Sunday, December 4, 2022

Jack Kirby’s Super Houdini

I remember encountering Mister Miracle early in my Houdini mania. I thought I had discovered gold. I liked comics and I liked escape artists, and here was a comic book escape artist! But I never really got into the few issues that I bought. For me to was too much superhero and not enough escapist. (I thought Marvel's The Human Fly, which came a few years later, struck the right balance between daredevil and hero.) 

But Mister Miracle developed a following, and while short-lived in his initial run, the character continued as part of the DC Universe and even saw a popular mini-series revival in 2017.

The below video does a nice job of laying out the origin of Mister Miracle by taking a look at the first issue page by page. One surprise for me was hearing that the character was influenced by real-life escape artist Jim Steranko. Enjoy.


3 comments:

  1. Steranko is a living legend. He was an author, magician, escape artist, and illustrator for Marvel Comics. I'd love to hear a Houdini story from him. Any story from him for that matter.

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    1. STERANKO ‘s Twitter has some good stories… he related one with HH and Gibson that brings a smile

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    2. Is it the story about Houdini unable to step out of Gibson's car because he couldn't find the door handle?

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