Originally posted by Whirlysplatt
Aquaman might do ok against that miracleman
In March 1982, a new British monthly black and white comic was launched called Warrior. From the first issue until issue #21, it featured a new, darker version of Marvelman, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Garry Leach and Alan Davis. Moore had been fascinated by the notion of a grown up Micky Moran, unable to remember the magic word, and this was the Moran presented in the first issue; married, plagued by migraines, having dreams of flying, and unable to remember the word that had such significance in his dreams. In his initial run of "Miracleman" stories Moore touches on many themes of his later work including the superhero as a source of terror, the sympathetic villain and exploding the mythology of an established fictional character.
Moran is working as a freelance reporter when he gets caught up in a terrorist raid on an atomic research centre, eventually remembering the word Kimota 'Marvelman' is reborn and saves the day. The adult Moran gradually remembers his early life as a superhero but his wife Liz finds the descriptions of the adventures ridiculous. In the process Marvelman makes love to Liz Moran and she becomes pregnant. Moran discovers that Kid Miracleman not only survived, but lived on with his superpowers intact only to eventually become a murderous psychopath. After a brutal confrontation Kid Marvelman says his magic word by mistake and reverts to his alter-ego Johnny Bates.
With the aid of a renegade British Secret Service agent Marvelman and after a short fight with a new British superhero called "Big Ben," he makes his way to a top secret military bunker. There he discovers remains of an alien spacecraft and two human skeletons fused together. Marvelman views a file that reveals his entire experience as a superhero was a simulation as part of a military research project attempting to enhance the human body with alien technology. Moran and the other subjects had been kept unconscious, their minds fed with stories and villains plucked from comic books by the researchers, for fear of what they could do if they awoke. When the project was terminated, so were Marvelman and his two sidekicks: in a final, real adventure they were sent into a trap where a nuclear device was meant to annihilate them. Moran survived, his memory erased, and Young Miracleman died.
The series stopped (but was not complete) in issue #21 of Warrior, just after Moran meets his arch-nemesis Dr Gargunza (based on Dr. Sivana, but now the scientist behind the experiment that created Marvelman). Now it was revealed that Gargunza after working as a geneticist for the Nazis had been recruited by the British after World War II. Unable to keep pace with the US and Soviet nuclear arms race the British had backed Gargunza to use genetics to develop a new superweapon. By coincidence an alien spacecraft crashed in the UK in 1947 and Gargunza was able to reverse engineer enough technology to create the first Miraclemen. After the cancellation of the project Gargunza escapes to South America where he develops bio-technology weapons such as 'Marvel-dog'. It is revealed that Gargunza has a deeper purpose as after the death of his mother he has a mortality complex and has designed it so that the child of Marvelman will act as the host of his own consciousness. After a hiatus of some years, it was reprinted in colour (beginning at issue #6) by an American publisher, Eclipse Comics, and the series carried to a conclusion, with art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and "Chuck Beckum" (the pseudonym of Chuck Austen). For this printing, to avoid a trademark conflict with Marvel Comics, Marvelman became "Miracleman". Warrior was printed on a larger paper dimension, thus giving the artwork a very detailed effect when it was resized to suit the books published by Eclipse Comics. Many readers, unaware that Miracleman was a British comic published years ago, were confused with the sudden "decline" in quality when Moore continued his story with Beckum/Austen's artwork.
As dark as the stories were during the Warrior years, Miracleman's tale became progressively darker when Moore went back to writing it again. Moran's daughter was born (with explicit artwork in the ninth issue), the aliens behind the technology came to Earth, and Kid Miracleman returns with disastrous results. Moore's run ended with a controversial view on "What Superman should have done with his powers" - making the world a better place through totalitarian rule.
Miracleman: The Neil Gaiman years
Writer Neil Gaiman developed the series further in the 1990s, working with artist Mark Buckingham. He planned three books, consisting of six issues each; they would be titled The Golden Age, The Silver Age and The Dark Age.
The first part Miracleman: The Golden Age showed the world some years later: a utopia gradually being transformed by alien technologies, and benignly ruled by Miracleman and other parahumans, though he has nagging doubts about whether he has done the right thing by taking power.
Eclipse followed up The Golden Age by publishing the standalone, three-issue mini-series Miracleman: Apocrypha, 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.
Two issues of The Silver Age appeared, but issue #24 was the last to see print. Gaiman has reported that #25 was essentially finished, but the shutdown of Eclipse prevented its publication.
The future of Miracleman
Following the bankruptcy of Eclipse, ownership and publishing rights to Miracleman are unclear, with some degree of ownership currently claimed by various parties, including Dez Skinn (publisher of Warrior), Todd McFarlane (who purchased Eclipse's assets), Gaiman and Buckingham, and even Mick Anglo. (Moore had transferred his share of the rights to Gaiman, who shared them with Buckingham. Davis sold his share to Eclipse.) A key question is whether certain transfers of ownership were legally sound and/or whether rights reverted to earlier owners at some point.
In 2001, McFarlane used the Miracleman character in a number of issues in his comic Hellspawn, subtly by having a character named Michael Moran making phone calls and with appearances of the phrase Kimota. He was scheduled to appear in full Miracleman form in the twelfth issue, but Gaiman intervened and the character's reappearance was dropped, although the cover artwork by Ashley Wood was leaked to the Internet.
Gaiman has established a corporation called Marvels & Miracles LLC which is acting to settle these questions, with the goal of publishing the existing material and then permitting Gaiman to finish the series. In 2002, Gaiman filed a lawsuit against Todd McFarlane about supporting characters Gaiman had created for McFarlane's Spawn, which tangentially touched on the rights to Miracleman, but the court's ruling did not address ownership of that material.
In 2004, Gaiman wrote for Marvel Comics a miniseries called 1602, the profits for which went to the Marvels & Miracles LLC corporation. It is unconfirmed if Marvel did agree to publish Miracleman, but there were rumours that Gaiman had struck a deal to write a few more books through this label, with Moran's name reverted to the original Marvelman.
Problem is miracle mans interesting
and not really about vs or battles, except the most famous and brutal in adult comics in Miracleman 15
I read that a few hours ago, thats why i made the threads. Supreme power seems to borrow heavily from it.
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. (only joking).