Mister Miracle Vol. 4 Review

Have you ever had something happen that in that moment, you knew immediately it had changed your life? Years ago I was at Holsteins Shakes and Buns inside the Cosmo (Cosmopolitan Las Vegas), known for their gourmet burgers I ordered up one called The Rising Sun. The Rising Sun consisted of Kobe beef in a teriyaki glaze, topped with strips of candied yams and a tempura avocado, all on a fresh baked bun. After the first bite a wave of emotion spread over me, mostly anger as I knew I was never going to taste any burger that was this amazing ever again. I had peaked. This is how I feel about Mitch Gerads and Tom King’s Mister Miracle.

I haven’t felt this way for any book since Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye back in 2012, a series I’ve regarded as the best comic book of this century. I don’t even know how I started reading Mister Miracle, I passed it so many times as I perused the DC shelves of Cosmic Comics!, but I could never keep my eyes off of it, I was drawn to it. Finally I picked up issue one and after the first page, the same feeling that I got after that first bite of The Rising Sun rushed over me, this was it, I’ll never read anything like this ever again.

Mister Miracle is powerful, it’s visceral, it’s life, it’s real, almost like a living thing. It has emotions that are visible and impossible to ignore. I turn each page and just stare in awe as Tom King masterfully spins this story, one that he only knows how it ends. I watch as Mitch Gerads creates living people in front of me, Mister Miracle and every character show so much emotion with such little effort. It’s just astounding. I can’t stop talking to people about it. How in two frames can a shift in Mister Miracle or Orion’s mouth evoke so much emotion? It’s maddening.

To make things worse, I cried reading Mister Miracle #6. I FUCKING CRIED! These damn characters that I’ve literally only known for six issues and fallen in love with made me cry. Do you know how many comic books I’ve cried to before Mister Miracle found me? None. Zip, zero, zilch. This series is powerful, it’s one of those books I wan’t to tell everyone about by yelling from the top of a mountain. Thank you Tom King and Mitch Gerads, you have made something that is now very precious to me. Take a bow.