Miracleman Is Here!

The first issue of Disney/Marvel's new Miracleman series debuted this week, nearly five years after the corporate giant declared that they owned him.  It's odd that they also declared, with great fanfare back in 2009, that the character would be returning to his original name of Marvelman and yet now they're publishing the stories under the Miracleman name, but such are the vagaries of the comic world, I suppose.

They've also chosen a God-awful format for the series, if the first issue is any indication.  It's $5.99 for what looks to be about 15 to 20 pages of the Alan Moore story from the British Warrior magazine, with the rest of the 30 or 40 pages given over to text pieces and black-and-white reprints of the Marvelman strips from the 50s and 60s that no one wants to read.  Eclipse did a much better job packaging these stories in the 80s and 90s, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Disney would opt to gouge the fans for as much as they possibly can.

The other hilarious aspect of this series is that Alan Moore apparently insisted his name not be used, and so the credit page inside the front cover reads "STORY - THE ORIGINAL WRITER," as if Moore were perhaps a mythical figure from before the dawn of recorded time.

Still, none of that detracts from the fact that this is one of the greatest superhero tales ever put to paper.  I'm genuinely excited that a new generation of comic fans will now get to experience the magic that Moore created thirty years or more ago.