Punisher MAX Book 7: Man Of Stone (#37-42)

"He's an American.  We fight our wars on foreign soil" - Rawlins

So we return to my coverage of Garth Ennis's acclaimed run on The Punisher for Marvel's mature readers MAX imprint.  The last book I covered was number four, I've had to skip books five and six as they are out of print and insanely expensive on Amazon, although they have been released on the Kindle.  Fortunately these two are probably the best ones to have been skipped, the fifth book deals with Frank's nemesis the gangster assassin Barracuda and when he returns in book nine the details of their prior entanglement is filled in then.  Book six, "The Slavers" is a standalone and annoyingly many see it as the best book in the series.  I'm sure I shall read it one day, alas I don't have a Kindle.  Anyway, the important thing to understand is that with those two books taken into account, the in-story gap between books four and seven is roughly one year.  This becomes very important later in the series.  This book features characters from several previous volumes.  The female ex-CIA agent O'Brien who slept with the Frank in Book four and helped him take down the mafia goons after him.  Her slimeball ex-husband Rawlins who had arranged a terrorist attack on Russia on the orders of some US generals in Book three when they needed to distract the Russian government from a retrieval mission they sent Frank on, and who Frank tortured that information out of before he managed to make an escape from him.  Also from book three is the titular "Man Of Stone" Zakharov, a Russian general who realised it was the US who was responsible for the terrorist attack not Islamists.  Finally from book two is a British S.A.S officer called Yorkie who is a sort of friend of Frank from back in his Vietnam days.  Mix all these characters together in the hellhole that is Afghanistan in the mid-noughties and you have the recipe for another harrowing and deadly serious story.

Meeting John James Toomey.

The book kicks off with a page of a cocky Rawlins meeting a Russian only to end up terrified when it turns out the Russian in question is Zakharov.  Then we cut to Frank, hands taped behind his back on his knees on the floor of a black gang hideout.  He had blackmailed a minor gang member into pretending he had surprised and captured The Punisher so he could get an audience with the leader John James Toomey, who is untouchable even by the F.B.I.  Toomey decides he wants to see if the Russians will make good on the bounty they have out on Frank, while Frank cuts his bonds with the razor he had hidden and grabs a gun shooting and killing all the gang members in the room including Toomey.

Back with Rawlins, he is naked and hanging upsidedown.  He says he has information for Zakharov who enquires as to what that might be.  A panicked Rawlins says the incident at Sudhek wasn't terrorists... "It was the Americans" responds Zakharov, "castrate this imbecile and leave him in the street to bleed out."  Captain Dolnovich, his aide, starts cutting Rawlin's balls off, but Rawlins yells that he can help them get proof of the US involvement.

Zaharov, Dolnovich and an upside down Rawlins.

He is cut down.  Zakharov says that pursuing the matter of Sudhek got him reassigned to a training camp in the middle of nowhere. Rawlins gives us a quick recap of book three, that the Islamic terrorists hijacking a Russian plane was a cover to distract the Russian government from the raid on Sudhek where a child with a sample of a very powerful bio-weapon in her blood was retreived for the US by two men, one now dead, the other being Frank castle.

Rawlins throws a pity party over being cut loose by the US generals who ordered both the hijacking and the retrieval of the girl after this information was tortured out of him by The Punisher.  Zakharov says if Rawlins wants to stay alive he needs to find a way to deliver them Frank Castle.  Rawlins says if they have someone he cares about they can lure him out.  He has a list of six ex-Taliban his ex-wife O'Brien is after.  If they watch them, they'll find her and Frank will come and help her if she gets in trouble.

O'Brien enacting some righteous vengeance.

O'Brien meanwhile has already crossed three names off that list and crosses another one off, the men in question were those who raped her when she fell into the hands of the Taliban years ago.  Back in the USA, Frank is questioning a Russian mafia member at gunpoint, the man says the contract on him has been cancelled and the same source in Russia wants people looking out for O'Brien.

In a crowded marketplace in Afghanistan, two S.A.S members are monitoring one of the ex-Taliban on O'Brien's list.  When they spot her in a burka approaching her target they walk her up an alley at gunpoint.  The yanks want to know who's been killing these ex-Taliban so they are surprised to find out she is a yank herself. "Fuck. Old Yorkie's gonna love this." says one of them.

Frank is trying to track O'Brien down via his military contacts but is getting nowhere.  So he tries a longshot and calls Yorkie and asks if he has seen her:

Yorkie: "Well that is a coincidence, I was just about to shoot her through the head."

The rest of the chapter is told in flashback.  After slapping the cuffs on O'Brien, two S.U.V.s filled with Russians, including Rawlins and Dolnovich, turn into the alley.  A massive firefight ensues and Rawlins and Dolnovich have to beat a hasty retreat. 

Just another day in Kabul.

Back with Zakharov, he is unhappy that Rawlins didn't know the ex-Taliban were under S.A.S protection.  Rawlins gabbles that they must be "workin' for some shithead in D.C."  He starts covering his balls in anticipatory panic.

Zakharov: "This puts us back where we started.  New ideas Rawlins.  Think quickly".

At the S.A.S camp Yorkie gets the message from Washington that O'Brien is to be executed.  Also the name she was yelling - "Rawlins" - has Washington shitting itself and their orders are to "obliterate the cunt".  When he asks for volunteers to execute O'Brien, his men all look anywhere but him.

Yorkie: "I've no idea why you lot are getting so sentimental.  One look at that lass and you can tell she knows the score.  She's one of us."

He then goes to her and tells her to put on a uniform, then she is to come with him "for a little drive".

The S.A.S showing their sensitive side.

Rawlins is being held over a cliff edge by Dolnovich, he screams "I've had a fucking idea-!"  Zakharov indulges him and Rawlins says if they can't use O'Brien to lure Frank over, they should use Zakharov.  He says if Zakharov gives a press interview saying he is "lookin' for a comrade from Sudhek" and Frank will know Zakharov is talking about him.

Rawlins: "He'll come to you, general.  I know this fuck, he doesn't like loose ends."

Dolnovich says Moscow will see this press report too and they are not supposed to be in Kabul.  But Zakharov believes making the true events surrounding Sudhek known is worth the risk.

Then we are back to the start of the chapter with Yorkie about to shoot O'Brien and on the phone to Frank.  After a one-sided conversation he tells O'Brien there has been a change of plans.  He is going to drive her back to Kabul, give her the keys to the landrover, hit himself over the head with a rock so "it looks like you twatted me one and then we're going our seperate ways."

Luring out Frank.

Frank sees Zakharov's "invitation" on the TV news and as he packs and makes ready to leave he thinks about the lessons the British and Russians both learned a century apart:

Frank: "You go to war in Afghanistan... And everyone dies."

The next chapter also starts with a flash forward to O'Brien and Frank sat together out in the desert.  They kiss and intend to do a lot more. We go back to the last leg of his journey on a plane into Kabul talking with a journalist who wants to cover the resurgence of Zakharov.  He wrote a book on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and says to Frank he'll tell him a "horror story".

Sexy time in the desert.

Yorkie and O'Brien are having a conversation on the way back to Kabul.  She says if he knew what the scum he was protecting had done and Yorkie says he doesn't need to know, "you know as well as I do how the world really works."  Yorkie also says he's not sure why he is telling her this but Frank isn't someone you think of a future with:

Yorkie: "He's not planning on growing old with anyone.  He's not the type to sit by your deathbed and hold you when you go."

He stops the vehicle and gets out, leaving a note for Frank with her.  He says that now, "I walk home and win arsehole of the year award...be sure and tell him I called him a cunt."

Yorkie does Frank a favour.

In a Russian secret base a couple of heavily armed attack helicopters are being readied to help capture Frank.  Rawlins comes to Zakharov saying he wants a job with him.  He's spent twenty-two years as a C.I.A field agent, a lot of the time doing deals off the books from the mujahs, the P.L.O, the I.R.A, the major drug cartels "an' that's just the tip of the iceberg".

Back with Frank and the journalist, he tells Frank his horror story about Zakharov.  During the Soviet occupation there were seven villages north of Kandahar that were a big nuisence to the supply lines.  But the fighters would always leave the village before the Russians could get to them.  They would watch from the surrounding mountains "but that suited Zakharov down to the ground".

One day he had his men round up the civilians and marched them slowly off the edge of a nearby cliff.  When one woman gave him her baby and begged him not to kill it, he took it and hurled it over the edge.  Horrified the mujahadeen fighters broke cover and fired upon the Russians and so were wiped out by them. 

The Man Of Stone.

