"The Great Miracles" or: All I Have Left

“This is an IMAGINARY STORY (Which may never happen, but then again may) of an imperfect man who fled from the sky and did mostly good. It tells of his twilight, when the great battles were over and the great miracles long since performed; of how his enemies conspired against him and of that final war on the burnt out husk that is Apokolips; of the family he loved and the choice he made because of them; how he broke his most sacred vow, and how finally all the things he had were taken from him save for one. It ends with a kiss. It begins in a loud, messy west coast town, one summer afternoon in the loud, messy west coast present. Away in the big city, people still sometimes glance up hopefully in the theater, glimpsing a distant trap on the stage… but no: it’s only a set, only a play. Mister Free died ten years ago. This is an IMAGINARY STORY… 

Aren’t they all?” 

One of my favorite styles of review is… well, it’s kind of a rebellion against reviewing. The reviewer will, at first, approach the subject (be it a TV Show, book, or whatever) as if it’s a typical review. Over the course of the review however, the review will collapse into something else-- something more personal, a piece on inadequacy or isolation. Most of the time, it’s a thinly veiled piece on the creator’s depression and how this work really brings that out of them (and sometimes not even thinly). In the end though, the reviewer will find a new appreciation for their lot, but they will be forever changed by it. It doesn’t break them, but they move to be better because of it. Their style changes, their attitudes evolve, and their work becomes even better.

I’m not going to do that type of review here. It’s on my mind though because… I have no idea how I’m going to approach this issue. How do you approach something like this that has had such an impact on me? This is the best issue of the series, and I have no idea what to say about it. I mean, I do. I have some ideas of where to go with this, but they just seem… inadequate. Wrong for this one. The problem I keep facing when writing this review is that, well, I’m not actually talking about the issue. I’m talking about how the series led up to the issue or how this works as an ending. But it’s never really about the ending itself, you know? All that has come before often overwhelms the piece and you’re talking about something else entirely.

Then again, what’s the point of talking about the end to a story if you don’t consider what it’s ending? How can you know what the pay off to the work is without considering it as a whole? Besides, I’m nearly 500 words into this piece and I still haven’t talked about the comic yet beyond an extremely vague “this is the best issue.” To start with, the art is amazing. I know this series of reviews has had an issue with dealing with the art of the comic, it wasn’t my field of study, and I feel like an idiot whenever I try to. I feel like I’m stating the obvious. “Yes Sean, the lack of panel bleeding makes them akin to being like a cage.” or “Very good, you’ve noticed that the photorealism of the artwork, while not to the degree of Lee Bermejo, combined with the fantastical nature of the events creates a distancing effect with the reader. You get a gold star.” or even “Yes, Scott’s eyes are discolored when he’s shaving. Good job describing what’s in the comic, you rapscallion you.”

But there are some parts of the art that I freaking love and feel I can actually talk about intelligently. One’s the first page’s fire. For starters, it’s not drawn: it’s actual honest to god fire. Mitch Gerads took a photo of fire and put it into the comic. This isn’t a new technique for comics. Indeed, Jack Kirby himself did it in his New Gods comics all the time. But that was in more of a collage style to highlight the strangeness of the universe than how it’s being used here. For in this page, Gerads uses it as a means of heightening the danger. Not only does failure to escape mean Scott will be burnt alive, but the way Gerads draws the page surrounding the flames, but… Note the coloring of Scott as the flames. It doesn’t look like flesh being burnt. It looks as if the paper itself is going to be burnt. As if the flames are so realistic, the comic is being burnt because of them.

Another part is the revisiting of the first issue’s joke about drawing God. Here though, the page has deteriorated from the crispness of the beginning, revealing the ghost of Jack Kirby’s original series (no, I can’t identify the page itself; I’m a literary critic, not a minutia expert) as well as a hint of film grain. Indeed, the redness surrounding the page evokes a disintegrating film reel. Indeed, the use filmic decay in quality within the issue, and indeed the series, has been talked about at length. But the decay in that regard has been more towards the digital side of things. Characters glitch in and out of reality, details are color corrected wrongly (in particular, eyes, but note how in the third issue, Orion’s reflection [and indeed Orion himself for the majority of the series] has been colored in black and white). This move towards film has an air of reality, a sense of physicality, that digital filmmaking, for all its qualities, lacks.

