Marvelman – Some Time and Thought Later

Having had a few hours to think about that whole Marvelman thing, a few points drift to the surface of my thoughts:

1. We know they’ve bought the character, but we don’t know yet if they got the rights to Alan Moore’s and Neil Gaiman’s run on the series. Without these stories, Marvelman’s nothing but a generic Golden Age throwback. There are a bunch of creator-owned elements in those runs (Gaiman’s original characters, and Garry Leach’s Warpsmith race, etc.), and by my completely-not-a-lawyer reckoning Todd McFarlane may own the rights to the actual stories.

2. Marvelman was created as a ripoff of/replacement for Fawcett’s Captain Marvel. Fawcett, and Captain Marvel, have since been bought by DC. I wonder how long before DC brings its litigious attentions to bear. (This is myown paranoid musings.)

3. Aesthetically, I’ve always preferred the “Miracleman” moniker (which he was given when he was first republished in the US), but switching back to the original “Marvelman” name is a small price to pay to have the character back in print again.

4. This was kind of inevitable, really. Marvelman wears Marvel comics’ trademark floppy foldover boots.

BTW, here’s the video of Quesada making the announcement, courtesy of Comic Book Resources. He kinda blew the “magic word” buildup by not actually saying the magic word.