Thursday 3 January 2019

Review: Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying

Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying by Alan Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first encountered this story when the character was known as Marvelman rather than Miracleman and the author was called Alan Moore rather than "The Original Author". When I read it in the pages of Warrior magazine in 1982, it was printed in black and white and when I first saw it in colour in the American reprints, I didn't like it as much. But with this edition, with its hardback cover and gorgeously glossy pages, the colourising seems to work.

Back in the 80s, I hadn't encountered the literary term "bookending" but I remember being hugely impressed with the way end of Marvelman Book 1 tied back to the very first page. Re-reading it for the first time in ages, I am still impressed. Also, the placing of a superhero in the real world where there are real world repercussions for their actions seemed fresh and exciting ("They played catch with my baby - mother of injured child speaks."). This book more than deserves it legendary status.

As well as collecting together the Marvelman: Book 1 stories, this edition also includes three Warpsmith stories and a bucketload of sketches, alternative versions of cover art and "original artwork" pages from Warrior magazine. Some of the extra artwork was interesting but muck of it (in particular the pages from Warrior) felt like padding. The Warpsmith stories, on the other hand, I very much enjoyed. I like the glimpses into the larger universe that Marvelman inhabits. I was especially impressed with the section in "Cold War, Cold Warrior" where where a Warpsmith faces off against a foe. There is a double page spread with a sequence of sixteen panels flipping backwards and forward between the antagonists; long shot to close up and back again. The sixteen panels show a battle of wills rather than a physical fight so pairs of drawings are almost identical until we get to panels seventeen and eighteen, each getting about half a page, where we see the outcome of the fight. Brilliant.

Finally, nothing to do with this book, but I want to finish with a moan about my collection of Warrior Magazines. I had a complete collection because I bought each one as it was published but they were destroyed when my roof leaked. I had started to rebuild my collection, buying them secondhand, and had most of the run (including a couple signed by Dez Skinn) but they were stolen from my office at work. I've not had the heart to start again. Scunner!

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