http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j241/Badabing_2006/Untitled-Scanned-06-15.jpg
Someone is going to cry over this.
Originally posted by Galan007
Is it? 😕All I know is how good that series is.
Get ready for a big 'un......
The legal ownership of Miracleman is a complicated story, which stems from the character's beginnings.L. Miller & Son was a UK publisher of dozens of comic titles. Len Miller reprinted material from many US publishers and European sources as well as creating his own original British comics. One of Miller's main source of income came from reprints of comic stories featuring Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family, originally created by Fawcett Publications in America. However, the company one day found itself facing the cancellation of two popular titles (Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr.) due to the conclusion of a long-running legal battle between Fawcett and National Periodicals (the parent company of DC Comics). National maintained that Fawcett's Captain Marvel infringed the copyright of National's Superman character (see National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications for further details). Faced with reduced sales in the 1950s, Fawcett Publications eventually capitulated and this decision meant that Captain Marvel would no longer be published.
Faced with the sudden loss of their star feature, L. Miller & Son, Ltd. turned to Mick Anglo to come up with a replacement character that, while obstensibly a new creation, mimicked enough core elements of Captain Marvel to retain the interest of readers who had enjoyed the reprints. Anglo created Marvelman, which proved successful enough to keep the Marvelman/Young Marvelman titles going. In 1959, Britain allowed the importation of "real" American comics for the first time since 1939. American publishers were quick to respond with "pence price" editions of popular titles. Soon, with new American four-color silver-age comics circulating in the United Kingdom, the demand for British produced black and white reprints began to shrink. Miller, in an effort to save money, cancelled Marvelman Family and turned both Marvelman and Young Marvelman into reprint books in 1959. This move, however, was not enough to save the titles, both of which struggled on but were finally cancelled in 1963. Despite experimenting with format and a variety of material, L. Miller & Son Ltd. ceased comic book publication in 1966. The physical asbestos printing plates from which Miller had produced their comics, and presumably the rights to the comics as well, were sold to Alan Class, Ltd. Class, for his part, was interested primarily in horror and science fiction stories and reprinted few of the original Miller creations. Class was still using some of the Miller printing plates as recently as the late 1990s.
In 1960, a disgruntled Mick Anglo recycled some of his Marvelman stories as Captain Miracle which appeared briefly under his Anglo Comics imprint which folded in 1961. Anglo always claimed ownership of Marvelman although creator's rights were almost unheard of in the work-for-hire British comics industry of the 1950s and 1960s.[1]
[edit] Warrior
The infamous Marvelman Special, cover art by Mick Austin.In 1982 when Warrior reintroduced Marvelman as its flagship title, the rights to the character were allegedly held in a four-way split between Warrior editor Dez Skinn, writer Alan Moore and artist Garry Leach, who owned 30% each, and the originating publisher, Quality Communications, which owned 10%.
However, in subsequent years there arose confusion as to how Skinn had gained the rights to Marvelman, or even if he actually held them. It is unlikely that the 1960s deal between Miller and Class was known in the 1980s. Several conflicting justifications were proposed:
Skinn thought the rights were in the public domain.
He had purchased outright the rights from Marvelman creator Mick Anglo.
After publishing had already begun, he had offered some form of retroactive deal to Anglo.
He just took the character, assuming there would be no interest in an obscure property owned by a dead company. (Skinn eventually said in Kimota! that this last justification was the case).
As far as is known, Moore and Leach thought the second situation to be the case at the time and that their ownership was legitimate. So when Leach left the strip and was replaced by Alan Davis, Moore, Skinn and Leach transferred part of their ownership of the character to Davis — with Skinn claiming 10% and Moore, Davis and Leach, 30% each. Moore and Leach continued to own the aspects of work they created. Further, Skinn says that when Anglo visited Quality's office to view the new work, he agreed to being paid only if his old work was reprinted, should the revision prove successful. This happened, and Anglo was paid against the Marvelman Special published in 1983. Skinn also comments that he never directly claimed to have bought the rights from Anglo, who may not even have held them to begin with, given his role as an editorial packager for L Miller & Son.To further complicate things, Marvel Comics, who objected to a competitor producing anything with "Marvel" in the title, threatened legal action in 1983. Even the rights to the alternate name for the character were murky, as Moore and Davis had already used the Miracleman name for a single-panel cameo appearance of a Marvelman duplicate in their run on Marvel UK's Captain Britain. With the creative team unable to produce a united front due to a series of differences between Moore and Davis, the strip saw its last appearance in Warrior issue 21, though Skinn did print letters he received from Marvel lawyers in Warrior's final two issues.
