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Check it out. I try to summarize the Marvelman history in only two paragraphs. Does it make sense? Who knows!!

It was announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2009 that Marvel has purchased the rights to Marvelman aka Miracleman . I’m going to admit that until recently, I had know idea what that meant. All that came to mind when I thought about Miracleman were the names Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarland and nothing else. Browsing my way through the web and certain wikis, I’ve learned how Miracleman is something of an interesting piece of comic history. The best part is that it begins and ends with Mick Anglo.

In 1954 Mick Anglo was hired by a U.K. Publishing company to produce a character similar to Captain Marvel but without the red tights or gold cape. Mick created the character “Marvelman” and it was a success. After some time the publishing company could not compete with imported U.S. Comics and so the company folded, as did the character. Mick reprinted a few of his stories with limited success. Fast forward to 1982 and Marvelman was going to be reprinted along with new stories being developed for the comics anthology “Warrior”, edited by Dez Skinn. The rights to the characters were divided up among 4 parties: Dez Skinn- editor, Alan Moore - writer, Gary Leach - artist, and the originating publisher Quality Comics. Here’s where it starts to go bad. The rights for the character were never up for grabs. As far as Anglo knew he owned the character, but Skinn was assuming no one would remember a lost character from a defunct company.

Skinn’s farce snowballed into a large dispute about who owned the ‘rights’ of the character and the stories featuring the character. Neil Gaimann was involved because he wanted the rights to default back to Anglo, while Todd McFarland assumed he had bought the rights when he bought the company that had purchased the rights from Skinn. It was big mess, but in the end Mick was the magic behind the character. He was one of the few creators in his time to maintain ownership of the work he created. For Marvel Comics to purchase the rights to the character all they had to do was go and speak to the owner of Marvelman, Anglo.

Certainly this story is more interesting when you read more of the details behind it. I’ve done a quick version of the history of the character and the issues surrounding it. I fail to capture the impact the character has had in the industry, due to ownership rights. This character is unique. Now that Marvel has purchased the rights to the character I assume we’ll be seeing some of those original stories being reprinted. I need to get those and finally get a to know Marvelman like Anglo had intended.