Mister Miracle By Steve Englehart & Steve Gerber HC

Release:

Mar 11, 2020

Creators

Writer	Steve Englehart, Bob Haney, Steve Gerber, John Harkness, Robert Kanigher
Artist	Rich Buckler, Michael Golden, Howard Purcell, Jim Aparo, Irv Novick
Cover Artist	Marshall Rogers
Penciller	Marshall Rogers, Ramona Fradon, Michael Golden
Inker	Joe Giella, Vince Colletta, Rick J. Bryant, Charles Paris, Ilya Hunch, Dick Giordano, Russ Heath, John Fuller
Colorist	Jerry Serpe, D.R. Martin, W. Argyle Nelson-Smith, Cory Adams, Cornelia Adams, Liz Bérubé
Letterer	Clem Robins, John E. Workman Jr., Milt Snapinn, Morris Waldinger, Jim Aparo, Ben Oda
Editor	Murray Boltinoff, Larry Hama, Julius Schwartz, Dennis O’Neil

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I’ve got a set of shelves reserved for my omnibuses, compendiums, and deluxe edition hardcovers that I’ve been – mostly – making my way through in alphabetical order. I say “mostly” because I’ve skipped around a bit to read things like the ROM and Micronauts omnibuses and to focus on reading things that I have not previously read in other formats.

As I reached The Fourth World by John Byrne omnibus, I decided I should first divert from that specialized shelf over to my Absolute Edition shelf and finish reading the original Fourth World saga by its creator Jack “King” Kirby.

I’d originally picked up an omnibus of that years ago, but when the two Absolute Editions were released, I opted to pick those up and gifted that great honking omnibus to my friend Scott (not Scott Free). I picked up where I’d left off in the first volume, then moved on to the second.

Once I finished that, I decided to keep stalling on the Byrne and read the collections of other Fourth World content I have that preceded him.

Which brings us, finally, to this, a collection of stories featuring Mister Miracle and company released in the years after Kirby’s original run ended.

Englehart and Steve Gerger are called out in the title, but it strikes me as a bit odd that Bob Haney is left out, as he wrote just as many of the stories contained in the volume as Gerber did.

Those stories featured the super escape artist teaming up with a certain Dark Knight Detective who is something of an escape artist himself and are exactly the kind of wackiness that you’d expect from Haney Brave and the Bold stories.

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The bulk of the collection is made up of the Englehart and Rogers revival of the original series, picking up with #19, which has a running plotline exploring the theological ramifications of Scott Free being a god.

Gerber tries to carry that baton after Engelhart’s departure, but the series ended shortly after with #25 as part of the DC Implosion.

The volume is rounded out by a Superman team-up from DC Comics Presents.

Overall, the collection is a weird mishmash, and the religious angle from Englehart doesn’t really gel – and I’m not sure it would have even if it had continued – with the idea being that Scott is attempting to become a kind of “secular messiah,” one who serves neither New Genesis nor Apokolips, and who hopes to use the metaphor of escaping your chains to inoculate humanity against the influence of Anit-Life just in case Darkseid ever gets his hands on the equation.

The art from Rogers is great, though I’m not particularly keen on his take on Barda’s armor. But at least Oberon finally got to wear pants.

Ultimately, with the abrupt and unplanned ending of the series, it’s a bit of a letdown. The team-up stories are fun enough in their own way, but they made no attempt to explore big ideas the way the main series, like Kirby’s series before it, tried to do.

It’s too bad the super escape artist couldn’t escape the power of the market forces that led to his book’s cancellation.

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