New Godz

Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Pasqual Ferry
Colourist: Dave McCaig
Letterer: Pat Brosseau

Featured Characters:

			Dr. Dezard
	Metron		Granny Goodness
	ZZ		Mad Harriet
	The Black Racer		Bernadeth
	High-Father		Wunda
	Orion		Lashina
	Darkseid

This issue is reprinted in:

Noteworthy Items:

pp 01-11: Mister Miracle died for your sins! One of them will die, is the crucifixion a clue? The cover shows him upside down, a la St. Peter, but the first page shows he’s right side up. At least to start. Why? He intends to escape from a black hole. More specifically, he intends to escape from the gravitation pull of a black hole, before it pulls him beyond its event horizon and he disappears forever.

The black hole is an artificial one at STAR labs. Described as one of the “seven celebrity wonders of the world” (I wonder if Zee is another), Mister Miracle is a stage name, not a secret identity, and he is publicly known to be Shilo Norman. Just how far Morrison is going in this revision is an open question. Outside Seven Soldiers Shilo has found a new use for his escape expertise, he’s a prison warden. To make his escape he will be relying on two things. The time dilation effect and his Motherbox (here called a “Motherboxxx”). I am not sure how the former is supposed to help. Yes, the greater the gravity the slower time, but only to an outside observer. To the person under the effect of the gravity, time will seem to advance normally. The Motherbox, on the other hand, is easy to understand. These have long been established as a part of Kirby’s Fourth World and are part sentient supercomputer, part side kick.

Kirby’s Fourth World. Last year I picked up DC’s 1997 reprinting of New Gods and just couldn’t get into it. A big part of the problem was Kirby’s pre-modern, Silver Age writing. I know a lot of people love it, but I can never finish it. It’s not Kirby, it’s the writing. I picked up a few of the new Showcase titles before throwing in the towel. The Fourth World presents a cosmic adventure, centering around dualistic themes of good and evil, lightness and dark. The High Father and New Genesis versus Darkseid and Apokolips. Darkseid is the best known product of these stories, having been picked up as a DCU villain. The first Mister Miracle was an escape artist named Thaddeus Brown, who mentored two successors, Scott Free and Shilo Norman. Both orphans, Shilo grew up in a Metropolis orphanage on Earth. Scott Free, the second Mister Miracle, was a child of the High Father who was raised in an orphanage on Apokolips. An overview of the Fourth World could very easily produce a project as long as this one, so I am not going to get too bogged down in details. It’s important to this mini, and to the Seven Soldiers as a whole, as we’ll learn in issue #1, but I am going to limit myself to specific references as they appear in the story. There’s tons of stuff online about it – knock yourself out!

Almost as soon as the stunt begins things seem to go wrong. His restraints go – maybe they were supposed to – and he falls across the event horizon and is... face to face with Metron, one of the more powerful New Gods and the only one not caught up in the simple dualism that drives the stories. He is on the side of good, though I doubt he’d put it so simply. I have often wondered if he – or at least his name – is derived from Metatron. Metron brings bad news. There has been a war and the bad guys won. He sends Shilo down a “boom lane.” These boom tubes, as they are normally called, are worm holes, connecting one part of the universe with another. We’ve seen one in this story already. Batman had one in the [I]JLA Classified[/I] set up. This one seems a little more than a means to travel; rather than just send Shilo across the black hole, it gives him a vision of what has happened. He sees the battle between the High Father and New Genesis, with its champions Orion and Lightray, fighting Darkseid and the Parademons of Apokolips (the last time I saw a parademon, it was a member of the Secret Six in [I]Infinite Crisis: Villains United[/I]). Metron tells Shilo that he must save the bright ones or die.

To everyone’s amazement Shilo escapes the black hole.

pp 12-19: Skip ahead, and he’s talking with his shrink. Okay, he’s talking with his manager, but he is actually recounting this conversation with his manager to his shrink. You see, the experience in the black hole, which he has decided was a vision, has left him shaken. At the right old age of twenty three, he is not only rich and famous, he’s at the very top of his game. Having accomplished his goals, he’s no longer certain of his role in life. Maybe the vision is meant to show him a new direction. His manager – called Zz – seems to understand this, though his solution is hardly profound: girls! He takes Shilo to see some visitors, “Granny” and four of her girls. This encounter led to an “outburst.” He sensed something about them that reminded him of Metron, “But this was bad stuff.” No sooner did he meet them, than he began screaming that they weren’t human, that they were from the “dark side”, and he ran screaming from his own home.

Of course, he had reasons for not trusting them. Granny had a snake-like forked tongue, the universal, Western symbol for deceit (Western as in cowboy movie). Zz himself was playing with a strange glowball, but Shilo doesn’t comment on that. Zz does tell him that the girls sought them out. That would make it our hero’s second meeting with the Fourth World. First by the good side, now by the bad side. As his psychiatrist sums it up, “Higher worlds of Manichean purity locked in a grim, eternal struggle, with the earth as their battleground,” are seeking Shilo out. He explains Shilo’s problems in psychological terms, but when he bites into what appears to be a chocolate bar, blood dribbles down his chin, so he’s probably not to be trusted either. The girls, of course, were Granny Goodness and four of her Female Furies (a little redundant, as furies have always been women.)

pp 20-22: After leaving the office, Shilo meets another New God. Since he’s sitting in a chair, Shilo assumes its Metro. But no, it’s the Black Racer. Suddenly looking kind of white. One of Kirby’s more obvious misfires (when you crank it out as hard as he did, you’re bound to have one or two), the Black Racer represents Kirby’s attempt to create a Silver Surfer for DC and is the Grim Reaper of the New Gods. He tells our hero that he and Metron had a talk earlier that day and made a bet. Could Mister Miracle escape death? Morrison is foreshadowing things so hard, you have to wonder if it will actually be someone else who dies. Suddenly Shilo is set on by… the Drive By Derby.

And so ends what most hold to be the weakest of the seven minis. Not the least because of the problems it had keeping an artist. This issue features Pasqual Ferry, hot off the incredible Adam Strange: Planet Heist. This will be his only issue. The story itself has problems, but they aren’t apparent in this issue, which is all set up. You do have to wonder why Shilo suddenly has a new career, though it’s not really that great a shift. You also have to wonder about the significance of Darkseid winning his war against New Genesis – but that is probably best dealt with after issue four. In the meantime, things are going to get much, much worse for Mister Miracle.