Shilo Free
Generally speaking, DC comics published after 2011 have more or less moved on from the continuity we usually focus on, so most modern comics don't feel like we need to worry about adapting them to our project. They're their own thing, and thats fine. There are exceptions, however, and the appearance of a certain little lump was clearly one of them...
Shilo Free's Comic HistoryJacob Free, the son of Scott & Barda, was born in the pages of the 12 issue 2017 Eisner Award-Winning Mister Miracle miniseries by Tom King. It's really a very personal story about depression and finding meaning in life, but it also depicts the birth of our titular hero's son. He's made some appearances in other series, so he is definitely canon (or at least whatever passes for canon in the post 2011 DC), which means that we get to make our Mister Miracle and Big Barda parents as well.
We did, of course, change his name a little bit, and this is mostly as a nod to another character elsewhere in the world of the New Gods. Shilo Norman appeared for the first time in the original Jack Kirby run of Mister Miracle; he was a street kid who was taken in by Scott's predecessor Thaddeus Brown, and eventually became a sort of protégé Mister Miracle, making appearances in both the original and follow up series. He later also starred as a new Mister Miracle in Grant Morrison's Seven Solders of Victory series where we discover that he's now the security chief for the Metahuman prison the Slab. He's made a few more appearances in other Morrison properties including Final Crisis, and even got his own 6-issue miniseries in 2021. The main reason we're not actually including Shilo Norman is specifically because his name and characterization work so well as a possible future for Scott & Barda's son. |
Shilo Free's Story & Possible FutureIt might seem relatively minor to change Scott & Barda's son's name from Jacob to Shilo, but hopefully this helps to convey the conceptual idea of what we imagine their son's future might be. He's a New God, technically, but fully born on earth without setting foot in the heightened reality of the 4th World. There's this sense of vast, shifting potential of his future, and while we imagine he will grow up to be a contemporary young hero along with Jon Kent and Irey West, just what that looks like for him could be anything.
There is quite a bit of interesting ideas out there for what Shilo's costumes might look like. I've always really liked this bit of concept art from the seven soldiers series that suggests a possible change in color scheme from his father, and some of the work that went into his 2021 series looks fantastic. This does all sort of assume that the heroic identity Shilo adapts in the future will also be Mister Miracle, but I think this really only makes sense if Scott has retired, and I honestly don't know how much sense that makes. Maybe he'd use this look but have a name of his own? I also should probably also mention; canonically Shilo is black, and if we make him Barda & Scott's son, then you might imagine that means we'd have to change that... but I actually don't know why Scott couldn't be black also? There's even precedent for it over in Varian Johnson's Mister Miracle: The Great Escape. |