Comic review: Miracleman #1- Neil Gaiman and the Perpetual 80’s

Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: Mark Buckingham
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Released: 2nd September 2015



I didn’t read Alan Moore’s Miracleman series when it was first released in 1982. I was around at the time, but doing something else, probably obsessed with American football, or just plain old football, I expect. I was reading 2000AD though, irregularly, and this new Miracleman #1 by Neil Gaiman very much reminds me of that time period in my life.

This new book has a narrative starting date of 1987. It’s a future parallel world 1987 with a God like superhero and a destroyed, then rebuilt London, but it’s a very familiar 1987. It’s a 1987 that is very, very 1980’s. It’s a 1987 that could have been written in 1985, at least, that’s how it reads.

Perhaps it’s just me, but whenever I read anything by Neil Gaiman it has that 1980’s feel about it. I get the sense that he doesn’t really care about the contemporary neoliberal world. His narrative universe is the late 1980’s, and so he is the perfect choice to be the writer on a book that is set in a parallel universe 1987. He doesn’t have to deal with anything that has actually happened in the real world for the past twenty eight or so years, he can build his cocoon in the late 80’s and he can go back to the past, a place where he very evidentially feels most at home.

The narrative itself in Miracleman #1 is instantly accessible. It’s easy to follow and brings the reader straight into the world, telling a story from the point of view of a man with hope, seeing him through a difficult journey, and concluding with a revelation of either hope realised, or hope destroyed. I won’t spoil it. The story is okay, it’s enjoyable, and I think that it’s worthwhile you getting the book to enjoy it for yourself.

The art has a bit of a Watchman feel about it, mixed with some of the recent stuff I’ve seen in Jeff Lemiere’s Trillium, and in the art by Matteo Scalera in Rick Remender’s Black Science. The faces are a bit sharp, very pointy noses and high cheekbones, and very blonde, and the colouring has an unreality to it that screams ‘sci-fi comic’ of the 1980’s, but in colour. I don’t have any problem with it. I’d term it as ‘old fashioned new’ if that makes any sense, and it’s perfect for this kind of book.

Let’s sum things up then. Do I have a problem with Neil Gaiman being stuck in a perpetual 1987 world? No, of course not. He’s a successful, talented man, and his work is always enjoyable.

However, I’m the self-appointed (self-important) post 9/11 false flag/ NWO/Neo-liberal/Globalist comic book reviewer. So what I am after is never going to come from somebody like Neil Gaiman who doesn’t want to get out of the late 80’s, well at least from what I’ve read of his work anyway.

That’s cool man.

Miracleman#1 is a good book. I enjoyed it. The very last part confused me a bit, but I’ll be back for issue #2, and hopefully it will make some sense there.

Get the book if you enjoy Neil Gaiman’s late 80’s worlds, and yes I know he’s just continuing a series left off in the 80’s, so he has a good excuse for doing it here. If all you’re after is a decent comic book with a 1980’s nostalgia feel about it, then this one is a lot better than most of the other mainstream junk that’s being pushed onto the masses today. Check it out, put on those old 80’s records, and go back to a time when the Internet didn’t exist, Thatcher was killing off all working-class resistance and the BBC still had an aura of truth and respectability about it.


Rating: 7/10 (Back to the late 80’s with Gaiman, and why not?)

Comic review: Martian Manhunter #1- Event Quality ‘Threat’ Book

Writer: Rob Williams
Artist: Eddy Barrows
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 17th June 2015



I enjoyed this book. It had a very professional structure to it, screenplay quality, like it was pitching for a television series. The art was very good as well, top end event quality good, and the main protagonist was shown to be a man in a moral quandary, fighting against his programming, fighting against what he is supposed to do, knowing that what he is supposed to do is wrong.

I love this guy.

All top quality comic book stuff, so you can’t complain too much about it, as even if you dislike it, you have to acknowledge that this is a very competent and well put together product. The narrative though at it’s core is a threat based story, so although it might seem complex at first, it really isn’t, and the solutions to the threat are the same as they always are in superhero comics. Normal people are helpless victims, they need outside agencies to protect and save them, and that’s where the superheroes come in.

That’s the one assumption that bothers me the most about superhero comics, the idea that people are always victims, that they need saving, and that they can’t save themselves. The idea is insidious mind control, and it’s pushed by all spectrums of political control, from monarchy to communism to democracy. It’s all pretty much the same thing, and based on the same assumptions. You don’t need your own farm. That’s what supermarkets are for. You don’t need your own education. That’s what schools are for. You don’t need your own guns to protect yourself. That’s what the cops are for.  You don’t need anything of your own at all. That’s what government is for.

