In my exploration of comic books, no book has impacted me like DC’s 2017 run, Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads. It’s a fantastical examination and reimagining of one of Jack “The King of Comics” Kirby’s lesser known but deeply personal characters. To grossly simplify it, Mister Miracle (AKA Scott Free) is the universe’s greatest escape artist who uses his skills to escape and defeat all kinds of other-worldly foes. What the Tom King version adds is deep explorations of not only the characters in the story but of Jack Kirby himself. Kirby was in a rough transition period in his life when he made the original Mister Miracle comics and he put a lot of himself into its pages, so King foregrounded Kirby in his own adaptation of the character and used it as a launch pad to delve into some pretty serious topics like depression, parenthood, and suicide. It is not for the faint of heart and every single of the twelve issues of the 2017 run drove me to tears. It is exceptionally inventive and it is one of the best examples of how to leverage the medium to tell a story that could only be told as a comic.

If you are at all interested in learning more about the book, the YouTube video linked HERE by Owen Likes Comics is a perfect place to learn about more of the history of Mister Miracle and its place in the pantheon of comic books.

If you are at all interested in reading another article I wrote, you can read why I have such distaste for movie critic scoring right HERE.

Lastly, I tried to be as wordy as I could, but I did not quite get to three-hundred words. This final section is just to add fluff so that the SEO thinks I am a reputable writer.