The Dead Man (2000AD #650-662)

"I don't know why or what I've done... but I've no right to inflict it on you good people" - The Dead Man

In 1990 2000AD ran a year long storyline called Necropolis.  This epic tale bought back the always popular Dark Judges - Death, Fear, Mortis and Fire, and introduced the "Sisters Of Death" the magic using  Phobia and Nausea.  What was interesting in retrospect was how much build up there had been prior to the start.  Although there was a strip that lead into it clearly marked "Countdown to Necropolis" pretty much all the several months worth of Judge Dredd strips in previous months had been setting the scene and introducing characters who would go on to play a major role in the storyline.  And then there was this story, "The Dead Man".  A quiet story to start with about a mysterious, badly burned and scarred man who is found out in the Cursed Earth by friendly natives. And who, in the company of a child from the village that takes him in, goes on a trek to discover who he is and how he ended up where he did. And slowly it starts to dawn on the reader that what seems like a stand alone story about a new character, is actually the lynchpin story of the whole mega-arc.  I'll try and preserve the mystery of The Dead Man until the reveal towards the end in this post in case you want to try and figure it out for yourself as we go.  Long time UK comics artist John Ridgeway provides the delicate, fine lined artwork making the Cursed Earth feel as arid and desert like as it ever has.  Keef Ripley scripts it with a well paced and sensitive hand.

The Cursed Earth is the expansive area outside Mega-City One.  It is a wasteland mostly populated by criminals, bandits, monsters and mutants.  But as the radioactivity has lessened it's also become home to small communties of normal human beings just trying to scrape out of a living of their own, and it is one such community that finds The Dead Man.  The story is narrated by a young black teenager called "Yassa" who introduces the story:

Yassa: "It wuz me who found The Dead Man... It was me who touched him - felt his skin.  All cracked and baked like a bad stretch of the Cursed Earth.  It wuz me looking right into his face when The Dead Man's eyes opened."

Yassa finds the Dead Man.

As this narration plays out we're shown Yassa, a friend and his pet dog called Dog discovering the wreck of a man and soon the whole village has come out to see him.  Yassa's mum gives him some water then they take him back into the village, "Bubbletown".  They load The Dead Man into a buggy to get him there and Yassa reflects:

Yassa: "Me I wuz praying for him.  I dunno why. I guess I kinda owed it to him. me being the one who found him. What I didn't know then wuz who he wuz - or why he had to stay alive. And I never dreamt of the evil he would bring down upon us all."

They take The Dead Man back to Yassa's house and lay him on a bed and bandage him up. The note the old bullet wounds on his body.  The local mad preacher, Larry, says he's "A man of violence!  A creature of evil!"  but the folks just ignore his rantings. Eartha, Yassa's mum says maybe The Dead Man won't survive to see the morning, but what kind of people would they be if they didn't give him a fighting chance?  And she chases everyone out the house.

Yassa's folks take the Dead Man in.

Mad Larry bellows she's bought "Doom!" upon them as he goes.  Yassa reflects if they'd known what was coming maybe they should have paid more attention to Larry. The Dead Man has a restless night and talks in his sleep.

The Dead Man: "Servants of Evil!  I know you...! What devilment is afoot?  Damn you!  I won't.. huuuhhHH! - Die for you!"

A pall seems to descend on the house.  Dog starts barking and in his room Yassa wakes up to a prescence that seems passes through him and as it does so he feels it "more full of blind evil than anything you could imagine"

Yassa's first nightmare.

His mum and dad come in and comfort Yassa who is shaking and crying.  He says he heard it scream, like a "saw scraping on glass".  His father says maybe The Dead Man will be able to tell him what it was when he wakes up. Two days later The Dead Man's fever recedes under Eartha's tender care.  The Dead Man finally comes around but when they ask him who he is he responds, "I remember... nothing."

A week passes and the fear everyone felt in Bubbletown the first night The Dead Man stayed there didn't come back, but it left Yassa feeling jumpy, looking at shadows and thinking he could hear screams. They ask The Dead Man about the things he said when he was feverish but he doesn't know what he meant, his whole life is a blank.

