As many of you have all ready heard, during the Cop of Joe panel at this year’s Comic Con, it was announced that Marvel Comics had acquired the rights to Marvelman from the character’s creator, Mick Anglo. But why is this considered such a big deal? Well, maybe it all has to do with the controversy that surrounds the Marvelman character. From him having to have his name changed in US reprints of his comics to the big legal proceedings that surround the rights to his publications, to have everything just get so put away as neatly as is it being made out to be is a big deal in the comic book world. But let’s take a look back at Marvelman’s history just to give you all some insight as to why the character is as significant to comics as he is.

The year is 1954. Fawcett Comics is forced to discontinue publishing books based on Captain Marvel because of a lawsuit from DC Comics, who feel that Captain Marvel was nothing more than a Superman clone and a violation of their copyright on the character. Len Miller, who was publishing black and white reprints of Captain Marvel comics in the UK, didn’t want to lose the fan base that he had attained with his publication of the book. So instead of stopping publication all together, he turned to artist Mick Anglo to help with either continuing or replacing the comic. Anglo decided to create Marvelman, in all essence a British version of Captain Marvel as the two characters shared many traits.

A young reporter, Micky Moran gains his atomic based super powers after he visits an astrophysicists. He can change into Marvelman by yelling the word “Kimota,” phonetically atomic backwards. And he has two young sidekicks… the young messenger boy Dicky Dauntless, who can become Young Marvelman, and young boy Johnny Bates, who can become Kid Marvelman, be yelling out the name Marvelman.

Marvelman would be published continuously from 1954 up until 1963, despite Anglo ending his association with Miller in 1960, and lasting 376 issues. Because of Anglo’s departure, the last three years, or 36 issues, were reprints of old Marvelman comics instead of original stories. This led to the end of any Marvelman publications after 1963.

However, in 1982, in the British comic book Warrior, published by Quality Communications, began running new stories starring a darker and post modern Marvelman series was being written by Alan Moore, with later issues being written by Neil Gaiman. In these stories, an adult Moran is seen as being married and having trouble with day to day life as he is plagued by dreams of flying and super heroics in a world he can’t remember. But during a disaster at a nuclear power plant, he sees the word atomic and remembers the word “Kimota” as he yells it out and is once again transformed into Marvelman who proceeds to save the day. He also discovers that both Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman are still alive. This series eventually ends unexpectedly on a cliff hanger as Warrior ceased publication with issues 21 as sales had dropped significantly on the title. To further make matters worse, in 1983, Marvel Comics had threatened to sue as it had trademarked the Marvel name and opposed any other company from using characters with the word in their name.

In 1985, Eclipse Comics began reprinting Marvelman here in the US based on the Warrior version of the character. This was allowed by Marvel because, in an effort to placate Marvel, Eclipse renamed the character Miracleman, and beginning with their issue number 7, started running all new stories featuring Miracleman and his cast. This series was written until issue 16 by Alan Moore. And from issue 17 until the series ended with issue 24 due to Eclipse going into bankruptcy in 1994, was written by Neil Gaiman.

During the time when Marvelman was reintroduced, rights to his ownership became very confusing to follow. Several factors led to this as it is now believed that Dez Skinn, owner of Warrior, never fully acquired any rights to begin publishing the Marvelman character. He either believed it was a public domain character since it had not seen publication since 1963, or just never bothered to obtain the rights as he thought no one would object to him just taking an obscure character from a dead company for his own gains. To complicate the matters, to help get Warrior off the ground, he split the rights to the character four ways. Skinn would retain 30 percent, Alan Moore would receive another 30 percent, and artist Gary Leach also gained 30 percent. The final 10 percent of ownership would be retained by Quality Communications.

