SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Mister Miracle #1, and theories about where the story may be heading.


Last week saw the release of one of the most buzzworthy issues of 2017: Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Clayton Cowles' new volume of Mister Miracle, which sees the god of escapes trapped in a world that’s not quite right and faced with the looming and overwhelming inevitability of Darkseid.

The first issue is a triumph of sequential storytelling, and one of the best debut issues of the year. If you’ve read it, you might have guessed that not all is as it seems in the life of Scott Free, and we’ve got a killer theory for what’s going on that just might blow this mystery wide open.

RELATED: King & Gerads Have Redefined Mister Miracle, And Possibly Comics

Over the course of the first issue, we see a number of things go wrong for Scott, whether it’s on a huge scale or microscopic differences that he seems to be misremembering. The inciting incident of the issue is an attempted suicide attempt, and after his recovery it seems like life is out to get the transplanted New God. Not only does he completely forget the death of his best friend Oberon, at the end of the issue he receives news that his father died as a result of one of Darkseid’s attacks. His reality is so foreign to him and his own recollection is so unreliable, he can’t even remember the color of his wife’s eyes -- but what if Scott Free isn’t having a breakdown? What if the god of escapes is already trapped?

Mister-Miracle-Fight-The-Lump

In the pages of Mister Miracle #8, by Jack Kirby, Scott Free went one-on-one with a grotesque creation of Granny Goodness. The creature, known as The Lump, is the master of the id, and as such has complete control of the surroundings and scenarios while a prisoner is hooked up to it. Over the course of the issue, The Lump alters reality, summons objects and environments from thin air, and does everything it can to keep Scott on the ropes. It's ultimately is defeated when confronted by its own hellish existence in the form of its reflection. After realizing its entire purpose is to be trapped in the id forever, The Lump is driven mad and Scott is able to free himself.

It certainly seems possible — based on that original appearance of The Lump — that Scott is trapped within the id in the first issue of his new series. A later appearance of the foul prison of the mind makes things even clearer, and highlights another of King’s potential big influences on Mister Miracle.

The-Lump-Batman-Final-Crisis

The two part Batman story “Last Rites,” by Grant Morrison and Lee Garbett, serves to fill in some of the blanks of Final Crisis, specifically what was done to Batman after he was taken hostage and held prisoner in the Evil Factory. In those two issues, we learn that Batman has been hooked up to The Lump, which was masquerading in his memories as Alfred, collecting all the data it needed and simulating potential scenarios to see how Batman would react. There’s a very good chance that Scott Free could be currently hooked up to The Lump in the same way and the oppressive “Darkseid Is” interstitial panels represent some form of conditioning. It would explain why everything has gone so wrong in Scott’s life and why he can’t remember simple details about simple things; The Lump has taken over and Mister Miracle must fight back against it.

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Mister Miracle's True Trap Is... His Readers

Morrison’s take on the Fourth World is all over Mister Miracle #1, which makes sense because until King, only Morrison and Walt Simonson ever truly captured the scope and scale of Kirby’s creation. The unease and unreliable reality feels like a throwback to Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle which — while starring a different Mister Miracle, Shilo Norman — also featured Darkseid as a crushing and oppressive inevitability and depression metaphor that skewed how Mister Miracle saw the world.

Darkseid-Seven-Soldiers-Mister-Miracle

While the idea of The Lump is certainly interesting, and it may or may not be at the root of Scott's current predicament, there’s a larger theme at play in Mister Miracle #1. The issue ends with Scott Free once again called into service to fight in the latest Final Battle against Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips, but we’ve seen that before, a few dozen times. Which is the point, because the trap that Scott Free must escape from in Mister Miracle is the very nature of superhero comics themselves.

Superhero storytelling, especially in comic books, is cyclical by its nature. Eventually, everything reverts to the status quo, whether it’s by the end of a story arc, or resurrecting a beloved character twenty years after they were killed off. The New Gods represent this overtly with the Ragnarokian nature of the constant war between Apokolips and New Genesis. This is a war that Scott Free is going to be fighting in and dying in for decades and decades to come, unless he can escape the ultimate trap of the narrative engine his own creator strapped him to forty years ago.

Ultra-Comics

It’s somewhat similar to what Morrison and Doug Mahnke did in Ultra Comics, which laid bare the scope of The Multiversity. The ultimate villain is us, the reader. If we stop reading, that beloved character doesn’t die in the first place. Our eyes and our hands are the kinetic force that powers the suffering of these icons and Scott Free is just as trapped as Superman, Captain America or Rick Grimes. Everyone is on the same playing field when it comes to a comic page, and Mister Miracle faces his toughest trap yet in the form of King and Gerads’ oppressive and brutalist nine-panel grid.

While there are a variety of references and influences all over this first issue, it's clear that Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Clayton Cowles are really going for something fresh and different. There’s no better way to honor Jack “The King” Kirby in his centennial year than by doing something bonkers, exciting and most importantly new with the characters he created. The mystery of Mister Miracle is going to build and unfold over the course of the next year, and while it’s a cliche at this point, when it comes to this creative team and this character, expect the unexpected.