The whole town comes for a gawp.

Eartha says to Yassa that his memory would start to come back in time and she wasn't going to throw him out of the house just because everyone said she should.  Larry keeps protesting outside of their house saying "they're bringing doom upon us all!"  The rest of the town come and ask questions of The Dead Man but he can't answer them.  When they leave he says to Yassa, "They all stare at me - like some.. monster.  Am I that ugly?"

He then picks up a rifle and starts examining it.  He asks what it is and Yassa says it's dangerous.  Then he says that as far as he is concerned if Dog thinks The Dead Man is OK then that's good enough for him, "smart animal" says The Dead Man and he and Dog shake hand and paw.

The Dead Man is recovered enough to go outside.  Yassa takes him to where they found him in the hope it triggers some memories.  It doesn't, but Dog picks up a trail and they follow it.  It leads further into the canyon and suddenly they are ambushed by a group of sub-humans called "Grunts".

The Dead Man discovers his gun skills.

There is a struggle and the rifle is knocked from Yassa's hands.  The Dead Man picks it up and with precise efficiency kills several of the Grunts with pin-point accuracy. With all of them dead, Yassa is amazed that this morning The Dead Man didn't even know what a rifle was, now he's  crackshot with one.

Yassa: "Maybe I can't tell you who you are Dead Man.  But I know one thing - you're the meanest shot I ever saw!"

He tells the folk of Bubbletown but they aren't too pleased at the proof The Dead Man is a killer.  They tell The Dead Man that ever since he arrived in town things haven't been right with the animals, the rains are late and more Grunts have been coming down close to town like they've been spooked.

They come right out and tell Eartha they don't want The Dead Man in town anymore.  That night he stands outside Yassa's house thinking.  Yassa watches him and thinks he hears that terrible scream again, "as if it too had learned something about The Dead Man".

Another nightmare.

That night Yassa has a nightmare that he is being chased, a crowd of hands grab at him and a shadow bears down on him and he wakes with a start.   But in the room with him is a hooded figure who pulls her cloak back to reveal a bueatiful woman.  She reaches for him saying "where is he?  You'll tell me won't you boy" and then she transforms into a hideous monster.  And he wakes for real this time screaming his head off.

As he tells his parents and The Dead Man what he saw there is a banging at the door.   An old man had taken fright and died of a heart attack and the villagers blame The Dead Man for bringing the terror, "he brought a curse down on us all!" The next day The Dead Man tells Yassa and his parents he is leaving as he feels responsible for what has happened since he arrived.

He asks to take Dog as he wants to retrace his steps and thought Dog had his trail the previous day.  But Eartha says Dog stays with Yassa and Yassa won't be going with him.  She packs him some supplies and Yassa's dad gives him a rifle and a map.  The villagers turn out to see him off, though they are glad to see the back of him.  Yassa and Dog surruptitiously follow him through a corn field and catches up with The Dead Man at the canyon saying his mum changed his mind about him coming along.

Yassa: "Scared as I were of the terror.  It sound like too good of an adventure to miss. Fool that I wuz".

They carry on and when Dog loses the trail, they wait for him to sniff it out again.  Dog returns with a scrap of material which Yassa identifies as the same kind burnt onto The Dead Man's body when they found him.

Yassa and Dead Man make camp.

That night they make camp and The Dead Man says he knows Yassa is there without permission and that tommorrow he goes home.  Yassa says he can't send him back, he needs Dog. He says The Dead Man said it was important he found out what happened to him and who he is, and at that The Dead Man decides to keep Yassa and Dog with him.

They are ambushed by Grunts the next day, but The Dead Man sees them off and they arrive at a place with several burnt out dwellings.  Yassa comments:

Yassa: "Funny, you coming all this way when you were so near dead. Musta been somethin' mighty powerful drivin' you on."

They realise the trail leads directly into Grunt country. When Yassa says no one is ever stupid enough to go in there to find out how many Grunts are there, The Dead Man says, "maybe I was".  So through there they must now go.

