A Marvelman Primer

This post is intended for those readers of this blog who know little or nothing about comic books, but have at least a passing interest in the topic. As a result of the big announcement yesterday about Marvel Comics getting the rights to Marvelman, it's quite likely that I'll be paying considerable attention to how things proceed on that front over the next year or more. Therefore, I figure it would only be polite of me to provide a little background on this character before all of that begins to unfold. The following is a very cursory look, written (hopefully) in a style that will be appealing and accessible to the non-comics fan (and please let me know how I did!). And, as with most superhero topics, it actually begins with a gentleman with whom everyone is familiar.

1938: Superman appears for the first time, in the pages of Action Comics # 1. The world has never before seen the likes of this strange visitor from another planet, with his super strength, near-invulnerability, amazing speed and ability to leap 1/8th of a mile in a single bound. Not surprisingly, people go nuts for the Man of Steel, and before long he's starring in his own title (Superman), as well as holding down the lead feature of Action, and each comic is selling close to a million copies of each issue.

1939: Success begets imitation, and so more superheroes begin to appear like weeds, with the most famous addition being Batman (the dark, Dionysian counterpoint to Superman's Apollo). Both of those heroes are produced by the publisher who would eventually be known as DC Comics; however, lots of other entrepreneurs have caught wind of the gold in them thar hills, and the newsstands are soon filled with new comic book publishers.

1940: Fawcett Comics launches the adventures of Captain Marvel, in the pages of Whiz Comics # 2. The Big Red Cheese, as he's affectionately known, has very similar powers to Superman, albeit a very different backstory. Marvel is actually boy reporter Billy Batson, who is endowed with an adult body and the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury, upon saying the magic word, "SHAZAM!" (formed from the first letters of the names of the six gods). Batson is switched between the two identities each time he utters that special acronym, making for all kinds of fun plot twists if his enemies can trick Captain Marvel into saying it.

1941: The publishers of Superman, however, are not amused by what they perceive as a copyright infringement upon their own character, and issue a cease and desist order against Fawcett. When the publishers of Captain Marvel refuse to comply, a long, bitter court case begins between the two rivals. It would actually take 7 years to come to trial, however. Meanwhile, the adventures of Captain Marvel, his young friend Captain Marvel, Jr, and Billy's sister, Mary Marvel, continue to come out every month, often outselling the titles featuring the Man of Steel.

1948: Captain Marvel vs Superman finally makes it way into the courts, where Fawcett is victorious on a bit of a technicality.

1951: DC Comics appeals the 1948 ruling, and that outcome is overturned. Superhero comics have already begun to fall from the public favour by this point, and so Fawcett pays DC a $400,000 settlement and stops publishing anything related to the Captain Marvel family of characters. Ironically, 20 years later, DC Comics would acquire the rights to the Marvel family and have had them ever since.

1954: A UK publisher, L Miller & Son, has been providing black and white reprints of Fawcett's Captain Marvel stories to a receptive British audience, and is faced with the prospect of running out of material, thanks to the lawsuit decided in DC's favour (upon appeal). Since their reprints are still selling strongly, L Miller & Son want to continue to milk that cow, and so head honcho Len Miller charges writer Mick Anglo with creating a new set of characters to replace the Marvel family. Thus, Captain Marvel is transformed into Marvelman (with Billy Batson becoming Micky Moran), Captain Marvel, Jr becomes Young Marvelman, and Mary Marvel changes genders and debuts as Kid Marvelman. "Shazam!" is replaced by "Kimota!" ("Atomic" backwards, if you replace the hard "c" with a "k") and the costumes are changed somewhat. With that bit of business out of the way, Miller proceeds to publish new stories about those characters, in several different titles, for the next 9 years.

1963: I'm born, just in time for the original adventures of Marvelman (and family) to finally end. And with that, the Marvelman character fades from memory, forever.

1982: Whoa, not so fast! Future British superstar Alan Moore, still a relative unknown, gets the assignment to come up with a few different ongoing strips to fill out the pages of British black-and-white comic magazine, Warrior. One of Moore's ideas is created from whole cloth (V For Vendetta), but the other harkens back to a comic that he remembered from his youth: Marvelman. Rather than simply pick up where the 1960s series had left off, though, Moore imagines a significant twist on the character: it's now 20 years later, and Micky (now Michael) Moran is a grown man, married, and stuck in the rat race. Moran has a nagging feeling that he's forgotten something important, and often has dreams of flying. With that, Moore reboots Marvelman and takes the Captain Marvel knockoff to heights that even the original has yet to achieve.

1984: After running for 21 issues in Warrior, the Marvelman feature is suddenly nowhere to be found (with the storyline left hanging from the previous issue). Marvel Comics is already making noises about not liking another company having a character with "Marvel" in his name, although they aren't yet issuing a cease and desist order as long as it doesn't show up as a trademarked word. Writer Moore and artist Alan Davis are apparently engaged in a contractual fight with the publisher over royalties and reprint rights, and so no more Marvelman installments are forthcoming through Warrior.