"That was the day he got his nickname. Man Of Stone" when he did not move as the bullets and bombs flew around him.  He pulled the same stunt in the other six villages as well.  The journalist is going to gather evidence to have Zakharov indicted as a war criminal.

Zakharov meanwhile turns Rawlins' offer down flat, saying he does not trust him and if he is lucky and Frank is brought in with minimal complication "I will allow you to leave here with your life."

Frank meets with O'Brien in a Kabul hotel bar.  He gave the journalist some advice before they parted which was to go home and let someone else who could do the job deal with Zakharov.  O'Brien and Frank travel out to a U.S army weapons cache and drive out into the wilderness where they can face Zakharov without incurring civilian casualties.  Then they make camp and we're back to where the chapter started, with sex about to happen.

Not a believer in the freedom of the press.

The journalist meets a sticky end at the hands of Dolnovich after Zakharov says he read his book and did not care for it.  Tsk, everyone's a critic.  Dolnovich wipes his blade on Rawlins' jacket saying "I'm still hoping that you'll do something stupid."

O'Brien fills Frank in on Rawlins' backstory as they set up their ambush.  His father was a field agent in Cairo, his mother a local girl.  He inherited most of his contacts from his dad, including those in the heroin trade.  Right after they got married, ten years ago, they were sent on a mission to reclaim some unused stinger missiles from the mujahadeen.  But the shipment was smack and when their helicopter came under fire and needed to lose some weight he kicked her out the back rather than dump the drugs and she was captured and raped by the men she's been hunting.

By the time she made it back home, Rawlins was in deep cover elsewhere so she shut her mouth knowing "one day I'd get my shot".  She says she has a thing for bad boys:

O'Brien: "It's mostly guys like Rawlins.  Or idiots.  Or drunks.  Or the truly, irrevocably doomed. That stupid bastard Tommy..."

OK, she definitely is the C.I.A agent Tommy gets involved with in the final arc of Ennis' series for DC, Hitman.  Frank says to be clear he's there because "I owed you.  I repaid the debt.  Now we're finishing off a mutual problem.  Nothing more."  And he walks off.

Romantic (!)

Zakharov's helicopters are on their trail.  They know they are being lead into an ambush.  Dolnovich wonders why they need Frank's confession when they have Rawlins.  Zakharov says a man as notorious as The Punisher confessing would cause an outcry and it would result in, at the very least, the deaths at Sudhek being re-examined.  As for Rawlins:

Zakharov: "He knows Castle and the woman.  If the fight goes badly for us, that knowledge may prove useful.  After that I do not care."

Then they spot Frank standing out in the open near a rockfall along the bottom of a cliff.  He runs and lures the helicopter gunship into the sights of O'Brien who blows it to bits with a stinger missile, while Frank mows down the soldiers on the ground. 

I like a woman with access to heavy ordinance.

The ground troops run up the rockfall to get to cover, but it has been mined and they are blown up.  Zakharov is not peturbed by this turn of events.  He announces over the radio that there is a village nearby that they will wipe out with their payload - a Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon or MOAB for short - if Frank does not go there alone and unarmed at sundown the next day.  So at the appointed time and place, Frank surrenders.

Zakharov sends Rawlins out to cuff Frank.  Rawlins notes Frank has a bandaged wound on his arm, Zakharov tells him to take the dressing off and check it.  Rawlins finds nothing but a "shrapnel injury".  O'Brien watches from inside a nearby foxhole.  As the chopper takes off she grabs the struts under the body of the chopper and hangs on as it takes off.

Inside, Rawlins holds a knife to Frank's eye and demands to know "where's the cunt?"  But Dolnovich yanks him away so Zakharov can question Frank himself.  As Zakharov starts to talk about Sudhek, O'Brien fiddles with the underside of the chopper and Frank slides a piece of sharp metal he had concealed deep inside the arm wound and cuts the cuffs with it.

Ow, Ow, Ow, Ouch!

He lunges forwards and headbuts Dolnovich and grabs his gun.  He and Zakharov exchange fire but both miss.  Frank shoots the choper pilots, Zakharov tells them to drop the MOAB but O'Brien sabotaged the clamps and it is jammed.  She jumps off the sharply descending helicopter and Frank opens a hatch and jumps out too.  Rawlins sees his chance and kicks Zakharov out and grabs onto him using him to cushion his fall.  Dolnovich also jumps.

Frank runs to O'Brien and braces against her as the chopper spirals into a nearby mountainside and goes up in a HUGE explosion.  Rawlins stands over Zakharov who is lying immobile on the ground, his neck broken.  Zakharov says "finish it". 

But Rawlins says "hell no", he wants Zakharov to die a slow death in the Afghan desert sun. Dolnovich comes up with his blade drawn but Rawlins lashes out and cuts Dolnovich's throat with a small pocket knife, leaving Dolnovich bleeding out, gasping for air.

Rawlins is such a dickhead.

O'Brien and Frank decide it's time to finish it and find the others.  As they begin to look for them, O'Brien wonders what she'll do next:

O'Brien: "With hubby gone I'll have no one left to want to kill.  No battles left to fight... It's like, what does that leave in my life you know? What am I going to do with myself now?"

Frank says whatever she does, it can't be anything to do with him.  Then O'Brien steps on a landmine.  Horrendously injured, Frank checks her over and says in what looks like some distress that "there's not a thing I can do for you."  She says he can do two things.  One of them is kill Rawlins, who is gloating over Dolnovich saying he plans on going to Moscow and raping and killing Dolnovich's teenage son whose address he has found on the ID he's taken from him.

Poor O'Brien.

Back with O'Brien and Frank, he holds her as she takes her last breath, then he sets off to hunt Rawlins.  But first he comes across the dying Dolnovich and Zakharov.

Zakharov: "Be strong captain.  What is there to be afraid of?  He is only death."

Zakharov says Frank has a week before the flight to Moscow.  So if he is to kill Rawlins, it must be in a week.  Dolnovich finally expires and Zakharov says of Rawlins:

Zakharov: "Our world is bad.  But we are soldiers.  He is a parasite: he would make the world this way forever".

Frank is a true Angel of Death.

Frank then crushes his skull with a huge rock.  He takes four days to stagger out of the mountains where the S.A.S fortunately find him.  He ends up having a chat in their camp with Yorkie, now relieved of command because "apparently an important prisoner escaped while in my charge".  Yorkie admits he's had enough, he's been soldiering for forty years near enough now. "So I don't give a toss about them firing me", although the airline his wife inherited will cushion the blow.

He also says if he was still in charge he couldn't "give you the names and locations of the last two bastards your friend O'Brien was after."  He'll also be giving their security details the night off, "most improper" of course.  Frank says he appreciates it.  Yorkie says if he is ever tied to a stake being used as Vietcong bayonnet practice "you be sure and show up with an M60".

Yorkie and Frank chat.

They talk some more, about how when people find out he knows Frank they want to know what makes Frank "The Punisher". Yorkie says "and I tell them there is no explaining it."  He goes on to say that when 9/11 happened a lot of people in the regiment were happy and lots of drinks were bought. "Here we go again" says Frank.

Yorkie: "There was a time I would have been one of them.  Best job in the bloody world, that's what I'd've told you. Now... It's as if everywhere I look I see dead civvies covered in dust."

He doesn't know what they are doing in Afghanistan any more.  Frank wishes him well and leaves.  He kills the final two ex-Taliban on O'Brien's list then tracks Rawlins to the airport.

Frank: "Two things you can do for me she said.  One was be there, so she didn't take her last breath alone.  The other was a thing I'm good at."
He confronts Rawlins in the toilets, Rawlins starts trying to talk his way out of certain death while getting Frank to come close enough to slash with his pocket knife.  Frank cuts the knifehand clean off.  Bleeding out on the floor he says he knows stuff "she'll want to hear".

Frank: "She's dead... Right when I was starting to like her."

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

And with that the book comes to a close.  This was a special Valentines day post so I hope you enjoyed its bleak and desolate attitude towards love and marriage, where sex performed as something to pass the time with someone who is emotionally distant is the closest you'll get to someone caring about you and marriage is worth less than a shipment of heroin. CAN YOU TELL I AM SINGLE?  Anyway, jokes aside, this is another corking piece of work from the pen of Mr. Ennis, O'Brien's tale is a sad one and it's fitting her scumbag ex-husband goes out squealing on the filthy floor of a public toilet.  The seamier side of the wests dealings with the one time Mujahadeen and ex-Taliban with protection for terrorist scum who might prove a useful intelligence asset against worse terrorist scum leading to a career soldier like Yorkie (himself no stranger to wetwork, as seen in book two) to finally throw in the towel is shown unflinchingly.  Not everything Ennis writes glorifies the military although he shows his protest through the Yorkie character.  The battle between Zakharov and Frank is a battle between two clever men with nothing to lose and despite being a monster, Zakharov remains weirdly honourable to the end. Leandro Fernandez keeps the artwork grittily realistic adding immeasurably to the downbeat tone of the book.  And this isn't the most miserable book in the series either, we have a long way down still to go.  It does have the biggest kersplosions in it though, always nice that.