More grunts dispatched.

They reach a wooded area and Dog finds more of the material.  The Dead Man says he recognises the place.

The Dead Man: "I have a picture... a memory cloaked in shadow. I'm staggering - lurching blindly. Pain exploding in my head - every step - but.. something's driving me.  I've got to keep going.  I've got to get away."

For some reason the Grunts didn't attack him then, which Yassa finds strange as he was already cooked.  But the Grunts aren't holding back now and they walk into a trap.  The Dead Man is yanked upwards via a rope trap.  He fires on the attacking grunts and gets himself free but not before they have carried Yassa off.

Yassa is tied up as the grunts light a big fire.  They grab him and Dog and drag them towards the flames to cook them.  Then they all hear the eerie scream and the grunts flee in terror and the hooded figure appears before them.  Yassa uses the knife he was going to be killed with to cut his bonds then he and Dog make a run for it.

Grunts take Yassa.

The Terror keeps chasing him.  The Dead Man lights a flare to guide him but Yassa stumbles and falls to the ground.  Dog leaps at the hooded figure but just passes through it.  Yassa is too scared to move, but before the hooded figure can do anything to him, The Dead Man appears and fires on it.  "You!" The figure says, "put that toy away you cannot hurt me."

The "Terror".

The Dead Man asks what it wants of him. It tells him when he knows himself it'll be back for him and disappates into thin air.  They follow the trail out of the grunt woods and come to country Yassa doesn't know about.  He reflects on what happened:

Yassa: "Even funnier to think the Terror had saved me from being eaten by grunts.  But I didn't feel like laughing.  I didn't feel good at all. I had a feeling it had only saved me for something worse."

They come to a river that is made of acid.  The Dead Man's memory is triggered again, he remembers stumbling through it, feet burning as he did so and he falls into it, "I'm on fire.  Pain.  The pain is unbearable."  But something stronger was driving him on, he could not die.  He thinks the final answers to his identity is over the river, but how to get across?

Fractured memories return...

The Dead Man says this is as far as Yassa goes, there is real danger over the other side of the river and he's already exposed him to far to much already.  Yassa pleads with him but The Dead Man says his mind's made up.  Then he fires his rifle at a tree on the other side and it falls making a temporary bridge across. 

But as he crosses, Yassa and Dog follow and can't go back as the tree burns away.  The Dead Man is annoyed by this and tells Yassa not to follow him, but Yassa refuses to comply and trails behind him.

Yassa: "Why did I go? What damn fool notion made me so eager to go rushing headlong into disaster?  It's a question I've asked myself many times in the madness where I now dwell;  when I awake screaming, reliving the terrible events of that day - remembering her face, her touch upon me..."

They finally happen upon another village called "Crowley" although there are no signs of life.  This is where The Dead Man will find the answers to his questions and discover who he is and what happened to him.

Crowley, where the answers lie.

Outside the town Dog lies down and will go no further, "he could smell the evil waiting for us there." Yassa still feels compelled to follow The Dead Man to find out who he is, caught like a whirlpool in events surrounding him.  They find several dead bodies, all burned to a crisp, there is no one alive in the town.

The Dead Man is lost in a mass of flashbacks, him confronting something evil, saying "I won't... die for you!" to his attackers.  "Servants of Evil I know you!" he says to them.  He and Yassa explore further, and find a helmet and the remains of a motorbike and finally a badge with a name on it.  "Who are you?" urges Yassa.

The Dead Man: "I am... Judge Dredd".

Best cliffhanger ever.

Even Yassa has heard of the legendary Judge Dredd.  But what is he doing here?  Dredd says he took the Long Walk (which is when a Judge retires, he goes out into the Cursed Earth with just his gun and bike to dispense justice until he or she is killed).

Dredd: "A hundred days bringing law to the Cursed Earth and then... they came... Creatures with hearts so dark and twisted nothing on this earth could have spawned them!"