Do you see how it works?

So when people read comic book after comic book with superheroes saving helpless victims from various disasters (it’s unspecified ‘terrorists’ in this book) it plays into the cultural programming of learnt helplessness. The idea being that we don’t have to do anything for ourselves, that there’s always going to be some government sponsored agency that will take care of us, to protect us from all of the threats in the world that we are so helpless to protect ourselves from.

It’s not a great mind-set you know, and this is not my opinion. Democide is defined as, ‘Murder by government.’ In the past century our various forms of government have started to excel in murdering their own people. So continuing to rely on governments, or the outside agencies that work for them (as represented by superhero characters) in 2015? That’s probably not a good idea.

‘Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as "the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the term genocide, and it has become accepted among other scholars. According to Rummel, democide passed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.’ (The Wikipedia definition of ‘Democide.’)

How many of their own people have governments murdered over the past century?

‘Let's start with a number: 262 MILLION. That's the number of unarmed people the late Prof. R. J. Rummel estimated governments murdered in mass killings he termed "democide" during the 20th century. "This democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century," he wrote.’ (reason.com)

The superhero genre is fun, but it’s dangerous, especially when it portrays those in positions of authority as protectors of civilians, when the truth is very often the opposite. Those in positions of authority do not serve the people, they serve their masters, and their masters are government.

Perhaps that’s the one change that comic books need to make before they move forward and evolve the paradigm of dependence upon government authority that is currently caging humanity, and stopping any genuine hope, change or progression?

Martian Manhunter #1 is a fine comic book. It feels big-time, and that surprised me. It read like a Geoff John’s Justice League book, and it looked like one as well. That’s a huge compliment by the way. Everything was there, in place as it should be. Great art, interesting characters, a moral dilemma for the main protagonist and a cleverly constructed script. It was all very good, but that one problem remains. The problem being the idea that humanity is weak, helpless and needs to be saved.

Is it a structural problem, a problem that cannot be resolved without completely tearing apart the entire superhero genre itself? I don’t think so. All we need is less saving the world ‘threat’ plots, less dependence on outside forces, and an acknowledgement that human beings are not as weak and powerless as governments want them to be.

Mainstream corporate comic books buy into the lies of our time. They ignore truth, and promote the authority of government. They promote the lie that we are free people because we have a corrupted version of corporate democracy, a pathetic sham of freedom and choice owned and controlled by corporate/banking interests and protected by their career obsessed friends in the mainstream media.

It’s so easy to ignore truth. It’s so easy to buy a comic book, to enjoy the cool, and to not think about it any deeper than that. People need to stop with the adoration of the cool, they need to get beyond the deliberate ignorance and they need to get with reality. You can’t hide from reality forever. Sorry, did you think that life was just fun and games, that you can do whatever you like, just as long as you are doing what you are told? Sorry, but the laws of the universe don’t let us get away with that kind of behaviour. Sooner or later it’s payback time. You might ignore truth, but truth will not ignore you.

But how to change, what needs to be done? If you care, and most people don’t, read on.

Real change starts with a no, and a refusal to follow immoral orders. Soldiers and cops and other servants of the state unquestioningly follow orders, they are not good people, as morality plays no part in their decision making process. They are ordered, they obey, like a dog obeys. This is a truth that people don’t want to hear, and it is a truth that is born out by the facts on democide that I have included above.

We need to recognise real heroism. Real heroism is refusing orders when you know that they are morally wrong. America has real heroes. It has whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, but when was the last time that Bradley Manning was even referenced within the pages of a mainstream comic book? Do you know why he isn’t mentioned? He isn’t mentioned because he was a US soldier who told the truth, he saw that what was happening was wrong, and he spoke up about it. That is true heroism, speaking truth even when it is not in your best interests to do so.

“When the persecution of an individual (Bradley Manning) who has exposed an evil is pursued so ruthlessly and yet the evil itself is studiedly ignored, all of us know that there is something very wrong with the way that our society is conducting itself. And if we do not protest in the strongest terms about what is being done in our name, then we become complicit.” (Alan Moore)

Humanity needs to wake up to truth, and it needs to look at itself in the mirror, however uncomfortable that might be. Comic books play their role. Governments need threats, just like comic book narratives need threats. In comic books an outside threat is used to push the narrative, to create tension, excitement, drama and action. Threats are used in our own world in order to justify wars, a restriction on freedoms and all kinds of totalitarian, Orwelian new world order government policies.

