A Dream Of Snow And Fireballs And Bourbon

Once upon a time, early in the Year of Our Lord 2001, back when a man could get on an airplane with a Zippo lighter, Marvel Comics was just coming off of bankruptcy, and the only geek and comic subculture crossover into the mainstream happened in niche rooms of progressive Reno brothels, this particular longtime comics stalwart decided it was time to catch up on Alan Moore’s Miracleman.

At that time, it was easier said than done. To accomplish it, I had to visit five different new comic stores – including the store that would eventually become my local comic store, where they now know me by name, but at the time asked me if I understood that licking the back issues would make the Overstreet guide price look like a wino’s desperate compromise – and participate in a drunken Friday night eBay auction (“Click to overbid best current bid by $.01 dollars to a maximum bid of $43,000,000 dollars“) to make it happen.

The process took months, but eventually I wound up with every issue of Eclipse Comics’ Miracleman,, plus all three issues of Miracleman: Apocrypha, and Miracleman 3D, along with the second trade paperback: The Red King Syndrome. That idle decision to real all of Miracleman took about a year and cost me hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

But that was a decision made in 2001. It is now 2014. And if you want to catch up with Miracleman? You just go to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that I’m a sucker.

Which is to say that Alan Moore’s Miracleman is back in print for the first time in about 20 years, and that this…

…means the end of out broadcast day.

And yes, Miracleman #1 is the big take of the week. But there’s also a new issue of Gravel by Mike Wolper, a new Ed Brubaker / Steve Epting Velvet, the latest Dan Slott The Superior Spider-Man, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can even consider talking about any of them, we need time to read them. So while I go through the restored Miracleman #1 to see if someone has made it less obvious that some other person whited-out “Marvelman” and hand-wrote “Miracleman” in all the word balloons…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!