From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Miracleman #23
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 20:17:39 GMT

In article <dwrn5qb.dani@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>wogg0743@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (William Shakespeare):
>>ps. Has it occured to anyone that Winter is the most powerful being in the
>>universe?  She can warp, shapechange, and has miracle powers.  Scary.  Maybe
>>she'll be the villain in the Silver Age (or the hero).

>We have no real basis for believing that she's more powerful than the
>other Miracle children.

	Well, she was, at least at the time of "Winter's Tale", the
only one who could simulate the Warpsmiths' biocircuitry and teleport
herself-- except for Kay, who is glonzo and has a squizzy aura.
Clearly some of the Miraclechildren have begun to experiment with
various possibilities since then, but she's the oldest by a
significant margin (five years, or a quarter of the others' lives) and
seems to have more natural inclination to experiment-- she was doing
mind control before she was born, remember.

	Interestingly, the only other person who seems to have done
that sort of expanding the limits of the powers is Kid Miracleman, who
developed rudimentary mental control ("John, are you doing something
to my mind?"), eyebeams, and some sort of low-level TK or electrical
control or some such (building a lightning bolt and throwing it at
Miracleman), not to mention increasing his raw strength dramatically.
Despite Miraclewoman's greater creativity in devising tactics, she
never seems to have expanded the potential of the powers themselves,
even in more constructive directions.  Of course, Bates had more time
to experiment-- but he had less motive.  He was _already_ the most
powerful thing on Earth, and as far as he knew his only rivals were
dead.  Miracleman and Miraclewoman, having to stay on top of a system
which involves other powered beings, really should be at least
_trying_ to figure out the limits of their powers.

  The main difference is that she grew up outside
>a society of peers, and so is least socialized.  Partly for this reason,
>she's far more effective in the role of uninvolved observer than that of
>villain -- which calls for concerns she doesn't seem to share.

	I think that's debateable.  I could imagine her deciding to
"redecorate" using methods which would be simply clearing away
detritus to her, but mass murder or displacement of whole populations
to humanity (and, I note, to Young Miracleman).  Complete amorality
and differing motives is a fine base to build villainy on, even if the
villain doesn't have a hostile bone in her invulnerable body.
Conversely, though, I'll admit that the conflict probably wouldn't be
very interesting in those terms-- Winter would either win, or be
destroyed, or go through a conversion a la Dr. Manhattan in
_Watchmen_.  The first two would be dull, the third derivative.

	Personally, I suspect that the conflict (which will probably
take place on some level _other_ than a fistfight) will be between
Young Miracleman (representing humanity) and the new world order as a
whole represented by Miracleman.  (Of course, Miracleman is just a
figurehead in all this, even if he doesn't seem to grasp the fact.
All the important decisions are made by the Qys, or the Warpsmiths, or
Miraclewoman, so far as we've seen, while Miracleman really doesn't
seem to have much more real power than British Bulldog.  But I
digress.)

	While YM has just come out of a fantasy world, he still
thinks of himself as a human granted special powers to do good.  He
isn't being eased into the new world by "necessity" the way Miracleman
was.  (And MM was the closest to having doubts about the
transformation towards the end of Book III.  Huey Moon sees humans as
children, Miraclewoman sees them as pets, and Winter sees them as
furniture, but Miracleman really seemed to care about them, for a
while.  By the Golden Age, though, he'd grown about as detached as the
others.)  Dicky never saw Johnny Bates as a psychotic monster, and
he'll now be exposed to the conflicting stories about the Adversary.
He won't become a Bates cultist, but can he accept uncritically the
claim that _Johnny_ became a monster when his hero, Miracleman, has
made himself absolute dictator of the world with pretensions to
godhood?  Dicky still believes in the mission of the Miracleman family
to help people on occasion but generally leave them to run their own
lives-- and he grew up on the legends of Britain's victory over a
power which would have subordinated humanity to amoral blond supermen.

	Of course, he can't just declare war.  First of all, MM _is_
his friend.  Second, he's outnumbered and outpowered.  (He also almost
certainly has a deactivation code, whether it's "Abraxis" or an
insertion by Mors, but he probably doesn't know that.)  And this isn't
a comic in which things are generally settled by fistfights (though
there are exceptions, actually.  MM #15, of course, and also the fight
with the Qys early in Book III).  But that doesn't leave him
completely without recourse.  He can argue, he can plan, he can give
humanity an alternative to the divine Miracleman and the diabolic
Bates-- someone neither god nor demon but simply a human who can do
things which other humans can't.

	Which is all _any_ of the Miracleman family are.  From Winter
and her half-brothers and half-sisters to Miraclewoman to Miracleman,
not one of them has anything but naked force to support their claim to
be above human concerns or human morality.  They have less to fear--
but not nothing, as Kid Miracleman so aptly proved.  Or do they trust
that they and the warpsmiths, or they and their fellow Miraclefolk for
that matter, will live in amity forever and ever?  They have fewer
needs, but not none-- they still need to interact with other people
(of whatever form and in whatever way).  They still have the same
questions that humans have had since Neanderthal times: what happens
after death (and Mors machines just postpone the question-- they don't
eliminate it)?  What constitutes a good life?  Does life have a
purpose, and what is it?  If greater strength and resistance to damage
makes one a superman or a god then give me a Kevlar jumpsuit, some
scuba gear, a lever and a place to stand, and then fall down and
worship me.  Miracleman is only quantitatively different, not
qualitatively.  I think that Gaiman recognizes this, and that Moore
did as well, to a lesser extent.  That "utopia" is almost certainly
_going_ to fall somehow, or the next arc wouldn't be called "The Dark
Age".  But whom it will be dark for, and what role Young Miracleman
will play in its fall, remains to be seen.

Mike

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Virginia (1784)