Someone Else Entirely

Originally published in PanelXPanel #10.

Let’s talk about the last time a Mister Miracle tried to commit suicide. In the final issue of Grant Morrison’s Mister Miracle, Shilo Norman, the third Mister Miracle, commits suicide after being crippled, castrated (or at least that’s what I think the power drill was for), and lit aflame. Except it turns out that he is in fact living within a simulation of life called Omega. His suicide is thus pointless as Omega simply writes a new life for Norman to live, suffer, and die in, and will continue to do so until Shilo breaks.

He lives a variety of lives from a simple father with memory issues to a prison guard coping with the death of his brother by locking up the ancient God, Alan Moore, to more traditional superhero fare. Eventually, he meets Omega who tells him that there is no escape from this endless series of unfortunate events. Life for Shilo will be nothing but pain and misery, dying pointless and meaningless death again and again. Suicide isn’t an escape because Omega can just make a whole new life or retcon the old one to prevent it from happening.

But as the lives go on and on, Shilo comes to a revelation: Omega’s suffering too. Omega can’t comprehend a life that isn’t eternal pain and suffering because that’s all he has ever known. When he realizes this, Shilo offers an alternative: why not escape together. Not through suicide (Shilo explicitly states that he’s given himself over to metaphor, so a “practical” solution like that wouldn’t work), but through working together to be a better story.

I’ll get back to this thread in a moment, as I want to first point out how weird Mister Miracle #7 is. It’s not like issue 3 where it’s a bunch of moments and themes that don’t fully coalesce into one another (though, having reread the first six issues prior to reading this one, I will say it does work better when read that way). Rather, it’s an issue where the themes and moments all cohere into something the previous six issues weren’t building towards: a sitcom about the day your child is born.

There’s the “Oh dear, I can’t find parking and my wife is about to give birth” gag, the awkward conversations Scott has with Barda’s old friends who hate her, but still show up because of that friendship, Scott standing in disbelief that the professionals have no idea what they’re doing, and the funny baby names Scott keeps coming up with. It still fits within the tone of the rest of the series, but it’s lighter and less self-serious than even issue 5, and that had a gag about the screams of the death pits of Apokolips being romantic and a shout out to the best gag of Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye.

That’s not to say there aren’t any serious moments in the issue. But it’s just the one. (One could argue two, but I’d argue they’re part of the same moment. I’ll explain later.) It’s quite frankly a mortifying moment in the life of a parent: Barda gives birth to baby boy, and the umbilical cord is wrapped around his neck, strangling him. The Doctors can’t do anything because the baby is a New God, with skin stronger than Superman’s. Fortunately, Scott is able to save the child’s life with a magic Sci-Fi knife, but something else happens that alters the implications of that moment.

Before Scott goes for the knife, the words “Darkseid is” appear. Previously, those words appeared in moments of great turmoil and personal suffering for Scott (be they shortly before killing Granny or shortly after seeing Darkseid sitting on Scott’s chair with Orion lying dead on the floor). The possibility of losing a child obviously fits in with that. In the previous moments, Scott has opted to fold in the face of these moments (be it going on to his execution or letting Darkseid go). But here, Scott bucks his previous moments and saves his son. Given this, one could argue that this is the first steps of Scott overcoming Darkseid and working towards being the hero who will save New Genesis.

However, there are the final two pages to consider. In those two final two pages, Scott refers to his son, Jacob, as “Just like a Lump.” To emphasize the implications of this, the narrator then talks about how “The Lump” is an agent of Granny Goodness and, subsequently, Darkseid. For those unaware, The Lump is a psychic being that traps its victims in a dream world where it controls the landscape, people, and implications. The Lump creates worlds of pain and suffering that its victims can’t escape.

And yet, if we are to take the logic of the last time a Mister Miracle tried to commit suicide (and if we assume that the Jacob is indeed the Lump as opposed to a normal baby), then it follows that The Lump is suffering as well. The Lump is also trapped in this world of pain and misery, lashing out at the world. (In fact, the parallels between father and son are highlighted in the last page where both Mister Miracle and The Lump get their names narrated in the funky font as opposed to the text boxes everyone else gets. Also notable, once the words “The Lump” is narrated, Jacob attacks the viewer and starts to cry once nothing happens.) It could be argued that Jacob, while in the womb, asked himself

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

and answered by strangling himself.

If this is the case, then Scott has denied his son what he himself desires: an end to the pain; an end to the voice in the back of his head that shouts, “Darkseid is;” an end to Anti-Life. (Side note: If we take Anti-Life to be a metaphor for a mental illness that makes someone want to commit suicide, it follows that Scott could have passed it down to his son. It would fit with the comic’s themes of flawed fatherhood.) But is suicide the only answer, the only possible way to escape? No, Shilo escaped by accepting Omega and working with it to improve himself. Maybe Scott and Jacob will work together towards some form of healing. Wistful thinking, I know… But what else do we have when the world is collapsing around us?

“And then he looked at me. And oh my goodness me, I became someone else entirely.”
-Steven Moffat, 9½ Months

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