Mister Miracle #8
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMister Miracle #8 is a pivotal chapter in Jack Kirby's Fourth World saga, resolving the tense Apokolips story arc begun in issue #7 as Scott Free battles the psychic entity called the Lump in a surreal 'realm of the Id' while Big Barda leads the Female Furies to storm Section Zero and free him. The issue delivers the first appearance of Gilotina — a bladed Female Fury who would recur across DC's New Gods mythology for decades — and presents the most expansive deployment of the Furies as a unit to date, cementing their identity as one of Kirby's most durable villain-group creations. As the final issue to carry the oversized 25-cent Giant format, it also closes a brief but distinctive editorial chapter in the series' production history. The lead story's psychedelic 'battle of the id' set-piece stands as one of the more formally ambitious sequences in Kirby's Bronze Age DC output, blending Freudian imagery with cosmic-scale action in ways that anticipated later writers' explorations of the New Gods' interior lives.
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The issue was produced in late 1971 for DC's National Periodical Publications imprint, written, penciled, and edited entirely by Kirby with inks by Mike Royer — Kirby's preferred embellisher during his DC tenure — and lettering by Gaspar Saladino. According to scholar John Morrow's 'Old Gods & New,' Kirby changed his plans for issue #9 while finishing this issue, and erasures are visible on the original pencil stats where the final-panel 'next issue' blurb was altered at the last minute; meanwhile, assistants Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman had already written a different description of what was coming next in the issue's letters column, creating a brief editorial inconsistency. DC's decision to run the title at an expanded page-count during this period led editors to pad issues with reprints of Golden Age Kirby material; Mister Miracle #8's backup is a Boy Commandos adventure originally published in Detective Comics #64 (June 1942), co-created by Kirby and Joe Simon — and it proved to be the last such reprint the series ever ran, as issue #9 dropped back to the standard format.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: June 1972 (on-sale March 16, 1972); published by National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) as part of the first volume of Mister Miracle (1971 series).
- Story title: 'The Battle of the Id!' — written, penciled, and edited by Jack Kirby; inked by Mike Royer; lettered by Gaspar Saladino.
- First appearance of Gilotina, a Female Fury of Apokolips whose name and power derive from her ability to slice through virtually any material with her bare hands; she was created by Jack Kirby as part of his Fourth World mythology.
- The issue expands the Female Furies roster on-panel beyond the four members introduced in issue #6 (Bernadeth, Lashina, Mad Harriet, Stompa), with Big Barda leading a larger squad — including Gilotina — in a raid on Section Zero to rescue Scott Free.
- Also introduces Orion's mother as a named character in this installment.
- Backup story: 'The Commandos Are Coming!' — a reprint of the first Boy Commandos adventure from Detective Comics #64 (June 1942), originally co-created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby; this is the final Golden Age reprint to appear in the Mister Miracle series, as DC reverted the title to a standard 20-cent format with issue #9.
- The issue's 52-page Giant format carried a cover price of 25 cents — the last issue of the series at that size.
- The lead story has been reprinted multiple times, including in Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle: Super Escape Artist (DC, 1998), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 3 (DC, 2007 and 2011 editions), Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby (DC, 2017), and The Fourth World Omnibus by Jack Kirby (DC, 2017/2018).
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Reprints
↩ Reprints Detective Comics #64 (1942)
Reprinted in Batman #716 (1974), Aventures Fiction #53 (1976), Superman Presents Superboy Comic #112 (1978), Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle #[nn] (1998), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus #3 (2007), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus #3 (2008), Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby #[nn] (2017), The Fourth World Omnibus by Jack Kirby #[nn] (2018)
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