Blacksad: Amarillo (#5)

"All that hard luck on my tail is starting to wear me down." - Blacksad

For the unintiated Blacksad is actually John Blacksad, a private detective in fifties America.  However what makes this a little different from a regular noir influenced crime thriller is that John Blacksad is a humanoid black cat.  And everyone else in his world is a similar blend of humanoid and animal, lending the whole thing a very Furry friendly air.  It is the brainchild of two Spanish creators, writer Juan Diaz Canales and drawn by ex-Disney animator Juanjo Guarnido.  It has a beautiful, subdued painted style that suits the era being portrayed down to the ground and doesn't shy away from sexuality and violence so isn't as "cute" as a world populated by anthropomorpised animals could become.  I have covered all the previous issues, the three volume collection "Blacksad" which introduced us to John and his world, taking in racial issues and the Red Scare as it did so.  "A Silent Hell" came next where John unearthed a thalidomide style scandal involving some major players in the New Orleans Jazz scene.  After getting shot at, drugged, beaten up and nearly drowned during that investigation, John decides to take some time out to recover and goes out on a road trip across America.  But of course it doesn't take long for John to get tangled in a new series of events...

The story begins with two writers, a lion called Chad and a bull called Abraham.  They are messing about in a swimming pool.  Abraham sets fire to his latest collection of poems and tosses them burning into the pool.

Abraham: "My poems don't 'see the light'.  They are the light.  My words enlighten and show us the way."
He says he doesn't want his words to end up in the hands of a slimy editor and threatens to burn Chad's novel.  He accuse Chad of selling out, "no guts, no glory" and likens his work to toilet paper, which leaves Chad sliently scowling.

Abraham and Chad.

Back at New Orleans airport, Blacksad is seeing off his pal the ferret journalist "Weekly" who is returning to New York.  Blacksad is broke, Weekly offers to loan him the airfare but Blacksad says he wants to get his feet back on the ground himself.  He wants a nice quiet job where he won't get beaten or shot at.

He wonders if he should have become a photographer like his father and Weekly enthusiastically agrees and offers him a camera which Blacksad refuses.  They part and when Weekly has gone, Blacksad finds he slipped the camera in his jacket.  "That damn Weekly" he smiles.

He leaves and walks through the carpark.  A bull drops his wallet and Blacksad returns it to him.  Impressed by his honesty the bull offers him a job driving his gold cadillac to Tulsa and Blacksad accepts.

Crusin' with mah top down.

We then cut to Tulsa, Oaklahoma where two shady dudes including a very shabby looking lion and a checkshirt wearing bull (Chad and Abraham to be precise) are lamenting the fact their car has broken down.  They try and steal some motorbikes but the leather jacketed gang they belong to stop them and Blacksad steps in to stop the fight escalating.  As he speaks with the gang leader, the two theives steal the cadillac and drive off.

Blacksad notices they have left a bag with a map that has Amarillo circled on it.  The amused gang leader offers him the use of their injured member's bike and Blacksad takes off on it giving chase to the cadillac.

Badass on a bike.

Having arrived in Amarillo. Chad and Abraham are drinking in a bar with a flamingo called Billy Sorrows  Chad and Billy put a shot glass on the head of the passed out Abraham and Billy challenges Chad to shoot it.  Chad hesitates and Billy shoots it instead.  Billy mocks Chad saying;

Billy: "No calculated act of violence is meaningless.  It's cowardice and stagnation that rot a man's soul.  If you want to be a real writer someday, you'd better face that."

Later Abraham wakes up and he, Chad and Billy talk.  Chad is fuming silently.  He is planning to stay in Amarillo to deliver his manuscript to his publisher.  But Abraham says he mailed it to the Dalai Lama, so he can put Chad "back on the path of light and redemption"  Billy sneers, "admit it Chad you just don't have the lyric sense."

Angrily Chad grabs Abraham and shouts at him asking why he thinks he is better than him.  "Poetry and balls" says Abraham.  So Chad decides to show him he has balls by shooting Abraham dead.  He turns to Billy and asks him:

Chad: "You gonna help me with this, or would you prefer we wrote a fucking sonnet about it?"

One way to win an argument I guess.

Later Chad is driving the gold cadillac lamenting what he did to Abe.  He smashes into a mailbox and retrieves a package which must be his manuscript.  In Alberquerque, two F.B.I agents are given the job of dealing with the busted mailbox.  They are a dog and a cat.  The cat one grumbles, "a whole career in the F.B.I just to wind up rescuing some hick town's postcards. It's fucking humilating"
In Amarillo, Blacksad and the rest of the motorcycle gang pull up in the centre of town.  They drop Blacksad off, and the leader shakes his hand and wishes him well, then they leave and Blacksad starts looking for the cadillac.

The F.B.I

Another character is introduced, a hyena lawyer called Neal Beato.  He talks with a drunken bird he saw being thrown out of the police station who is called Filipe.  Blacksad mooches past them but overhears Neal asking about a "scruffy beatnik lion".  He's been hired to replace Filipe at the circus.  Blacksad butts in saying:

Blacksad: "If it's the same lion I'm thinking of, I can help you break his legs for free."

Neal is also looking for the lion.  "A dilemma.  Three plaintiffs - only two legs to break" but Filipe wanders off saying the circus will have packed up and moved on by now.

Neal introduces himself to Blacksad as the literary agent of Chad, who is the scruffy lion in question. Neal and Blacksad go thumb a lift and Neal tells him a bit about Chad, seems the success of his first novel "plunged him into a sea of doubt,  he can't seem to tell what's good or what's bad anymore."  He says he'll pay Blacksad if he helps him find Chad.  Blacksad says he just wants the car.  Then a parrot offers them a lift and the two F.B.I agents go zooming past them.

A racist parrot.

Working as a handyman at the circus Chad is flirted with by a sexy fortune teller and knife throwers assisstant.  She offers to read his mind, he replies "what's outside my head is way more interesting". She says to him she'd much rather be behind the curtain, he says he'll keep that a secret. 

She says she know he will, she read his mind and she departs.  Chad watches her smiling with a heart over his head, but the bear dressed as a clown says hands off, he's after "Luanne" himself.

Clown + Bear = Bad News.

The F.B.I agent find the gold cadillac wrecked and dumped.  They match the gold flakes on the mailbox to it.  The open the trunk and find the dead body of Abraham stuffed in there.  They find I.D but it turns out to be Blacksad's, who the cat declares the prime suspect.

He wants to know if there are any mendicants in Amarillo he can question.  The policeman with them says Filipe maybe, he's a transient and could fit the bill.  The cat grins cruelly, "I got the feeling we're gonna have some fun".

In the car with the parrot are Neal and Blacksad.  As the parrot chatters away he keeps insulting the "coloured", a group Blacksad belongs too.  Blacksad grits his teeth and tries not to be provoked.  He fails and we cut to him and Neal walking along the road because Blacksad punched the parrot in the head.  Blacksad says he knows someone nearby with a car they can borrow.

The circus is open for business.  Chad is being ordered around backstage and he peeks in on Luanne through a gap in the wall and sees the bear forcing himself on her, and initmating he is blackmailing her as well.  Chad runs in and pulls him off her.  They fight an it looks like Chad will be killed.

Chad comes to Luanne's rescue.

Luanne throws a knife into the bear's back and kills him. Another circus worker comes upon the scene and sees Chad holding the bear's dead body and screams murder.  Chad runs, but the circus folk capture him and the Boss says they'll decide what to do with him tommorrow.

Neal and Blacksad are in Santa Fe, New Mexico where Blacksad's sister Donna works as a tour guide.  They meet her and return to her home in Raton.  Neal plays the guitar for Ray, Donna's son and Blacksad asks if he can borrow her car. 

Blacksad's sister.

She agrees as long as he doesn't trash it.  He asks if she has heard from their father, "nothing since the last letter" she says sadly.  Then Ray runs in and asks to see Blacksad's gun.

