Kirby confounds our expectations as readers from the very first page of “Murder Missile Trap!” The splash panel’s caption and title blurb invite us to “Meet Mister Miracle! Super Escape Artist” - and the colorful costumed figure at the center of the splash must be our man. I was therefore somewhat bemused, and even a bit disappointed, to find behind the Jack Kirby-Vince Colletta cover of Mister Miracle #1 a completely earthbound story, with nary an alien god in sight (so far as I could tell, anyway), and not even a single mention of Darkseid. Now, as the new year began, it was time for the fourth major piece of Kirby’s Fourth World to fall into place, and while my thirteen-year old self wasn’t sure what to expect from Mister Miracle, I was confident that we’d see a further expansion of the already compelling, cosmic-scale mythology Kirby had introduced in his first three titles. Next, the premiere issues of two new titles, Forever People and New Gods (both published in December), had revealed that Darkseid was no ordinary alien, but a god - the supreme leader of the “new gods” of Apokolips, who stood in eternal opposition to the more benign divinities of New Genesis. So, take your pick.) The earliest chapters of Kirby’s epic, published in three consecutive issues of Jimmy Olsen (beginning with #133 in August, 1970), had introduced readers to Darkseid - a mysterious and sinister figure hailing from a world called Apokolips.
(Or, if you prefer, the seventh, as both it and Jimmy Olsen #136 - which I’ll be blogging about next week - were published on the same date, January 14, 1971.
The first issue of Mister Miracle, written, drawn, and edited by Jack Kirby, was the sixth book to be released in the creator’s new “Fourth World” project for DC Comics.
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