Miracle Man

In the 1980s Dez Skinn thought it would be a good idea to revive the old L. Miller/Mick Anglo character “Marvelman”. Alan Moore along with Garry Leach and Alan Davis produced some well-received strips in “Warrior” that updated the character without completely discarding the more light-hearted 1950s stories (which now became “dreams” fed to the subconscious mind of the unconscious Michael Moran).

But Dez had opened a can of worms about who actually owned the trademark of “Marvelman” that would rumble on for the next 25 years. It’s so complicated you could write a book about it. George Khoury did, and inevitably had to title it “Kimota” !!

So when it was decided to reprint the “Warrior” pages in Eclipse Comics in the States, to “avoid problems” the character’s name was changed to “Miracleman”. Perhaps they shouldn’t have used that name either! There was already a “Miracle Man” courtesy of Top Sellers/Thorpe and Porter. Circa 1965 there were 13 issues published in the UK which were slightly modified versions of Mick Anglo’s late 1950s Spanish “Super Hombre”. But wasn’t “Super Hombre” already trademarked by DC Comics?? (See one of my earlier posts…gosh, my brain hurts….)

Miracle Man 09 Thorpe and Porter/Top sellers 1965?

Today the american Marvel Comics/Disney own the rights to “Marvelman” having purchased them in 2010 from Mick Anglo (1916-2011) who had owned them all along. Who owns the rights to “Miracle Man” now though??? Marvel Comics are due to reprint the Warrior/Eclipse “Miracleman” material in the new year. Presumably then Marvel/Disney have purchased the rights to the Eclipse material from either Neil Gaiman or Todd McFarland or whoever won their protracted court battle. I hope the “new” reprints will be in colour and I hope they will restore the character back to his original name.