Miracleman

Marvelman (known in American reprints as Miracleman) was a British-authored superhero comic, first published on February 3, 1954.

Its 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, Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

In 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. 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. For this printing, to avoid a trademark conflict with Marvel Comics, Marvelman became "Miracleman".

Writer Neil Gaiman developed the series further in the 1990s. 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.

A couple of episodes of the second part, The Age of Silver, appeared, but issue #24 was the last to see print. Eclipse has since folded, and the ownership and publishing rights to Miracleman are somewhat unclear, with partial ownership currently claimed by Todd McFarlane. Representatives for Gaiman had been engaged in slow, plodding negotations with McFarlane's company to allow the series to continue. In October 2000, the prospect of Gaiman completing his Miracleman story was greatly improved, when Gaiman's court case with McFarlane was decided, in favour of Gaiman on all counts.