He says they are denizens of a world where living was judged a crime and the population wiped out, Judge Death's world.  And the creatures who attacked him were "The Sisters Of Death!" I wrote about the origins of them in my coverage of "Young Death: Memoirs of a Superfiend."

The Sisters of Death.

Then the Sisters appear and approach them.  Dredd fires on them but one says "you cannot kill what does not live".  Dredd tells Yassa to run, but Yassa is frozen to the spot in terror.  And we get a full on look at the two sisters "Phobia" and "Nausea".  Dredd struggles with Phobia while Nausea takes a hold of Yassa and says she wants him to suffer and presses his face to her manky bosom.

Yassa: "Oh yes, I learned who The Dead Man was that day. But the price I was to pay would be terrible."

Ouch!

Dredd yells to Yassa that they can't hurt him if he doesn't believe in them.  But Yassa is terrified and Nausea rams her fingers in his eyes and blinds him.  Dredd curses them saying Yassa is unimportant to them.

Phobia: "All life iss important!  All mussst be punissshhhed!"

Dredd says they couldn't kill him the first time, and they can't now.  Phobia says they have damaged him physically before but Dredd says that was a momentary aberration. He grits his teeth and tells them:

Dredd: "You're not here! You're just an illusion- a nightmare... your power was strong enough to hurt me - even kill me.  But only if I surrended to it.  You're somewhere else! Yes! If you'd been here you'd have made sure of me."

Dredd resists and they find they cannot hurt him anymore so they leave and Dredd says, "tell your brothers I'm comin' for them".  Yassa had blacked out which Dredd says it what saved him from further harm.

The Sisters were currently elsewhere and using projection to attack people's minds.  Allowing them to inflict physical harm by tricking the mind into making it real.   Dredd picks up the blinded Yassa and says sadly, "what have I done?"  And takes him back to Bubbletown.

Dredd takes Yassa home.

All the folks in Crowley had died because they thought what was happening was real, but Dredd just refused and that's why he survived.  Back in Bubbletown, Yassa's mother says she can't forgive Dredd for what happened to Yassa.  Dredd says there may be a way to help him in the future and he is now going to head for Megacity One where he believes the danger originates from.  He leaves a traumatised Yassa, trapped in a cycle of nightmares and terror.

Yassa: "Dear God, I wish I could forget - lose my memory - become a Dead Man too. But I don't suppose is wise to envy The Dead Man.  Somewhere out there he's got his own nightmare to face."

And a new quest begins...

And that brings "The Dead Man" storyline to a close.  It leads directly into "The Tale Of The Dead Man" which relates the story of how Judge Dredd came to become disillusioned with the Justice system and the reason he decided to take the Long Walk into the Cursed Earth. I shall be covering that story in my next UK comics month. This story however is a really nice little tale, building up a solid mystery and leaving you feeling much sympathy towards Yassa, a brave young man who just wanted to help Dredd find his memories.  I remember being legitimately surprised at the reveal of who The Dead Man was at the time, this story was running at the same time Dredd strips also were in the comic so there was no reason to connect the two.  It also was our first glimpse of The Sisters of Death and the first major clue that something was going terribly, terribly wrong in Megacity One.  There was still many weeks to go before the Necropolis storyline started properly and the sense as "The Dead Man" story drew to a close that something big was on the horizon for the Dreddverse was palpable.  Dredd's promise to Yassa's family that he will find a way to help him is not forgotten, but there are more dreadful things to deal with right now. John Ridgeway's art is beautiful here, imbuing the human characters with dignity and strength while giving us a repulsive look at Phobia and Nausea.  His and Keef Ripley's Dredd is just the right blend of vulnerable and badass in this story and his bond with Yassa, even though it dooms the poor boy is well conveyed.  All-in-all a triumph of serial storytelling that is stil an enjoyable read when you know the twist ending.  Good stuff.

Miracleman Book 2: Red King Syndrome (#5-10) NSFW

NSFW:  Warning!  Contains very graphic images of childbirth that leave nothing to the imagination!

