 |
|
| |
|
||||
Miracleman (originally Marvelman) was a British-authored superhero comic, first published on February 3, 1954.
Marvelman: The Mick Anglo yearsThe character's origins were in black and white reprints of the American Captain Marvel comics, by a London publisher, L. Miller & Son. When the US publishers of Captain Marvel, Fawcett Comics, were forced to stop publication of the title after a lawsuit from DC Comics, Miller was faced with the supply of Captain Marvel material being cut off. He turned to a British comic writer, Mick Anglo, for help, and launched the new "Marvelman" comic. Missing image Young_marvelman_annual.png Cover of Young Marvelman Annual, 1960 Marvelman's origin was based loosely on that of Captain Marvel: a young reporter named Micky Moran encounters an astrophysicist who gives him his super powers, based on atomic energy. To transform into Marvelman, he has to speak the word "Kimota" ("atomic" backwards). Marvelman was joined by Dicky Dauntless, a teenage messenger boy who became Young Marvelman on speaking the name "Marvelman", and young Johnny Bates (Kid Marvelman, magic word "Marvelman"). They had fairly typical, unsophisticated superhero adventures, and the comics ran until February 1963. The titles published were Marvelman, Young Marvelman, and Marvelman Family which usually featured Marvelman, Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman together. Marvelman and Young Marvelman each had 346 issues, being published weekly except for the last 36 issues, which were monthly, reprinting old stories. Marvelman Family was a monthly, from October 1956 to November 1959. A variety of Marvelman and Young Marvelman albums were printed annually from 1954 to 1963. Miracleman: The Alan Moore yearsIn March 1982, a new British monthly black and white comic was launched called Warrior. From the first issue until issue 21 it featured a new, darker version of Marvelman, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Garry Leach, Alan Davis, and Chuck Beckum. Moore had been fascinated by the notion of a grown up Micky Moran, unable to remember the magic word, and this was the Moran presented in the first issue; married, plagued by migraines, having dreams of flying, and unable to remember the word that had such significance in his dreams. Moran, of course, eventually remembers the word, and the series, like many of Moore's other works, exploded the existing history. The adult Moran gradually remembers his early life as a superhero, only to find the entire experience was a simulation as part of a military research project attempting to enhance the human body with alien technology. Moran and the other subjects had been kept unconscious, their minds fed with stories and villains plucked from comic books by the researchers, for fear of what they could do if they awoke. When the project was terminated, so were Miracleman and his two sidekicks: in a final, real adventure they were sent into a trap where a nuclear device was meant to annihilate them. Moran survived, his memory erased, and Young Miracleman died. Moran discovers that Kid Miracleman not only survived, but lived on with his superpowers intact only to eventually become a murderous psychopath. The series stopped (but was not complete) in issue 21 of Warrior, just before the birth of Marvelman's child: after a hiatus of some years, it was reprinted in colour by an American publisher, Eclipse Comics, and the series carried to a conclusion, with art by Rick Veitch and John Totleben. For this printing, to avoid a trademark conflict with Marvel Comics, Marvelman became "Miracleman". Miracleman: The Neil Gaiman yearsWriter Neil Gaiman developed the series further in the 1990s, working with artist Mark Buckingham. He planned three books, consisting of six issues each; they would be titled The Golden Age, The Silver Age and The Dark Age. The first part Miracleman: The Golden Age showed the world some years later: a utopia gradually being transformed by alien technologies, and benignly ruled by Miracleman and other parahumans, though he has nagging doubts about whether he has done the right thing by taking power. Eclipse followed up The Golden Age by publishing the standalone, three-issue mini-series Miracleman: Apocrypha, written and illustrated by a variety of other creators, with framing pages by Gaiman and Buckingham. These stories did not form part of the main narrative, but instead further fleshed out the world of The Golden Age. Two issues of the second part The Silver Age appeared, but issue #24 was the last to see print. Gaiman has reported that #25 was essentially finished, but the shutdown of Eclipse prevented its publication. The future of MiraclemanFollowing the bankruptcy of Eclipse, ownership and publishing rights to Miracleman are unclear, with some degree of ownership currently claimed by various parties, including Dez Skinn (publisher of Warrior), Todd McFarlane (who purchased Eclipse's assets), Gaiman and Buckingham, and even Mick Anglo. (Moore had transferred his share of the rights to Gaiman, who shared them with Buckingham. Davis sold his share to Eclipse.) A key question is whether certain transfers of ownership were legally sound and/or whether rights reverted to earlier owners at some point. Gaiman has established a corporation called Marvels & Miracles LLC which is acting to settle these questions, with the goal of publishing the existing material and then permitting Gaiman to finish the series. In 2002, Gaiman filed a lawsuit against Todd McFarlane about supporting characters Gaiman had created for McFarlane's Spawn, which tangentially touched on the rights to Miracleman, but the court's ruling did not address ownership of that material. Miracleman Trade Paperbacks
External links
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 WordIQ.com - Privacy Policy
::
Terms of Use
:: Contact Us
:: About Us This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Miracleman". |