After Leach left the group, to bring in new artist Alan Davis, Skinn, Moore, and Leach transferred over some of their rights to the character and it would now be divided with Skinn retaining 10 percent, and Moore, Davis and Leach each owning 30 percent. After Eclipse acquired the rights to US publication of the character, they also believed that they owned at least a partial stake in the character as well. So when Moore left the book after issue 16, he transferred his shares of ownership to new writer Neil Gaiman, who then proceeded to split that part between himself and artist Mark Buckingham. So now there were at least 3 parties to the issue of ownership, as Anglo never actually gave permission to or sold any rights over to Skinn when he began his publishing of the character.

In 1996, things got even murkier when Todd McFarlane purchased all of Eclipse’s creative assets, believed mainly to acquire the rights to the Miracleman license. McFarlane clearly had plans to use the Miracleman, but failed to consult with Gaiman, the last known person to have part ownership of the character. All ready at odds with Gaiman regarding the ownership of Cogliostro, Angela, and Medieval Spawn, characters which Gaiman created during a two issue writing stint he had on McFarlane’s Spawn comic, McFarlane and Gaiman feuded over who had the actual rights to the Miracleman character. In 1997, a supposed deal was reached between McFarlane and Gaiman but was later negated by McFarlane. Adding to the fire, McFarlane stopped making royalty payments to Gaiman over the use of the previously disputed characters. And after McFarlane introduced the Mike Moran character in 2001 in his line of comics, Gaiman went on to file a lawsuit against McFarlane to halt him introducing the Miracleman character in Spawn.

To help fight and fund his lawsuit against McFarlane, Gaiman formed the company Marvels and Miracles, LLC. This action prompted the countersuit by McFarlane. Gaiman won the lawsuit and subsequent appeal by McFarlane, but this was not the win that neither the creators nor the fans wanted. The only matter that was cleared up by the final verdict was that regarding the characters Gaiman created for McFarlane. As for the Miracleman issue… It was thrown out of court during the first sets of proceedings and again during the appeals process. No further paperwork or filings were ever made regarding the issue since then. Though Gaiman remained positive that he would ultimately prevail as owner of the now redubbed Marvelman character. He even went as far as to state that Marvelman would see republication by Marvel Comics back in 2002.

Then, in 2004, Atomeka Press released a sketchbook that contained four Miracleman related pinups done by artist Gary Leach, though they remained unnamed to avoid any litigation as to their use in the book. Though a variant of the book was released that featured Miracleman on the front cover and Kid Miracleman on the back. Also, in 2005, McFarlane introduced the Man of Miracles in his Spawn series. To avoid any further legal actions however, this Man of Miracles has gone on to be described as an androgynous being of power who takes the form of how people perceive him to be. He has also been called Mother of Creation and has been portrayed as being seen by other characters as Jesus Christ, Shiva, and a younger Mick Moran.

All this is now all cleared up by Marvel’s announcement to have gained full rights to the Marvelman character. Details of how they did this are not yet released, though it would be curious to see just how they managed to tie up everything in the end. Neil Gaiman had asserted back in 2002 that Marvel would again publish the character. And it is interesting to note that Marvelman’s original creator, Mick Anglo, is in full agreement with the announcement as he stated “I did not think it would ever happen. It’s a wonderful thing to see my creation finally come back.”

To have a character with such a varied history as the one Marvelman has had finally find a permanent owner and new publisher is a big deal. The character was born through a feud begun by DC Comics. Has had to change names due to legal threats from Marvel comics. And has had his ownership rights contested after almost appearing in a book by Image Comics. How many characters can you name that have had that much of a storied past? And then Marvel goes on to make the announcement sweeter by stating that they are in talks with Alan Moore, Alan Davis, and Neil Gaiman about having their original works on the character reproduced by Marvel. Artist Mark Buckingham himself was a member of the panel during the announcement. And Anglo has given it his blessing. This is a major step in one of the most important and sought after characters in comic book history.

The fact alone that new works on the character will see publication beginning in 2010 is a big deal enough. But to maybe have Moore agree to the reprinting of some of his works by Marvel, a company that he has had a long and disagreeable past with… that may be as big as an announcement as the Marvelman one was. It will be interesting to see what future developments come out of this story. But it is definitely one of the biggest stories to have ever come out of Comic Con in years.