The Marvelous Miracleman! Part 10 of the Blog history of the many Captain Marvels!

     
When last we left our Hero, Marvelman,

Skinn shopped around his package of characters to various US comic book companies, but the name "Marvelman" and the letters from Marvel's attorneys kept getting in the way of closing a deal. It was decided to change the hero's name, and Alan Moore came up with "Miracleman," a name he had used before. Under this name, the property was sold to Eclipse Comics in September 1984, and the first issue of Miracleman appeared with a cover date of August 1985.

The series began by reprinting all that had appeared in Warrior, through issue #7, and (after complicated contractual dealings) Alan Moore picked up the story with #8. However, a flood destroyed the all-new art for that issue, so it became a fill-in issue with reprints of old L. Miller and Son-era stories. #9  began the all-new material, featuring a graphic, anatomically accurate telling of the birthing of the child of Miracleman by Mike Moran's wife.

This was highly controversial, as were future issues that wrapped up the Kid Marvelman conflict in issue #15. In that issue the entire city of London was razed to the ground in the climactic battle between hero and villain, with the inevitable and terrible deaths of thousands of civilians. A horrifying two-page spread by artist John Totleben showed the results of unfettered superpowers in battle in a realistic world.

Alan Moore finished his story arc and left the title on issue #16, which finally came out in 1989. replaced by Neil Gaiman (who got some share of the character rights in the deal). The stories continued into a series of stories world run by Marvelman as a benevolent super-powered dictator called the "Age of Miracles" (ironic, seeing as how this was a play on the "replacement" name for the hero). Eventually, however, the book was cancelled and for different reasons, Eclipse Comics went under.

Comics writer/artist Todd McFarland, creator of "Spawn," bought all the rights and properties of Eclipse Comic at auction , and believed the rights to Miracleman were included. But the complicated rights-sharing agreement established between Dez Skinn and the various writers and artists of the character was apparently still in play. Lengthy wrangling between the players involved ensued, which can be tracked by their various statements in interviews over the years.

Somewhere in there L. Miller and Son dissolved itself, with no documentation assigning the rights to Marvelman to anyone.

Eventually, Marvel Comics came into the picture. To make a very long and complicated story short, they paid Mick Anglo, the creator of the original Marvelman, ostensibly for the rights to the character, came to some sort of agreement with any other parties that may have had rights claims to the revived version of him, and most all the interested parties now accept that Marvel Comics owns both versions of Marvelman/Miracleman.

Starting in 2010, Marvel Comics began reprinting the original L. Miller and Son Marvelman, Young Marvelman, and Marvelman family stories, but stopped after a few albums  They have also completely reprinted all the "Miracleman" material available, including some unpublished material from the end of the run.

Much of the information in this post was drawn from the website and book "The Poisoned Chalice" by Pádraig Ó Méalóid