Where did you think ISIS came from?  Why are they running around in US vehicles and using US weapons? Why are they being promoted in the mainstream media, and given free publicity like they have the best PR people in the world? Threats legitimate state control, and that is why states will always manufacture new threats in order to justify their positions of authority, or domination over our lives.

As superheroes characters are often little more than stand-ins for government order followers, the parallel should be perfectly clear. Both entities (comics and governments) are dependent upon permanent new threats, and both entities are more than willing and able to create their own threats to push their individual narratives. What they have more in common though is the idea that these threats cannot be handled by normal people, that people in positions of authority need ‘special powers’ in order to deal with these threats. In comic books it’s superheroes who save you. In the real world, it’s a gang of murderers, liars and thieves called government.

Real change is not going to be easy. You are not going to be able to watch your television and vote for it. It’s time to demolish false heroes, and to recognise uncomfortable truth. Superheroes will continue to work as stand-ins for government control, and the corpses will continue to pile up, just as before, as long as we ignore truth, ignore reality and pretend that comic books are just a bit of fun that we don’t really have to think too much about. Threats can be real, but who is creating the threat, and why have they created it in the first place? That’s a good place to start, and a good place to end as well, and that’s where I will finish off this review.


Rating: 8/10 (Fine book, but it’s just another threat narrative that portrays humans as helpless victims, in need of rescue by government sponsored heroes)

Alan Moore’s New Comic Book (Review)- Providence #1: An Open Doorway to the Occult

Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Jacen Burrows
Publisher: Avatar Press
Released: 27th May 2015



Mr. Moore has a good story-telling technique going on here that just might entice the feminist liberal types into an understanding that there are deeper things happening in the world than they are at present conscious of.

The technique is to present his story ‘Providence’ through the eyes of a closeted homosexual, Jewish news reporter. The book is set in the post WW1 period in the US, a time and place where being a homosexual Jew might have a detrimental impact upon your career. This man has two huge secrets, and he has already experienced tragedy in his personal life. That tragedy links him to the main story, and with the idea that just as this man hides his deepest, darkest secrets in order to blend in with the everyday world, so does another more powerful group of people.

‘There is a concealed country, therefore, hidden below the society we show the world. Uncomfortable truth, it lurks behind our pretences.’

Sounds like a member of the illuminati speaking some truth behind closed doors, don’t you think? Throw in the fact that the man who is saying these words is obviously doing something that involves prolonging his own life, and you have a link to transhumanism, or the idea that man can become immortal through technology. Well, only certain kinds of men, obviously.

The Billionaire controllers of this world fear death so much that they are investing heavily in life enhancement technology. Why do they fear death so much, are they not religious people? That’s the issue. They are religious people, but rather than being on the side of God, they are on the side of Satan.

Transhumanism offers these criminal ‘elites’ the possibility of avoiding their inevitable day of judgement, when they will have to pay for the crimes they are committing against humanity. If they live forever, they will never have to pay for their crimes.

Providence #1 hints at these secret world controllers and transhumanism, but it’s not aimed at people like me, people who already talk about these kinds of things. Alan Moore is being clever here. He is strategically aiming the book at the generation of children who have been brought up by feminist liberal Marxist ideologies in their schooling. What he is doing in this book is giving them occulted truth that they might otherwise instantly (like a trained parrot) dismiss as ‘conspiracy theories’ and thus, not even bother engaging with.

By using one of their own heroes (a tormented gay guy) he is giving them exactly what they want to read, but placing occulted truths about the real nature of world power into that feminist liberal friendly narrative.

It’s a magic trick performed by a skilled master of misdirection. Look at the left hand, whilst what I am doing is concealed in the right.

The book itself is wonderfully crafted. It’s subtle, you have to take you time reading it, and there are joys to be had in re-reading it at least two times over, as trust me, you’ll see things on the second or third read through that you missed on the first. The book is literary, huge in scope, and is more of a novel than a comic book, even concluding with a long essay from the main protagonist in something called a ‘Commonplace Book.’

This ‘Commonplace Book’ clarifies not just the plot, but the sense of empathy that the reader will feel for the tormented protagonist, and as I’ve mentioned repeatedly throughout this review, that empathy is the key to getting Moore’s message across here.

Providence #1 is a fascinating book, not just because of the superior comic book construction skills of Mr. Moore, but because it’s hinting at deeper truths, and allowing readers an easy, open doorway where they can casually stroll through and discover those hidden truths for themselves. Mr. Moore, you are a genius, a very clever dude indeed, and I applaud what you are doing here.



Rating: 10/10 (Mr. Moore’s friendly invite into the world of the occult)