Marvel Comics Acquires MARVELMAN!

BIG NEWS for us COMICS GEEKS!!!
... Marvel Comics has acquired the publishing rights to Marvelman from original creator Mick Anglo. (Hey Marvel, please please please please please don't fuck this up!!!)

A previous legal battle between acclaimed author Neil Gaiman and fecal sample Todd McFarlane determined that Gaiman's legal right to the revamped version of the character superceded T. McDouchebag's, though that didn't stop ol' Turd McFeces from issuing a statue + who knows what other dreck thru his line of "toys" based mostly on his "comics" like Spawn (yep... rhymes with yawn for good reason...).

Marvelman was originally created back in the 1940s as basically a British ripoff of Captain Marvel (y'know... Shazam!) + went away (except for reprints) for a loooong time... Micky Moran was a reporter who could utter a magic word, "Kimota!" and transform into the superhuman Marvelman. He even ended up with a stable of 'family' characters, just like ol' Cap'n Marvel.

Back in the 1980s, Eclipse Comics obtained the rights to the Alan Moore-penned Marvelman stories from Warrior magazine, as well as more stories to wrap up the then-current storyline + move forward from there... Moore's story was one of the first real revisionist superhero stories, treating the problems of the characters + their world as realistically as possible. Should've been an instant hit, right? Wrong... The first problem that arose was that Marvel Comics decided that there would be a copyright issue with a comic called Marvelman published by an independent comics company... the character was quickly rebranded as Miracleman, and Alan Moore publicly gave Marvel the finger for this asininity (real word? who cares?), announcing that he would never work for them due to the incident.

Eclipse published Moore's original storyline + then continued publishing more Moore-written stories, til Moore decided he was done with the character. After depicting the ground-breaking superhero battle that culminates in a devastated, corpse-filled London, Moore handed the series, character, and rights to the property to Neil Gaiman, who took over the writing just as Eclipse Comics began to have some serious cashflow issues... the books quickly became known for being incredible. And incredibly late. And then Eclipse went under, leaving the character mired in mountains of legal poopy... All of the issues + collected editions are looooong out-of-print and some of the most sought-after of modern comics.

So, what's gonna happen with the character? Gaiman had at one time commented that he still had stories to tell in the Miracleverse + there's even been some artwork seen from an unpublished Eclipse-era issue... Neil doesn't have a real problem with Marvel; he's written some stuff for them (not his best work, but still better than anything McFarlane has ever produced). So, will Neil write new Marvelman (gotta use the name again, right?) for Marvel? Hope so!

Will Marvel fuck everything up + try to assimilate the character into their one great + interesting, now completely fuckt Marvel Universe? Hope not (but prob'ly...)!

Will Alan Moore have any say in the disposition of his work on the character? Will the Alan Moore-era issues be reprinted by Marvel? Will Alan sue 'em? Cast a spell on 'em (he IS a practicing magicker, y'know)? Can Alan Moore prevent their use? Can he use this situation to become richer than a five-balled cat?

Should be a very interesting resolution to one of modern comics' most bullshit-ridden backstories, and hopefully the best work of Moore's pre-Swamp Thing period will be back in print before too much longer! (Artwork included is from the cover + interior of Miracleman #15, and is by John Totleben, who also worked with Moore on the groundbreaking Swamp Thing series. (...oh. I almost forgot... FUCK MARVEL + DISNEY!!!)