Miracleman: Nietzsche's Nightmares

[Amake]

It's so strange, so far away from everything that should be possible; power past anything we humans should be allowed. We are not ready for this. But it's so beautiful, so simple and strong. Think of all the people who hurt in this world. We could change everything. We could make things better.

The dilemma of Alan Moore's eighties masterpiece Miracleman actually hurts me. On one hand, maybe humans are meant to become like gods. If there's one thing I want for this world, it's for people to fly with their own wings. On the other, how can you justify forcing the entire world through premature enlightenment? It's not a decision that a human being is authorized to make.

But maybe I should start at the beginning. Miracleman begins as a straightforward Golden Age superhero comic, with a bunch of utterly invincible heroes flying around and smacking the Science Gestapo in the face so hard they go into the future where they came from. Job finished, Miracleman pauses to enjoy the moment, laughing it up with his friends. Then http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/vv324/immortalpictures/miracleman.jpg.

And the rest of the 21 issues are spent exploring what would really happen if you let a creature of perfect power, wisdom and poetry loose in the world. Not to spoil too much, but Miracleman and his buddies rebuild the world as a socialist utopia powered by free teleportation and work to eliminate the concepts of dependency, money, war, hunger, disease, death and possibly humanity. They begin a program to give everyone the same kind of power they have. And they leave it to the reader to decide if this is good or bad.

It might remind you of something (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Watchmen).

Worth discussing I think. If anyone has read it? And if not what are you waiting for? You can get it almost for free (http://www.amazon.com/Miracleman-Dream-Flying-Alan-Moore/dp/0913035629/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277759784&sr=8-2)!

[Magus]

Is it a dystopia like "A Better World" in Justice League or out and out totally wonderful for everybody as far as we can tell?

EDIT: Har har, you got me with the "almost for free" bit, hahaha.

"unfortunately it was never finished." This put as bit of a damper on it, though I guess it'd still be interesting to discuss, or maybe they'd finish it someday or remake it...

[Amake]

Sure, they'll finish it sometime. Maybe when they pry the rights from Todd McFarlane's stupid, dead hands. But it works quite well as it stands. Alan Moore finishes the basic story and the last few issues by Neil Gaiman are like a bunch of self-contained codas.

And yes. It is a dystopia or it is totally wonderful.

[Lumenskir]

The beginning was interesting, but after reading both it and Watchmen it really feels like a first draft of Dr. Manhattan.

Personally, I sort of lost interest after he found out all of the details of his origin. There were a lot of interesting sights and ideas throughout (the youngest MiracleKid masquerading as a human, the failed attempt at duplicating the process that yielded a deranged Uber Brit, the whole dream aspect, etc.), but I never really got that invested into his whole ordeal to change humanity (maybe because I tried to read it after Red Son, which did something similar but without becoming the whole story).

Also, the baby birthing issue...yeah.

[Amake]

Obviously, MM is basically a prototype for Dr Manhattan. I find that interesting, just seeing the process that'd eventually lead to Watchmen. As I found it interesting to see where it would go after the mysteries were solved and the villains defeated, at about the point you lost interest. No accounting for taste eh.

The child birth issue does deserve some mention. For its time, it was extremely graphic and groundbreaking. Heck, I still haven't seen anything else in comics, TV or movies resembling that level of traumatic realism. And yet all they did was basically Greg Landing from Lennart Nilsson's photobook that's widely suggested reading for everyone who wants to know where babies come from.

It doesn't add much to the story I'll admit, but it does serves to drive home the message that they're not fucking around with the realism of the book. And it was a heroic effort to reduce the general level of squeamishness in the western world. I wonder how things would have been if they had put that scene in Watchmen instead. :O

[Lumenskir]

It doesn't add much to the story I'll admit, but it does serves to drive home the message that they're not fucking around with the realism of the book.
This was my main problem. From the three comics I've read of Moore he's good at making worlds and stories and all that, but there invariably comes a point where he seems to regard the reader as someone who needs to know just how smart and [other superlative] Moore really is. In V for Vendetta it's the entire page where a character talks about old experiments that could be interesting but reads like an all-nighter Psych 101 essay, in Watchmen it's Ozymandias staring at televisions and uses all of the big post modern words Moore knows, and in this it's the ULTRA REALISTIC BIRTHING LIKE WOAH.