DC Comics 2017
Written by Tom King
Illustrated by Mitch Gerads
Lettered by Clayton Cowles
Scott Free is the greatest escape artist that ever lived. So great that he escaped Granny Goodness’ gruesome orphanage and the dangers of Apokolips to travel across galaxies and set up a new life on Earth with his wife, the former female fury known as Big Barda. Using the stage alter ego of Mister Miracle, he has made a career for himself showing off his acrobatic escape techniques. He even caught the attention of the Justice League, which counted him among its ranks.
You might say Scott Free has everything...so why isn’t it enough? Mister Miracle has mastered every illusion, achieved every stunt, pulled off every trick-except one. He has never escaped death. Is it even possible? Our hero is going to have to kill himself if he wants to find out.
First off I’ve been a fan of the character long before his revival in Justice League International. So that we’re getting a chance to see him again with a lot of his past still intact is wonderful! You never know what version of a character you are gonna get from DC these days so that we have Barda alongside him, their past on Apocalypse and with connections to the world’s greatest heroes keeps him right where he needs to be.
What Tom does with the story here is absolutely amazing. With Mitch they really mesmerized me with what they presented on every page. There’s this whole repetitive thing going on here that almost feels annoying and prophetic at the same time. It sets up what and who he’s going to have to come up against if he’s going to be able to move forward with his life.
Mitch is as equally as impressive and amazing with what he brings to the interiors here. Somehow he’s able to blend that whole pop art Ben-Day dots with some classic comic book style and some unique tricks of the trade to make the pages captivating. The way he utilises the page layouts through the use of angles and perspective has a cinematic quality to it. The attention to detail here is utterly astonishing in how much it changes the way we see things. Heck even the limited use of backgrounds is key to the storytelling here.
Scott is that rare character who can traverse the DCU and seamlessly fit it in regardless of who he is with. He can do the Detective Death Trap adventure with Batman, take a trip through Hell with Constantine, the Supernatural with Andrew Bennett or fight criminals alongside the JLA as easily as traipse through Apocalypse or New Genesis. That he is so versatile and can blend makes him a hard character to write sometimes but Tom’s direction and where I see this going kind of blends all aspects of him perfectly.
I didn’t want to get my hopes up for this but I’ll be damned if this doesn’t meet and surpass everything I could have hoped this would be!