Mister Miracle
From Barbelith
Background
The original Mister Miracle, Scott Free, is the universe's greatest escape artist. He's one of Jack Kirby's creations -- a resistance fighter from the horrifying futuristic world of Apokolips who also, like, hangs out on Earth and fights crime with his amazing technological and, uh, escape abilities. Scott Free has been a member of the Justice League, and if you only know comics from Sandman, he's one of the guys hanging out on the satellite with the big green Martian dude early in the series.
Scott Free, the son of Highfather of New Genesis, was exchanged as a child with Darkseid's son Orion as a twisted-son-exchange-program to secure a peace treaty between Apokolips and New Genesis. (As if that would stop Darkseid!) Scott Free grew up on Apokolips and ended up marrying Big Barda. Both joined the JLA, stationed on Earth by the New Gods to battle the looming threat of Mageddon, but have since semi-retired to suburbia.
As Scott Free originally took the title of Mister Miracle from famed (human) showman Thaddeus Brown, so he has now handed it on to his human apprentice, Shilo Norman.
New Story
Mister Miracle III is Shilo Norman, the new greatest escape artist in the world. Shilo was originally introduced in the early Kirby Mister Miracle series. At first apprenticed to Scott Free, Shilo became a supporting character in the series, which is collected in the The Fourth World trade paperback. In publicity material for Seven Soldiers, Shilo Norman was described as a cross between annoying escapist David Blaine and annoying rap producer Puff Daddy.
Locations -- New York City and the cosmic realities of New Genesis.
Genre -- Futuristic psychological thriller with Matrix / The Invisibles undertones.
Because of the weird relationship between New Genesis and Earth, a theory has been put forward about Shilo Norman's role in Seven Soldiers. The "fictionsuit" is a concept from Grant Morrison's The Invisibles -- essentially, it's a character created for interacting within a particular reality by an occupant of another, higher reality.
The Shilo Norman is Scott Free's Fictionsuit Theory:
Chad-- Ok. So I'm thinking the DCU's like the Matrix. And these New Gods are present in everything, and can peek through/use people in the DCU to accomplish tasks. The New Gods would be like Agent Smiths, who drop down from the architecture of the Matrix to engage rogue elements... you get the picture. The lady pimp, the whores, the wheelchair guy and ZZ are DCU people, but also fictionsuits for higher order entities. Higher order is important... And Shiloh's a DCU person who's a fictionsuit for a New God whose whole existence is dedicated to freeing himself of the Mundane. Okay, so in SK we dabbled with the idea that Ystin isn't from the past at all, but a higher order plane where things are more dense, more thematic, and more "true". Enveloping universes, like matryoshka dolls (see: Points of Contact). Empire of evil Summer's End versus Empire of good Camelot Earth surrounds the superhero Clark Kent versus supervillain LexEarth surrounds the simple and similar-to-ours Qwewq Earth. Now we've seen time travel here and universes existing within others, and that travel between them is prevalent -- the JLA travel to Qwewq Earth. The TTT brings the Sheeda to the DCU Earth. But the notion of New Gods is another level that we hadn't considered. What if New Gods are indigenous to a higher order universe that surrounds the universe that the Sheeda are indigenous to? The New Gods resemble superheroes when they drop down fully into the DCU, because that's the level they'd be on = the superhero Earth. In Qwewq, they might manifest as athletes or politicians or celebrities. In Camelot, perhaps as fantastic elemental dragons? Who knows?
More on that in this post (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/21563/from/105#post501413).
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