Reading this crap.... Miracleman, part 1

A note on names. I'm going with Miracleman in this review because that's the name of the comics I'm reading.

*Spoilers*

I'm only actually going to get round to reviewing issue 1 in this part of the review. The rest of it is an attempt to place the story in its context as well as explain why you can't go out and buy it.

Miracleman has his birth in the legal dispute between National Comics and Fawcett. The former felt that the latter's comic book character, Captain Marvel, was derivative of their own Superman character and infringed on their copyright. At the peak of his popularity, Captain Marvel and his family of titles were shifting in excess of a million copies a week in the US. As the superhero boom ended and with sales falling, Fawcett finally decided to settle out of court with National Comics and agreed to cease publication of Captain Marvel in 1952.

The decision had a knock-on effect for publisher L. Miller & Son in the UK. American comics were not allowed to be imported to the UK so Miller had done quite well issuing black & white reprints of the Captain Marvel family of titles. No more Captain Marvel meant no more reprints. Derived of a significant source of income, Miller began to cast around for ideas for a replacement. They turned to writer and artist, Mick Anglo, who suggested replacing the Marvel family with another set of characters who were just different enough to avoid litigation.

Out went Captain Marvel and in came Marvelman. Instead of Billy Batson being given the magic word 'Shazam' by a wizard, Mick Moran was given the word 'Kimota' by an atomic scientist. Captain Marvel Junior was replaced by Dicky Dauntless who became Young Marvelman by saying the word 'Marvelman' and Mary Marvel switched sex and became Johnny Bates who turned into Kid Marvel when he also said the word 'Marvelman'. For a decade they had Captain Marvel-esque adventures against approximations of the Big Red Cheese's rogues gallery but the decision to allow American imports of comic books into the UK in 1959 spelt the death knell for the titles which ceased publication in 1963. And that was that.

Kind of.

As an avid reader of those comics as a child in the 1950's, Alan Moore had mentioned in an interview that he would like to have the opportunity to write the character. Moore had seen an old Marvelman annual in a second hand shop which led him to muse of a middle-aged Micky Moran, wandering the streets with vague recollections of his superhero days and trying desperately to remember the secret word that gave him his power.

Dez Skinn had been editor of Marvel UK where he had instituted a policy of using up and coming British talent to produce original product for the UK market. Unhappy with Marvel's stance on creative rights, he left in 1981 to launch his own monthly comic, Warrior, with many of the talent he had used at Marvel but giving them much more freedom and a share in their creations. Wanting a superhero strip in the comic, Skinn, aware of Moore's comments, hired him to write an all new Marvelman strip with Garry Leach on art. Moore was also chosen by artist David Lloyd to work with him on a strip he'd been asked to do for Warrior by Skinn and when Warrior launched in 1982 it featured two, Moore-penned, seminal comic strips, Marvelman and V for Vendetta. In fact it's fascinating to compare the two strips (and I may well do in a future post).

The final episode of Marvelman in Warrior was published in 1984 with the story still unfinished. The release of a Marvelman special had brought Warrior publisher, Quality Comics, into conflict with Marvel Comics who felt the title infringed on their trademark. By episode 8 of Marvelman, Leach had been replaced as series artist by Alan Davis (who assumed Leach's share of the rights) and he and Moore had a falling out at this time over whether they would allow Marvel to reprint their run on Captain Britain for the American market (guess which one didn't want to).

Warrior itself only lasted another year amid falling sales and late work from artists. Bound by his creative control agreements, Skinn couldn't bring in fill-in artists. Skinn began to look to the American market to pick up reprints of Marvelman but the name again proved a stumbling block. After having problems launching their own Captain Marvel title in the 1970's, DC didn't want to touch another title with Marvel in the name. Marvel EiC, Jim Shooter, felt any comic named Marvelman would have to be a flagship title for the line and the type of story Marvelman was telling most certainly did not fit the bill (ironically, rumour currently has it that if Neil Gaiman is ever able to claim the rights back Marvel will continue the series with it's original title).

It eventually found a home at Eclipse Comics who began reprinting several newly-coloured episodes at a time in US comic book format. Unwilling to get into a legal wrangle with Marvel they changed all references of 'Marvel' to 'Miracle' (though one or two 'Marvel's' slipped through the net in the reprints). After the Warrior material ran out six issues in, Moore returned to the title to pick up where he had left off with artists Chuck (Austen) Beckum, Rick Veitch and John Totleben, completing his run in issue 16 and handing over the writing reins and his share of the property to Neil Gaiman.