"Is this it Gargunza?  Is this what all those years were for?" - Miracleman

OK, so this sucks.  I'm doing another Brit comics month and I was supposed to be doing The Complete Ballad Of Halo Jones as my Alan Moore comic.  But those cocksuckers in the UK postal service are obviously too busy gargling each others cum to ensure I get my post, and it's lost somewhere in limbo.  So I'm doing the second Marvel Miracleman reprint collection which I think was originally still mostly published in the UK first.  Fuck I don't know, wikipedia is not helping me.  But as it's the only Alan Moore comic I can at least tenuously link to the UK I've have to hand so it'll have to fucking do OK?  Fuck.

Hrmm, I think two months looking at Garth Ennis's stuff has had a deleterious effect on my usual prim and ladylike manner of speech.  Let's start again.

Miracleman (or Marvelman as it was originally known) was an old Silver Age British knock-off of Captain Marvel.  Miracleman, Young Miracleman and Kid Miracleman all had magic words they could say to turn from normal humans into powerful superbeings.  By the early 1980's the series hadn't been published in a long time so writing for Warrior comic, Alan Moore revived and rebooted the series as one of the first deconstructionist takes on the superhero archetype, as middle-aged schlub Mike Moran remembers his long forgotten magic word and transforms into Miracleman, gets his wife pregnant, fights the now evil Kid Miracleman and then finds out all his memories of his old adventures were simply beamed into his brain via a virtual reality machine. I looked at Book One here and here.  The first Book of Miracleman ended with him departing the govenment bunker where his past had been manufactured in the company of one Evelyn Cream a government agent who was meant to kill him, but who betrayed the UK government to team up with Miracleman for his own reasons.

Miracleman and Liz

The book begins with Liz and Mike Moran arguing.  She says that although Miracleman can't be hurt, Mike can.  Mike says it's not his fault Miracleman was done to him and if Liz wants reassurance she can talk to him and he changes into Miracleman in the next room.  We then get a look at what's happening to Johnny Bates, the teenage vessel for the evil Kid Miracleman.  He is in a vegetative state externally through the sheer effort of fighting Kid Miracleman's persuasion to get him to change.

Evelyn Cream is meeting with his ostensible boss, Sir Dennis Archer.  Cream wants Miracleman left alone and Project Zarathustra suspended immediately.  Sir Dennis asks if he realises just how powerful Miracleman is?

Evelyn Cream: "You made it an enemy.  I made it an ally.  There is a difference."

Sir Dennis: "Not at all Mr. Cream.  It has made you it's pet!"

Miracleman appears naked to Liz and they start to embrace and make love.  She realises that with his power there is no reason to be scared and yet:

Narration: "So why does she feel so vulnerable? And Afraid?"

Later Miracleman is sitting on a rock in a wooded area somewhere.  There is a boy who is hiding stuff that he will need post-nuclear war.  He spots Miracleman and asks him "Are you a pouf [UK slag for a homosexual]? Or are you a superhero?" A surprised Miracleman introduces himself as Miracleman, superhero.  The boy says he is called Jason.

Jason is a little dubious about Miracleman's claims, so Miracleman destroys the big rock he was sat on.  Satisfied, Jason asks him if he could stop a nuclear war happening.  Miracleman says he'd doe his best.  They part and when Miracleman gets home he comes across the living room all smashed up and Liz (who is now heavily pregnant with Miracleman's kid) has been abducted.

Cream woken from a prophetic dream.

In the midst of a nightmare, Cream is wakened by a panicked phoncall from Miracleman. We briefly see Liz in a comfortable bedroom while two voices off screen scan her and note her total lack of panic at what has happened to her.  Back with Miracleman, Cream denies all knowledge of what happens.  They figure out it must be someone who knows Miraclemans secret identity.  First they phone the hospital Johnny Bates is in, but he hasn't gone anywhere. 

Then Cream phones Sir Dennis and tells him Miracleman will destroy one city an hour until he gets Liz back.  Desperately Sir Dennis says he hasn't got her, but he knows who might have her. We then return to Liz and a man called Gargunza, who was behind Project Zarathustra and he says to her, regarding Miracleman:

Gargunza: "I created him.  He is almost my son.  And shortly Mrs Moran, very shortly.. he will be my father."

