Marvelman originally appeared in 1954 as a comic book hero in the Shazam mold. Written by Mick Anglo, he was bold colourful and wholesome. It was intended to be the UKs answer to Captain Marvel and Superman and ran until 1963, before falling into obscurity beneath the wave of Marvel and DC heroes coming from the states.
Then in 1982, Dez Skinn launched a more adult oriented comic, called Warrior, featuring the writing talents of upcoming writers such as Steve Parkhouse, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore. Moore took Anglo's original story and used it as the basis to relaunch the Marvelman character for a modern audience.
The concept was simple - a alien craft crashes in the english countryside in the fifties, gifting a rogue scientist with the means to reverse engineer exotic advanced technology which the aliens had used to travel in harsh environments by displacing their conciousness into a second artificial body, which would be stored in suspended animation. The scientist, Gargunza, went on to develop a cloned copy of an abducted teenage boy, who would become Marvelman, The super powerful body could be adopted by a human after uttering a special code word - in this case 'kimota' or atomik backwards. In order to control this being of staggering power and potential, Gargunza fabricates a comic book fantasy 'world' which he uses as a kind of reality for the superbeing - the comic persona originally created by Mick Anglo. Alan Moore skilfully combines the light comic adventures of the fifties with a stunningly complex storyline and uses the existence of the comics as part of the new storyline.
As the Marvelman family grows and Gargunza becomes more hungry for immortality and power, the government decide to pull the plug on the project and attempt to destroy the superbeings with a nascent A-bomb. The detonation succeeds in killing Young Marvelman, but Marvelman and Kid Marvelman survive. Kid Marvelman goes into hiding in his superhero form, but Marvelman is transformed back into his mortal self, suffering amnesia. At the point where the story begins, Michael Moran - MM's alter ego is suffering a spate of nightmares and crushing headaches and after being held hostage during a news agency report, and suddenly recalls his magical code word, immediately swapping out his human form for the invincible and eminently powerful Marvelman. The story then goes on to describe how a middle aged Moran faces life with a god-like doppelganger waiting in the wings and the effect it has on his marriage and life, especially after his wife falls pregnant to his super form.
The artwork is clean and stylish and the early issues were inked by 2000ad veteran Garry Leach, who was replaced shortly after by Alan Davis. Where the story really takes off (no pun intended) is when Moran discovers that Kid Marvelman is still alive and now an adult, but in full control of his powers.
Possibly one of the finest moments of the story is where Moore takes a deadly satirical look at the idea of super-pets like Krypto the super dog. When Marvelman finally discovers the nature of his perceived reality and that Doctor Gargunza has been filling his head with his perverted fantasies for decades, MM takes off to South America to find him. Unfortunately, Gargunza anticipated this occurrence, following an accident with conditioning in the 1950's and has a special code word up his sleeve to swiftly render MM powerless and switch him back to the bumbling middle aged failure who shares his mind. Setting him loose in the jungle, he then places his cute little white lapdog on the ground and utters a new code word - Steppenwolf - thereby transforming the pup into a vast reptilian apex predator, smartly named 'Marveldog'! Unfortunately for Warrior readers, the story stopped at this point and it would be some years before Eclipse picked up the story and showed readers the next events in the story!
Later issues, after the strip was picked up by Eclipse Comics featured graphic scenes of childbirth by Rick Veitch, as MM's child 'Winter' is born, a natural superhuman and hyper intelligent from birth. Moore eventually left the strip, after Marvel became involved over copyright issues with the name, which was eventually changed to Miracleman and other writers including Neil Gaiman took up the reigns, examining how humanity might respond to being directed by a family of omniscient superbeings akin to gods. Due to further legal wranglings with Anglo about the rights to the original intellectual properties, the comic stalled for many years and has only recently been republished by Marvel as a trade paperback.
Unfortunately though, Gaimans projected series of books depicting 'Olympus', 'The Golden Age', 'Silver Age' and the final 'Dark Age' was put on hiatus after the third installment, so even after many decades, the tale remains unfinished.
The story is dark and epically scaled and is eminately filmable, but whether it will ever be free of legal litigation, remains to be seen. In the meantime, I would urge anyone to seek out a copy of the trade paperbacks and discover some of Alan Moores finest writings.
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