Who is Miracleman? // Comics History 101

UPDATE 1/2/2022: Thanks to a @TheAllCreator on Twitter, we now have a much more in-depth idea of the history of Miracleman. The edits here include a more in-depth explanation as to how Eclipse Comics died as a publisher. Expect a supplementary article for the legal drama soon!

Just recently, Marvel Comics released a comic intended to drum up hype for the year 2022 and their current slate of major events. Featuring Kang the Conqueror, it featured the longtime Avengers villain doing his usual conquering and being a villain of some depth. However, what caught many fans by complete shock was the last page of the book:

I can hear the frantic tapping of keyboards as I write this.

Fans of early Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman would recognize this immediately, as would fans of vintage UK comics. However, a lot of fans of modern comics are decidedly going to be left in the dark. What is the MM for, and what does it portend?

Well, this actually goes back to the 1950s, before Marvel themselves existed in name.

Yeah, this is going to get convoluted. Welcome to comics.

Back during the Golden Age of comics, Fawcett Publishing owned arguably the most popular comic character of the era: Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel first appeared in Whiz Comics issue 2, and came from the mind of CC Beck and Bill Parker. Young Billy Batson was granted the powers and abilities of six different figures of history and mythology when he spoke the name of an ancient wizard:

This would also become the catchphrase of many, including Gomer Pyle.

Captain Marvel would combat various foes like the nefarious Mr. Mind, his dark mirror Black Adam, and even weirdos like Mister Banjo.

Oh, and Hitler!

This is Hitler from the reverse universe. His name is Relith. He tried marrying into the British royal family to win World War 2. He married Captain Marvel instead. Comics, man.

Like any respectable superhero, spin-offs were impossible to avoid. Captain Marvel Junior appeared when Captain Nazi killed the grandfather of (and subsequently crippled) a young boy named Freddie Freeman. Billy would share his powers with the boy, allowing him to change whenever he said “Captain Marvel.”

This hero was a favorite of a young Elvis Presley, who would style his later years off the fashion.

Billy would also be revealed to have a little sister, Mary. She would also gain the powers of Shazam, albeit through a different pantheon. Going by Mary Marvel, she would fight foes just as strong as her male counterparts.

The family would expand to crazy levels, with their Uncle Marvel, Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, Tawky Tawny the talking tiger, and more. My favorite are the Lieutenant Marvels, a trio of boys also named Billy Batson who have the powers of Captain Marvel due to the Wizard apparently not specifying which Billy Batson has the powers of the Wizard Shazam.

To distinguish them, they are called Tall Billy, Hill Billy and Fat Billy. Comics, man.

Captain Marvel’s comics sold numbers that would make modern publishers drool with envy, and his popularity spawned multiple spinoff comics to go along with those characters. Cap would also star in a reasonably faithful movie serial, and even sell more comics and merchandise than Superman himself. 

And then National Comics sued Fawcett Publications.

You see, National owned Superman. And they felt Captain Marvel was nothing more than a copyright-infringing knockoff. To be fair, Superman knockoffs were also a literal dime a dozen at this point. Wanting to appeal to the same demographics and audience of the Man of Steel was one thing, but then you have Wonder Comics’ own Wonder Man from 1939… just a few months after Superman premiered in Action Comics issue 1. While he was created by comics-legend Will Eisner, the character itself was… well, look for yourself:

In court, Eisner would say that the owners of Fox Publishing had straight-up asked for a Superman knockoff.

The germ of an idea for Wonder Man may have been before Superman, but National would win the case in 1939. It was the first-ever copyright case for comics, and National would continue to have them to defend their Superman. While they didn’t win the court case against Fawcett explicitly in the 50s, Fawcett was driven to decide it just wasn’t worth continuing. It was the early 1950s, and superhero comics weren’t selling as well as they used to. Indeed, all of Cap’s comics were selling only half as good at best.

After winning the first case, and basically tying on National’s appeal, Fawcett settled out of court. They stopped publishing Captain Marvel, and National would later absorb their entire publication catalog as they bought up other companies to eventually become DC Comics. DC would later hire CC Beck and import a ton of ideas from Captain Marvel into Superman during the Silver Age of comics, and it would make the two even closer related than some fans could imagine.

Luckily, they would keep the Captain Marvel family around, though they would rarely be as popular as they once were.

However, we now leave the shores of America and head over to the island empire of the United Kingdom. Like America, the UK loves their superheroes. While they have their own homegrown heroes, a lot of companies also love importing comics to republish there. Fans of Transformers, for example, may be aware of a comic run that is almost triple the length of the American one thanks to creators like Simon Furman making new content to fill in while they waited for the American books to make more content.

