Tom King Discusses New Mister Miracle Book

Mister Miracle may not be a household name when it comes to DC
characters, especially since he’s part of Fourth World, which
casual fans may not be familiar with; however, little do most
people know, the inhabitants of that world, the New Gods, helped
inspire the world of Star Wars. One of the New Gods, Mister
Miracle–the master escape artist who was created by Jack Kirby–is
getting his own mini-series, debuting this week, and it’s written
by none other than Tom King (Batman, Vision).

King has a knack for developing memorable, engaging stories
around underrated and underappreciated characters like 2015’s
Omega Men for DC and 2016’s Vision for Marvel.
The writer is now taking on Mister Miracle, but he has to be
tight-lipped about the overall idea for the book: “I can’t give you
the pitch for Mister Miracle, which is a stupid thing for a guy
who’s pitching things to the media to say,” King told GameSpot. “I
did a book called Vision, and the pitch for
Vision was super easy. It was ‘Breaking Bad Vision.’ It’s
just about a robot that goes bad, but I couldn’t tell you that
beforehand because that’s the mystery of the whole thing. And the
same thing applies for Mister Miracle; there’s a very easy
pitch to what Mister Miracle is, but I can’t tell you
because it’s a spoiler.”

Legendary creator Jack Kirby’s work on the New Gods back in the
’70s has inspired a generation of creators in their work: “It’s the
inspiration for Star Wars. It’s where Star Wars came from. The bad
guy’s literally named Darkseid, like the dark side of the force,”
King explained. “So if you just think of it as Star Wars, it’s that
big epic opera that inspired Star Wars. The idea to use that
bigness and make a personal story about a man sort of falling apart
appealed to me. And Mister Miracle himself appealed to me because
Mister Miracle is a super escape artist. That’s his power. He
escapes from things. And like I was saying before, it feels a
little bit like we’re trapped in something right now, and we can’t
get out. And the idea of working with a guy who’s an escape god,
he’s an escape god who can’t break out of a trap.”

King did say that he and artist Mitch Gerads wanted to created a
comic that reflected the times: “We had our next project, and we
looked at Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and
New Frontier, like these great self-contained stories that
were not only good comics, but they were good literature,” King
continued. “They reflected the time. They said something.
Watchmen says something about the ’80s. Dark Knight
Returns says something about the ’80s. New Frontier
says something about the ’90s. And we’re like, ‘Can we do that?’
And the answer is no. But we’d be stupid not to try, right? It
would be stupid to give up the ambition because we found ourselves
sort of in a moment of insanity. We found ourselves in this moment
where you wake up every day, and the world doesn’t make sense
anymore.

“The rules I was raised with don’t apply to current reality. And
so we wanted to write a book about that, about this moment.
Something that could be as good as Watchmen and that could
sort of reflect our times in a book. So that’s what it’s about.
It’s about the current insanity using Jack Kirby’s New Gods as a
metaphor for the haunting of our times.”

While the New Gods aren’t as a familiar concept as Superman or
Batman with mainstream audiences, King went on to that they will be
as the DC cinematic universe continues, as the main villain of the
upcoming Justice League movie–Steppenwolf–is one of the
New Gods.

What many fans find so appealing about King’s work on past books
is that his characters deal with a lot of relatable subjects, as
King tends to put many elements from his own life into each story.
“I’m a latchkey kid,” explained King. “You know my dad walked out
when I was seven; my mother worked 15 hour days. So I’m not from
sort of a traditional kind of family, but I’m trying myself to
build a traditional family and to sort of correct the mistakes. I
mean we all try to correct the mistakes of our childhood,
right?

“Like that’s what life is basically. That’s like the easiest
definition I know. And I think you see that constantly in my work,
sort of this idea of constructing some sort of perfection and never
achieving it. Because when you’re trying to do that, you’re trying
to create an ideal with no definition of what the ideal is. You
know, you’re rolling that rock up the hill–it’s gonna fall and the
only way to sort of escape that is to accept the inevitability of
the fall.

“That’s my everyday life. That’s the thing that I most care
about–family and when you write, no matter what you do, you can
try to escape it, but the thing you most care about–the thing that
hits your soul the hardest–will always be in your work. So if you
always look at my work, there’s always some guy who’s madly in love
with his wife because I’m madly [in love] with my wife, and there’s
some guy who’s always scared of what’s going to happen to his kids
because I’m scared of what’s going to happen to my kids. And
there’s always some guy whose kind of been a little broken down by
either being in a bunch of wars or a childhood because I’m a little
broken because of being in a bunch of wars and my childhood, so all
that stuff just leaks in too.” For those wondering, Mister
Miracle’s wife, Big Barda, is a big part of the series, no pun
intended.

Artist Mitch Gerads, who worked with King on the critically
acclaimed miniseries The Sheriff of Babylon, collaborated
with King on Mister Miracle: “I knew that Mitch was my
favorite military artist; I had no idea he was my favorite
artist artist. I didn’t know he could get as good as he’s
gotten. And it’s just, he’s mind boggling. He’s like one of my best
friends and I’m almost scared of his talent. I don’t want it to
stop.”

Gerads does interior art and colors on the new book, which you
can check out above. Mister Miracle #1 hits comic shops on
August 9. For more on Tom King, you can check out our interview about his run on
Batman.