Marvel & Marvel/MiracleMan

Fysh

It's emerged at Comic Con that Marvel think they have the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman, or at least the original 1950s stories. They claim to be working on getting the rights for the later series that Alan Moore & Neil Gaiman worked on, that have been tied up in legal hell for years.

Fanboy buzz aside, does anyone really care? I'm a bit curious, chiefly because of the infamy of #15 and the depiction of what a superhero battle would really look like (compared to the benign versions that Marvel & DC tend to show). But that means, at best, that I'm a potential audience for trade paperback collections of 24 issues (25 if they sort out getting the final issue of Gaiman's run illustrated).

What's the general feeling on this? Does anyone else care passionately about this, other than the eBay speculators who may now find it that bit harder to hawk their sets of original issues when the whole series is reprinted?

livingtargets

I`d be interested,but I won`t be crying if it doesn`t come to fruition.

In other words,if I saw it going cheapish in waterstones I might take a chance on it.

I would like to read it all, over the years I've managed topick up a few random issues but never the whole collection. I do know someone who has them all including the script of the last issue, he's a friend fo Gaiman's and was given it by him.

Given my reluctance to buy individual issues I would opt instead to wait for the TPB. Sub City in Galway is a bit of a joke at this stage price wise, nearly 30 euro to get any 6 parter when the hardback edition of all 6 can be got online for 12 or 13 euro as was the case with the Gunslinger.

niall mc cann

I'm genuinely excited about it. Miracleman was phenomonal under Moore, and Gaiman's stories were worthy successors, going into hiatus at a crucial, exciting moment where everything seemed about to change... It's been the ultimate cliffhanger, really.

The prospect of owning the collected stories is exciting, and the idea that Gaiman and Buckngham would get to actually finish their story (however remote) makes me shiver in anticipation. I mean that almost literally.:o

As I understand it, all Marvel own the rights to at the moment is the fifties character, which I have less interest in, though there does seem to be more of a prospect of (at the very least) getting the eighties/nineties stuff reprinted than there has been for quite a while. The idea that the story will ever be finished? I won't hold my breath, but i'd be first in the queue.

It's really a great story.

Fysh

I can understand the desire to see the end of the story, but it's still just one story. From what I've read about it I don't see there to be much further mileage to the character or the concept, and while I imagine it was groundbreaking at the time I don't see it being perceived as such by someone who's never heard of it before.

I understand that there are people who want to see the final issue of the Gaiman series, and get the collected editions, but I don't see those people being an audience for new stories with the character (whether incorporated into the Marvel universe or not).

niall mc cann

Fysh wrote: »

I can understand the desire to see the end of the story, but it's still just one story. From what I've read about it I don't see there to be much further mileage to the character or the concept, and while I imagine it was groundbreaking at the time I don't see it being perceived as such by someone who's never heard of it before.

In 1982 there probably didn't seem much further milage to the concept either. But there was at least 24 and a half excellent issues at that point, and Gaiman promises more. So i have no objection to Marvel running with the character, sticking him in the MU or whatever they want to do with the property.

Whether or not people who haven't heard of it perceive it as groundbreaking? Well, that's not the issue. Would someone who'd never heard of a seminal film like Psycho or Pulp Fiction perceive it as groundbreaking to watch now? I don't know, but it doesn't change the place of those works in cinema history. You can say either of them is "just a story" and you'd be absolutely right, but then, nobody's claiming otherwise. Like those films, Miracleman's a story I like and i'm excited at the prospect of seeing the end of it finally.

I understand that there are people who want to see the final issue of the Gaiman series, and get the collected editions, but I don't see those people being an audience for new stories with the character (whether incorporated into the Marvel universe or not).

Ultimately, it depends on the quality of those new stories. If they're good, I'll be there, if they're not... I've never picked up a bad run out of sentiment. I won't start for MM

Fysh

niall mc cann wrote: »

In 1982 there probably didn't seem much further milage to the concept either. But there was at least 24 and a half excellent issues at that point, and Gaiman promises more. So i have no objection to Marvel running with the character, sticking him in the MU or whatever they want to do with the property.

That's an interesting one actually, there are a lot of folks who've been unimpressed with Gaiman's more recent comics work so it would be interesting to see whether the follow-up would be with scripts that have already been written and ready to for years or genuinely "new" material.

niall mc cann wrote: »

Whether or not people who haven't heard of it perceive it as groundbreaking? Well, that's not the issue. Would someone who'd never heard of a seminal film like Psycho or Pulp Fiction perceive it as groundbreaking to watch now? I don't know, but it doesn't change the place of those works in cinema history. You can say either of them is "just a story" and you'd be absolutely right, but then, nobody's claiming otherwise. Like those films, Miracleman's a story I like and i'm excited at the prospect of seeing the end of it finally.

Fair point I suppose - to continue the film analogy I find that Monty Python's The Holy Grail is a good example of the issue at hand. Amongst other gags it features an opening sequence that for a good couple of minutes appears to be a completely different film, as well as a fake intermission near the end that lasts just long enough to appear convincing. It's easy to dismiss watching it on a DVD, but on its original cinematic release the impact would've been quite different, and that context is important to bear in mind.