Blacksad: "Good guys don't carry guns, Ray. 'Cause we know they always wind up shooting someone."

Back at the circus, Chad has been tied up in the middle of the ring.  The Boss says the penalty for murder is death.  The elephant ringmaster says they should turn him over to the law.  But the Boss says that will mean the police will shutdown the circus while they investigate.  Chad says, "Just do what you're going to do."  Luanne watches him and cries a silent tear.  The Boss says they'll pack up tommorrow, it'll be like they were never there.

The circus owner.

Blacksad and Neal arrive at the circus and Neal notices Luanne and says she reminds him of someone.  Flustered she runs off, and Neal recalls there is a reward out on her.  The Boss comes up and asks them what they want.  Blacksad says they are looking for a scruffy lion.  The Boss says he'll help them find Chad if he can get the reward on Luanne and he shows them into the back of a truck.

Inside are the two F.B.I agents and Filipe who led them there.  They try to arrest Blacksad for damaging the mailbox and murder.  He fights them off with help from Neal and they flee the truck.  The F.B.I agents give chase..

In some nearby mines the circus folk have stashed the bear's corpse and tied up Chad to die down there of hunger and thirst.  After his captors leave, Luanne appears and asks Chad why he didn't rat on her.

Chad: "Because I made a horrible mistake not long ago, and I just wanted to make up for it, somehow, with one good thing".

Luanne comes to Chad's aid.

She cuts the ropes holding him saying she is also doing "one good thing".  The F.B.I are in a car chasing another at high speed.  It spins out on a bend and ends up upside-down in a wood.  The F.B.I agents go down to arrest Blacksad and Neal only to find Filipe was driving the car.  Neal and Blacksad are still at the circus.

Back at the circus, the Boss is arguing with the ringmaster over the reward out on Luanne.  The ringmaster is disgusted he would give up one of their own, "what about the Brotherhood you claim to hold so dear?"  The Boss says they need to pay their debts or the family wil fall apart and he'll do whatever it takes.  The ringmaster says they aren't going to hang around, they are off on a tour of Canada.  Then a baboon runs up say he saw Luanne buying a ticket to Chicago and she wasn't alone.

On the train, in a private cabin, Luanne tells Chad her story.  She is the daughter of a press mogul, she got pregnant and had to have an abortion age fourteen after that she ran away and joined the circus where no questions were asked.  Her real family have spent a lot of cash trying to locate her.  She says it's like a bad novel.  Chad regards his manuscript:

Chad: "Novels are bullshit.  But real life is even worse."

The circus owner tracks them down.

Then the circus boss appears, he locks Luanne in the cabin and forces Chad at gunpoint to walk to the open door at the end of the train.  He orders Chad to jump, but before he can, Blacksad appears and whacks the Boss over the head with a bit of wood.  The Boss falls to the floor and bites Blacksad's ankle.  There is a tussle and the Boss ends up falling out of the train.  Chad holds his gun:

Chad: "I.. don't want to be a killer."

Blacksad: "Too late for that, kid."

Luanne and Chad embrace.  In Chicago, Blacksad phones his sister and apologises for wrecking her car.  Then he asks another favour.  He finishes the call and goes to speak to Luanne sitting nearby, he says she can hide out with his sister for as long a she needs to. Luanne asks why Chad can't come.  Blacksad says he's a killer:

Luanne: "His friend and it haunts him everyday.  Isn't that punishment enough?"

Blacksad is lost for words.

Blacksad is silent for a moment, then wishes her well and they part.  Neal is freshening up in the public bathroom.  He tells Chad that because the murder happened when he was so drunk a good lawyer could get him out in a year.  He'll be a celebrity now.  They go to catch a bus and Neal asks Chad where his manuscript is.  "I left it in the public shitter" says a despondent Chad.

Neal is aghast. Chad say it'll do more good there.  Neal decides to go back for it yelling at Chad for bringing the whole world down with him.  He's going to publish it whether Chad likes it or not.

Neal: "Do whatever the hell you want, but I want to live.  Can you dig that?  To live and laugh, to play and dance.  Anything but wallow in my own pitiful shit as if that were some grand aesthetic enterprise."

The death of Neal.

Chad grabs his arm saying he doesn't have the right.  Neal pulls away and his jacket rips.  He falls backwards into the path of an oncoming bus and is terminally injured.  As he lies dying, Chad holds him and weeps "Oh no, no, no. Neal! Not again, not you!" Witnessing this Blacksad comes to a decison, he grabs Chad and takes him to Luanne telling her to take him away to somewhere like Mexico.

Then the F.B.I agents turn up and arrest Blacksad.  But Chad walks up and says he shot Abraham.  There was a witness he can provide to confirm this.  Blacksad ask him what he is doing? "One good thing.. I hope" smiles Chad.

Chad does the right thing.

Back in New York in his flat, Blacksad surveys all the dead plants Weekly failed to water.  He offers Weekly his camera back, but Weekly says to keep it to make up for the plants.  He just wants to see the pictures when they are developed. "Deal" says Blacksad.  The final page shows a goat walking out of the public toilets read Chad's manuscript and that brings this volume, the last one so far, to a close.

S'all good man.

This is another fine effort by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido.  Unlike the somewhat heavy subject matter of the previous books this has more lighthearted elements despite having a murder at the heart of it.  I must say I do wonder how Blacksad explained away the wrecked cadillac to its owner.  It was fun seeing him chase all over Southern USA and Chad is a compelling character, haunted by his actions and every attempt to atone backfiring on him.  Neal is also well drawn and his rant against "emo" feels like it is just as relevant today as it was then (I'm talking within the fiction here).  The introduction of Blacksad's sister and their absent father feel like plot seeds being planted for future issues which I fervently hope will still be coming.  The era is once again captured gorgeously through the writing and of course the amazing art imbuing the animal people with emotions both subtle and over the top.  Seeing Blacksad riding out alongside their version of the Hell's Angels was a totally badass image, especially as he stayed dressed in his sharp suit.  And he almost managed to avoid physical harm this time apart from a bite on the ankle.  Anyway, this is a wonderful, beautiful read with genuine appeal to people who don't generally go for comics.  Come on Juan Diaz  Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, we want more!

Prophet Book 3: Empire (#32, #34-38)

"John lost so much.  His love died in that battle" - Narrator

This is the third volume of the recent reboot of the uninteresting Rob Liefeld created character John Prophet which has taken the character and entirely rewritten him before setting him loose in a weird sci-fi universe peopled with reimaginings of other Liefeld studio characters.  The main writer is Brandon Graham, with additional story and the main art duties supplied by Simon Roy and Giannis Milonogiannis. The main hero is a wild bearded man called "Old Man Prophet" who was reawakened when the Prophet that we followed in Book One (now known as "New Father Prophet") reactivated all the Prophet soldier clones seeded across the universe by the evil Empire. Telepathically controlled by "Brain Mothers" they are to re-establish the Earth Empire after the rebellion against it that Old Man Prophet led centuries ago virtually wiped them out. Old Man Prophet quickly put together a resistence band made up of a living treelike entity called Hiyanhoiagn, the android (and ex-Youngblood member) Diehard, the robot Jaxson and a female lizardlike humanoid called Rein-East who reminds Old Man Prophet of an old lover of his he spent his happiest years with.  They also have an intelligent starship called the Insula Tergum which Hiyanhoiagn bonds to.  In books one and two we were also introduced to a third Prophet with a tail who manages to break free of the Empire Mother's mind control.  After checking in with New Father Prophet and meeting a new Prophet reborn on Earth, we rejoin Old Man Prophet's motley band as they travel the galaxy looking for allies to battle against the resurgence of the Earth Empire.  This is a strange fantasy/science fiction story told mostly in narrative captions giving it an almost alienated feel which works very well with the tale being told. 

[If you're wondering where issue #33 is, the sequence of the story was rejigged slightly and #33 is covered in my look at Book Two]

The first chapter begins on what was once Earth, with a group of the creatures who now inhabit it discussing the possibility that some of the humans the hunt are sentient which would put people off from eating them.  So the beings, the Oiix set a bounty, "one aluminum ingot per feral, four per old type".

John Ka.

Watching the bounty hunters is Brother John Ka and her familiar a brain-fly.  John Ka's pod surfaced months ago and she has seen that "the Imperial homeworld no longer belongs to man."  The place she was programmed to reconnoitre at no longer exists.  But she is still driven to search out the Empire's enemies.

