Miracleman #1
By: Mick Anglo, “The Original Writer” (w) Mick Anglo, Don Lawrence, Garry Leach (a)
Marvel Comics

Liz says: Holy Macaroni! I’ve finally read the first installments of “Original Writer” AKA Alan Moore’s Miracleman (yes, Bleeding Cool readers, this was me) and true to expectation it was easily the best thing to hit the shelf this week, this month… probably this year. It’s also kind of a big deal: here’s why.

For many years, Moore’s Miracleman (published in installments in Warrior magazine, and later taken over by Neil Gaiman) has been regarded as the “great lost book” that fell out of print and out of sight, never finished, and unlikely to see publication again. The reasons for this involve a complicated snarl of ownership disputes (resulting in stories so preposterous they sound like fiction themselves). Marvel finally bought the rights four years ago, and at long last, they are here. So what will today’s audience make of it?

The character (created by Mick Anglo in 1953) is reintroduced by Moore as an amnesiac who has forgotten for the past twenty years that he was ever a superhero called Miracleman. It’s an interesting opening for a book that has been largely forgotten for about that same amount of time. The past/present/future hopping where the work itself is concerned is aided by the character’s ability to time-travel; there’s poetry there that works in its favour.