1985: After having been "shopped around" to various American publishers, the character finally lands at Eclipse Comics (both Marvel Comics and DC Comics had already passed on the idea, for different reasons). Eclipse is well aware that they're in trouble with the self-proclaimed House of Ideas if they produce a comic entitled Marvelman, so they make the decision (with writer Moore's blessing, presumably) to change all "Marvel" usages to "Miracle". And just like that, Miracleman is born! The rest of the family similarly changes names once again, giving us Young Miracleman, Kid Miracleman, and the anything-but-cuddly Miracledog. I kid you not! The Eclipse series begins by reprinting (and adding colour to) the chapters from Warrior, and then picks up the story right where it left off, allowing Alan Moore to finally finish the extended saga that he'd had in mind when he wrote that first Warrior tale. A North American audience is introduced to something previously only known to the Brits, and Moore's star continues its ascendancy. Between Saga of the Swamp Thing, Watchmen, V For Vendetta (which DC Comics does pick up the rights to, thereby similarly providing Moore with the opportunity to finish it off, as well) and Miracleman, Moore is soon recognized as the new king of comic writers. A key point here is that, as far as anyone is concerned at the time, the writer and artists on the character owned the rights to him, since Moore and his artistic partners had revived a long forgotten set of figures from a defunct publishing company. And that's where the fun really begins.

1990: Moore has finished his Miracleman saga, and hands the reins for the book over to a man he trusts to do right by it: fellow Brit, Neil Gaiman (Gaiman is now an ex-pat Brit, living in the U.S.) Gaiman begins the first of three arcs that he has in mind for the character, entitled, "The Golden Age." The plan is to follow that up with "The Silver Age" and "The Dark Age".

1994: Unfortunately, Eclipse goes out of business right in the middle of "The Silver Age", and fans get no more issues of Miracleman after # 24.

1996: Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn (and owner of several steroid-juiced home run baseballs for which he paid multiple millions of dollars), buys the assets of Eclipse during its bankruptcy sale. With that, he declares that he owns the rights to Miracleman, and has plans to begin publishing the character. Most of comic fandom issues a collective groan (or shriek), in response. However, there's a glimmer of hope: Alan Moore had passed his rights to the character on to his successor, Neil Gaiman, and McFarlane has not done anything to secure them. It's therefore very unclear what McFarlane actually bought, as Eclipse didn't necessarily hold any rights to Miracleman beyond those associated with the initial publication of those previous stories.

1997: McFarlane also wants to secure the rights to several Spawn characters that were created by Gaiman during a guest writing stint on the title, and so a verbal contract is arranged between the two: McFarlane gives whatever Miracleman rights that he has (along with any assets, such as films of the original Miracleman artwork) to Gaiman in exchange for complete ownership of characters Angela and Medieval Spawn (whoever the Hell they might be). At this point the prospects look good for Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham completing "The Silver Age" and giving us "The Dark Age", except that McFarlane then reneges on the deal, resulting in yet another legal proceeding!

2002-ish: The trial between McFarlane and Gaiman is limited to ownership of the Angela and Medieval Spawn characters (the Miracleman angle is pushed to the side and not dealt with), with Gaiman winning handily. Unfortunately, this doesn't clear up things on the Miracleman front at all (but is still a positive development, in general, because it seems to provide Gaiman with more leverage). McFarlane owes Gaiman a large sum of money for his continued use of Angela and Medieval Spawn, but he files for bankruptcy on that portion of his company and (presumably) gets away with the intellectual theft.

2006-ish: Word begins to make the rounds that Mick Anglo, the original creator of Marvelman (recall: as a replacement for Captain Marvel), is still alive and well, and therefore is the true rights holder to the character. Alan Moore, upon hearing this argument, agrees wholeheartedly with it, and endorses the notion that it was all a matter of confusion that lead to him thinking that he had the rights in the first place. He points out that Anglo approved of what he (Moore) did with Marvelman and then Miracleman, but that he (Moore) now realizes it was all done rather unofficially. Neil Gaiman more or less agrees, and things begin to take on a different light. Marvel Comics are said to be interested in picking up the character, and would be happy to restore him to his original "Marvelman" naming convention if they did. No one seems to really care what Todd McFarlane thinks of this development, which is just as well.

2009: We hear what we heard yesterday.

So there you have it: the long, complicated history of Marvelman.

A few final points to ponder, for the brave souls who have made it this far:

1. Superman begets Captain Marvel who is then cloned as Marvelman who becomes Miracleman who finally goes back to being Marvelman. How's that for a twisted lineage?
2. Has any other comic character ever had so many legal entanglements in his history?
3. Speaking of which, will DC Comics now turn around and sue Marvel Comics for their use of a character who's clearly a ripoff of Captain Marvel/Shazam, now owned by DC? And if that happens, would that be the first time that one company sued over the same character twice, once against its existence (in 1948) and once in protection of it?
4. I didn't even go into the whole "Captain Marvel" mess, in which Marvel Comics created a character by that name in the 1960s and trademarked it (long after Fawcett Comics stopped using the name) and which, to this day, prevents DC Comics from publishing a Captain Marvel comic book, despite owning the Big Red Cheese and the rest of the Marvel family (they have to settle for starring in comics with names like Shazam!). That would have probably made heads explode if I'd included it, right?