She comes across a camp of feral humans and is attacked by one.  Her brain-fly takes control of him and he points out she has been followed by some Oiix who she easily kills.  The human who attacked her is a fellow John whose pod surfaced "nine winters" earlier.  He has gone native, he attacked and killed the alpha male of the feral human pack and now leads it.  They make John Ka welcome and over the coming days with them her mind wanders to her past.

The feral humans and the John who leads them.

Her childhood, with the pain of the Brain Mothers programming contrasted with the patient teaching of her Brother.  Their casual closeness when her only intimacies were in battle.

Narrator: "She wonders which is deeper: the gulf between her and these creatures.. or between her and her masters."

One night an Empire Brain Mother contacts her to say they are in orbit.  She must return and tell them of her mission.  They want the rogue John to either return or be detroyed with the feral humans, "we cannot risk contamination".  John Ka asks John if he will return, "you know I cannot" he replies and they lunge at each other.

Daytime and John Ka is picked up from the rendevous point alone.  The Empire ship bombs the feral human's camp.  But the ferals are gone and "from a distant ridge John Ka's brother watches with satisfation.  For a little while longer at least, his band is free."  Brother John Ka is welcomed aboard by New Father Prophet and "above their forgotten homeworld, the Earth Empire gathers."

We are then introduced to "Magnus Johns".  Seigebreakers "planted to wipe out anything holding the tether."  Many pods containing them have opened and the Magnus Johns fought and ate each other until one was left and picked up by the Empire Wombship where he is taken back to the Empire's earth base which is steadily growing and retaking the planet.

New Father John and his Brothers.

New Father John (recognisable by his blue jelly-like replacement arm formed from something called a "Dolmantle") walks with his brothers, Long John and John Ka and the Magnus John "Big John". Big John grumbles that because he is bigger he should be Father.  They go further into the base passing Prophets of all kinds.

There is a council of war going on under the "eye womb", a collection of Brain Mothers acting as one, "their mind(s) stretched out in a great net across Empire space."  The latest plan debated by the Prophets is to take the towers New Father scaled in Book One.

The eye-womb reports that part of it was "witness to something new before we lost its sight" when the woman army was destroyed at the end of Book Two.  They have also seen a "mass of weak creatures grouped as one.  A power rides on the minds".  They have dispatched the Hammer-Deon fleet to investigate.  One of the John's says this is off-world stuff, they must take the towers here on earth.

Later Big John challenges New Father for leadership.  But New Father easily flips him and puts a boot on his neck.  "Live or die?" he asks.  "L-live" stutters Big John.  New Father then goes to relax in a bathing area, the "pleasure cast Parabalani Johns" and exotic aliens serve their needs.

Introducing Greenknife.

One of the Parabalani Johns warns New Father that the aliens there are planning to kill him.  His Dolmantle has been drugged, but the Parabalani John gives New Father his knife.  New Father then fights and kills the aliens and the Parabalani John kills one as well.  When it is safe, New Father renames the Parabalani John "Greenknife" and takes him as his personal intimate companion.

Later that night he dreams of the mysterious entity known as "Troll" who is calling to him:

Troll: "Hello Johnn. You must ready yourself.  Something is coming".

And while Greenknife sleeps soundly beside him, New Father wakes up with a start.  We then cut to the Hammer Deon fleet being steered by an "arc mother".  She probes ahead and "suddenly she mind touches overwhelming pain".  This pain starts pulling the fleet into consume it.  The fleet launches "mind mortars" at the Red Pain.  A pilot John "reaches the core of the Red and sees...." Then we return to New Father who again wakes with a start having had a vision of the fleet under attack.

Bad dreams for New Father John.

Greenknife comforts him while Big John and Long John spy on them.  Big John wonders what New Father sees in this small John.  John Ka says they are "grown smaller for pleasure".  Then a large assembly of Prophets are directed to take the towers back from the aliens.

We now return to Old Man Prophet and his companions.  Their ship is now housing the "cerebral body of the Young Trust".  A sentient flesh blob picked up after the events at the end of Book Two. It has bonded to Hiyonhoiagn who says it's "just a seed and has been alone far too long".  Diehard watches Old Man Prophet and Rein-East questioning Hiyonhoiagn.  Jaxson notes the way Diehard regards Rein-East, "she's in your eye" it says.  Diehard says nothing.

The battle of the towers rages on with both sides taking heavy losses.  On the moon of Phobos which belongs to Troll, Old Man Prophet, Rein-East, Jaxson and Diehard are joined by a shipskin version of Hiyonhoiagn which he created so he could come along with them.  A spherical creature approaches them.  Diehard tells Old Man Prophet to touch his head and connect his thoughts to it.  The being used to be Radar, the dalmation superdog owned by Supreme many thousands of years ago.

The being known as Radar links with Old Man Prophet and Diehard.

As the battle of the towers starts to go in the Empire's favour, Radar leads Old Man Prophet and the others across the moon to the old man's old spaceship.  He goes inside and remembers its last battle which they won but lost the ship.  His lover was also killed in the battle and he regards her remains sadly.

On Earth the Prophet army attack the inside of the towers and finally free them from alien control.

Narrator: "Thauilu Vah.  Earth's junction on the Cyclops rail awakened after centuries of polycrystalline suppression.  The tower's energy threads space like a needle.  From the other side, a single ship.  Lone survivor of the Empire's Hammer Deon fleet."

The Empire's earth base, The Great Domus, takes in the surviving fleet member although his mind is fractured.  The All-Mothers probe it delicately to find out what he saw.

Narrator: "They see the centre.  A creature at the living nebula's core.  Burning pain pulling for red COntrol of the minds of every thinking thing in its path."

The visions of the Pilot-John are also picked up by Troll who passes them on to Old Man Prophet and to New Father Prophet.  Troll says to New Father that this is why "I need your help".

Troll enacts his plan.

Distracted New Father is summoned to the War-Womb.  The three armed "World Raper" is wanting to track down Old Man Prophet.  Troll whispers in New Father's mind that he should disregard this "petty revenge".  The Sisters of the Pure watch him and think New Father has been touched by an outside mind.  So they secretly load an Imperial Brain Mother called "Megaera" onto his ship.

Back on Phobos with Troll and Old Man Prophet, Troll says he didn't join in the old man's war because he felt the humanity he knew was gone and he mourned its loss.

Troll: "The Earth Empire that grew you, a broken tool left over from the humanity I knew".

They are like Diehard, who was once a man melded with tools "now just tools that think they are a man".  Old Man Prophet says Diehard is still his brother.  He says Troll has identified a new threat that can control many minds with one, and "you think we can aid in its destruction."  Troll agrees and says Old Man Prophet needs to go and speak with the old ones of earth "whose ears I no longer have".  They need to find Badrock. 

Inside Old Man Prophet's old ship, Diehard talks with Rein-East.  He reminisces about his time there, how he liked to listen to music for hours.  Rein-East says he must be as old as Old Man Prophet.  Diehard says he is much older.  He remembers the first of his kind.  "You're so sad" says Rein-East.  Diehard says he looks at her and thinks of what he has lost, no longer being alive. "You seem as alive as myself" she says.

Diehard and Rein-East have a moment.

Hiyonhoiagn appears, breaking the sudden tension between them.  He says Jaxson has found two "egg brothers" he thinks he can revive.  Diehard and Jaxson zap the dormant units and bring back to life "Garte and Franxis".

New Father's ship is travelling away from earth.  Onboard, Megaera speaks into Big John's mind saying his "Arch Father" has been corrupted and he must kill him.  New Father is in the control room listening to Troll who is instructing him to go and find one of Badrock's children which is in orbit around Ixpolinioux (the dead giant that is mined for its blood and bone which Old Man Prophet visited in book two).

Big John and New Father fight.  Big John's power is being boosted by Megaera but Troll is supporting New Father and psychically blasts Big John's head to bits through New Father's eyes, the psychic backlash also killing Megaera.  New Father then fills the others, Long John, John Ka and Greenknife, in on the plan and they agree to follow where he takes them.

New Father destroys Big John.

We're then taken to Kutra-Thal, an abandoned "war station" orbiting the "Onco Sine star since the last war."  Another Prophet, Brother John Atum has awakened.  He is drawn deeper into the rotting war machine.  He battles with a giant pink insectoid creature called a "Modan-Bug".  Defeating it he meets a transparent construct brother called John Agro.

He is guided further and deeper into Kutra-Thal.  When he sleeps he comes under neural attack.  He runs and finally he makes it to the system's core.  Brother John Agro is waiting and psychically unlocks the door.  Inside John Atum struggles to the top of a great machine and activates John Agro's physical container.

John Atum and John Agro.

