These two series use a lot of the same self-referential devices, and the biggest one is the analogue hero. Most of the cast of both series are based on original characters, but altered slightly to create a commentary on them and the superhero genre, and the balance of the self-referentiality is part of a push for a certain kind of pseudo-realism, or partial realism, that arises in superhero comics in the 80s.
Analogues
Watchmen's cast is all analogues of the Charlton Comics characters, but altered so that they don't just refer to their direct originals but instead out to the whole superhero genre. Moore and Gibbons originally intended to use the Charlton heroes, but DC refused and so they had to strategically alter the Charlton characters.
Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II, for example, is a direct analogue of Ted Kord/Blue Beetle II. They are both inventor heroes who took on the name of an earlier hero from the so-called Golden Age of American comics. However, Night Owl also wears a costume that's highly reminiscent of Batman's (i.e., yellow belt, grey tights, animal-themed cowl and cape), and Dan is reminiscent of Clark Kent (i.e., an everyman secret identity who is more than a bit nerdy). The rest of the cast contains similar squinting analogies. Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre II is a pastiche of Charlton's Nightshade, Quality's Phantom Lady, and DC's Black Canary. Rorschach is a combination of The Question and Mister A, both of whom wear fedoras and trench coats, but where those heroes are merely unrelenting, Rorschach is genuinely obsessive, as well as being homicidal and rampantly misogynistic. Doctor Manhattan is based on Captain Atom, both of whom wield atomic-based powers, but Moore expands his character out so that he becomes a god-like nuclear guru.
The dedicated comics reader/viewer recognises these references, if not consciously then at the very least intuitively. In a discussion at the Newsarama website, StevenClubb (a pseudonym, most likely) sums up the informed fan's perspective well:
they [the Watchmen cast] really are just common characters in super-hero comics... both real and psychoanalysized [sic]. You have the guy pursuing justice/revenge, you have the adventurer, you have the sadist, you have the publicity hound, you have the legacy, etc. Pretty much every reason to become a super-hero (either from comics or from comic criticism) is on display in Watchmen [...] ("Watchmen/Charlton Analogues??" post 17).
The analogues in this series thus direct the audience's thoughts and attention towards the superhero genre as a whole, as well as, to a more limited degree, their awareness of the publishing history of American comics, a history that includes DC having run many other publishers out of business and then buying up their by then effectively worthless characters.
Miracleman does almost the same thing with its analogues, which should come as no surprise given that Moore wrote them both at the same time. The cast of the series, the "Miracleman Family," is based on a British superhero from the 1950s that has a very convoluted publishing history. That history starts with Superman, who was so popular that other publishers immediately started to copy him, including Fawcett Comics, who created Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel outsold Superman for several years in the 40s and 50s, and a British publisher called L. Miller and Sons reprinted his adventures, in black and white.
However, DC had launched a copyright suit against Fawcett, and won it in 1953, which left L. Miller and Sons with nothing to reprint. They then got Mick Anglo, a British comics artist, to invent a replacement, so he created Marvelman and the Marvelman family, an almost direct copy of Captain Marvel. Marvelman was then published, by L. Miller and Sons, for several years before it was finally cancelled. In 1982, Warrior, a British comics publisher, hired Alan Moore to write Marvelman again, but Moore based the series on a vision he had of a middle-aged Marvelman who could no longer remember the magic word he used to change into a superhero, which puts this series solidly in the Revisionist camp.
Moore subsequently broke into American comics, starting with The Saga of the Swamp Thing, and so American publishers started reprinting his British work. Eclipse Comics, based in California, reprinted Marvelman's collected adventures under the title Miracleman due to pressure from Marvel Comics, who contended that the title "Marvelman" infringed on their trademark. Marvel also pressured Warrior to stop publishing Marvelman's comics entirely, so Moore began writing issues directly for American publication.
Non-British audiences would not necessarily have known Miracleman's history at Warrior and L. Miller and Sons, but the references to Captain Marvel are quite clear. Mick Moran even retells his own origin story in issue #2. As a child, Mick met an astro-physicist who had gained cosmic powers and bestowed a portion of them onto Mick. Using the trigger word "kimota" (which is "atomic" read backwards), Mick turned into a super-powered adult called "Miracleman." This story parallels Captain Marvel's perfectly, in which Billy Batson, also a child, journeys into subway system and finds a cave in which an ancient wizard gives him a magic word, "shazam" (the wizard's name), which turns Billy into a super-powered adult.
The difference that constitutes the analogue function, however, is that is that in Moore's version, Mick's wife laughs at the story and calls it stupid, and Mick reluctantly agrees: "I suppose you're right. Actually saying it out loud like that. It does sound... well... pretty unlikely." Thus the analogue leads directly into the first, prominent self-reflexive gesture, which I discuss in the next entry on Miracleman. Moore later complicates this relationship between Miracleman and Captain Marvel, of course, but the analogue function by itself is highly self-referential.
As if this were not enough, the afterword to Miracleman #3 comprises Moore's explanation of the entire publishing history of the character, including DC's law suit with Fawcett and L. Miller's quite deliberate copying of Captain Marvel. This afterword is ostensibly Moore's insistence that the character is not really called 'Miracleman' at all, but it is also effectively informs the audience that Miracleman is an analogue character with a multistable identity.
The character that audiences outside of Britain know as "Miracleman" is thus arguably a fifth-generation copy of Superman (from Superman, to Captain Marvel, to Mick Anglo's Marvelman, to Alan Moore's Marvelman, and finally to Eclipse's Miracleman). He is a self-conscious analogue of Captain Marvel, but he is also ostensibly the same character, with the same name and costume, as Anglo's Marvelman. Moore simply retcons most of his old adventures out of existence.
Miracleman does not just have a multistable presence, then, as both a copy of Captain Marvel and a character unto himself, but a many-faceted presence that belies a series of connections to the whole publishing history of superhero comics, from the invention of the superhero, to a frenzy of lookalikes, to their influence in Britain, and finally to the Revisionist impulse to re-examine characters that the creators and/or the audience originally read as children. Thus, just as in Watchmen, the analogues in Miracleman serve to remind the audience of the generic construction of the superhero and its publishing history.
Posted by orion at July 15, 2008 2:44 PM