Created by a government-backed mad scientist in the 1950s, the Miracleman Family is a group of kidnapped orphans who are turned into superhuman adventurers. The team includes Mike Moran, AKA Miracleman, Johnny Bates, AKA Kid Miracleman, and Dicky Dauntless, AKA Young Miracleman, and together they beat back the darkness, even if it is all in their dreams.
Alien Influence
It all starts when a Qys spaceship crash-lands in Wiltshire, England in 1948. A secret branch of Airforce Intelligence known as The Spookshow kicks off an experiment termed Project Zarathustra starting in 1954. Led by Dr. Emil Gargunza, the project uses technology from the Qys spaceship to enhance kidnapped orphans, Mike Moran, Johnny Bates and Dicky Dauntless, to turn them into the superhuman Miracleman Family.
The orphans are kept in a dreamstate where they experience adventures and fight off Super Villains, unknown to them that their existence is a computer-designed fantasy. Outside in the lab, they’re studied and monitored until 1963 when the government deems the Miraclemen too dangerous to live. The Miraclemen Family is called into action, told a lie and encouraged to save the day from the Sky Fortress hovering over the North Sea, and they are brought out of their dreamstate and into the real world. The controller of the Spookshow, Sir Dennis Archer, launches an atomic airstrike against the Miracleman Family. As the bomb explodes, Miracleman sees Young Miracleman perish just before he reverts back to Mike and later wakes up in a hospital, suffering from burns and broken bones and no memory of his life as Miracleman. Kid Miracleman escapes and lives on as a businessman, though ends up corrupted by his power.
Dynamic
While they are kept in the dreamstate, Miracleman leads the Miracleman Family, often taking charge of their missions against Super Villains. They work together as a team. Outside of the dreamstate, their dynamic changes as they are separated for decades. Kid Miracleman eventually becomes corrupted by his miraculous powers, leading Miracleman and his allies to take him down, not once but twice. Young Miracleman dies and then returns only to find Miracleman changed by his powers as well, and chooses to be his adversary.
Strange Villains
During their combined dreamstate, the Miracleman Family fought strange villains, like the Firebug, Young Nastyman and the freakish dwarf genius called Doctor Gargunza. They thwarted Gargunza’s plans time and time again, putting him in jail but he always came back.
The Miracleman Family ultimately faces dissent in its own ranks, with Kid Miracleman being the first when he’s corrupted by his power, and Young Miracleman being the second, when he believes Miracleman abuses his power.
Found Family
The original trio of Miraclemen are bonded by their superhuman alter-selves and the adventures they share while in the dreamstate.
Once two of the three members of the Miracleman Family are lost, the remaining member, Miracleman, allies with Huey Moon, the Warpsmiths, Aza Chorn and Phon Mooda—envoys from the Gulf Worlds—fellow orphan and Gargunza-created superhuman Avril Lear, AKA Miraclewoman, and the Qys representative, Mors.
The Age of Miracles
In 1982, almost 20 years after Kid Miracleman was defeated, Mike’s memory returned. As Miracleman once again, he uncovered the truth about his past and eventually fathers a superhuman child, Winter, with a human, Liz Sullivan.
Meanwhile, Kid Miracleman changed for the worse, becoming an evil, ruthless and power-hungry businessman. Miracleman and Kid Miracleman battle until the latter ends up mistakenly using his keyword and transforming back into the young boy Johnny Bates. Ended up in a comatose state, he is taken care of in a nursing home.
Gargunza later returned and conspired to possess Miracleman’s daughter Winter, but Miracleman killed him before he could get the chance. Around this time, the alien Qys race returned to Earth seeking to exterminate those created from their misappropriated technology. But seeing Winter as a new form of “intelligent life” changed their mind. They kept an eye on the superhumans and Earth through their representative Mors and they looped in their enemies, the Warpmiths, who also sought to observe Earth. With this new group, Miracleman effectively creates a new Pantheon of gods, and they lay plans for humankind’s future.
By 1985, Kid Miracleman returned and attacked London, killing 40,000 people in a gruesome holocaust, forcing Miracleman and his Pantheon to reveal themselves to the world in the ensuing battle. With no cause to delay their plans, Miracleman enacts sweeping global changes. From London’s ashes arises his towering pyramid, Olympus, and a new world—one free of war, of famine, of poverty—known as The Golden Age.
In 2003, Mors brought back Young Miracleman from the dead: Dicky Dauntless. Seeing that it had been 40 years since his death, Dicky tried but struggled to accept the drastic global changes that his former friend Miracleman had implemented. After going on a long journey of self-discovery, he returned to face Miracleman and committed to being his adversary—his opposition to the world he created
