Mister Miracle #18--“Wild, Wild Wedding Guests”

“MUCH SENTIMENT, BUT LITTLE JOY…”

(It’s just come to my attention that yesterday would have been Jack Kirby’s 91st birthday. I still say we lost him too soon…)

With Kirby’s plots getting more and more convoluted thanks to the editors' increased meddling, the supposed escape artist Mister Miracle was, ironically, getting entangled and restrained by his own book. So he did the only thing he could: he escaped. By being canceled. But as with The New Gods and The Forever People, he was able to give us something resembling a conclusion, however rushed.

This issue starts unremarkably enough, with the gang setting up an escape stunt that will apparently involve Mister Miracle crouching in a cylindrical glass tank filled with water, which in turn stands in the middle of a shallow pit. Barda’s unloading a crate of Nitroglycerin into the pit, and Shilo’s giving Mister M. a snorkel mask so he can breathe in the tank. And I’m completely confused as to how this trick is going to work. We never actually find out, either.

You see, Oberon and Shilo are grabbed by faceless hands as they crawl out of the pit, at which point weird, retro “shock grenades” are fired into it, resulting in a massive explosion. The fiend responsible? One Virman Vundabar, back from his sojourn on Apokolips and wearing a doofy hat.

“Virman’s mission seems hardly designed to generate a wedding! But there will be a wedding!” the narration informs us. And just in case there’s any doubt as to who this wedding will involve, we cut to Scott and Barda, huddling in a small tunnel Scott was somehow able to cut in half a second with his boot lasers. Man, those boot lasers work fast.

Barda mopes passive-aggressively about how she slowed Scott down, and asks “Why didn’t you leave me?” “The answer is simple--now. I love you Barda—I-I can’t live without you—“ responds Scott. Gee, good thing it wasn’t some stranger in the pit, or Scott totally would have left her to die. He only saves people he loves, you see.

The two of them fall into a clinch, and Kirby slips in some obviously self-referential dialogue regarding his wrong-headed attempt to make the book “more commercial” when it was bound for cancellation anyway:



But of course, the two are still in danger, as demonstrated by the “ground probe” that finds them. “This probe is super-sensitive! It can pick up a heartbeat!” announces Scott, right into the mouthpiece. Belatedly realizing that this isn’t the smartest idea, Scott desides to go the whole hog and screams into the probe, nearly deafening Vundabar and his minions. Scott and Barda take advantage of the downtime and pop up to subdue Vundabar, but no sooner have they done so then they’re confronted by another enemy—Granny Goodness. Looks like the Apokaliptians have decided to do away with that whole “single combat” thing and just finish the job.

Granny deploys “an invisible mass gravity beam” of the kind that Scott escaped from back on Apokolips, which grinds Scott into the Earth, petulantly whining “STOP IT!” as he goes. Geez, take it like a man, Scott. Disappointingly, he’s saved not by his usual skill but because the guy deploying the gravity beam decides to take it easy on him. The guy in question is yet another familiar face: Kanto the “master assassin” who never actually kills anyone. As regards Kanto…it’s pretty obvious that Kirby wanted to make him somewhat sympathetic, and he presumably would have defected to Scott’s side at some point…but at the same time, he’s supposedly motivated by the fact that his loyalty lies only with the highest bidder. I guess he’s the Han Solo of this series, or would have been if it had continued.

What happens next:



Yeah, they’re totally doomed. It’s not like Mister Miracle has escaped from every deathtrap he’s been put in.

On the other hand, the Apokoliptians have finally shown they’ve learned something, by shorting out Scott’s hood circuitry in advance, thus complicating matters for him. How did they accomplish this? Via some mental chicanery courtesy of the guy who was tripped up by Scott’s hood circuitry last time, Doctor Bedlam. Yes, it’s an all-star cavalcade of Scott’s archnemeses!

As if the “bomb-clock” wasn’t elaborate enough already, it’s now fired up into space (!) and, a panel later, explodes in the atmosphere. No sooner does Granny take a moment to cackle in triumph, however, than suddenly her soldier boys are “going down like ten-pins” under the onslaught of a familiar red-clad figure. Yes, it’s Special Guest Star Orion of New Genesis! He was just taping his Christmas special across the hall, y’see, and thought he’d stop by.

And the hits just keep on coming! Seems the explosion we just witnessed was Lightray, who now makes his entrance, and right on his heels come Metron and Highfather, towing Scott and his friends in a hovercraft. Yes, Highfather saved Scott’s ass, rather than his usual escape artistry. Hmmm…this being the last issue and all, I’m tempted to read a lot into this…given High-fathers’ godly nature, there’s a whole spiritual significance to him saving Scott on this occasion, when he was unable to do the job himself. Again, it seems like I’m catching a glimpse of a more elaborate story that Kirby was forced to cut short. It’s an interesting theme, though.

The Apokoliptish villains apparently at bay, Scott and Barda say goodbye to Shilo and Oberon, who are forced to leave before the godly shit goes down. They get a nice couple of goodbyes:



Meanwhile, wouldn’t you know it, there’s going to be a wedding, as decreed by The Source, and even the bad guys are invited. Except that there’s one particular , rocky-faced bad guy who tends to show up fashionably late, and they’d rather get the whole thing over with quickly, before he can show up, get drunk, and hit on the bridesmaids. Metaphorically speaking. It’s time for a mythological shotgun wedding!

Apparently it’s a quick matter of Scott and Barda declaring themselves “eternal” with each other, exchanging a smooch, and having Highfather tap them with his Wonder-Staff. So Scott, the master escape artist, ends the series with a Ball and Chain. Wokka wokka wokka!

No sooner is the job done than a tornado appears on the horizon, heralding the arrival of Darkseid. The gang piles into Highfather’s little barge jobbie, and the gang phases off to New Genesis, with Orion tossing off a final threat that he and Darkseid will meet “on the day called ‘Last Battle!’” And the New Gods are gone from Earth.

Oberon and Shilo, not having gotten very far, emerge from the rocks, only to find a solitary figure standing, watching the spot where the New Gods vanished. “Have you been out in the storm all this time, mister?” asks Shilo. “I am the storm,” replies Darkseid casually. Realizing there’s something terrifying about this guy, the two mortals take to their heels, leaving Darkseid to have the final word, describing Scott’s wedding and the Fourth World saga itself:

“It had deep sentiment, yet little joy. But—life at best is bitter-sweet!”

…

And that, or so it seemed at the time, was where the Fourth World would end. Sure, the characters would show up again—Mister Miracle joined the Justice League later on, there were various revivals. But that was it for Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, the original saga as conceived by its creator. It would forever be an unfinished symphony, ending with a whimper instead of a bang.

…Or so it seemed for a decade or so. But wouldn’t you know it, many years later Kirby did indeed get a chance to put a capper on his most cherished creation—and if not precisely satisfying, it certainly was an astounding bit of work.

Tune in next time, when we learn that “Even Gods Must Die!!!”