The real Gargunza

Later Cream is preparing to fly to where they have been told Gargunza is hiding out.  They are going by plane as it would be to cold for Miracleman to fly Cream under his own steam.  On the plane he ponders meeting Gargunza who is holed up in South America, and finding out his secrets to use for "his own ends".

Gargunza performs various check-ups on Liz, who takes it all in her stride.  When he tells her sheis having a girl, she simply replies "I know".  Later that night Gargunza has a nightmare where the Miracle foetus stares him down, and knowing he won't be able to go back to sleep he remembers his time with Project Zarathustra.  Cue flashback.

He and his assistant, Fabian are overseeing the three Miraclemen being given false memories as dream programmes.  Then one day he turns off the "somatic inducers" and the Miraclemen keep on dreaming independantly.

We then travel into the gorgous dreamworld of the Miraclemen.  Miracleman comments that it doesn't feel real and he has felt like he is in a dream for a while now.  They are presented by a city with "Sleepytown" written up the side and they go in to investigate.  Outside Garguza notes that their subconciousness are trying to tell them things aren't real.  The Miraclemen come across three huge slumbering figures which look exactly like them to their discomfort.

Gargunza: "Their subconcious minds are trying to overload on absurdity to shock the brain into wakefulness by crossing the threshold of disbelief".

Gargunza says he anticipated this might happen and installed failsafes.  A dampner field will drain the power of their minds and allow them to rein in the warnings from their minds.  Inside their dream the Miraclemen come across vampires and start fighting them as Fabian says the dampner fields aren't working.  As the Miraclemen fight, Gargunza muses:

Gargunza: "Tell me Fabian, have you ever read Alice in Wonderland?  You have? Do you remember the Red King?  He slept and dream and no-one dared wake him.  They were afraid you see, that they were all part of his dream. And if he were to wake the whole of existence would vanish".

Fabian says that existence wouldn't end if the Miraclemen wake up.  Gargunza replies "It will for us."  And then we return to him in the present.

The Miraclemen's shared dreamworld.

He is sat with Liz as they drink coffee together.  She asks him who he is and where he comes from.  he says he is an old man, close to death and he comes from vera Cruz.  Liz expresses an interest in hearing his life story so he obliges.  He says he was around six when the Mexican government fell and US troops were sent to keep the peace, it was 1911.  When he was nine, his father died and he and his mother lived in poverty in Rio.

He joined up with a local gang and because he was small and intelligent, the head gangster Aurelio adopted him as a mascot.  One day though Aurelio tried to sexually abuse him and when Gargunza resisted he was badly beaten.  However Gargunza's intelligence and earning power had bought him the loyalty of the rest of the gang and one night he had Aurelio dragged from his bed.  Gargunza then raped his girlfriend in front of him and beat him to death with a baseball bat. He was fourteen.

By the time he was eighteen he was rich enough to keep his mother in comfort and he left for Europe and began to study science.  His reputation spread and one day he met Hitler and was offered a position in the Reich to study genetics.  In 1941 he realised the war was unwinnable for Germany and defected to England where he started working under Sir Dennis Archer.  After the death of his mother in 1947 he realised he did not want to die.

The mystery spaceship that helped start it all.

One night he was summoned to the site of a poison gas leak, which turned out to be a cover story for the landing of an alien spacecraft.  He and a few others entered it and could hardly comprehend what they were seeing.  Further into the ship they discovered the alien body that Gargunza spent a long time puzzling over.

It was the same being but had two bodies fused together, it was one mind but with two bodies.  Garguza theorised that the ship had crashed after the alien had suddenly and catstrophically had both bodies occupy the same space at the same time.  Gargunza believed he could create humans who could switch bodies in the same way and experimented on three orphans, he also makes a passing mention of two who came later, "Rebbeck and Lear".

When they had been physically altered, he went to work on a way of controlling them via their minds.  He hit on using the superhero narrative after seeing a comic one day (and that comic is shown to be Captain Marvel) and used technology created using what they had found in the alien spacecraft.

