Miracleman series discussion (spoilers)

Dang. For some reason you're not on the group e-mail list I send the issues to.

I'll get you back up to speed on Tuesday.
 
:shock: "Olympus" is the most beautiful, poetic comic book writing I've ever read. Period.
 
The big fight in #15 is not only horrifically violent, but sublimely beautiful.

No one has yet to tell a fight like this. It's not what happens, but the way it is told. It is totally unique to me.

And #16 is the perfect calm after such a storm.

Beautiful work. Thinking about these two issues makes me shiver.
 
I loved the last two issues. What a beautiful ending.
 
Alan Moore with Watchmen would be considered a Genius... but on his work with MiracleMan he has totally blown me away. I have never read such a well thought out and written comic. This shouldn't even be a comic anymore it should be a classic work in literature. I love MiracleMan I'm disappointed they don't have comics like this anymore. Alan Moore is now the greatest writer ever.
 
I think one of the major reasons people hark Watchmen as better than Miracleman is because well... you can't buy Miracleman for love nor money, while Watchmen has been in print since the 80s.

But as good as Watchmen is, I honestly think Miracleman (or Marvelman as it was originally called) is far better.
 
Watchmen is a contained graphic novel, conceived with a beginning, middle, and end. Moore had complete control over the characters.

Miracleman was meant to be an ongoing series, and while Moore's run is highly acclaimed, the series went on in the hands of Neil Gaiman's.

That, more than anything, is the difference.

Not to mention that Watchmen is an allegory using story-driven characters, and Miracleman is character-driven allegory.

Anyways... Every time I read something new by Alan Moore, its like he has recreated all of comic bookery.

but here's how I rate what i've read:

1 - V for Vendetta
2 - Superman: For the Man Who Has Everything
3 - Watchmen
3 - Miracleman (i think this is pretty much on the same level as Watchmen)
4 - Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
5 - Swamp Thing
6 - League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol.1
7 - Promethea: Books One-Four
8 - Batman: The Killing Joke
9 - Top Ten: Book One
10 - League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol.2

Yeah... In that order.
 
To me, my favourite of all of Alan Moore's work is Miracleman. A distant second is V for Vendetta. Everything else becomes an even more distant third (and I love 'em. I've yet to read Swamp Thing though.)

V for Vendetta is so unbelievably good, that when I got the trade I literally could not put it down. I just read it non-stop. And it haunted me for days afterwards.
 
That's why its my favorite.

V for Vendetta leaves you with chills and a solid message about what was right, and made you think they were right...

I'm not getting that out of Miracleman... I get chills, but its not changing how I think about the world as a whole.
 
V haunted me for days, and when it was over, I felt it was over.

Miracleman, on the other hand, when I get to the ending, "Sometimes I just wonder"... I stop. Everything stops. I almost can't leave the page. I love the fact it so completely shuts me down.
 
So Bass, you told me not to write my MM review before I read #16 and I ignored you. So now I've had to rewrite it. I just want to ask you if you think I "got" the theme. In my review I say that we are taught by religion that though we can strive to be close to God, we can't actually be him. Miracleman challenges that. As the MM's final monologue explains, Gods may be just like you and me and it is possible for you to become a God. That man should not sit around talking about how sinful and despicable he is and how much better God must be. Does that sound right? That monologue just explains it so well...
 
It's not for me to say, but I can tell you what I experience from the title (in a long, non-sequitur rambling as Miracleman tends to make me shiver when I think about it).

In Nietzhe's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" the idea of God being dead was that if he was indeed dead, then Man must strive to replace Him. In fact, Zarathustra, the superman, destroyed the human man merely by his presence.

What we see in Miracleman is very much that. Miracleman appears (and even the Warpsmiths say this at one point) and soon, the normal man is made not only obsolete, but as we can see by #16's end, but the normal man is completely destroyed (look at what happens to both Mike and Liz Moran when Winter appears). Miracleman, to me, does not say man can be god, but man IS god, and by waking up from the slumber of mortal flesh, we realise that potential, and leave what we had before, our crutches, behind. The waking destroys the dream, does it not? So does the god destroy the man.

Nietzche's idea of man having to ascend is very heretical because it attempts to remove God from the equation and thus, leads to hubris and madness. The religions of the world preach the same message - the ascension of man and its inevitable reward - but do so with the Godhead figure to create humility, an important lesson that the powerful must understand. But that humility is also turned to fear and used for control. Nothing is ever truly perfect.

So, in this sense, Miracleman is a deeply spiritual story, discussing very religious themes - about man and god, their relationship, how one perceives the other, and so forth. The title is very much about the relationship of the mundane and the divine.

And no other genre so epitomizes that relationship than the superhero, where the protagonist is mundane (secret identity) and divine (super hero).

At least, that is what the story's conflict is about. How you see that conflict, be it a message for improvement, or perhaps that gods are terrible and terrifying, or that there are no gods, or that we are all gods - well, that is up to you. The conflict though, is god and man. Life and death.

To confront eternity, as we do so fully in Miracleman, forces one to confront our own mortality. To me, this is the most powerful part of Miracleman, and I feel that confrontation with death each time I read it. But the beauty of Miracleman is it does not preach fear of survival, but the acceptance of death, and the understanding of eternity.

And it does this through powerful dream imagery. Of life and death as a dream. The dream of humanity. That one day, we must wake up from this world of and see it for the remarkable miracle that is. The miracle that we are. The divine revelation. This life we lead is not the only life, the only world, and there is so much more. Be wary of the nightmare.

To you, I wonder what it says. To you, what defines it? To me, Miracleman says two things that will probably continue to touch me until the day I die.

"Oh Earth, look up."

"Sometimes, I just wonder."
 
Just reread the last issue, and now that im actually mostly awake for it, I have to admit that this series belongs at the top of my list.

Alan Moore... you never cease to amaze me...

I'm going to read the Gaiman stories with caution, keeping in mind that the series ended with #16
 
So far it seems that Gaiman has taken the perfect approach to the comic after Moore...

Imagine that Moore's issues are the Gospels

Gaiman's are shaping up to be the Acts of the Disciples.

Anyone who's read sandman know how good Gaiman is about writing stories about characters, hardly using the characters... Its all centered on the people of the Utopian World

He's not trying to mimic Moore, he's going in a whole new direction.

And there are Bates-Worshippers... which is damn creepy. (albeit nowhere near as creepy as Osama and Jerry Falwell standing together preaching to the militant Islamo-Christians in the mountains... I <3 you Alan Moore)

EDIT: And the Six Andy Warhols are back... with a familiar face.
 
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Someone finally uploaded a torrent that has seeders, which means I can finally read this series. The bad thing? It's all in .rar format, which means I have to open each one up, and view each page individually.

But I can take it. The story's looking good so far. I'm turning into a Moore-follower. :D
 
Bass, I just sent an Email requesting this.

PLEASE SEND IT SO I CAN READ IT AND JUSTIFY MY NAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :x

thx,

marvelman
 
ProjectX2 said:
Someone finally uploaded a torrent that has seeders, which means I can finally read this series. The bad thing? It's all in .rar format, which means I have to open each one up, and view each page individually.
Click to expand...

Do you not use CDisplay? If not, get it (it's free). If so, all you have to do is rename the files from ".rar" to ".cbr" and they will open in CDisplay normally.
 
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