A review by some_okie_dude27
A Dream of Flying by The Original Writer, Steve Dillon, Alan Davis, Garry Leach, Paul Neary, Mick Anglo

(Minor spoilers will follow)

“Behold, I bring you the Superman! The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!"
Friedrich Nietzsche

Alan Moore's first excursion into the superhero concept is an underrated one, at least to me. Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and From Hell are considered some of, if not the, greatest comic books ever conceived, Swamp Thing and The League of Extraordinary Men have achieved cult status, and Top 10, Promethea, Tom Strong, and Lost Girls show an aging, yet still gifted and inventive creator. But I don't hear a lot of people bring up Miracleman, except for die hard Alan Moore heads like myself. Miracleman, formerly known as Marvelman, was initially a Captain Marvel/Shazam rip off that was made for the UK after the US' supply of comics at the time became flakey, and young Alan Moore took this character and made him into a postmodern reflection on how superheroes would work in a real and credible world and how it would bring nigh apocalyptic change to the world, and how that wouldn't be such a great thing like we would be led to believe. I could go over Miracleman's complicated legal history, but that doesn't interest me as much as the actual source material does.

Michael Moran is a freelance journalist. He's happily married, has a pretty good job, and a decent life. But he remains dissatisfied with his life, he has bad dreams about flying and crippling migraines, he hasn't been able to have kids with his wife Liz, and he has a general feeling of dissatisfaction with his life. One day, he gets caught up in a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant that he was supposed to cover for his work, as he begins to have migraine attacks, he sees the word 'atomic' and remembers the word from his dreams...kimota. So he says it and Miracleman is born once again and saves the day! After that, he gets a call from an old friend, Jonathan 'Johnny' Bates, his former sidekick known as 'Kid Miracleman,' who has his memories intact and has become quite the success as a media mogul. However, John isn't as he seems...and he isn't happy that Miracleman is back. If that isn't a hook, I have no clue what is.

Miracleman is as perfect a thematic prequel to Watchmen as one could get, while Watchmen primarily aims its deconstruction at the caped crimefighters such as Batman, Daredevil, The Green Arrow, etc, Miracleman's primary aim is at the actual superhumans, such as Superman or Shazam (though Miracleman aims more at Shazam than Superman.) Miracleman is not a perfect work, as the work steadily shows Moore growing as a storyteller, but it shows the potential of Moore's scope and depth that he would take with later works such as V For Vendetta (which he was writing at the same time that he started Miracleman) and Watchmen and it shows Moore giving depth to the superhero genre and showcases his penchant for subversion and deconstruction. Moore's superheroes are full of awe, but also of terror. But as the first arc goes on, we see both, but Moore focuses on the awe aspect of a superhero appearing into our world in this volume, as well as showcasing the sheer absurdity of these superhero antics in our real world. I said in a previous review that Moore did a spiritual trilogy of sorts with superhero deconstructions, and he started with his run on Miracleman, which more or less helped to jumpstart his career.

Now, like I said earlier, this book isn't perfect. There are moments where Moore can come off as self indulgent and even tongue and cheek, but I think that I can excuse that because that's kind of the point. Moore isn't directly lampooning the superhero concept, much like with Watchmen, but is delivering a message on the status of superheroes and how superheroes have come to be our new mythology, which is something that Moore would hit home time and time again throughout the series is how these superhumans are people who are comparable to gods, and that's rather terrifying, but I'll save that speech for when I get to volume 3.

A genuinely riveting beginning to a master creator's most overlooked masterpieces, and I can't wait to get to the rest of them.