The Miracle family are created.

Liz asks why he did all this  Gargunza says he wants to live for ever.  He thought about wiping Miracleman's mind and transferring his conciousness into him, but that wouldn't have worked.  A baby on the other hand, that had inherited Miracleman's abilities naturally, well that would be a different matter altogether.  And finally Liz is shaken by what he is implying.

We return to the flashback the night in 1961 when the Miracle family started to wake up. The dampner fields overload and the Miraclemen start creating their own dreamworld.  Miracleman is still uneasy, saying something is wrong and nothing feels real.  His mind is creating absurdities upon absurdities in an attempt to wake himself up.

Miracleman: "No!  This is wrong!  Don't you see?  We're being seduced.  They're trying to stop us thinking!"

His subconcious projection is so powerful it even changes the logo on his real life costume.  Gargunza desperately looks for a way to reassert control as Fabian says Miracleman is moving.  Gargunza finally hits on having them wake up inside the simulation with all the crazy stuff as just being all a dream.  This appears to work, although Miracleman's costume logo is still changed. 

Gargunza reasserts control... maybe.

Back in the present, Liz is accosted by Cream who tells her that her husband is coming for her.  Miracleman comes raging through the compound destroying everything in his path.  He tells Gargunza that he is going to kill him.  Gargunza laughs and says the word "Abraxas" which turns Miracleman back into Mike Moran.  Mike says his magic word but nothing happens.  Gargunza has activated a mental failsafe that will keep Mike from transforming into Miracleman for another hour.  Then he places his dog on the ground and says "Steppenwolf" which transforms the dog into a huge, vicious "Miracledog!"

Cream arrives on the scene with Liz.  Liz and Mike hug and Gargunza says Mike and Cream have three minutes to make their getaway before he sets Miracledog on them.  He says now Liz is pregnant, Mike has outlived his usefulness.  Cream and Mike leave, but soon Mike collapses in despair saying he is too fat and old to run.

Miracledog.  Not a very friendly guy.

Cream says that inside Mike is a God who must be protected.  He gives Mike his gun then leaves him to try and draw Miracledog away and buy Mike some time.  He remembers his nightmare and realises the "whiteness" he reached for was not the "the hot whiteness of steel.  Or of sanctity.  It is the whiteness of bone.  It is death."  Miracledog catches up with him and cuts his head clean off, thus ending Cream's involvement in the story.

Miracledog then catchs up with Mike and when Mike points his gun at it, snaps the gun up taking two of Mike's fingers with it.  Mike tries to figure out how to defeat an opponent whose magic word it can't even say.  Then he realises that the magic word could be said by someone else besides Gargunza.  He tries  it and Miracledog changes back into a harmless animal.  Mike beats it's brains out with a rock then sits and waits.

Gargunza's men are out looking for Mike and Cream's bodies.  They find Cream and Miracledog, but then Mike transforms back into Miracleman and kills all of them.  He then speeds back to Gargunza's compounds and smashes his way down to where Gargunza is.  Before Gargunza can say the counterword, Miracleman grabs him by the throat.  Then he flies him up above the Earth.

Miracleman: "Can you see the planet?  How big it is?  Can you see the scale I live on?  Gargunza, can you see how small you have always been?"

He kisses Gargunza farewell, then hurls him back down towards the Earth.  Gargunza burns up in the atmosphere and only a small amount of bone makes it back down to the surface.

Sucks yo be you now, Gargunza.

(I've got a feeling that this was the point Miracleman ceased being published in Warrior, as the rest of the book is made up of much longer chapters, which makes me think this was when the strip went over to US publisher Eclipse in full.)

Back with Liz, her contractions start.  She struggles outside to seek help to find the place wrecked.  Then Miracleman appears angelically in front of her.  She gets a bit hysterical but he holds her and says it's "all gone away".  She doesn't want to have her baby where they are now, so Miracleman puts her in a nearby truck and then flies her inside it to find a quiet place she can give birth.