In the 50s, this was publisher L. Miller & Sons, Limited. They had been publishing black and white reprints of a lot of Fawcett comics. This would also extend to the Marvel Family, and these books were top sellers. When Fawcett announced they were ending their publication of Captain Marvel and all of his related books, owner Len Miller was in a panic. He turned to Mick Anglo, a man who had been going to Fawcett and packaging the comics together to sell in the UK, and asked for a way to replace Captain Marvel with a similar-but-different hero.

Not gonna lie, this stuff is increasingly hard to find.

In plain language, Anglo filed the serial numbers off of Captain Marvel and the Marvel family. 

Billy Batson became Mickey Moran, a young reporter who was granted supreme atomic powers by an alien astrophysicist and transformed by saying Kimota (the word Atomic backwards). His powers, though, were pretty similar and without gods and legends attached to them.

Kid Marvelman would replace Captain Marvel Junior, with the name of Johnny Bates. A schoolkid, he would fill in the role of being the average kid who also pals around with superheroes in a super-powered incarnation of himself. Similar to Captain Marvel Junior, Kid Marvelman would also transform by saying his hero’s name: Marvelman.

Rather than a direct replacement for Mary Marvel, a third boy would join the trio: Young Marvelman. Dickey Dauntless was a messenger boy of the day, and would find plots to defeat while on the job. Again, he would also say ”Marvelman.” Presumably, a third boy was used because someone figured it would sell better than an icky girl, ignoring the fact that girls also read comic books.

Now, while the covers changed almost overnight, Billy Batson himself would break the fourth wall of the comic to introduce readers to his replacements. While the comic wouldn’t acknowledge Fawcett or National, or the lawsuit that lead to his demise, young Billy would introduce his readers to the Marvelman family. It was just text, but it was less jarring.

Hundreds of comics would be published weekly from 1954 through 1959, with Marvelman and Young Marvelman both taking their corresponding hero’s titles and going weekly with publication. Marvelman Family would also join them, making for a truly ridiculous amount of issues published in a short amount of time. The art was solid, being a less detailed version of CC Beck’s iconic character designs and styles. However, Anglo did give it a flair all his own.

The less than subtle atomic imagery, though, makes it a very different comic.

Marvelman would also go worldwide, with reprints in Australia and Italy, as well as Brazil re-adapting these comics back as part of the Captain Marvel family. Amusingly, Marvelman became Jack Marvel, though the double M logo would go unchanged.

1959 would signal the end of Marvelman for multiple reasons, though. Not only did Mick Anglo quit, but the laws in the UK surrounding comics changed. Companies could now directly sell and print in the UK from other countries, so National could just straight sell Superman in the UK in full color. Comic sales suffered, and would stop publishing in 1966 when the now bankrupt L. Miller & Sons, Limited ceased publications. Mick Anglo would recycle a few of his stories under the titles of Captain Miracle and Captain Universe, as he contained some of the rights to his Marvelman stories. Not only are the copyrights different in the UK, but he also included his own copyright on some of the stories. As such, with even Anglo’s recycling ending in 1961, Marvelman fell into obscurity, much like Captain Marvel himself had.

And then Alan Moore started writing comics.

Resurrecting the fondly remembered corpse of Marvelman was not Moore’s idea, though. Warrior was a comic anthology premiering in 1982, and editor/publisher Dez Skinn and his company Quality Publications wanted to relaunch the character. Publication rights to Marvelman had been obtained by Quality, and Skinn had done similar with Captain Britain the previous year. This was to be a grittier and more realistic version of the happy-go-lucky adventures of Marvelman, and Skinn had been told that Alan Moore would die to write for the character.

Moore would also work with Garry Leach and Alan Davis on the art. Leach would leave after the first few issues, but these black and white comics are truly a delight to read due to their art.

Yep, Moore was also writing V for Vendetta at this time, too. The man was firing on all cylinders at the time.

While Moore had been writing for Marvel UK and 2000 AD for two years at his point, the relaunch of Marvelman looks to have been his first deconstruction of a superhero. Moore would become notorious and infamous for it during his time with DC Comics, putting out legendary works like Watchmen, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, and The Saga of the Swamp Thing. But this is where a lot of his ideas and alternate takes find their root.

Mickey Moran is much older now, and unhappily married. He has constant headaches, and while he dreams of flying… he also is haunted by the word that means everything in his dreams, but can’t remember in life. 

While being held hostage at, of all things, the first ever attempted plutonium hijack, Michael’s headaches kick into overdrive and he nearly passes out in the crowd of hostages. One of the terrorists drags him away, and he sees the words Atomic written backwards through a window. Realizing that his word is in front of his eyes, he says it.

It’s quite a decisive and impactful scene.

