SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Clayton Cowles’ Mister Miracle #3, on sale now.
Mister Miracle is arguably the most critically-acclaimed superhero comic of the year, which is no mean feat for a book that tackles subjects such as suicide, ever-lasting war and the existential terror of reality being wrong. So far, Scott Free has survived a suicide attempt only to be conscripted into the final war between New Genesis and Apokolips after the death of the New Gods' Highfather. Everything seems somewhat off, though; Orion — now Highfather of New Genesis — is even crueler and more brutal than he ever was before, while Granny Goodness — Scott’s childhood torturer — is seen as a more caring and welcoming figure, someone that Scott reminisces almost fondly of.
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Everything is falling apart for Mister Miracle, and in this week’s issue things go from bad to worse as Scott Free is visited at home by an old friend and finally has some quality time with his “brother.”
Rise of the Bugs
While on leave from the war effort, Scott is visited at home by Forager, who represents the Bugs who live on New Genesis proper. While the New Gods live in Supertown, the Bugs work the land, living underneath the ground where they worship their queen and are looked down on by the New Gods who treat them, well, like bugs. Forager himself has been hinted to be more than a Bug and actually a New God himself, one who joined the Bugs either through choice or through force, and over the years has proven himself to be one of the most heroic of any of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World characters.
The reason why Forager is visiting Mister Miracle tackles the obvious question posed by Kirby all those years ago. What kind of gods rely on the exploitation and subjugation of a lower class, and does it make the gods of New Genesis any different than the Gods of Apokolips? After all, Apokolips has The Hunger Dogs of Armagetto, also known as The Lowlies, and when you compare their quality of life with the Bugs, is there really a difference? Forager’s visit to Mister Miracle is to inform him that Orion has been sacrificing the Bugs en masse as cannon fodder in the war against Apokolips. Six-and-a-half million Bugs are already dead, and if they march on Apokolips itself, triple that number will die. The Bugs sent their queen to try and convince Orion to spare her people, only for the new Highfather to mount her head right next to Granny Goodness'.
Forager wants Mister Miracle to lead the armies of New Genesis over Orion, and for that treason he was is hunted down and vaporized by Lightray, once the kindest of the New Gods. His final plea touches on something that’s in the zeitgeist at the moment when it comes to superhero comics, the idea that supposedly benevolent beings prospering while a working class struggles below them is a bad thing that needs addressing. It’s currently a major aspect of both Christopher Priest and Phil Noto’s Inhumans: Once and Future Kings and in the Inhumans television show. In both franchises — featuring characters co-created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee — royal families of super-powered heroes live in luxury while the working classic — The Bugs and The Alpha-Primitives — live in abject poverty and essentially slavery.
Kirby was a working class man at heart until the very end, always concerned that he had work coming in, as did his colleagues, and he’s someone that was exploited by publishers and executives for most of his life. It’s a shame that it’s taken comics creators so long to tap into these aspects of the seemingly heroic New Gods and Inhumans for so long, but it’s hard to root for heroes who turn such a blind eye to the struggles of their own people and through those two franchises, maybe people can realize the blind eye they’re turning to their fellow man on a daily basis.
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The Paranoid Pill
A huge factor of Mister Miracle is the unreality of Scott’s existence ever since his suicide attempt, with Mitch Gerads’ art cleverly and subtly pointing the reader towards what is real and what isn’t. There’s a chance that Forager isn’t even dead; if you look at how he’s drawn and presented in comparison to the likes of Mister Miracle and Lightray, he’s got much more of a pop art, Kirby-infused dynamism to him, a stark contrast to the rest of the book’s gritty VHS aesthetic. There’s also the use of characters in roles and locations where they shouldn’t be. In the first issue, Scott Free gave an interview to G. Gordon Godfrey, whom he should know to be the Apokoliptian evangelist Glorious Godfrey, while in this issue Funky Flashman is somehow on New Genesis in the throne-room of Highfather to present Mister Miracle to Orion. While the Stan Lee analogue found himself wound up with Scott on a number of occasions, he’s not a New God, and thus has no place on New Genesis. He even has a different lettering style -- there's definitely something up there.
It seems that someone is playing with Scott Free’s history to create a new reality for Mister Miracle, bringing back old allies and enemies and forcing him to relive old adventures in new ways. Each issue contains the original narration from the corresponding issue of Jack Kirby’s original run, with Mister Miracle #3 referencing Doctor Bedlam and the Paranoid Pill, which first appeared in #3 of the original volume. In that original story, the Paranoid Pill was a concoction that turned people rabid, not unlike the Madbomb which Kirby would later introduce into Captain America stories following his return to Marvel. In this issue, the Paranoid Pill is literally the medication Scott takes for his mental illness following his suicide attempt. Even the super-escape that Mister Miracle partakes in during this issue is pulled from Mister Miracle Vol. 1 #3, where he was locked into a crate and dropped from a great height.
Anti-Life Will Set You Free
In this issue, Scott reflects on the nature of the phrase “Darkseid Is” which has permeated the book like an intrusive thought. In his plea to Orion that he feels something is wrong with his reality, he wonders if the Anti-Life Equation is trapped with him — as it has been before in Jim Starlin’s Death of the New Gods — and maybe by attempting suicide he was actually attempting to escape the Anti-Life Equation or escape the “wrong” reality in which Darkseid has trapped him in. Orion attacks Scott, asking if he has ever seen the face of God and boasting that he has witnessed the divine. The issue ends with Orion removing his helmet to reveal his face, which transitions from his “normal” visage to his true, horrific Apokoliptian face as he tells Scott, “This is the face of God”.
The Anti-Life Equation is a formula that essentially mathematically proves that everything in the universe is not only subservient to Darkseid, but is Darkseid. As the Anti-Life infected populace of Final Crisis put it:
One of the first things we learned in Mister Miracle #1 is that Darkseid has unlocked the Anti-Life Equation, which has sparked the war against Apokolips. However, if that’s true, Darkseid has already won, and everything is already under his control. Orion, Lightray, Forager, Big Barda -- everyone is Darkseid. Darkseid Is. Scott Free is likely also under the effect of the Anti-Life Equation, but what is Anti-Life if not a trap for Mister Miracle, Super Escape Artist to escape from? Everything in Scott’s life right now is trying to break him down and force him to submit to Darkseid, and since subtlety hasn’t worked, Darkseid is forced to beat down Mister Miracle using Orion as his vessel. It’s the most deadly trap ever formed and the biggest challenge of Mister Miracle’s career because if this is the case and this is what’s happening around him, his ability to escape from Anti-Life could save the entire universe from Darkseid and prove that sometimes, Darkseid Isn’t.