But then, there are the things only a comic can do. Take for example the page where Scott confronts Highfather (we’ll get more into the encounter in a bit, but focus on the page itself). The first three rows are depicted on white paper, which has been used to symbolize places where Scott feels the War isn’t physically present. Which is to say “anywhere but Apokolips.” But by invoking that page style here, it changes the meaning to “where Scott isn’t triggered by his childhood trauma.” There’s also the stillness of the comic. Each action is drawn like a photograph with an additional white line to highlight the movement of an object as opposed to motion blur. Every frame a painting, as the saying goes.

But perhaps the biggest aspect of the comicness of this story is the nine panel grid. More so than even the works of Alan Moore, Mister Miracle has consistently used a complete nine panel grid, only breaking it on seven pages throughout the whole series. Furthermore, it never combines panels together to prevent obfuscation. Compare that to other formalistic works like Watchmen, where it does this on the first page, From Hell, where it does it in the first panel, or DC The New Frontier, which takes three pages. It’s almost like a cage in that regard. But the thing about the comic, and indeed all comics, is that it’s a two dimensional cage. Which is to say, we cannot really tell which side of the cage we’re on. Are we geeks inside the cage, peering into the outside world of strange visitors and helpful travelers or are we on the outside, gawking at these weirdos and waiting to see what torments the ringmaster has in store for them next? See what I mean about stating the obvious?

One final aspect of the art that I have been even more lacking in discussing than that of the interior, are Nick Derington’s amazing covers, each one simultaneously obfuscating the events of the issue while at the same time perfectly encapsulating what’s happened. In the case of this cover, it’s a revisit to the first cover of the series. There, Scott was trapped in a seemingly impossible trap, which was revealed to be depression within the comic itself as opposed to a physical trap. Here, Scott has escaped and is waving to the audience with his wife. The symbolic meaning of this should be obvious, and yet…

(Ok, few side notes before we get into the analysis of the issue: the editing by Brittany Holzherr and Jamie S Rich is wonderful, with the occasional dialogue hiccups that occasionally popped up in the series being gone [most notably “Scott, what you know about my breasts…” from issue issue 8]. Clayton Cowles’ lettering is top notch, highlighting the exaggerated world of the characters while still being clear enough to be legible. Also, when I first read the issue, I thought I had a cameo on the first page, either sitting next to the guy with the Doom Patrol shirt or the guy coughing. Unfortunately for me, they turned out to be Clayton Cowles and Jamie S Rich respectively. Blast.)

In the first one of these reviews published in an issue of PanelXPanel, I discussed the nature of love. Specifically, how it brings people to do horrifying things in the name of it. (Which makes Hassan’s decision to rename it “The Power of Love” darkly hilarious.) Of how love isn’t necessarily an inherent good concept. And yet, here we are, ending with Scott not going to the “other world” because he loves his family. There’s certain an ambiguity in regards to whether or not this is the “real world” or not. It’s not completely resolved at the end, as is the nature of ambiguity.

But core to that ambiguity is an examination of the loves of Scott Free. Throughout this whole comic, both those who were virtuous and those who were villainous haunt him. Let’s go through them one by one in chronological order. Granny Goodness was an abuser. She abused children for countless generations, both physically and mentally. She put children into positions that forced them to abuse one another in order to survive. She delighted in coming up with new forms of torture, even if they used the old techniques. And yet, she loved Scott Free.

