Mister Miracle is, on the face of it, one of the cheesiest of all costumed super-heroes. Created by Jack Kirby in 1971, he’s a gaudily dressed glint from the last gleaming of the Silver Age. Like the fictional ‘Escapist’ created by Michael Chabon in his Kirby-drenched Kavalier and Clay, Scott Free is part superhero and part vaudeville act — forever wriggling free from mountainous shackles or making nick-of-time exits from water-filled coffins or tea-crates in the paths of runaway trains.
But when we first meet him in this 12-issue trade paperback he’s slumped on the floor of a bathroom with a razor blade in the foreground, bleeding out from his slashed wrists. We follow him to a very ordinary LA hospital where his wife Big Barda (still in her Amazonian superhero get-up) waits head in hands in the waiting room as he’s revived. Leaving the hospital in hoodie and dark glasses he’s mobbed (‘Scott, talk to your fans’).
At home, he’s near catatonic.
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