Mister Miracle #5

Writer: Tom King

Art: Mitch Gerards

Published by: DC Comics

What would you do if you only had one more day to live? That question is the central theme for this issue of Mister Miracle after the stunning conclusion to the last issue: Scott Free has been sentenced to death by Orion and now he has only one day left to live.

For Scott, the answer is quite simple in this issue: he is going to spend it doing everything he can with his wife Barda - even fight Orion if she asked him to. However, their day isn’t spent fighting the inevitable, it is instead spent enjoying each other’s company as much as they can and for Scott to fulfil his one last promise to Barda: to win her a stuffed toy at the carnival.

All throughout this issue though, King elegantly weaves the theme of life and death and what it means to the characters, and to a certain extent, to us, the reader. By offering many perspectives on the theme, we get to learn Scott’s process on how he is dealing with his fate.

At the beginning of the issue, as I mentioned, Scott asks his wife Barda to ask him to fight - to go against this fate. However, her answer is quite simple: she can’t ask him to fight for her, he has to fight for himself. This sets off Scott’s version of the stages of grief. We get a sort-of acceptance in both the form of Funk Flashman and Scott himself. Anger, shock, denial and bargaining all in one fell swoop, as seen by his willingness to kill Orion to escape his fate. He exhibits pain at the prospect of leaving Barda but he never exhibits depression. All this comes from Scott, but we get to also experience it from Barda’s perspective as well.

In the end, this issue perfectly encapsulates the series as a whole in that we get to be a part of an incredible character study that makes us feel all those emotions described in the last paragraph as we follow King and Gerards’ exploration of what makes Scott Free Mister Miracle. With the next issue, we’ll be at the halfway mark, but I can honestly say, this is already shaping up to be one of the best series of the last decade.