There’s this criticism of Avengers: Infinity War floating around that the film’s depiction of Thanos equates abuse with love. This is close enough to the truth of what the film does as to be somewhat damaging. What the film is actually doing is claiming that Thanos’ love for his daughter is enough to redeem him for all the cruelties of the world (I too shall be saved by love, to quote a different Tom King comic). This is a mistake that Mister Miracle readily avoids. While the concepts of love and abuse aren’t mutually exclusive (and indeed at times compatible), they can’t be used to justify or nullify each other. Indeed, in her final moments in the series, Granny tries to guilt Scott for daring to escape from the woman who put him into death traps as a child and expected him to die for the immortal Death God. And yet, Scott seems to have made some form of peace with her. He can live with her memory, her influence, and yes, her love in his head. Abuse is a far more complicated subject to deal with than good and bad people…

The next ghost seen is that of Bug. In many ways, Bug is perhaps Scott’s biggest regret: someone who died not because of some noble sacrifice or in the great fields of battle. He died because Scott was so wrapped up in himself that he let Bug die just because he was a loose thread in the machinations of Orion’s plans. Now here he is on Apokolips talking about life being hell. That there will always be another devil, another super villain, another room with another robot and another group of weird animal people being dragged to another room against their will. Unlike the other ghosts, Scott can’t even say a word to him. We all have a breaking point, where we can’t deal with what’s happened to us and have to admit to our own failings. Guilt has a way of gnawing at you. Indeed, Scott’s love for him is one out of guilt. Love, after all, is a kind caring that just won’t go away. (As an aside, it’s not really a war anymore. Though we only see one fight within it, there doesn’t seem to be any animosity between the combatants. Even a battle involving two siblings would have some level of animosity, a mournfulness over having such a fight to the death. If anything, as Lightray described Scott when he started out being Highfather, it feels like King Kalibak is just playing the part of Darkseid. That he’s having a war because Darkseid would have wars. All the reasons for war are gone and all that’s left is fighting. A bit pessimistic, I suppose. And yet, though again we only get this one skirmish, it doesn’t actually feel like a traditional war. Consider that the Last War of Darkseid started with the death of Highfather, this first War of Kalibak starts with an MMA fight. It’s a very performative war, like it’s a television show for the people of Apokolips to enjoy [indeed, Kanto himself describes it as a “Season of war”].)

After Bug comes Orion. Orion’s love is an unwanted love, a love of a brother who wasn’t given up by his parents and didn’t end up in an abusive household towards one who was. There’s some resentment on Scott’s part with him repeatedly distances himself from his brother, even denying that he is his brother to the end. And yet, Orion doesn’t share this anger. Indeed, he seems more subdued in these panels than he ever has in the entire comic, more willing to understand the life Scott has lived as it could have been his own. In many ways, he’s the most sympathetic of the New Gods to Scott’s decision not to join Metron in the universe of… reborn heroes. Indeed, he’s smiling while being sympathetic to his brother. And yet, sympathy does not mean alignment. Orion thinks that life is a series of struggles and challenges; that misery is the very soil that nourishes life itself. That you can’t find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity. In many ways, Orion is Ahania to his father’s Urizen: a redemptive read of a problematic concept.

Darkseid is… interesting. Unlike the other ghosts of this issue, Darkseid says nothing. Scott Free just puts his feet atop the god of eternal suffering like he’s nothing. The embodiment of abuse and cruelty is now impotent at his defeat. Not even his presence brings Scott down like all the previous ghosts did in one form or another. This imposing force that has been haunting this whole text, that has dominated the panels with “DARKSEID IS” over and over again, just sits on the couch as if he’s nothing to Scott. Then again, for all that his influence has haunted and still haunts the life of Scott Free; Darkseid himself has been an absent figure. He’s more of an existential threat to Scott than anything else. More a metaphor than a person. There is no love to be found within Darkseid, one way or the other, because you can’t really love something that was never there to begin with. And without that love, Scott lacks any complicated feelings towards the god. He’s just shit. And Scott beat him.

And then there’s Highfather. He pities Scott for his inability not to be as strong as him. Not to be able to make the hard choices in life. Not to be able to escape Anti-Life and give up his own son to the God of “Fuck You” if it meant ending the war. I mean, it wouldn’t really be an end to the war so much as a pause while Darkseid personally torments and bends Jacob Free to his will, teaches him the way of Anti-Life. At best, he would be as broken as Scott is, tormented by the traumas of Apokolips under Darkseid. But Scott was five when he was sent to Apokolips. Jacob would be raised as a baby to be Darkseid’s heir. Molded into Darkseid’s singular vision of power and with enough eyes to use the Anti-Life equation. ”You were…” says Highfather, “not as strong as I. Sadly. You could not make the choice I had to make.” And then he says that he’s proud of his failure of a son.

