Miracleman #1-25 + Related Titles & Extras

, originally Marvelman in the UK, but named as such for US trademark purposes in American reprints and story continuation, is a fictional comic book superhero created in 1954 by writer-artist Mick Anglo for publisher L. Miller & Son. Initially intended as a United Kingdom home-grown substitute for the American character Captain Marvel, the series ran until 1963. He was revived in 1982 in a dark, post-modern deconstructionist series by writer Alan Moore, with later contributions by Neil Gaiman.The character is notorious for the long, complex and expensive legal battle over various creative rights attached to it. Many have heard of, and have discussed, Miracleman; though I daresay few have actually read the series (I'm referring to the one I'm posting here) in its entirety. Over-all, an excellent and enduring deconstruction of the idea of the superhero. One of the finest comics stories ever written, and one that changed the comics industry, creating a paradigm for all future comic book writers to follow. In March 1982, a new British monthly black-and-white anthology comic was launched called . Until issue #21 (August 1984), it featured a new, darker version of , written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Garry Leach and Alan Davis, and lettered by Annie Parkhouse.The series stopped (incomplete) at issue #21. In August 1985, Eclipse began reprinting the stories from , colorized and re-sized. However, they were renamed and re-lettered throughout as , due to pressure from Marvel Comics. Issues #1-6 reprinted all the Warrior content, after which Eclipse began publishing all-new stories from Moore and new artist Chuck Beckum (aka Chuck Austen), soon replaced by Rick Veitch and then JohnTotleben. Moore wrote the series through issue #16. Many people thought the comic book would totally suffer when Moore left, but Neil Gaiman with issue #17 proved them wrong. Although not as outstanding as Moore's run, Gaiman writing put his own stamp on the character and developed it further by shifting focus away from the superheroes. He planned three six-issue books respectively titled, " The Golden Age", "The Silver Age" and "The Dark Age." Eclipse followed up "The Golden Age" by publishing the standalone, three-issue mini-series , written and illustrated by a variety of other creators, with framing pages by Gaiman and Buckingham. These stories did not form part of the main narrative, but instead further fleshed out the world of "The Golden Age". The print runs on Miracleman started at just over 20,000 for issue #1 but, by issue #11, that had halved. Miracleman #15 is the most famous of the issues featuring the death of Kid Miracleman but also rare due to a low print run of just over 7,000. Issue #21 is rarer still with a print run under 7,000 but the rarest of all is #24 with a print run of only 6,400. Sadly Eclipse Comics collapsed, which saw being the last issue to see print (#25 was actually written and inked but never saw the light of day). Over the years that followed, a long and complex dispute took place over the ownership rights of the character with Todd McFarlane, Neil Gaiman and others claiming some form of full or partial ownership of the character. This rights conflict had prevented the reprint and distribution of any of the Miracleman stories, making the critically acclaimed work extremely difficult to find. However, at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel through editor-in-chief Joe Quesada announced it had purchased the rights to Marvelman although it is unclear whether they will be able to use the MM trademark symbol. Aside from the aforementioned miniseries (1991), also included in this compilation are two Warpsmiths books, "Cold War, Cold Warrior" and "Ghost Dance." There is also the (1985) and the famous (1984) as well as 3 pages of a comic book entitled . I packed issues #1-12 then #13-25 (at least the pages that have been made available as regards issue #25) into two separate RAR archives, and the remaining eight other related titles and extras mentioned in a third RAR archive.


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