Gaiman, with artist Mark Buckingham, continued Miracleman up to issue 24 but with issue 25 completed bar the colouring, Eclipse went bust in 1994, a victim of the crashing comic book market and 25 never saw print. In 1996, Eclipse's creative assets were purchased by Spawn creator, Todd MacFarlane, who was mainly interested in securing the rights to Miracleman and introducing him into the Spawn-iverse (as that a word? It is now). Although MacFarlane now owned Eclipse's share of the property, Gaiman still had his and the two were not on the best of terms. Back in 1993, Gaiman had written issue 9 of Spawn for Todd and introduced the characters of Medieval Spawn, Angela and Cogliostro. Gaiman claimed he had created them on the understanding he would retain creative ownership of them. The Todd-meister reneged on the deal, pointing to copyright notices in the Spawn comics that proved they were work for hire.

In 2002 the case came to court and Gaiman won, he was awarded 50% ownership of the characters he'd created and the relevant back-royalties, but no decision was taken over who owned Miracleman. Then it got even more complicated. Skinn claimed that in the deal that sold Miracleman to Eclipse, the rights to the character would revert back to the original creators if the comic went a certain amount of time without being published, which would leave Todd with no claim on the character and the rights back in the hands of Gaiman, Buckingham, Leach (who had been given them back by Davis when Davis left the title) and Skinn.

Or did it.

Original series creator, Mick Anglo, claimed that Skinn had never actually purchased the rights to Marvelman from him. Meaning that Skinn could never have shared them with Moore and Leach or sold them to Eclipse which in turn meant MacFarlane could never have purchased them. Skinn had come to an agreement with Anglo to pay him royalties for any reprints of the original strip but it's unclear whether he purchased rights. Given that it was an obscure character intended for circulation an obscure periodical it's likely he felt that it wouldn't have been worth the bother.

A further spanner. Anglo produced Marvelman as work for hire for L. Miller & Son meaning that if Skinn didn't acquire the rights then they would probably still hold them. The problem is they ceased publication in 1996 and were sold to Alan Class Ltd, who published b&w comic book reprints, and nobody knows whether the rights to Marvelman were included in the sale. There's even been the suggestion that if Miller did retain the rights that they would be in the public domain now, meaning we could all do our own Miracleman comic (but not Marvelman, unless you wanted to go to court).

Ultimately the decision over the rights is likely to boil down to who can defend them in a court of law, meaning either Gaiman or MacFarlane remain the most likely destination. More likely still is that the issue will never be resolved and we'll never see the completion of the story.

So, issue 1. The first Eclipse reprint opens with a further reprint of an original, 1950's, Miracleman story (partially rewritten by Skinn) wherein the Science Gestapo, frustrated by their failed attempts to take over the world in 1981, travel back to 1956 where their superior technology will allow them easily achieve their goal. Naturally, they are defeated by the Miracleman family. Given what Moore went on to do with 1963 and Supreme I actually thought this was a Moore pastiche when I was reading it and it does a good job of introducing the series as well as being a lot of fun.

The first three episodes of Moore and Leach's run on Warrior follow. As Moore had imagined, Mick Moran is now a man in his early forties, a freelance journalist, married with no children and living a pretty mundane life. But when he sleeps he dreams of being Miracleman and in particular of a disaster where it all went wrong. He is haunted by his dreams and the magic word which remains tantalisingly out of reach. Sent off on an assignment at the opening of a nuclear power station, Moran is caught in the middle of vast plutonium theft by armed robbers planning to sell it on to terrorist organisations. A chance look at the word 'atomic' stencilled on a door window and seen from behind brings his magic word back to his memory and Miracleman is reborn.

With his memory now returned along with his powers, Miracleman is able to recall what happened to him and his two super-powered friends in their final mission in 1964 and how he came to lose his memory. His wife, whilst confronted by the reality of Miracleman, has a hard time coming to terms with his four-coloured knockabout adventures in the 1950's or why no-one's ever heard of him.

An image of Miracleman flying away from the power plant brings him to the attention of Johnny Bates, Kid Miracleman, who has since become a successful businessman. Bates arranges a meeting with Moran in which he explains how he survived their final mission at the cost of his own powers.

Moran quickly realises that it's not Johnny Bates he's talking to but KM and deduces that KM never turned himself back into Bates after their final mission and has been a living god ever since, freed from human concerns or morality. Confronting him with this, KM turns on him, determined to remove Miracleman from the picture and resume life as the only superhuman on the planet. Issue 1 ends with KM about to attack Moran.

I'll leave a longer analysis of what Moore does with Miracleman as I come to the end of his run but just taking issue 1. There is an ever present and quite extensive third-person narrative that runs right through this which coupled with the relatively short length of the original Warrior episodes (about 8 pages each) and the more compressed storytelling style of the time, moves issue 1 along at quite a pace. Typical of Moore there are no thought bubbles, something still quite in vogue at the time.

Leach's art is excellent and brilliantly evokes the mood of the book, capturing the dull day-to-day world of Moran and lending tremendous power to Miracleman and KM by contrast. I would loved to have seen it in its original black & white where I have the feeling it would be even more effective. Issue 1 closes with a two-page history of Miracleman by Skinn.