This makes John Agro's "existence complete" and in the form of a huge robotic suit it flies away to "open the way for the Empire's fleets".  John Atum has just enough of a drug that will make his heart burst.  He doses himself and dies, his mission complete.

Back with Old Man Prophet and his companions, they have travelled to visit the being made of "thought and light" that was once Sally Crane - Suprema.  She invites Old Man Prophet to partake of an elaborate tea ceremony. Hiyonhoiagn on board the ship is reading the crystal memory to find out how to do it and broadcasting it into Old Man Prophet's mind.

His mind unshielded he sees a world once teeming with life, now virtually empty.  He sees Suprema as she once was and as she still sees herself.  "He sees himself.  He looks so old, now.  Tired."  Suprema suddenly rages at him because her child, The Lady Probable was killed by the Red Pain (see the end of book two), yet Old Man Prophet and his crew escaped. She will not help him, but he probes her mind and touches on a name.

Old Man Prophet: "I am sorry I could not help her."

Meeting with Suprema.

He returns to the ship and thinks about the name he picked up, "The Venerable Wake".  An information page tells us he was grown in the Golden Emperors mind vats.  He was an integral part of creating the network of wormholes, the Cyclops Rail.  He raised an army and defeated the Golden Emperors grandchild, expanding his realm and conquering worlds for hundreds of years until he was defeated by the "revolutionary army 7thumb".  He has more recently been thought to be behind the genocide in Koktok and the resurrection of the Black Bloom.

We return to New Father Prophet and his crew.  He's been grown a new arm, they have also grown a bombshell, insect-like exoskeleton containing a "Life bomb" that Long John is going to deliver inside the torso of the dead giant Ixpoliniox that will blow Moorrock, one of Badrock's children, free of the gravity well of the nearby neutron star.  After a tussle with some alien guards that prevent Long John from digging into the body, he sends the bomb into a volcano and the wombship picks him up just before it explodes and blows Moorrock free of the stars gravity.

The Life Bomb is sent to do its work by Long John.

And that brings volume three to an end.  Like the preceeding volumes this doesn't hold your hand.  It throws all kind of weird names and creatures at you and expects you to reread several times to start making sense of it all.  It's a fantastically imaginative series still, with yet another Extreme studios knockoff given new life thousands of years into the future.  The introduction of an enemy that has forced New Father and Old Man Prophets into working towards the same ends through the machinations of Troll is an interesting idea especially as so far, Old Man Prophet hasn't really registered as a threat on the Earth Empire's radar, they are more concerned about retaking all of earth and setting up their travel and communications networks.  The art is wonderfully "ugly" which suits the subject matter perfectly and the world building is expertly teased out with even minor details coming together to create a universe that is incredibly alien. Unfortunately it might have been a little too alien as the next volume is the last, so join me in a couple of months as we look at how satisfactorily such an epic is wrapped up in the remaining few issues.

Miracleman Book 3: Olympus (#11-16)

"Thus we hewed stones, smoothing away their roughest edges.  And were masons of utopia" - Miracleman

So, not an obscurity and not officially by Alan Moore still, but that "by The Original Writer" credit ain't fooling anyone.  Anyway, this volume deals with the final issues of the series as Alan Moore lets his imagination go wild and is illustrated by one of my favourite artists, one of his collaborators on his Swamp Thing run, John Totleben.  By this point the series had left the defunct black and white UK comic Warrior far behind and was published in full colour by Us publisher Eclipse, but has been recoloured for this deluxe release and very nice it looks as well.  There is a huge amount of extra stuff contained between the covers, including the Grant Morrison one-shot that he pitched back during the eighties and which has been drawn especially for the collection.  The framing sequence is set in a utopian 1987 which was around the time of the original publication, but flashes back to events taking place in 1982 which is two months after Miracleman and his human alter-ego's wife Liz's daughter has been born.  I have to say, if you find Alan Moore's poetic prose unbearably flowery in something like Promethea you might have a hard time swallowing some of this.  I like it, but it's a big difference from the grittier, deconstructionist take of the first two volumes.  Moore manages to take all the elements of his previous plotlines, adds in some more characters from the past and ends on a fascinatingly uncertain note as the stage is set for Neil Gaimen's take which was to follow.  And I am not going to lie, there is some rape as well. Spoilers! Sigh.

We begin in 1987.  Miracleman is walking through his palace, and he decides to write his experiences up:

Miracleman: "I have legends to write.  Tales of how it feels to live in a mythology".

We then get glimpses of what was going on for some of the characters in November 1982.  Johnny Bates, the host of the evil Kid Miracleman still be mistreated in a children's home, but is resisting the urge to change.

Then we see Liz, Miracleman's human wife who is still feeling weird after the birth of their daughter Winter.  She feels like her "feelings aren't my own.  As if they get switched on and off".  She thinks it's probably post natal depression.

In his human guise of Mike Moran, Miracleman goes for a walk in the park.  He is followed by two stranges who say they want to talk to him, to discuss his "other self".  Mike runs from them then says "Kimota" and changes into Miracleman.  The two strangers join hands and speak in an alien tongue and change themselves.

Miracleman: "And then the light of an older heaven than this was in my eyes.  And when I saw again.  I saw Titans".

The two aliens attack Miracleman, smashing him into a wall and beating him down.  They keep shifting and changing bodies as they press their attack, "I began to understand the extent of my predicament" thinks Miracleman.

The Qys make themselves known.

As he lies bleeding on the ground he wonders "how long has it been since I'd last told Liz I loved her".  He thinks that he wants to stroke his daughters soft hair and with this thought the aliens stop their attack.  They have read his mind and on discovering he has a child, one of them races off to find it.

The alien bursts into the Moran house, but before it can harm Liz or Winter a mysterious woman appears and crushes the alien's throat.  Back in 1987 Miracleman looks down on humanity from his palace and poetically muses that:

Miracleman: "When politicians and moviestars prove inadequate only gods remain."

Then he remembers first meeting the woman who will be revealed as Miraclewoman for the first time, "this stark Madonna of the quantum age... my muse... my Venus"

Miraclewoman.

The other alien comes to the aid of it's fallen comrade in the Moran house and Miracleman follows. The uninjured one asks for a truce so it can summon help.  It says things are different now, they will not attack again.  Miraclewoman backs it up.  Miracleman recognises her, he has a vague memory of meeting her in the 50's.  Or was it one of Gargunza's illusions?

They leave the aliens and go and talk in another room, "I sat stunned as all reality seeped from our lives and listened to the angel tell her tale."  Her human name is Avril Lear, an orphan who was abducted for a secret project Gargunza was running that he had kept secret from the government.

He diverted cash from Project Zarathustra to fund it  He cloned a perfect body for her and set her free in "infra-space".  She was alone, there was a male - Young Nastyman - and a hideously mutated dog.  While the pair of them were dreaming in virtual reality, Gargunza raped their bodies over and over for fourteen years.  She didn't care however, even when she found out from the tapes he made of him doing it.

Miraclewoman: "I was elsewhere.  A cosmos full of colours and emotions that were simple, bright and wonderfully garish.  Free from hindering logic, I explored a realm of incandescent comic book ideas".

Miraclewoman dreams.

So.... raped multiple times but you got kickass powers so who cares?  I said in my last Moore post that gratuitous usage of rape and sexual assault would get him tossed in the Sin Bin and I think this definitely applies.  We already KNOW Gargunza was a monster what did this add to our understanding of him?  And the fact it has no repercussions means that this is exactly the annoying use of rape that makes me sigh so much about Moore's work. Anyway, moving on.

His depravity started affecting the fantasy world and she found herself suffering from psychosexual tortures.  He pushed Terry, Young Nastyman's real name far into the role of the villain until he snapped and escaped the lab.  Panicking about his secret work being found out, he woke his official Miraclemen and Miraclewoman and sent them out to look for him.

When Miraclewoman met the Miraclemen she noted Young Miracleman was jealous of her immediately.  He says Young Miracleman loved Miracleman, "and you didn't know".  Miraclewoman found the Project Zarathustra bunker and discovered the same truths Miracleman did in Book One. 

Miraclewoman defeats Young Nastyman.

She tracked Young Nastyman down, and found him too far gone to go along with her plan of faking their deaths and escaping Gargunza.  She fought him in a volcano and last saw him flickering between his two bodies, his double skeleton was the one Miracleman found in the bunker, not Young Miracleman's, so that leaves us with the mystery of what happened to Young Miracleman.

She then disappeared herself, living a normal human life as a doctor as the Zarathustra project shut down.  When Miracleman and Kid Miracleman reappeared she kept an eye on them and when the aliens appeared she realised it was time to become Miraclewoman again.