In response, Scott does the only sensible thing and punches his “father.” (One detail in the art that I love here is that Highfather bleeds white. Indeed, that last close up of him is this amazing mess of whites strewn about like a scratch card.) And then he walks away. As with Darkseid, there is no love between Scott and his biological father. The truth of the matter is, he’s never known his dad. Not really. He’s gotten a few glimpses of the old man, a cursory glance when “the war” isn’t taking up all his time. But those moments have been impersonal, more akin to meeting with a boss in an exotic local than anything else. It’s an artifice of love. A role they both believe they have to play because they’re tied together by blood. But in the end, Scott realizes that blood isn’t enough to make someone your family.

Which brings us to Oberon, the first and last ghost of this story, returns to Scott. In many ways, Oberon more than anyone else was Scott’s father. He was the person who influenced Scott from being this drifter wandering the world without an aim or reason to a family man, an entertainer, a hero. Scott misses him. Scott Free missed Oberon so much, he tried to kill himself. I know, the story says it was the Anti-Life equation, but it never says how he got it. There’s no moment where Darkseid whispers the words into Scott’s ear like a snake in the desert. Scott just knows it and tries to kill himself. The fact is Oberon’s death opened the door for Scott to know the equation.

And in seeing Oberon one last time, Scott breaks down into tears. He hugs his father and cries. He talks about making the wrong call. That he should have gone with Metron. That he shouldn’t have slit his wrists. Everything is wrong. Oberon’s response is to comfort Scott Free. He talks about that other universe, the one that Metron offered. It’s easy to read what he says as a condemnation of the concept of serialized superheroes. That such a universe is lesser than that of mundane fiction. But that would ignore several aspects of the book, not the least of which being Apokolips is a crisis of that nature. What Oberon is actually saying here is that for all the wonder Metron offered of another world, a world full of superheroes who always end up hunky dory, Metron’s offer lack the mundanity of the life Scott has. His world is already full of heroes like Superman and Booster Gold and Blue Beetle and Batman and Mister Miracle. Oberon’s love is a reminder that there is more complications to this world than jet-powered apes and time travel. It’s also people dying of cancer and having kids.

There are so many people Scott loves who are still alive. Who will be alive. Who were alive. There’s Big Barda and Jacob and Funky and Scott’s soon to be born child. The audience who love his death defying stunts. The people who will know of Scott Free only from television specials and horrifyingly inaccurate biopics. And those from the higher worlds, where all of Scott’s adventures are seen on a two dimensional plane we call a comic book. Love is this complex, contradictory idea, one that can be both a positive force and a negative force. But what love requires is other people to share in it. That’s why Darkseid could never receive love: at the heart of his concept is isolation. After all, nothing else appears in those “Darkseid is” panels.

So at the end of the day, we return to the question that this series started out on: Why shouldn’t I commit suicide? There are many answers to that question, some better than others. None of which can truly apply to everyone, but to those that it can it does wonders. For Scott Free, and subsequently this comic, the answer is because we are not alone. There are other people out there in the world, with ideas that are alien to our own. Sometimes bridges will be burnt, relationships will crumble, and love will not be enough. But if we’re together, if we try to build each other up rather than assume the worst. If we embrace differences, then we can escape any trap.

“And now that I’ve lost everything
Now that everyone I love is gone
All I have left is everything
The river carries me on
Though every fear is facing me
And I do not know what next will be
And I cannot know what next I’ll see
I’m running forward anyway
I’m not afraid to meet the day
The world is filled with everything
I’m a boy who could be anything
And now I will do everything
The whole world unfurls before me
A great adventure lies before me
I’m reaching out for anything
I’m calling out to everything
There’s nothing I’m afraid to be
The world is new and glittery
I run to meet it, hopefully
Love never dies in memory
And I will meet life gloriously”
-Anne Washburn, Mr. Burns

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