Boy Commandos

Mister Miracle #8 (May-Jun., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In March, 1972, the eighth issue of Mister Miracle picked up right where #7 had left off.  Having voluntarily returned to the dark god-world of Apokolips with the aim of formally earning his freedom through trial by combat, our titular hero, aka Scott Free, had been taken into custody by the forces of Granny Goodness — as had been his friend, ally, and fellow former inmate of Granny’s “orphanage”, Big Barda.  But while Scott was taken away to the mysterious Section Zero to face an unknown fate, Granny ordered that Barda “be returned to the female barracks”.

And that’s just where we find Big Barda on the first page of MM #8 — though the precise manner of her arrival is probably not quite what Granny had in mind…  Read More

Mister Miracle #7 (March, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In November, 1971, the lead story in Mister Miracle #6 had concluded with the titular hero resolving to return to the planet Apokolips — from which he’d escaped just prior to the beginning of his series, only to be regularly menaced by its forces on Earth ever since — to win his freedom “their way!! — in trial by combat!!”  Two months later, Jack Kirby’s cover for Mister Miracle #7 indicated that he would indeed be making such a journey within its pages — and also that the “Super Escape Artist” would, not unexpectedly, encounter more than a bit of trouble before achieving his goal.  (Not that we readers of January, 1972 would have wanted it any other way, of course.) Read More

Mister Miracle #6 (Jan.-Feb., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The subject of today’s blog post is probably the best known issue of writer-artist-editor Jack Kirby’s DC Comics title Mister Miracle — or, if not that, at least the most referenced.  Its contents are mentioned in most comprehensive histories of American comic books, as well as in the majority of biographies not only of Kirby himself, but also of Stan Lee, Kirby’s primary collaborator at DC’s main rival, Marvel Comics.  Most of you out there reading this probably know the reason why; it’s all down to a certain character who, while he doesn’t actually appear on the comic’s cover by Kirby and inker Mike Royer, does have his debut heralded there: “Introducing.. Funky Flashman!  Villain or Hero — You Decide!”

And why was — why is — Funky Flashman such a big deal?  Because, as Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon so aptly put it in their 2004 book, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, Funky represented Kirby’s “considered vivisection of his old creative partner.”

But, here’s the thing — back in November, 1971, my fourteen-year-old self didn’t get that.  At all.  Read More

Mister Miracle #4 (Sep.-Oct., 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When I was nine years old, I fell in love with a superheroine whose unlikely name — a name that still brings a wince of lust and embarrassment to my face when I say it — was Barda. Big Barda. I have never recovered, thank God, from my first sight of her, in Mister Miracle #8 (September 1972).  — Michael Chabon, “A Woman of Valor”, 2004.

Your humble blogger’s own first meeting with Big Barda came four issues earlier than did that of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and I was fourteen years old at the time, not nine.  Nevertheless, I can definitely relate.  Read More