Scott Free got out. He escaped as an orphan from Grannie’s unkind goodness on the 4th world hell of Apokolips but he didn’t escape scot-free. He was hit by Darkseid’s ricochet:
“Sweet Child in time you’ll see the line
The line that’s drawn between good and bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets taking their toll,
If you’ve been bad, Lord I bet you have
And you’ve not been hit by flying lead
You’d better close your eyes and bow your head
And wait for the ricochet.”
(Child in Time, Deep Purple, 1970)*
In Mr Miracle # 1, which came out 50 years ago today (14 January, 1971), Jack Kirby, as always, is writing and creating on multiple levels. On one level, he tells a story about a ‘super escape artist’, the ‘making of a legend’, a miraculous man who blends science and spirit to soar past the challenges of all traps, who puts his life on the line each time, a man who ‘cheats death.’ You could enjoy the story just for its own surface sake, like a comics Evel Knievel.
On another level, Kirby is interested in the journey of the human spirit and how it overcomes pain, particularly childhood pain. As Scott gets to know the original Mr Miracle, Thaddeus Brown, Brown tests him by chaining him and daring him to escape. The elder Miracle and assistant/Kirby avatar Oberon, are surprised when Scott doesn’t struggle.
Scott says “The trap is not in the chain—it is in the brain…” When you’re trapped and you can’t get out, when you are someplace bad, struggle is useless. When a terrible thing happens to you, you fight but you fight against a force that will inevitably overpower you. Scott accepts the moment and transcends it by connecting to something bigger than himself. Before the trap test, he reaches into his bag and the comforting voice of the mother box. Oberon says: “Look at him! He reached into the bag and touched something – now – look at him!” Scott says “I’m ready.”
Scott Free carries a lifetime of hurt, collateral damage from an unholy exchange deal between Moses (Highfather) and the Devil (Darkseid). As a child, he is abused, trapped in Grannie’s torturous, terror orphanage, hit by the flying lead of a blind Darkseid shooting at the world. A child in time, his cries, his needs are drowned out by the all-consuming needs of the discordant, distorted, abusive adult. The wails in the Deep Purple song only grow stronger and louder, faster, more insistent until in the second half, there is a moment of peace, a lament and finally cries of pain, ‘No! Do it! No! No!’
The need to escape pain is universal, escape from bullying, from abuse of all kinds, from people who deride you because you are different. We run from it. We seek an altered state through drink or drugs or anything else to avoid being present with pain. We also seek solace in things and people that give us hope and love, comics, community, a future vision of ourselves that reaches back to our child in time and says ‘you will make it.’
Scott Free as Mr Miracle rushes at pain in defiance of it. He challenges death each time using all the tools he learned in hell. At first it’s how he survived as a child, escaping from his own body and the pain he felt, now it’s how he lives as an adult, escaping from traps, each escape a reaffirmation of his own journey. He won’t be put down, drowned out, his voice will be heard, he won’t be abused. He seeks to turn the pain he felt as a child into something transformative, serenity in the face of death.
Scott Free remembers the wounds, he carries the scars the ricochets put there. He wears them proudly because they are not the signs of a victim but evidence of a miracle. Of someone who went through so much pain and came out, healed.
“Spread the word around
The rat is leaving town
The message is a song
The misery is gone
….
Now I’m free
And I can see
And I am me…”
(Flight of the Rat, Deep Purple, 1970, the song after Child in Time on the album, Deep Purple in Rock).
Research this article:
Comics:
-Comics Journal # 134, February 1990 (Jack Kirby interview by Gary Groth)
-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website
-The Indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows).
Discography:
In Rock, Deep Purple, 1970
Popular culture:
-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007)
-Uncovering the Sixties (Abe Peck, Pantheon, 1985)
Michael Mead is a 54 year old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult.
As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he will publish a contextual commentary. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!
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