Of all the astonishing figures in the realm of comics, few if any have made quite the name for themselves as Miracleman. Across numerous decades and just as many iterations, Miracleman has stood as one of the brightest, most heroic, and devastatingly tragic characters in pop culture. Though things seemed to have turned around since making his latest miraculous return courtesy of Marvel Comics, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Miracleman has just taken his darkest turn yet, and there is absolutely no hope of walking back across that line.
In the alternate 2003 of Miracleman: The Silver Age #2 (by Neil Gaiman, Mark Buckingham, Jordie Bellaire, and Todd Klein), it has been forty years since the atomic strike that nearly destroyed the Miracle Family and claimed the life of its youngest member. Miracleman and his allies have remade the world into a beaming bastion of futurism and fantasy. In the case of Dicky Dauntless, aka Young Miracleman, it has only been a week since he was rescued from his slumber in Underspace into a new body. This resurrection hasn’t even been the hardest thing for Dicky to come to terms with, especially once he discovers just what kind of monsters the people who brought him back have become, or maybe have been all along.
Miracleman is the Absolute Worst Kind of Villain
While Young Miracleman has been finding his place in the world as he learns about the future he has been reborn into, everyone else in the Miracle Family has been keeping an obsessively close eye on him. When it comes to Miracleman and Miraclewoman, their concerns had been easy to dismiss as overly concerned parental figures. The truth of the matter, however, couldn’t be further from that assumption. Not only does Miracleman attempt to make a move on his young ward, but he does so apparently at the behest of his own wife. This results in Dicky violently turning on Miracleman before taking his leave, yet it also calls into question everything he knows about the past forty years.
Since his return, Young Miracleman has learned all about his predecessor effectively making himself god-emperor of the planet following Johnny Bates, aka Kid Miracleman’s gut-wrenching assault on London nearly twenty years prior. The sheer brutality of Kid Miracleman’s attack reduced the city to ruins and left hardly any survivors behind. It was only through the combined efforts of almost every hero on Earth that Kid Miracleman’s rampage was brought to an end. Even then it took Miracleman brutally murdering Johnny in his unwitting, human form to end the threat completely. Previously, it was believed that this was spurned on by Kid Miracleman’s powers driving him into a homicidal frenzy over years of isolation. Now, Dicky has to wonder if there weren’t an even darker trauma behind Kid Miracleman’s crimes.
Miracleman May Have Caused The London Massacre
The idea that Miracleman could have abused Johnny and pushed him to become a villain is something that will only be answered in time, but his pass at Dicky isn’t the only indication that it might be the truth. When Dicky was initially woken from his forty-year slumber, he immediately noticed that Miracleman’s suit had changed. As Miracleman explained to him at the time, their suits are a reflection of who they are at their core. With a greater understanding of who Miracleman really is, it makes sense that his detestable predilections would be a major reason why the emblem on his chest has disappeared entirely.
After the line Miracleman has crossed, there really isn’t any hope of him walking back from it whatsoever. Hopefully, Dicky will be able to find both the peace he has been searching for since his return and retribution for himself and any other victims of his former hero. On the other hand, it does seem like the cycle of abuse extends farther than just Miracleman. If that is indeed the situation at hand, Young Miracleman might not have any chance but to forego a happy future in favor of tearing apart the world he has been awakened into.