[edit] Eclipse Comics and bankruptcy
In 1985 Eclipse Comics bought the rights from Skinn and started reprinting Marvelman, retitling it Miracleman to placate Marvel Comics. Davis, stating that he wanted no more to do with Moore or the situation, gave his rights to Leach.So for much of the initial 16 issues on Miracleman, Eclipse believed they owned the rights to publish the character. When Moore completed his story with issue 16 and Eclipse announced they wished to continue publishing, Moore gave his 30% share to writer Neil Gaiman, who would be taking over the title, and Gaiman divided them between himself and artist Mark Buckingham.
The unpublished cover to Hellspawn #13 which would have been Miracleman's return.Unfortunately, Eclipse went bankrupt in 1994. The last published Miracleman issue was #24; issue 25 was more or less completed[1] but was never printed. Also, Gaiman had approved a spin off series called Miracleman: Triumphant which was written by Fred Burke and drawn by Mike Deodato Jr. The first issue of Miracleman: Triumphant was completed and ready for printing, and the second was scripted, but like Miracleman #25 the two issues would remain in publishing limbo after the collapse of Eclipse.
[edit] Todd McFarlane vs. Neil Gaiman
In 1996, Todd McFarlane purchased Eclipse's creative assets for a total of $40,000. It has been suggested that McFarlane was mainly interested in the Miracleman rights; the rest of Eclipse's characters and properties were incidental, though he did not expect to keep them idle. McFarlane's plan was to reintroduce Eclipse's characters through two new Image Comics anthology titles, Todd McFarlane's Twisted Tales and Todd McFarlane's Alien Worlds. However, these were never printed and to date the only Eclipse character to appear again has been The Heap in McFarlane's Spawn title.McFarlane clearly had plans for Miracleman, but had neglected to consult Neil Gaiman, the last person to have held part of the rights. In 1993, Gaiman had created the characters Angela and Medieval Spawn for McFarlane. Gaiman claimed that he had created them with the understanding that he would retain creative ownership of them, an ownership which McFarlane now disputed. His plans stymied, in 1997 McFarlane reached a supposed verbal agreement (and according to Gaiman, a written one as well) with Gaiman in which Gaiman would cede his half-ownership of Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn in exchange for which McFarlane would trade his rights to Miracleman. A subsequent letter from McFarlane to Gaiman would void this deal, if it ever legally existed, as McFarlane claimed that he already owned the two characters and pointed to a copyright notice on Spawn Issue 7 and cited them as the product of work-for-hire. He also stopped paying Gaiman royalties around this time for the action-figures and other items featuring the characters that were still in print. This was another of the direct causes for the legal action. At the time, no one was aware that the rights for Miracleman were not included in the purchase of most of Eclipse Comics' assets and both men believed that McFarlane held a large stake in Miracleman. That was a fact that would not become clear until after the lawsuit concluded. It turned out that McFarlane did, however, own two trademarks for Miracleman logos. Gaiman and Marvels and Miracles, LLC would take action to try to block him from being able to reregister these trademarks.
In 2001, McFarlane had introduced Mike Moran (Miracleman's alter ego) in Hellspawn issue 8, with the alleged intention of returning Miracleman himself in Hellspawn issue 13. This never came to pass as the lawsuit was filed before the book was ready for print. McFarlane also had included Miracleman in his section of what was then the long-delayed Image 10th Anniversary Book, known today as the Image Hardcover. He also released a Miracleman cold-cast statue as well as a 4" scale action figure that was partnered with Spawn in a San Diego Comicon exclusive two-pack. It had been McFarlane's intention to use the character in his core title. Since the Hardcover story became a direct tie-in to the events of Spawn 150 and beyond, Miracleman was retconned into a mysterious new character known as the Man of Miracles. His appearance as Miracleman is explained by Man of Miracles ability to shape-shift and the fact that people see him as they wish to see him at the time.