There is a brief interlude with two strange humanoid characters who gain entrance to the facility where Johnny Bates is being treated.  They enter his mind as try and talk to him about his "Change-self".  When Johnny refuses to respond they withdraw and Kid Miracleman pops up wondering "what they hell were they?"

There is now an extensive birth scene rendered in extremely graphic detail with a series of beautiful and life affirming captions.  It's not easily summed up and is really the emotional heart of the entire book, so here are some images from it to give you some idea how lovely it is.

Behold!  Miraclebaby!

Finally with their daughter safely delivered, Liz says over and over, "is she alright?".  To which Miracleman responds "Yes. Yes she's all right."  And just as they breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the fact their world is finally safe and sane, their newborn baby girl says "Ma-ma".

The action then cuts back to the strange humanoids who are keeping an eye on all the beings like Mike/Miracleman who can change, whether alive or dead.  Their speech is odd and hard to follow and very elliptical, but one thing they do reveal, that there is a Miraclewoman out there as well.

Returning to the new family, they are back at the Moran home.  Liz is unable to keep up Miraclebaby's need for sustenance.  Miracleman changes back into Mike and is still missing two fingers, overwhelmed by all the stress he has been under he passes out.

We then cut to Johnny Bates, inside his head, Kid Miracleman has managed to trick Johnny into coming out of his vegative state that had trapped them both.  He knows Johnny won't say the magic word and free him easily, but that it's more likely to happen if Johnny is concious and mixing with the other kids in the group home.

Kid Miracleman plots....

Back with the Morans, Liz is feeding the baby formula to keep up with her hunger.  Liz confesses that when she was pregnant, the baby, who she names "Winter" kept her stress down and made her calm.  But now she's given birth she feels like she doesn't matter and she is depressed.  Then oddly her mood changes and she feels happy again.  As this conversation was being shown from Winter's perspective, the implication is that she used her powers to make her mum happy again.

We then return to the odd humans, they are in a doctor's office, the receptionist speaks to the female doctor and says they have asked for her using the wrong name, "Lear" and seem to be foreign.  Then the receptionist, still speaking to the female doctor over the phone says "Kim who?" and the side of the building shatters as Miraclewoman says the magic word "Kimota" and makes a quick getaway.

Miraclewoman.

Back with the Morans, Liz has started feeding Winter solid food to satisfy her.  When Mike queries this, Liz says something told her it was the right thing to do - "mother's instinct". Mike goes to check on the baby and is overhwelmed by love for her.

Mike: "How can anything so wonderfully complex be made so small, so flawless in every details.  Her perfect little fingers.  Her perfect little eyes.  Her perfect little ears.  Her perfect little mouth... with it's... perfect... little... teeth".

The book concludes with the mysterious couple in South America inspecting the body of Miracledog.  Their next target is Mike who they are detirmined not to allow to escape them like Miraclewoman did.  They travel back to England in a burst of light.

The mystery humanoids... aliens perhaps?

And that concludes Book Two of Miracleman.  After the impact the first Book had at the time, added into the fact this book was being put out during the final period of Warrior magazine and then transferred over to US publisher Eclipse, this middle book suffers a little from feeling like it's acting mainly to tie off loose ends from Book One (Evelyn Cream and Gargunza) while setting up plotlines for the epic events of Book Three (the introduction of Miraclewoman, Johnny Bates coming out of his fugue state, the odd humanoid aliens, Winter's fast development and powers).  However it's still a fantastic read in it's own right, the birth sequence alone is some of the finest, most heartfelt writing I have ever read by Alan Moore and showing the birth in all it's unsanitised detail keeps the premise of Miracleman as a superhero book grounded in gritty reality alive. This reprint package as a whole is just as lavish as the previous one, there are two extra stories, a short fun little one starring Young Miracleman trying to impress a lady, and a fourth wall breaking framing sequence for some reprints after the Eclipse publishing offices got flooded. Add in all the covers, promo art, as well as other artistic treats, all bound together in hardback and you have a fantastic package any lover of comics must have in their collection.