The aliens in the other room have summoned help from their enemies the Warpsmiths who can travel comsic distances in the blink of an eye.  It's time for Miracleman to learn the deeper truth behind his origins, and although Liz exhorts him not to go, he teleports away along with the two aliens and Miraclewoman. 

Meet the Warpsmiths.

We get another glimpse of the hellish time Johnny Bates is suffering in the childrens home, being beaten and bullied relentlessly, but still he resists Kid Miracleman.  Then we return to Miracleman in 1987.  He thinks that "two years ago we abolished hell".  He thinks of how things have changed for the world below:

Miracleman: "Computers and telecommunications webs make earth a place where distance is irrelevant.  And yet it took Warpsmith philosophies to demonstrate the virtues of an instantaneous world.... when screens can take the office into every home.  No borders in the electronic state.  Where jokes in Aberdeen raise laughs in Japan."

Alan Moore predicted Lolcats!  Seriously though, it's interesting he believes it would take alien intervention to give us something like the internet, but for the time he was writing this in 1987 this is actually a solid piece of predictive science fiction.  Especially for a luddite like Moore.

Back to the story and Miracleman finds himself transported to an alien planet called "Qys", the home of the monsterlike aliens also called Qys.  Apparently the birth of Miracleman's daughter has changed everything.  Earth is no longer of "animal" status and a place for their new intelligent race needs to be negociated.  The Qys are also the originators of the multiple body technology that Gargunza engineered from the crashed Qys spaceship as part of Project Zarathustra.

They are bought before the "glorious KingQueen" of the Qys.  Underneath "hir" are Qys and Warpsmiths dancing even though they are bitter enemies, "in perpetual cold war deadlock.. for eleven thousand years."  Miracleman finds it hard to believe the Qys haven't won, but the Warpsmiths are fast, "their mastery of space matches our own manipulation of identity" says their Qys escort.

On an alien world.

The Qys then reports to the KingQueen that a ship had been lost on earth during a "firedrake sweep".  They later found "six earthbeasts" transformed by "debased Qys technology".  Three are dead, two are here in the form of Miracleman and woman, and the third is locked away inside Johnny Bates where they think he will stay.  "He is no threat".

They were going to destroy the altered earthbeasts but then stopped because Miracleman had produced a child.  This means that Earth is "intelligent class" and needs to be dealt with differently.  The KingQueen asks what the Warpsmiths think.  The "white warrior class" one suggests conflict over the earth.  They think Qys has unfairly influenced it with their technology.  The KingQueen practically sighs saying that are both cultures doomed to unproductive wars?

Miraclewoman: "Excuse me.. But couldn't you have sex instead?"

...............

Look, Alan.  I like sex myself.  In fact I'd say sex with someone you are in lust with and who lusts after you in return is a very enjoyable way to spend time together.  Almost as enjoyable as Gears Of War split screen co-op.  But I just can't see sex as this universal panacea as you do.  Also, despite on the surface seeming like a cool and groovy free love sixties concept, Moore's use of sex has always had a strangely puritanical underpinning we see summed up perfectly in this volume.  Good people only ever have Good, healthy, erotic, creative Sex.  Bad people only have empty, meaningless, destructive and rapey sex.  There is no happy medium.  The only time he's come close to implying a bad person might be able to have a decent relationship is between The first Silk Spectre and The Comedian and even then it's still supremely fucked up that the woman falls in love with the man who raped her originally even if they later reconciled and had a good thing (Laurie) come of it.  I think in a way this explains his overuse of rape and sexual assault as a plot device, he sees sex as the supreme transformative act and to twist and despoil is the most villianous thing he can imagine.  But he still overuses it and when you've read enough Moore you find yourself rolling your eyes and thinking "again with the rape?" Which isn't great when you think about it. And we're not actually done with it here either as well.  Something to look forward to as you read on.

Anyway, while the two races mull this over, Miraclewoman continues to explain what she means in more detail:

Miraclewoman: "It's obvious.  If two organisms or two cultures are forced into contact it can be Thanatic and destructive or Erotic and creative."

The KingQueen decides this idea has potential and sends them away while it consults with it's advisors about how they are going to deal with earth.

Miracleman falls deep into thought as Miraclewoman asks their Qys escort many questions about their abilities, "did I first love her then?"  Finally a decision is reached.  Earth will be left uninterfered with.  Miracleman and Miraclewoman will observe for the Qys, two Warpsmiths will also observe to maintain parity.  Their base will be behind the moon and Miracleman and woman will liase with them.

Liz Moran takes her leave.

Miracleman is then transported back to his home and Liz.  He starts to tell her all about it, but she starts crying saying she can't take it anymore.  She thinks Winter is controlling her moods so she is going to stay with her sister for a while.  They hug then she leaves.  Once she is gone, Winter says to Miracleman, "Father, I think it's time we discussed mother don't you?"

When Miracleman says Winter can speak, Winter says she could from the day she was born but didn't because it would "upset mother".  She admits she's been manipulating Liz's moods, when Miracleman queries how, Winter says he should follow Miraclewoman's example and try to be more adventurous with his powers.  She says she chose her own name and she flies out of the window.  Miracleman says someone might see her.

Winter goes for a fly.

Winter: "Nobody will see anything I don't want them to see.  You shouldn't worry about them so much.  They're only people."

She tells Miracleman she is already more advanced than him so she'll be going away soon.  Miracleman says he loves her.  "I know" she says.

Later he goes to meet Miraclewoman and the two Warpsmiths on their base.  The Warpsmiths have mastered english now.  They discuss the fact that earth will change due to the appearence of superhumans.  They are scanning earth for the prescence of more, including something called a "Firedrake".  They plan to usher in a "glorious age" on earth.  "the change is worth the effort, be assured."

They find two more extraordinary beings.  One is Big Ben from Book One, but he is mad and no use to them.  The other is a Firedrake a black American called Huey Moon.  He is immune to fire, but can cause anything within range to ignite explosively.  "Thus did Apollo.  Fire of Heaven.  Come into our midst".  The five of them touch hands "and first convened our glorious pantheon".

Back with Mike and Liz, she leaves permanently saying she doesn't belong with them anymore. "I'm sorry Mike.  I'm sorry for us all."  With Liz gone, Winter also departs.  She intends to go to Qys to learn from them and hopes she can surpass lightspeed within the year.  She promises to come back and teach Miracleman everything she has learned, ".. do not look so sad.  It's such a lovely universe".

Kids, tsk.

Mike Moran climbs to the top of a lonely mountain and undresses.  He leaves a note for Miracleman with the date of his "death" on it and says "Kimota" for the last time.  Thus Mike commits a kind of suicide and Miracleman respects his descision and will not turn back.  He carves for himself an underwater fortress where he can be alone.

Meanwhile things are going very badly for Johnny Bates.  A gang of kids corner him and hold him down while one of them starts to rape him.  Tearfully he whispers "Miracleman" and transforms into Kid Miracleman who immediately kills all the kids and the nurse who was kind to Johnny before going out and beginning a rampage through London.

Horrible stuff, but in this case it works.

I think this rape is actually justifiable within the narrative.  We've seen Johnny resist normal violent bullying so it really needed something utterly horrifying to happen to him to push him over the limit and let Kid Miracleman out.  I think if it had been the only rape in this volume it would have had more dramatic impact, but the gratuitous rape of Miraclewoman kind of watered down that impact for me.  So no Sin Bin for this rape.

Kid Miracleman then runs riot for a couple of hours, causing acts of unimaginable cruelty.  Stripping people of their skins and hanging them on a washing line.  Impaling people on the hands of Big Ben.  Crushing, tearing and dismembering everything in his path.  Farting about above the earth, Miracleman and woman finally notice something is up when they see a plume of black smoke rising from London.  When they confront Kid Miracleman along with Huey Moon and Aza Chorn the warrior Warpsmith, it is on baby!

A one being holocaust on the loose in London.

Miraclewoman attacks first, Kid Miracleman says he remembers her and suggests some "novel ways" to get to know her (ALAN!).  They brawl, she is more refined in her fighting but he outclasses her, knocks her out and tosses her to one side.  He then goes for Aza Chorn who teleports him into Marble Arch but he smashes free.  Aza Chorn says he is going to his home planet to get some extra power.  He disappears then reappears saying "it is arranged."

Huey Moon goes next, and we get another censored usuage of the word "nigger" even though keeping it in would make Kid Miracleman come over even worse.  Moon calmly sets Kid Miracleman ablaze in a huge explosion and burns his business suit off to reveal his black costume underneath.

