DC Comics · Mister Miracle #1 · April 1971 · $0.15 · 32 pages
Grade: VG- 3.5
Edited by Jack Kirby.
Cover by Jack Kirby.
“The Murder Trap!” — written, penciled, and edited by Jack Kirby — opens on Scott Free, a young man with an inexplicable drive to escape anything that can hold him. He survives a death trap that should be fatal, and the issue establishes why: Scott Free is a New God, a son of New Genesis traded to the tyrant Darkseid as part of a peace treaty and raised in the brutal X-Pit on Apokolips. He escapes that too. Thaddeus Brown, the aging circus escape artist who performs as Mister Miracle, befriends Scott and is killed by Steel Hand, a mob enforcer working for Intergang. Scott takes up the identity — not out of legacy, but because escaping is what he does. The origin is efficient and mythic, with Kirby compressing cosmic backstory and street-level conflict into a single issue without losing momentum on either.
Oberon — Scott's diminutive, sharp-tongued handler — appears here from the start, grounding the New Gods mythology in something human. Granny Goodness is referenced as the overseer of Scott's brutal upbringing on Apokolips, and the larger Fourth World architecture is already present in the first issue: the Source Wall, the conflict between New Genesis and Apokolips, Darkseid's shadow behind everything. Kirby seeds it without stopping to explain it, which is the correct choice.
This is the fourth of Kirby's Fourth World launches at DC — New Gods #1 and Forever People #1 both hit in February 1971, Jimmy Olsen had been Kirby's since 1970 — but Mister Miracle is the one that ran longest, outlasting the others and carrying Scott Free into DC's mainstream. The cover badge reading “Kirby's Here!” is a period document: DC was genuinely advertising his defection from Marvel as a selling point, and the books backed it up.
Condition VG- 3.5 — .
We use what the scientists are calling artificial intelligence to research and write our descriptions — it gives us more time to add books to our website and provide you with a wider array of inventory. We think Klaatu would approve. Details are verified but the robot does slip up. We're not infallible. Every book is graded by a human collector who has actually held it. If anything ever looks off, reach on out at robopictocomics@gmail.com.
DC Comics · Mister Miracle #1 · April 1971 · $0.15 · 32 pages
Grade: VG- 3.5
Edited by Jack Kirby.
Cover by Jack Kirby.
“The Murder Trap!” — written, penciled, and edited by Jack Kirby — opens on Scott Free, a young man with an inexplicable drive to escape anything that can hold him. He survives a death trap that should be fatal, and the issue establishes why: Scott Free is a New God, a son of New Genesis traded to the tyrant Darkseid as part of a peace treaty and raised in the brutal X-Pit on Apokolips. He escapes that too. Thaddeus Brown, the aging circus escape artist who performs as Mister Miracle, befriends Scott and is killed by Steel Hand, a mob enforcer working for Intergang. Scott takes up the identity — not out of legacy, but because escaping is what he does. The origin is efficient and mythic, with Kirby compressing cosmic backstory and street-level conflict into a single issue without losing momentum on either.
Oberon — Scott's diminutive, sharp-tongued handler — appears here from the start, grounding the New Gods mythology in something human. Granny Goodness is referenced as the overseer of Scott's brutal upbringing on Apokolips, and the larger Fourth World architecture is already present in the first issue: the Source Wall, the conflict between New Genesis and Apokolips, Darkseid's shadow behind everything. Kirby seeds it without stopping to explain it, which is the correct choice.
This is the fourth of Kirby's Fourth World launches at DC — New Gods #1 and Forever People #1 both hit in February 1971, Jimmy Olsen had been Kirby's since 1970 — but Mister Miracle is the one that ran longest, outlasting the others and carrying Scott Free into DC's mainstream. The cover badge reading “Kirby's Here!” is a period document: DC was genuinely advertising his defection from Marvel as a selling point, and the books backed it up.
Condition VG- 3.5 — .
We use what the scientists are calling artificial intelligence to research and write our descriptions — it gives us more time to add books to our website and provide you with a wider array of inventory. We think Klaatu would approve. Details are verified but the robot does slip up. We're not infallible. Every book is graded by a human collector who has actually held it. If anything ever looks off, reach on out at robopictocomics@gmail.com.