Man of Miracles was released in action-figure form in Spawn Series 29, wearing a modified Miracleman costume and bearing one McFarlane's two trademarked logos. This has created many fan-fueled rumors.
[edit] Marvels and Miracles LLC
To aid him with the legal battle against McFarlane, Gaiman formed Marvels and Miracles LLC, a company whose goal was to clear up the ownership of Miracleman once and for all.[2] In 2002 Gaiman sued McFarlane over his unauthorized use of Miracleman, prompting McFarlane to countersue in turn. McFarlane lost the suit, and the following appeal. The case was seen as one of the single most important events in the comic industry on the issue of creator's rights. Unfortunately, it only cleared up the confusion over the characters Gaiman had created for McFarlane. The issue of Miracleman was thrown out in both the initial lawsuit and the appeal before the 7th District Court and there have been no further legal papers filed on the subject.Gaiman had been dropping hints that should he successfully win full ownership of Miracleman from McFarlane that the name would revert back to Marvelman, the character would see a return to publication through Marvel Comics, and that Marvel would also reprint all past material. In 2002 Gaiman wrote the 1602 series for Marvel. Gaiman's profits from this series went to Marvels and Miracles LLC to aid his legal fight over Miracleman.[3] Amusingly, Gaiman's dedication in the collected editions of 1602 reads, "For Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, with infinite admiration. For Jonathan and Lenny, comics fiends. And, of course, to Todd, for making it necessary." Below, letterer Todd Klein thanks Gaiman for keeping him in mind, presumably to suggest that he, not McFarlane, is the beneficiary of Gaiman's remark, marking perhaps the only time a comic book letterer has submitted a dedication.
In late 2004 the A1 Sketchbook was released by Atomeka Press, in part including art from original Miracleman artist Garry Leach. It contained four Miracleman-related pin-ups (although the pin-ups were not labelled as Miracleman, likely to avoid further legal entanglements). A variant of the sketchbook was also produced, with a "Miracleman" front cover and "Kid Miracleman" back cover by Leach.
[edit] The future
The character's future remains uncertain as of 2007, due to further complications which have come to light since the end of Gaiman's case against McFarlane.Dez Skinn has claimed to possess written evidence that all shares of the character which Eclipse Comics purchased, reverted back to their original creators after Miracleman had not been published for a number of years.
Mick Anglo has claimed that the rights never left him and he has always owned the character.
Alan Davis claims he owns the copyright of the art he produced for the character and also claims to have documentation to prove this. But this is common for all creators on the series — they own the rights to their work.
It has become unclear exactly what happened to all of the assets of L. Miller & Son when they ceased publishing in 1966, possibly calling into question the claims of everyone concerned in the fight for the rights to Marvelman. Although subject to rumour and speculation, the nature and details of any transfer of property between Len Miller and Alan Class are unknown.
Further, any reprint would have to involve Garry Leach, as his Warpsmith characters, which appear in the stories, were only "loaned" to Eclipse for their Miracleman run. Warpsmith solo stories have featured in A1, published by Atomeka Press.In the December 5th 2005 edition of Rich Johnston's column, It was revealed that a character called The Man Of Miracles will feature in Spawn #150.[4]. The character was errantly rumored to be a retcon of Cogliostro, a character Neil Gaiman originally created for McFarlane's Spawn series. Johnston's assertion was rebuffed on the Alan Moore Fansite:
… David Hine, the current Spawn writer, told me that he doesn't intend to have any character in Spawn whose ownership is currently contested and that as far as he is concerned, the character Man Of Miracles is not Miracleman and bears no resemblance to the character. He has a clear idea of who the character is, which will be made clear as the book progresses. And I know both he and his friend Mark Buckingham had discussed this amicably … [cite this quote]
An action figure of Man of Miracles was produced by McFarlane in Spawn Series 29.[5]