While Mickey is restored to his superheroics body, Moore and Leach recount what happened to Marvelman. With his wife poking good-natured fun and the ridiculousness of the 1950s comics, Mickey remembers his old life. Young Nastyman, Firebug, and Doctor Gargunza were all villains who never did anything truly evil, and would always come back for another round like it was a kind of game.

Then Doctor Gargunza obtained an atomic bomb in 1963.

Alan Moore’s Marvelman is a truly remarkable work. The pages are filled with wonderful art from Leach and Davis, while the dialogue from Moore is top notch. The action is visceral and brutal, with some truly shocking twists that feel fresh even today. I strongly recommend checking out his run on the book, though Warrior isn’t likely the version you’ll be able to find.

You see, Moore and Skinn were getting into arguments over finances… and Marvel Comics had taken notice over another superhero using their name. Funnily enough, Skinn had checked with Marvel’s UK offices to see if the Marvelman name would cause issues. No one batted an eye, as the character had existed decades ago. However, with the comic causing waves in the critical world, someone back in the US offices took note and complained. Not only had Marvel claimed the name of Captain Marvel a few decades back, now someone was planning to take Skinn and Quality Publications to court for his unofficial offspring’s similar name. Seeing no way out that didn’t cost a lot of money, Warrior dropped Marvelman at the 16th chapter, citing pending legal action from Marvel for doing so.

This legal action from Marvel was actually the act that caused Alan Moore to have nothing but disgust for Marvel until the modern day. If you remember his early Captain Britain works, those went out of print for decades until he was talked into it by his former co-creators on the book.

Skinn, however, had other ideas in mind. While the name of Marvelman might be a taboo topic, there was nothing against shopping the comic itself around. Moore himself was trying to do the same. Since he was now working on The Saga of the Swamp Thing, Moore tried DC first. However, DC got cold feet since they were also publishing the original Captain Marvel under the Shazam name at this point in time. Moore also tried Marvel, but the company balked due to his name: Marvelman. After all, he might be considered as representing the company. As such, the only options were the more independent publishers of the day.

In this case, Quality Publications sold reprint publication rights to Pacific Comics so they could bring Marvelman to the United States under a new name. When they went out of business before publication could begin, Eclipse Comics would get the license instead.

Amusingly, Moore had decided to use Miracle Man as a knockoff of Marvelman if they couldn’t get the rights to the character. This would be revisited in Watchmen when DC balked at Moore using their library of Charlton characters for the story.

Here is where many Alan Moore fans jump in. With the name changed and the comics relettered appropriately, Eclipse Comics ran through the 16 chapters of Marvelman in only six issues. Coloring was added to make the books more palatable to the American audiences, but the colorist has gone uncredited with their name lost to time. There was even some classic Marvelman content that was adapted as a way to introduce American readers to characters they had no familiarity with.

The coloring job was very well done as well. Kudos to the uncredited!

When they ran out of content, Eclipse reached out to Moore himself and asked about continuing. With what Moore felt was a safe ownership setup for the character so no one was screwed over, he would work for another 10 issues of full content with artists like Chuck Austen, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben. Moore would end issue 16 with literally ending all crimes, war being solved forever, and the world becoming perfect with no chance for future stories. However, Moore had decided to pitch this setting to another writer, who said he would love writing in a world like that.

Enter Neil Gaiman, who began his run on Miracleman in 1990.

I swear, this cover style is on about half of the comics Gaiman worked on in the 90s.

Working with Mark Buckingham, the entire tone shifted for the book. It was less about the adventures of Michael Moran and how his life had been increasingly destroyed by his superpowers. It was about how the world was going to change now that a benevolent god lived among them. This isn’t Gaiman’s first comic work, but it is some of his earliest, and helped solidify his place in the world as one of the best comic writers in the 90s (to say nothing of now). 

Gaiman and Buckingham had plans to delve into three ages: The Golden Age, the Silver Age, and the Dark Age. Fittingly, the Golden Age focused on how amazing the world has become with superhuman and super science becoming a shining light in the world. Miracleman himself took a backseat, but the world building in these issues is gorgeous.

Sadly, Eclipse Comics was starting to suffer from what I’ve come to consider the opening of the Great Comics Implosion of the 90s. They might not have ended the same way as the other publishers around that time, but Eclipse was a special case in multiple ways. It was like God himself told Eclipse they would die as a company, and provided them multiple choice:

1. A flood destroys all of your catalogue of work, resulting in the original art being gone forever. Back issues would also be lost, resulting in no way to recoup costs of issues printed in excess.