Which, I suppose, leads us to the key question about Miracleman - while it did definitely push boundaries and have a significant impact on comics as a whole, will a wider audience care? Its place in comics history is deserved (and if anything emphasised by the legal situation, which arguably caused more fame than the original comics themselves) but will it become another Watchmen/V For Vendetta piece in terms of lasting popularity? (I'm not trying to suggest an answer for this, because I genuinely don't know and in terms of the material's age and "wider appeal" the same arguments could likely be made against Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention other comics of the time like Dark Knight Returns or Ronin).

niall mc cann wrote: »

Ultimately, it depends on the quality of those new stories. If they're good, I'll be there, if they're not... I've never picked up a bad run out of sentiment. I won't start for MM

That's a fair stance to take. I'm just unconvinced that there are good stories that can only be told with Miracleman; while there may be great stories that can be told with him it's not like they couldn't just as easily be told with other characters or settings. (Which, of course, can lead to the sort of thinking that Marvel & DC dislike where you wonder why you're supposed to believe that a story featuring Batman/Spider-man/Got-No-Legs-Boy is supposed to be inherently better than any other story...but that's a different conversation).

niall mc cann

Fysh wrote: »

That's an interesting one actually, there are a lot of folks who've been unimpressed with Gaiman's more recent comics work so it would be interesting to see whether the follow-up would be with scripts that have already been written and ready to for years or genuinely "new" material.

I hadn't thought of that. I suppose I'm one of the people that are a little bit disenchanted with Gaiman. Although i quite enjoyed Gaiman's recent Marvel work, it certainly wasn't without it's flaws. I really enjoyed 1602, there were definitely scenes in there that were quietly touching and reeked of Gaiman, but on the whole i felt the pacing let it down... Eternals was fine, but just a random chunk of an ongoing series with little resolution that left me with a bit of a "so what?" feeling; as the first six or eight issues of a new ongoing, I'd have been hooked, but to just end it with what felt like the story largely untold... It wasn't for me.

It would be interesting to see what any new MM work would be like... I can't imagine he'd have many more than the next one or two scripts written.

Fair point I suppose - to continue the film analogy I find that Monty Python's The Holy Grail is a good example of the issue at hand. Amongst other gags it features an opening sequence that for a good couple of minutes appears to be a completely different film, as well as a fake intermission near the end that lasts just long enough to appear convincing. It's easy to dismiss watching it on a DVD, but on its original cinematic release the impact would've been quite different, and that context is important to bear in mind.

It's a point, but I think it'd work fine as collected editions; the story's generally structured in fairly easily delineated arcs.

Which, I suppose, leads us to the key question about Miracleman - while it did definitely push boundaries and have a significant impact on comics as a whole, will a wider audience care? Its place in comics history is deserved (and if anything emphasised by the legal situation, which arguably caused more fame than the original comics themselves) but will it become another Watchmen/V For Vendetta piece in terms of lasting popularity? (I'm not trying to suggest an answer for this, because I genuinely don't know and in terms of the material's age and "wider appeal" the same arguments could likely be made against Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention other comics of the time like Dark Knight Returns or Ronin).

Well, I've seen plenty of people already proclaiming as loudly and as vehemently as they can that they absolutely don't care, and how dare Marvel lie to them by claiming they have a huge announcement when all they were announcing was some old character nobody cares about...:rolleyes:

You've heard them too, I'm sure. They're vocal parish.:D

There'll always be people who don't care. They wouldn't care about a previously unreleased Hitchcock film or a lost O'Casey play, either.

Certainly, I consider it up there with Watchmen and V (in fact I consider it comfortably superior to V). If you're a Moore fan it really is required reading... the idea of Superheroes as morally superior to mankind, as a kind of cuddly fascist idea is most clearly explored here, and this is his most openly, explicitly mythological book... in the first battle between MM and KM, the combatants are refferred to as dragons... when MM and MW finally decide they're going to abolish all existing societies on earth to create utopia, they find they have one last trial set for them by KM before they do, as he constructs a particularly repulsive vision of hell for them to journey through.

It's an extraordinary book. I've reread it many times, and it still holds all it's charms for me. It's more ornate, more poetic than V. Some people may not like that fussiness. It's rawer and less dense than Watchmen, so people may find those things disappointing. It's a really exciting read though, that can turn from highly adrenalised superhero fight scenes on the grandest scale to touching and poignant kitchen sink moments in the space of an issue. The characters are wonderfully drawn and situations are drawn in a beautiful, ornate but convincingly real way. I can't say anything about popularity, but it's already held it's quality exceptionally well; I'm not speaking from nostalgia here, I read it illegally (!) years after the legal troubles started. I'm a relative newcomer to all this.

That's a fair stance to take. I'm just unconvinced that there are good stories that can only be told with Miracleman; while there may be great stories that can be told with him it's not like they couldn't just as easily be told with other characters or settings. (Which, of course, can lead to the sort of thinking that Marvel & DC dislike where you wonder why you're supposed to believe that a story featuring Batman/Spider-man/Got-No-Legs-Boy is supposed to be inherently better than any other story...but that's a different conversation).

Sure, there's no stories that only work for MM. But while he's there, why not use him?

And really, the big appeal of this is getting to see the story finish.