10 Best Comic Book Characters NOT From Marvel Or DC
6. Miracleman (Eclipse Comics)
When it comes to the rise of darker, grittier superhero comics in the 80s and 90s, the usual suspects for kicking the whole thing off include Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, and Alan Moore's Watchmen. But there's another Alan Moore comic that tends to be forgotten in this lineup: Miracleman.
Originally created back in the silver age, as essentially a Shazam clone, the character eventually evolved into quite a bit more thanks to the help of writers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. And since those two writers aren't exactly known for writing happy rainbow sunshine stories, you can make an educated guess for yourself as to what we mean by "evolved".
It gets dark. Like, really dark. As in, Watchmen was Moore taking it down a notch.
The violence and dark tone was often excessive, but Miracleman also took time to lay the groundwork for the "superheroes as gods" story idea that would be explored in different ways by the big two and others later on. And like with the rest of Alan Moore's early work, the violence may have been excessive, but the writing was just good enough to keep you hooked issue to issue.