#marvelman

[silveragelovechild]

[dc-vs-marvel-tournament]

Submitted by @penny-anna

[vertigoartgore]

1989's Miracleman Vol.1 #15 cover by cover artist John Totleben.

Chris K. (Comic Art Fans) : "Miracleman and Miraclewoman sit above the world they are re-shaping completely - economies, governments, markets, social structures, etc.

"We're going to love them, Michael. We're going to make them perfect."

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Gods rule the planet, and humanity simultaneously gains & loses so much."

[annlarimer]

Neil Gaiman reveals why Alan Moore's Miracleman is brilliant

Marvelman (aka Miracleman for legal reasons) came back in a b&w magazine anthology called Warrior, which also included a serial called V for Vendetta. It was absolutely astonishing, so of course it didn't last long. V and Marvelman still looks best in black and white.

[miracleblog]

Warrior 7 (1982)

Mick Austin's beautiful and iconic front cover painting won a well deserved Eagle Award for best cover.

[comicarthistory]

Pages from Miracleman #14. 1987. Art by John Totleben.

[coupleofdays]

This single comic book panel, from issue 2 of the 2022 comic book "Miracleman: The Silver Age" (written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by Mark Buckingham), is pretty mindblowing and, if you'll pardon my French, a little fucked up, if you know the real-life context of it:

The problem is, to truly understand the context, you would have to read a long series of blog posts about the bizarre and complex history of the superhero Miracleman, AKA Marvelman. But I'll try to summarize the relevant bits: The panel is from a comic about the superhero Miracleman (and his sidekick "Young Miracleman", the guy in red in the background), which was originally created in the 1950s (originally with the name "Marvelman") by a Brittish comic book publisher (L. Miller and Son) who had previously been reprinting the American superhero Captain Marvel (and his sidekick "Captain Marvel Jr."). However, the original American publisher of Captain Marvel, Fawcett Comics, had gotten embroiled in a long legal battle with DC Comics, who claimed that Captain Marvel was a copy of Superman. Because of this, no new Captain Marvel comics were produced for a few years, and L. Miller and Son decided to create what was quite obviously a copy of Captain Marvel in the form of Marvelman. Oh, and later on Marvel Comics also had a legal spat with DC Comics (who had bought the rights to Captain Marvel from Fawcett) over the name "Captain Marvel", which lead to DC eventually changing the name of that comic to "Shazam".

Many years later, another Brittish publisher, Quality Communications, decided to make a modern, far more mature revival of Marvelman, written by Alan Moore. After a few years, Marvel Comics threatened Quality Communications with legal action because of the name "Marvelman", which pissed off Moore to the point that he has refused to write anything for Marvel ever since. Quality Communications eventually went bankrupt (though not, as is sometimes claimed, because of Marvel's threats), and just who owned the publishing rights to Marvelman after that became more and more unclear. One of the later companies who published it decided to change his name to "Miracleman" in order to avoid any future threats from Marvel.

And here's the kicker: Guess who owns Miracleman now? Marvel Comics. That's right: The panel above is from a comic published by Marvel Comics, about Miracleman/Marvelman, a character they threatened legal action against, and in that panel another character holds up a picture of Captain Marvel Jr., a character who has been involved in similar legal battles and is currently owned by Marvel's chief competitor DC Comics, though the picture is from his first appearance originally published by Fawcett Comics, a company that DC by many accounts screwed over royally. And the whole point with the panel is Neil Gaiman making a meta-commentary about the fact that Miracleman was originally a Brittish copy of the American Captain Marvel.

And just to show that all of this is just the tip of the Miracleman iceberg... Here is the same panel, with the same dialogue, drawn by the same artist, 30 years earlier:

No, I am not making that up.

[splooosh]

“Mightiest”

Nick Anglo

[akirakan]

Miracleman is my favorite comic book of all time.

It will remain inconclusive, right?

Man, this comic is cursed....

[artphotographyofmen]

Miracleman by Craig Hamilton

[evilhorse]

Cerebus in Hell? Presents #81

[vertigoartgore]

Barry Windsor-Smith's cover for 1992's Miracleman #23.

[cgbcomics]

[miracleblog]

Marvelman Special 1 (1984)

This edition of the Quality Communications magazine reprinted a few of the original Marvelman stories along with four pages of new bridging material by Alan Moore and Alan Davis.

Cover painting by Mick Austin.

[lokiblackfatkink]

He will always be my favorite Marvel character forever 💚💋

[dynamobooks]

Pádraig Ó Méalóid: Poisoned Chalice: The Extremely Long and Incredibly Complex Story of Marvelman (and Miracleman) (2018)