Superhero Media: Mister Miracle by Tom King

I feel it's worth mentioning that this Mister Miracle series is technically an "Elseworlds" book, because I didn't figure that out until the last issue myself. Is that a spoiler? I hardly do these reviews in a timely manner, so for all I know there will have been four Mister Miracle films released that follow this plot by the time this gets through the backlog. Covering a brutal war between New Genesis and Apokolips, Mister Miracale features such epic highlights as drunk Skeets, Darksied eating carrots and Batman killing babies. In a more metaphorical sense, the series is about PTSD and the healing nature of positive relationships that ground us to reality. The very human moments of the series are among the strongest, especially contrasted with the brutal and high-concept warfare on display in other sections. Moments where Scott Free and Barda are lounging on the couch, watching nothing in particular on television and reflecting on their brutal upbringing under Granny Goodness are perhaps the most grounded I've ever seen superheroes and the trauma which drives them.

In Ultimate Fantastic Four, there is a storyline in which the civilisation of Halcyon is at war with the forces of the Resurgence led by Thanos. It's basically an update on the Jack Kirby "4th World" stories from which Mister Miracle and Darksied emerged, and is one of my favourite versions of that "Chariots of the Gods" take on a war in heaven myth; until I read Mister Miracle that is. One of the factors that makes the Grecco-Roman Olympian myths so enduring is that the gods are all about the human emotions writ large, being as wrathful, lustful and jealous as humanity, but with the power to act on all these impulses with impunity. Mister Miracle takes this concept of divinity and runs with it to the extreme when it comes to the New Gods, with Scott and Barda in particular driven to extreme acts of violence by their, very 'human', desire to be done with their abusive families and just live their own lives. Towards the end of the book, there is an extended sequence where one of the couple is at home, looking after their son and the other is engaging in bloody hand-to-hand combat on Apokolips.

There is an interesting art style happening in Mister Miracle, with digital blends and blurs over seemingly random panels, representing Scott's trauma disconnecting him from reality. As an experienced Trauma Psychotherapist, I found a lot of value in this technique, as it reflected both my study and the experiences discussed by my clients to do with their own trauma. Some of the reviews of Mister Miracle that I've read are put off by the visualisation of the protagonist's internailsed trauma, which I can understand, but it is, essentially, the main point of the story, and if the reader is unable to engage with the motif, then much of the story is lost. Can I also just say that this is probably the best appearance of Darksied that I've read? Not just because Darksied eating carrots and cream cheese is an amazing image, but because he his used minimally, doesn't engage in much of the fighting and is just a malevolent force, rather than a big bad to punch. Evidently, a lot of fans hate Tom King's run on Batman, but if he does more work in the vein of Mister Miracle, I'll be sure to track it down.