written word, and Miracleman: The SIlver Age is a perfect example of that.