The Best Comic I Read Today Is . . . Miracleman #11

They just don’t make comics like this anymore, and I know this was originally released in May, 1987. The richness of Alan Moore’s prose, the way he uses subtext in his captioning to further enhance the story, the imagery, assonance and consonance are all vestiges of a comic book writing past that disappeared sometime around foil-hologram gimmick covers.



This issue begins Book Three of the Miracleman saga, “Olympus”.  It also begins John Totleben’s run as illustrator of the book, reuniting the team that made Moore’s run on Swamp Thing earlier in the ‘80’s so horrifyingly memorable.  There is a fantastic section at the end of this issue called “Miracleman Behind The Scenes” where the reader is shown the process Totleben goes through in creating each page.  There was no “digital” in 1987, so the page reproductions are captioned with descriptions like “pencil, India ink and white acrylic on illustration board”.  After the previous sixteen pages of mind-warping line work, it is wonderful to see the craftsmanship evident in Totleben’s art.



 

When I saw that this book was being released today, and I knew that I was planning on writing this post later tonight, I felt bad for the other books on my pull list. It’s almost not fair to compare Miracleman, written by a master of the craft at the height of his powers, to anything being released today.  But that’s not accurate.  There are vestiges of Moore in every quality book out there.  Somewhere, a young writer is reading Miracleman for the first time, recognizing its brilliance, and thinking: “They just don’t make comics like this anymore . . .

“. . . but maybe I can.”

- Aloha -