We then get a break in the action as we are told that the events of this epic battle are subjects to many different interpretations in the years after.  Theologians, conspiracy theorists, rationalists and gnostic faiths all have their own versions of the story.

Battle is joined.

Then we return to the battle proper.  Aza Chorn briefly teleports the three of them to the depths of the ocean then back to London.  The combination of the explosion and subsea pressures in quick succession knock the wind out of Kid Miracleman.  Miracleman smashes him down through the ground, they crash through an underground tunnel and crush a passing train. Back on the surface, they carry on trading blows.

Miracleman: "My apologists have claimed that the car I first hurled at Bates was empty.. I'm sorry but that isn't true."

Johnny chucks an occupied car back at him.  Miracleman tries to reason with him, saying what will happen when he runs out of things to destroy? "You've taken something marvellous and turned it into sewage" he shouts.  Kid Miracleman throws a lorry at him saying "burn in hell" and flames surround Miracleman.

Kid Miracleman is finally wounded.

Aza Chorn meanwhile has made a discovery that the Miracle family don't rely on tough skin for their invulnerability but a forcefield.  So instead of throwing things at it, he starts teleporting bits of rubble inside it.  Kid Miracleman roars in pain and lashes out, nearly blowing Aza Chorn in half.

Miracleman: "And the Warpsmith, eyes gone somewhere cold.  Somewhere beyond pain, faced death like some albino samuarai and insolently stared it down for just one vital moment longer".

Poor Johnny Bates...

Bad. Ass.  And to stop the pain Kid Miracleman says his magic word and turns back into Johnny Bates who is horrifed and distraught at what had happened. "Bad Johnny got out".  Miracleman realises there is only one way to stop it ever happening again. He tears Johnny's head off.

Bad Johnny won't ever get out again.

And as he holds the lifeless body, he realise that now things are really going to change for the world, there is no denying point the superpeople hiding anymore.

No one draws Hell like John Totleben.

And this horrfying scene of devastation isn't gratuitous, it's the logical outcome of what would happen if a) a supervillian really did run amok in a crowded city and b) just how spectacular the human cost would be if two superpowered individuals brawled in the same place.  Try watching The Avengers or Man Of Steel now, and wonder at how many hundreds if not thousands were killed in Manhattan and Metropolis.  This penultimate chapter finishes with Miracleman telling us the area was left and not rebuilt as a memorial to those who perished.

Miracleman: "These charnel pastures serve as a reminder.  A memento mori. Never letting is forget that though Olympus pierce the very skies, in all the history of earth, there's never been a heaven; never been a house of gods.. that was not built on human bones."

Back in the present of 1987, Miracleman reminisces that the "Bates Affair" cost forty thousand lives.  Now it was time to introduce the world to them officially.  Apparently many countries thought of attacking Britain with nukes, but realised against him, Miraclewoman, Huey and the Warpsmiths it would be pointless.

Miracleman meets with Margaret Thatcher and tells her of his economic plans.  She says nothing must be allowed to interfere with the market. "Allow?" says Miracleman.  And Thatcher ends up humiliated and in tears when she realises she has lost her power (ho ho ho).  "She looked so old, so suddenly.  I could not hate her" he thinks as she is led away.

All your weapons are belong to us.

At the United Nations, he and the Warpsmiths tell the assembled countries, including those of the Warsaw Pact that their chemical, biologial and nuclear weapons have been teleported into the sun.  The media has various takes on them.  The conservative press call them "super-liberals".  The liberal press accuse them of taking away free will and destiny, a criticism that makes Miracleman uneasy.  But Miraclewoman retorts:

Miraclewoman: "Did humans ask such agonised questions about the free will of cows or the destiny of fish?  We'll give them more free will than they ever dreamed or wanted.  We're going to love them Michael.  We're going to make them perfect."

Despite protests, they begin to "repair" the world.  The ozone layer is renewed, the nuclear power plants got rid of, the smog threatening the ice caps disappated.  They remove money and though people can have a more luxurious life if they want to work, if they don't:

Miracleman: "Each soul shall have free clothing, food and shelter.  Entertainment, education, all the requirements for a worthwhile life.  Come summer money won't exist.  But then it never did."

Communist. They legalise all drugs resulting in drug crime disappearing overnight.  They find a herb that treats criminality and rehabilitate psychopaths so thoroughly that Charles Manson runs a group caring for abused children.  "By 1986 we had demolished earth's last penitentary".

Shagging in the sky.

They build a huge palace in London and finally Miracleman and Miraclewoman get together, and have sparkly, flying supersex in the skies over London.  She suggests they begin a eugenics programme to create more gods so they aren't the only deities.  Huey Moon takes charge of earth's energy needs while the Warpsmiths eagerly study earth's different cultures and languages.

The Qys also arrive, their representative creates artificial bodies that the recently deceased can be reborn in.  Big Ben is partially cured, now going by the name "British Bulldog" he is a Herculean hero.  Even Gargunza's monsterous dog is bought back, with a nicer dog's personality implanted in it, and is Miracleman's pet "Fenris".

His daughter Winter comes back to earth after having spent time amongst the Qys.  She takes charge of the eugenics programme and the super babies born of it.  The next step is offering superbodies to anyone who wanted them:

Miracleman: "Now everyone would be a god, and no one need let feelings of inferiority put barriers between themselves and those who were deities."

Brilliant use of layouts to emphasize the distance between them now.

He visits Liz and offers to put her at the front of the queue for one so she could be with him and Winter again.  Liz is not convinced, especially due to his relationship with Miraclewoman.  Miracleman says they are beyond possessiveness and she'll understand when she is like them.

Miracleman: "Liz? Come on.  You don't understand what you're turning down."

Liz: ".. and you've forgotten what you're asking me to give up".

She tells him to get out and he leaves.  He hasn't seen her again.  He admits to himself that not everyone wants a part of this new utopia.  There are holdouts, in shelters in the wilderness.  Also religious fundamentalists of all faiths resist, although it is futile.

As Miracleman walks through his palace to a party being held, he thinks "is this perfection?  I think so."  But even as he mentally exhorts humanity to "look up and see your gods at celebration" he ends up alone after the party in the Aza Chorn memorial garden.

Miracleman: "It's been five years since my rebirth.  I come here quite a lot these days.  Sometimes I think of Liz.  Sometimes I wonder why she turned my offer down; why anyone should not wish to be perfect in a perfect world.  Sometimes I wonder why that bothers me, and sometimes...sometimes I just wonder."

The end..?

And that brings Book Three and Moore's run on the title to a close.  And what a wonderful final way to end it.  Like Seymour reaching for Rorschach's diary at the end of Watchmen and threatening to bring down Ozymandias's plot to create peace on the backs of thousands dead, we're left wondering if utopia ever justifies the means.  That final note of uncertainty turns what could have come across as a niave manifesto for a better world by Moore into a question of whether it is ever right to force a new way of life on people that would seem to deny the urge people have to strive and become better through their own efforts. It would seem to be a recipe for a world where humanity "exists" but does not "live".  I am incredibly interested in what is to come in Neil Gaiman's take on the series as he obviously has to deal with this new world order set in place by the end. 

The house that Miracleman built.

I have to say this is an incredibly dense work of which I have only skimmed the surface of. Poetic and beautifully illustrated by Totleben who draws wonders both horrifying and beautiful with equal skill (and for me ties with JH Williams III when it comes to layouts and panel composition), this is a fantastic book, with my only caveat being I could have done without the rapey backstory for Miraclewoman (one month in the Sin Bin for that Mr. Moore!).  The book also contains lots of extras including a short story by Grant Morrison about Kid Miracleman that he pitched back during the series first run and Morrison claims that Moore sent him a threatening letter because of it telling him to "back off".  Moore of course denies this.  Anyway, he allowed it to be used with new art by Joe Quesada.  Pete Milligan and Mike Alread also provide a cute and whimsical throwback style story as well.  There is also plenty of promotional materials and looks at the art in its various stages of production all in a lovely hardback edition.  Even if Moore has disowned it due to his issues with Marvel, it's still required reading for all his fans.  After ending this and Watchmen round about the same time, Moore announced he had done all he wanted with the superhero and it was time to move on.  Sadly his self publishing endeavour failed and he had to return to superheroes with his work for Image in the 90's which in no way matched what he had done with them in the 80's sadly.  Still, Miracleman is intelligent, profound, thought-provoking and timeless.  A must buy for anyone even slightly interested in thedevelopment of the superhero genre.