PhantomStranger

Why they ever thought anyone wanted those Mick Anglo issues was cuckoo.

I'll be honest and admit that I would get excited to see Marvel introduce Miracleman into the official Marvel Universe.

brayzie

It just seems to me that their lessened the long term sales potential considering their aging targeted audience for the character. I myself stopped buying comics because of a multitude of reasons: rising cover price w/ less pages, issues that were late by as much as 6 months, bloated decompressed storylines, and so much more. I pretty much stopped buying comics right before DC's Flashpoint. Had they put out softcover TPB's right away and started production on Gaiman's run I probably would have been a customer but stretching out everything with the reprints of Anglo's stories, the variant covers, reprinting the entire run by the month...

And damn, $5.99 for individual issues? Was it in prestige format or something compared to their regular issues?

I guess I'm out of the loop with collections. I preferred it when collections were produced relatively cheaply for the masses instead of what it is now, coming out in a more expensive hardcover first for the collectors like they did with "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?"


I remember they had the MAX line a while back, showing nudity and that wasn't polybagged, and there was only explicit nudity, IIRC in that one particular issue of Miracleman. The violence in MM looked like stuff you'd see in their Ultimate line, like the time there was a full page panel of The Blob chewing on the entrails of The Wasp. Maybe it's mostly because of Disney.

I thought it was a decent idea to get audiences aware of the idea that this character was once an Atomic Age superhero who went MIA. Had they been in color I probably would have bought an issue or two, especially since they were based on the very fun Captain Marvel comics.

It felt like a bait and switch though, by having modern looking covers. It's a letdown to see a Marvelman Family comic with amazing Jae Lee art on the front, and then open up the comic to see some old fashioned black and white cartoons. They should have used the original Anglo covers to better advertise what the content was, and second, to reinforce that nostalgic/retro feel. Like what Big Bang Comics did or certain issues of Black Dynamite.

Red Hood

The polybags were done because of the explicit material. This is something that Marvel/Disney did on purpose so that kids didn't get a hold of these books and some idiot parent gets outraged.

Buying the rights was a huge pain in the ass for Marvel. Marvel first bought the rights to the Anglo stuff and then were able to finally get the rights to the Eclipse stuff after the rights to this version of Miracleman were straighten out after years of fight between Todd McFarlane, Neil Gaiman and the judicial system. This was a huge tangled mess which I hope gets put out in a documentary or oral history thing because it's pretty entertaining.


Funny thing is that even with the polybags, Marvel has edited some stuff that has outraged fans. For example, several of the issues have blacked out, removed and changed racial slurs. I don't understand at all why Marvel did this crap.

For the past 4 years, Marvel has been rising the power levels of their characters. At one point, the Avengers under Hickman's run, was more powerful than the Justice League. The Avengers had on the roster at the same time:
Hulk
Red Hulk
Thor
Captain Universe
Starbrand
Nightmask
Luke Cage
Hyperion
Manifold
Captain Marvel
Rogue
Scarlett Witch
Ex-Nihilo
Noh-Varr
Doctor Strange
Namor
Captain Brittain
Iron Man

Marvel apparently wants to play with power big time, so Miracleman wouldn't be to far fetched in the new Marvel Universe.

PhantomStranger

Marvel has always been a very liberal, PC company. Now that Disney owns them and the comics are mostly used as a cheap source of ideas for their movie division, I would expect rampant changes of this nature going forward. No company in the world is better at whitewashing their own history than Disney.

BGPu

At some point I remember reading that when Gaiman was originally writing Miracleman he intended to finish his trilogy with the "Dark Age" and then pass his ownership share on to another writer, but for the life of me I can't remember who that writer was supposed to be.

Maybe that's still part of the plan, albeit without the ownership transfer. (Please not Bendis.)

Or maybe Marvel just has him show up in Atlantis Attacks 2019 Redux, or whatever Event rehash they're planning next.

Josh-da-man

I remember hearing, and I have no idea how much veracity this has, but...

PhantomStranger

Wasn't that Grant Morrison? I think the idea was that another popular English writer would pick up the mantle for the series. Though it sounds more like a fantasy what-if scenario answered by Gaiman in some interview than an actual plan.

Josh-da-man

Oh, god, it's going to be Mark Millar, isn't it?

Or even worse, Warren Ellis.

The Valeyard

I thought I read about who was next up in "Kimota! the Miracleman Companion." I'll have to check when I get home tonight.


Side note about Morrison's story that appeared in the Miracleman Annual:

kodave

Alan Moore hates Grant Morrison. I'm too lazy to Google it but there's an interview out there where Moore absolutely demolishes Morrison and rips him to shreds, basically considering him a hack writer.

fujishig

Does Alan Moore like anyone, though?

Red Hood

Moore likes Gaiman. Other than that, I don't think he has ever given a compliment to anyone else.

Josh-da-man

He also tended to gush over Steve (no relation) Moore, and I believe he's still on good terms with Eddie Campbell.

Josh-da-man

https://slovobooks.wordpress.com/201...ore-interview/

It's long, but well worth a read. moore compares Morrison to "herpes" and a "medicinal leech."

It's also blazingly obvious that Moore can hold a grudge like an eighty year-old woman.

brayzie

Grant Morrison originally implied Alan Moore produced his best work by ripping off ideas from an older fiction book called "Super Folks". And when Morrison was at DC Comics he was slighting Alan Moore here and there, whether it be in regards to his stance on the Watchmen movie to the usage of rape in Moore's stories.

Alan Moore fired back in that interview.

majorjoe23

He's still on good term with Kevin O Neil as well.

The Valeyard

And now delayed.

Bleeding Cool

Josh-da-man

Well, Neil Gaiman's only had about twenty-five years to write the next chapter. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Sandman Overture). Marvel announced the reprints would begin two years ago; I would hope that would have given NG enough of a heads-up to at least finish writing The Silver Age.

Sadly, I really hope the delay/cancellation is due to creator indolence and not the Mouse objecting to something.

Josh-da-man

Since it's been about a year since Miracleman ceased publication, I was doing a web search on Miracleman tonight to see if there was any news and found this:

I hadn't heard this, even though the reddit post is from over six months ago. Whatever the issue is doesn't seem to have been resolved yet.

Apologies to Neil for thinking the delay was due to him goofing around and not getting it done. In a way I shouldn't be surprised that there was some kind of legal hang-up, but I would have thought they had everything locked down.

brayzie

I was wondering about this a while ago, if the Gaiman/Buckingham continuation had started yet.

It's a shame there's still legal issues. I don't know if the rest of the series can possibly live up to the hype and expectations after all this time.

PhantomStranger

I'd like to see them but it's been years and years now, the industry has largely moved on from Miracleman. Gaiman and Marvel should publish a mini-series about the drama behind the legal wranglings.

Red Hood

Spoiler about Miracleman



whotony

Wow

Red Hood



Josh-da-man

I don't give a fuck about Miracleman outside of Neil Gaiman finishing up "The Silver Age" and "The Dark Age."