2. The two heads of the company (Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney) have a messy divorce, one that is as public as you could possibly be in the 1990s. This would also include tidbits published in the Comic Buyer’s Guide about one of the pair’s infidelity. Specifically issue 1034, which contained this message:Those Who Can Read Code Can Get The Real News Dean Has Left For A Woman Named Jane Kingsbury Who Has Bone Chips In Her Brain. — Cat

3. A contract with a popular publisher, Harper Collins… that did not pan out at all financially for the company, much less give out any royalty checks.

4. Publishing manga. While this is a multi-million dollar industry today, the early 90s was a different market. In fact, it was almost suicide at the time, with low sales and high prices to license the materials.

5. Writers, artists, and staff aren’t being given their royalties, and demand to be paid properly. This would include Gaiman and Buckingham’s work on Miracleman.

6. An agent named David Campiti swindled money out of Eclipse and ran off with it.

And rather than choose one, Eclipse chose option 7: all of the above. All of those happened to Eclipse, and they died a rather spectacular death of horrifying accidents. They would end publication of all comics by 1994, with issue 25 of Miracleman being almost completed but unpublished… and leaving the Silver Age eternally half-done.

This is one of the rare pages the fandom has been shown.

Eclipse’s licenses would later be picked up by Todd McFarlane of all people in 1996 at an auction for $25,000.00.

McFarlane, one of the founders of Image Comics and creator of Spawn, believed this contained the rights to Miracleman. In fact, he planned to work Miracleman into the Spawn universe by 2001, and decided his ownership superseded all rights by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and the teams of artists they both had worked with.

It did get us this sweet two figure set… which is still mind-boggling that it exists.

This would create the Spawn character Man of Miracles when his ownership was questioned in court in 2002. McFarlane would hand-waive appearing as Miracleman as just him showing up in whatever form he’s interpreted as.

In 2009, it would be revealed that Mick Anglo actually owned the rights to Marvelman in the first place! This meant any comics published by Quality, Eclipse, and Image didn’t actually own the license and were completely illegitimate. That same year, Marvel Comics swooped in and bought the rights entirely for Marvelman.

2010 would have Marvel pump up the hype meter with a Marvelman Classic Primer comic featuring interviews with nearly everyone who had worked on the character, and would even launch an anthology of classic comics called Marvelman Family’s Finest. It’s unknown how well these sold, but Alan Moore stated any profits he could be earning from Marvelman should be donated to Mick Anglo.

In 2013, Marvel further announced they had solidified the rights to Miracleman as well! Marvel would release large, high quality reprints with modern coloring and lettering. These would also include some classic Marvelman comics, and some essays and thoughts about the character. Alan Moore would be credited as “the original author,” per his requirements for these comics to be published, and the comics actually almost feel better with the modern gloss slapped on top of them.

Meanwhile, Gaiman’s works would be published under the name Miracleman: The Golden Age, equally recovered and remastered alongside Moore’s works. This, at least, unifies the work in looking like a more modern publication. However, the art and coloring blend isn’t quite as seamless as it was for the Moore era. There was even a bright light for fans: a brief “lost story” by Grant Morrison being published in the 2014 Miracleman Annual that was the first new content for the character in decades. Joe Quesada, EiC of Marvel at the time, would also provide the art.

However, the promised Silver Age reprints never materialized despite being promised in 2016 - and promises that Gaiman and Buckingham would finish their story also went unfulfilled. In fact, aside from a brief appearance by Miracleman in Marvel Comics #1000, we hadn’t heard one word from Marvel about him.

Until now.

What could the future hold? Marvel is no stranger to making knockoffs of other popular heroes. From Hyperion, to the Sentry, to the Blue Marvel, Marvel Comics has filled their pages with dozens of Superman takes. They even took the name Captain Marvel from DC’s former greatest rival, using it for their own with a family of characters. However, the character of Mickey Moran and his alter-ego represent something both more and less.

It would be easy to brush this off as Marvel trying to loosely copy DC’s recent attempt to merge Alan Moore’s Watchmen to their main comic universe with the divisive Doomsday Clock. And, to be entirely honest, it very well could be just that.

But Marvelman represents a time where a comics publisher needed to stay in business, and creatively came up with a way to do so despite losing their best-selling character. And from it came a fan-beloved classic for their country.

Marvelman’s revival and rebranding to Miracleman is easily case zero of the “maturation” and darkening of comic books in the 1980s, something perhaps wrongly attributed to Watchmen.

Gaiman’s time on Miracleman is easily one of the first times someone could look at a comic book during those dark ages and go “hey, this is good as more than just a collector’s item or kid’s comic.”

These books have had an absurd level of effects on the comic industry. To throw Miracleman (or is it Marvelman now?) into the same book as Iron Man and Spider-Man feels both fitting and sacrilegious at the same time. 

Time will tell with what Marvel and their mouse overlords have planned for Mickey Moran. But one thing is for sure: Miracleman is back.

…for the time being anyway.