Sam Leith Sam Leith

Getting off on Scott Free

Jack Kirby’s 1971 creation is serious escapism and genre-mashing postmodernism

  • Mister Miracle

    Tom King (writer) and Mitch Gerads (artist)

    DC Comics, pp. 320

Mister Miracle is, on the face of it, one of the cheesiest of all costumed super-heroes. Created by Jack Kirby in 1971, he’s a gaudily dressed glint from the last gleaming of the Silver Age. Like the fictional ‘Escapist’ created by Michael Chabon in his Kirby-drenched Kavalier and Clay, Scott Free is part superhero and part vaudeville act — forever wriggling free from mountainous shackles or making nick-of-time exits from water-filled coffins or tea-crates in the paths of runaway trains.

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