Check Out This Mother....Box

Mister Miracle Concept Drawing From the Jack Kirby Museum

When I was child I loved super heroes. Okay, I'm not fooling anyone, I still love them. The problem was that there weren't many action figures depicting them. Then in 1984 Kenner released it's Super Powers line. To this day the Super Powers figures are some of the best representations ever molded into plastic. They had good likenesses and excellent playability.


I had quite a few growing up but one day I realized that none of the characters I owned had capes. It just seemed wrong to me. A super hero should have a cape. When my birthday rolled around with dollars in hand I went to the store on a quest for a caped hero. Lo and behold the only one they had was Mister Miracle.

Mister who? I had never heard of this guy, but he had a cape and that was important to me at the time. Little did I realize that I had stumbled on something beyond awesome. The figure also came with neato keen hand shackles and from the card backing I learned he was an escape artist with a somewhat punny alter ego of Scott Free.

If Apokolips can't hold Mister Miracle what chance to handcuffs have?

It wasn't until years later when at art school, I became obsessed with all things Jack Kirby. During that period I learned about the Fourth World stories and Mister Miracle's place in them. (As a child I thought Darkseid was just some stone guy with an unhealthy obsession for Wonder Woman.  Something many of us can probably relate to. ) I won't go into the details of the New Gods as there are plenty of places on the internet which do a better job than me. Needless to say I find them to be some of the most inventive stories of the time. Seriously Orion is Darkseid's son? What a revelation to have a hero be the son of the villain. I wonder if anyone else has used that as a plot device?

So there you have it. You never know when those childhood impulses lead to amazing discoveries. It also turns out that the figure is rather rare with all his accessories and can fetch top dollar on eBay. Not that I would ever sell him.