Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Mark Buckingham, marvel, marvelman, miracleman, neil gaiman

New Neil Gaiman & Mark Buckingham Miracleman In September/October

Published Mon, 13 Jun 2022 11:08:11 -0500

They promised it years ago. They teased it in Timeless #1. And now, for September, Marvel Comics has announced a brace of Miracleman variant covers across Marvel titles for September 2022. This suggests the long-promised The Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham will be republished by Marvel, continued and concluded through the end of 2022 and into 2023. And then, maybe, you never know, the long-planned conclusion, Miracleman: The Dark Age. Thirty years on, it is actually happening…

This year, Marvel Comics will honor the 40th anniversary of Miracleman's modern era with a transformative year for the iconic super hero. In addition to announcements for upcoming new collections of his groundbreaking stories, fans witnessed a monumental development in last year's TIMELESS #1: the herald of Miracleman's grand return! In anticipation of his upcoming era, a new collection of variant covers will show Miracleman fighting alongside some of Marvel's greatest heroes for the very first time. Crafted by some of the industry's finest artists including Peach Momoko, Pepe Larraz, John Cassaday, Mark Bagley, Terry Dodson, Jim Cheung, Mark Buckingham, and Salvador Larocca, this breathtaking artwork serves as an exciting tease of Miracleman's eagerly anticipated upcoming new adventures!

On Sale 9/7

CAPTAIN AMERICA: SENTINEL OF LIBERTY #4 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by MARK BAGLEY

MOON KNIGHT #15 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by DECLAN SHALVEY

WOLVERINE #25 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by JOHN CASSADAY

On Sale 9/14

X-FORCE #32 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by PEACH MOMOKO

On Sale 9/21

CAPTAIN AMERICA: SYMBOL OF TRUTH #5 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by SALVADOR LARROCA

On Sale 9/28

MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN #42 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by BRIAN STELFREEZE

SHANG-CHI AND THE TEN RINGS #3 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by PEPE LARRAZ

X-MEN #15 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by TERRY DODSON & RACHEL DODSON

On Sale October

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #11 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by PATRICK GLEASON

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #12 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by GABRIELE DELL'OTTO

AVENGERS #61 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by HUMBERTO RAMOS

BLACK PANTHER #10 TBD

CAPTAIN MARVEL #42 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by JAMIE McKELVIE

CARNAGE #7 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by LEINIL FRANCIS YU

DAREDEVIL #4 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by MARCO CHECCHETTO

FANTASTIC FOUR #48 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by MARK BUCKINGHAM

GENIS-VELL: CAPTAIN MARVEL #4 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by JIM CHEUNG

HULK #11 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by MAHMUD ASRAR

IMMORTAL X-MEN #7 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by SARA PICHELLI

IRON MAN #24 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by KUBERT

SHE-HULK #7 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by JEN BARTEL

STRANGE #7 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by ALAN DAVIS

THOR #29 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by KAARE ANDREWS

VENOM #12 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by RYAN STEGMAN

On Sale November

GHOST RIDER #8 MIRACLEMAN VARIANT COVER by BRYAN HITCH

Originally known as Marvelman, this was a superhero comic book created by Mick Anglo for publisher L. Miller & Son in the UK in 1954, when they ran out of Captain Marvel strips to publish, when DC Comics won their legal case against Fawcett over trademark similarities to Superman. The series ran until 1963 and was revived by Dez Skinn's Warrior Magazine from Quality Communications in 1982, written by Alan Moore and initially drawn by Garry Leach and then Alan Davis. That story was then reprinted and continued by Eclipse Comics in the USA, renamed Miracleman, with artists Chuck Austen, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, then continued further past its conclusion by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham until Eclipse folded. What rights were in dispute and Todd McFarlane, who bought the assets of Eclipse, planned to publish comic books, which ended up in the courts. Marvel Comics was meant to have bought all possible rights, reprinted the previously published stories as well as classic stories from the fifties. Now, thirteen years after that purchase, Marvel will finally be finishing the story that began forty years ago.

Marvelman was originally a young reporter named Micky Moran who encounters an astrophysicist, who gives him superpowers based on atomic energy instead of magic. To transform into Marvelman, he speaks the word "Kimota", and was later joined by Dicky Dauntless, a teenage messenger boy who became Young Marvelman, and young Johnny Bates, who became Kid Marvelman; both of their magic words were "Marvelman". This was clearly a rewritten Captain Marvel, but one of science.

In the first issue of Warrior Magazine, Michael Moran is married, plagued by migraines, having dreams of flying, and unable to remember a word. The earlier Marvelman stories were revealed to have been a fiction created by Dr Garguanza, to explain to Mike Moran why he had gained superpowers, rather than the genetic experimentation inspired by alien contact. Eventually, the alien contact becomes the central plot of the series, after superhero battles of such a destructive nature that had never been seen in such stories before, and the world is remade as a result of such contact.

In August 1985, Eclipse began reprinting the stories from Warrior, coloured, and re-sized. Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham picked up the series at #17, which was published in June 1990. Three volumes were planned, consisting of six issues each: The Golden Age, The Silver Age and The Dark Age. The Golden Age showed the world some years later: a utopia gradually being transformed by alien technologies, and benignly ruled by Moran and other parahumans, though he has nagging doubts about whether he has done the right thing by taking power. Gaiman's focus in The Golden Age is less on the heroes themselves than the people who live in this new world, including a lonely man who becomes one of Miraclewoman's lovers, a former spy and several duplicates of Andy Warhol. Two issues of The Silver Age appeared, that saw Young Miracleman brought back to life, but Eclipse went bankrupt in 1994, ceasing publication with issue #24. Issue #25 was completed but never published.

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