Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby (New Edition)

In a word: majestic.

In a beautiful moment in his quintesessential speculative fiction novel, "Fortress of Solitude," the great geek-auteur-come-novelist Jonathan Lethem plays heavily with superhero tropes, and his young protagonist imagines the moment when Jack "The King" Kirby moves from Marvel to DC as a scientific process in which the great artist is hooked up to something like IV's and literally getting the Marvel drained from him.

That is lovely (see also Lethem's short story "Vision and the Scarlet Witch") moment. Lethem's Kirby fandom really highlights how the bright writers, kids, and dreamers of the period viewed the master.

Now we know Kirby had initially created his "New Gods," Orion, Darkseid, et. al. for the Thor landscape at Marvel, in order to get his hands on some of that "creator" pay, which the genius -- and friends, I don't use the word lightly; genius is reserved for Kirby, John Ford, Orson Welles (move past seeing only Kane), Carl Barks, and not many others -- more than deserved, just as Stan Lee-collaborator Steve Ditko (who also wrote many Spider-man stories in addition to providing his pencils) "creator credit" for establishing The Fantastic Four, original X-men line-up, his magnum opus in The Mighty Thor at Marvel, Captain America (with Joe Simon), The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, The Eternals (later), and basically half the line at the House of Ideas.

But Kirby, joyfully unmoored at DC and no longer saddled with someone writing gave us everything from The Forever People to The Kirby Sandman (too short-lived), OMAC, and so many other vividly drawn walking piece of graphic design. And here, in Mr. Miracle, he does not disappoint -- from issue one in which we see a simple escape artist, fending off Intergang (we'll later see them in "Superman: The Animated Series" from the 90s), only to be killed and replaced by the extraordinary Scott Free, now in the loving care of DC's current golden boy, Tom King, a writer of Grant Morrison / Mark Waid / Kurt Buseik potential.

But do me a favor - read the original. IT IS BRILLIANT, and while there is a massive Kirby omnibus I've pre-ordered at Amazon when it was less expensive coming around the corner, this edition's colors pop, and the old school paper works great.

"Mister Miracle" ranks with Etrigan the Demon as one of my favorite Jack Kirby creations. Although I have a number of the original issues tucked away, I have long ago abandoned buying individual issues in favor of picking up these collections. The original hardcover version by DC is apparently out of print and very pricey and so I settled for this attractively priced alternative even though I prefer the more durable HC. As a comic book fan I gotta have at least a few quibbles right? The cover is hideous. Mister Miracle has one of the all time greatest costumes ever created and the possibilities for this cover were endless, but instead a grainy blown up panel image from a seemingly random issue was chosen. It's also odd that Scott Free looks more like Shilo Norman and the colorist even selected a darker skin tone for Scott (I assume by mistake?). Weird. The initial issues were inked by Vince Colletta, who underwhelms in his efforts to ink Kirby. Colletta-inked Kirby is still > most of the stuff out there, and I suppose Mike Royer couldn't be everywhere at once right? Otherwise WOW! These issues never looked better. White pages, very fine color work and great images of the covers. Includes reprinted pages of the main characters from the old DC "Who's Who" series. I love the relationship between Scott and Barda; there were so few marriages between superheroes and the fact that Kirby modeled this one on his own marriage with Barda standing in for his wife Roz makes it even better. In an alternate universe Kirby had the time to fully realize and expand his Fourth World saga and these characters would become household names. Unfortunately Mister Miracle wraps up without really wrapping everything up, much the same as "Omac" and "The Demon", but I will cherish this amazing effort from The King for a long time to come!

First the good news: This is pure Jack Kirby, all his crazy imagination can come up with is jammed in this (and other 4th world books), wild artwork, unique costumes. His vision, his voice. The initial issues are inked by Vinnie Colletta, whom despite the well documented short comings, I actually like on Kirby.
The bad news: Kirby the writer is just not good, I was jazzed to read this collection after hearing how good it was, that Jack's writing was unfairly maligned. Not so, it was disappointing the way some ideas didn't go anywhere, the dialogue was clunky, stories were at times illogical and disjointed, trying at the end to make up for what was missing in the story. The reason Stan Lee worked so well with Kirby was he could take the ideas and mold them into an interesting and melodramatic story, that's what a writer does.
All in all I say, if you're a comics fan & you love the silver / bronze age stuff, buy it, it's neat and it's Kirby. Just don't expect a Marvel-ous (ouch)experience.

I've been really getting into Jack Kirby for these last few years, and after reading Tom King's Mister Miracle series I decided to grab the originals. Let's start with the book itself: A nice affordable trade paper back collecting Mister Miracle 1-18, plus scans of Jack's original pencils! On content alone it's an amazing deal! The quality of the paper is very nice, no worries of accidental rips or tears. All of this, and it looks good on a shelf! Seriously! The eye-popping fuchsia on this book and the New Gods collection make for an interesting piece for any collection.

On to the story. As I found with New Gods, this book as a bit of a slow start. This is especially true if you're looking forward to the actual Fourth World stuff with New Genesis and Apokalips. Thankfully, this book is action packed with classic Kirby flair that will keep you hooked even into the weaker issues. I'm going to be honest, this book kind of loses energy in the end. This is mostly because Jack Kirby kinda knew the book would end up being cancelled, so those last few issues acted more as "villain of the week" books. Regardless of that dip in the issues, if you've read the new Mister Miracle series and want some more, I highly recommend this collection!

Love it! Every issue in full color, the whole series, and reasonably priced. About time DC got around to reprinting the King in decent editions. Where are the New Gods and Forever People and Jimmy Olsen collections?

I don't usually read comics from the 70s, so I was surprised to find that I mostly loved this. I don't know much about Kirby or the rest of his Fourth World stuff, but this is one of the most fun collections I've read all year. If you can ignore the writing's lack of subtlety, you find a great comic with a ton of cool ideas. The idea of having an escape artist who used futuristic gadgets to get out of traps is really cool, as is the idea that he's from another world, and has friends and enemies who follow him to earth.
I really like Kirby's art. Once again, I don't usually read stuff from this era, due in part because the art usually isn't as interesting as a lot of stuff coming out now, but Kirby has a style that is uniquely his own. It just looks great. The coloring is also nice, even though it's not as varied as it would be if it came out now.
My biggest problem with these stories, and the reason I can't give this collection five stars, is because a lot of stories end very anti-climatically. Often, Mister Miracle will get into crazy traps, then will appear to die, only for it to be revealed that he survived the trap due to some gadget that we're seeing for the first time. Half (or more) of the stories seem to end this way, and it's just really annoying and unsatisfying. Kirby builds these great stories, then ends them poorly by randomly making something up within the last two pages. I get that this stuff is older and comics were written differently back in the day, but this is something I just can't excuse because of how much it decreased my enjoyment of the work.
I absolutely recommend this, but I don't think it's perfect. Still, it's a whole lot of fun if you're willing to give it a fair shot.

Great comics that aged very well. Jack kirby was king for a reason.

Here's hoping DC breaks out the rest of the 4th world into these smaller single story omnibus, because if this is proof of anything, they're well worth a read

Great

SUPER FAST SHIPPING. WELL WORTH THE MONEY SPENT ON IT. VERY GOOD COMIC, ART WORK, AND WRITING/STORY. ALSO, EXCELLENT BEGINNING CLIP ON GETTING 2 KNOW THE CREATOR JACK "THE KING OF COMICS" KIRBY.

Mister Miracle is the best of Jack Kirby's New Gods saga.