Posted in: Adult Swim, HBO, Max, TV | Tagged: Mister Miracle
Tom King on Why Fans Connect with Mister Miracle; Defends CIA Work
Tom King discusses why fans connect with Mister Miracle, defends his time working with the CIA, and shares how his training still serves him.
Article Summary
- Tom King says Mister Miracle resonates because Scott Free’s journey confronts suicide, trauma, recovery, and hope.
- King defends his CIA service, rejects pro-war claims, and says his work focused on stopping deadly terrorist attacks.
- Tom King credits CIA sleep-deprivation training for helping him juggle Lanterns and Mister Miracle work.
- King says the Mister Miracle animated series is his life right now, with casting, scripts, and fan impact guiding it.
Between his upcoming live-action Lanterns series and the animated adaptation of his and Mitch Gerads‘ Mister Miracle, Tom King has been busy – and things are about to get a whole lot busier. Speaking with Variety, King offered insights into what makes Mister Miracle so special and how his work as a CIA counterterrorism officer prepared him to handle the stress and long hours of balancing his personal and professional lives. Regarding his work with the CIA, King responded to accusations that he’s pro-war. “Like a million other people, I was like, ‘What can I do to help the country?’ I applied to the CIA because I was good at information. I think comics helped me, like knowing every single Avenger and their first appearance. I could be a dot connector. To my surprise, after a year of training, they’re like, ‘You’re a frontline guy.’ Then I became a case officer in the CIA. That’s how I spent my 20s,” he explained.
“I’ve seen rumors that I started the Iraq War. I didn’t start the Iraq War. I was 23 years old,” King continued. “I was against al-Qaida and the Taliban. We were trying to stop them from doing horrible things. I was against the Iraq War. I thought it was the stupidest fucking thing. I watched people lie about stuff on TV, but I still had to go. It was my duty. I worked on some cases where people were going to blow up a base, and we stopped them. Should I have let them blow them up? Let those kids die because I didn’t agree with the war?”
Though he left his work with the CIA behind in 2009, King credits the agency’s sleep-deprivation training for his ability to juggle his current schedule. King’s made no secret of the fact that he’s been putting in serious work and time on Mister Miracle, even as the marketing machine for Lanterns begins picking up steam – including a stop at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 next week.
“You’re doing two or three hours of sleep for months. You go insane,” King said. “Lately, I’ve been doing ‘Mister Miracle’ during the day, then spending time with my kids, and after 10 p.m., I’m back at my computer writing until 3.” But it will all be worth it if King can bring to animated life what made the work so important to so many. “Of all the things I’ve written, it’s the book that can connect with people on a deeper level because it’s about a man who attempts suicide, goes through something, and comes out of it,” King added. “It’s about how you recover and live with trauma.”
Checking in with The Brave and the Boys podcast back in January, King explained how essential auditions were in making sure he could find the right voice for each character. From there, he described the experience he feels when an actor is so right for a character that, as a writer, he focuses less on the words written and more on the moment being expressed. Regarding the upcoming animated series, King explained how some of the actors cast hit perfectly with the voice that King had for certain characters, while another actor offered King something he wasn’t expecting, something that was right for the role.
“So yeah, I mean, there were some people who nailed it, who were exactly just… I was like, ‘Oh, my god! That is Scott. That is Barta,” King shared about the actors cast for the DCU animated series. “And then there were some people who are… I was like, ‘That’s not what I expected, but that is what… that is Darkseid.’ So yeah, it ran the gauntlet from, I mean… I love this book. I love it to death. I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than perfect. But it ran the gauntlet from perfect to just beyond.”
Checking in with Brandon Davis during WonderCon in May for a wide-ranging interview covering his comics and DC Studios work (which you can check out above), King had some things to share about the highly anticipated animated series. As he’s mentioned in the past, King notes that the animated series is “my whole life right now.” That includes writing the season’s scripts, with King noting that he was taking a page from DC Studios co-CEO and writer/director James Gunn‘s playbook with how he approached Creature Commandos.
In addition, King shared that he was with the actors during the recording that morning, doing “all that kind of actorly… directing kind of stuff.” The previous day, King was in the editing bay, editing the pilot, and had previously checked out the artwork while in Paris. In addition, King shared that he and Gerads are “constantly in touch, building the whole thing.”
From there, King shared a brief look at Mister Miracle with Davis via his phone, with Davis clearly impressed. Having heard from fans over the past 10 years how deeply the work affected them emotionally, King approached the animated adaptation with those thoughts in mind. “And so people tell me, ‘Oh, this part really meant a lot to me or this part was confusing.’ And so, recreating it, I can be like, ‘This was the part that meant the most to fans. Let’s lean into that.’ Or, ‘This part needed some clarification. We can clarify that.’ But I can, having talked to so many fans about this book, I can bring out what they loved in it in the series. So, it’s just been a joy.”
Teasing that there were “lots of announcements to come,” King wanted it to be known that working on the series “couldn’t be more fun.” He continued, “I love these Jack Kirby characters. And just, you know, playing with Orion and Darkseid and Mr. Miracle. Especially Mr. Miracle and Barta and their relationship, which is the key to the whole series, has been just absolutely joy. And wait till you see who’s been cast. Oh my god, it’s amazing. It’s great.”
“Get out your veggie trays…,” King began the caption to his Instagram post back in June, which also included a look at the key art for the series and a look at the original comic book series run. “Just announced and coming soon. MISTER MIRACLE: a new adult animated series from DC Studios and [Warner Bros. Animation]. Based on the Eisner winning best-selling comic by myself and semi-professional nerd/genius, [Mitch Gerads]. I’ll be show running the series, working with a dream team of animators and storytellers including Mitch himself who drew that gorgeous teaser art up there. Hard to express how excited I am to be working on this, what a joy it is. I love these characters and I love this world that the King, Jack Kirby built from a pencil tip. Thank you all for supporting the book over all these years. Its meant so much. More details coming.” Here’s a look at King’s thoughts from shortly after the news broke, followed by a look back at the animated series’ official overview (based on the DC Comics characters created by Jack Kirby):
No prison can hold him. No trap can contain him. He is Scott Free, the worldwide celebrity sensation known as Mister Miracle, and he is the greatest escape artist who ever lived. But can he pull off the ultimate trick — and escape death itself?
Something has gone horribly wrong with the perfect life that Scott and his warrior wife, Big Barda, have built for themselves on Earth. With war raging between their home worlds of Apocalypse and New Genesis, Scott’s cruel adoptive father, Darkseid, seems to have finally captured the Anti-Life Equation — the ultimate weapon that will give Darkseid total dominance over the universe.
As the mountains of bodies on both sides grow ever higher, only Mister Miracle can stop the slaughter and restore peace. But the terrible power of the Anti-Life Equation may already be at work in his own mind, warping his reality, exposing his long-buried pain, and shattering the fragile happiness he’s found with the woman he loves.
And so begins the odyssey of Scott Free, Mister Miracle: a harrowing, hilarious, heart-wrenching journey across the pitfalls of the ordinary and extraordinary as the son of God raised by the devil tries to save his family, his world, and maybe even himself.
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