There are hazards, when you run a comics blog, to making the decision to fuck off to central New Hampshire to play classic video games during the weekend when the New York Comic Con is occuring. We knew when we made the call that we would miss some news, but we figured that that wouldn’t be all that big a deal, as there would be half a dozen comics blogs with budgets bigger than ours (read: almost all of them) who would have boots on the ground and be better able to cover it than we would even if we spent the weekend parked at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Information Center (read: the couch with a first-generation Transformer tablet tuned to our “comics news” RSS feed).
So we knew that we would be late with some news… we just didn’t anticipate that some of that news would entail several hundred dollars worth of direct impending loss of value to our personal comic collection!
To wit: Marvel announced at New York Comic Con that they would be reprinting Neil Gaiman’s and Mark Buckingham’s late-80s / early-90s run on Miracleman… and that they would be finishing the three-part storyline that was aborted after Miracleman #25, the first part of the middle The Silver Age storyline, after Eclipse Comics went under.
Which is excellent news (well, it’s excellent news for anyone who didn’t spend the first two years of the 21st Century hunting down those original Eclipse issues), but that original announcement only referenced Gaiman’s and Buckingham’s issues, which didn’t start until Miracleman #17. Miracleman #1 through #16 were written by Alan Moore, and include the infamous 15th issue, Nemesis, writh art by John Totleben and featuring the complete decimation of London in the battle between Miracleman and Kid Miracleman. If you’ve never read it, it’s a classic, that is well worth the fat cash I dropped on it during a drunken bidding war on eBay in 2002.
And it looks like that is fat cash that I will never see again, because today Marvel made it official: they will be reprinting the entire Eclipse Comics run, starting with Alan Moore’s Miracleman #1, starting in January.
But Marvel’s still not using Moore’s name anyplace.
So we’ll start with the good: Marvel is completely restoring and remastering the series, which is good news if you stop and think about it for a second. After all, we are talking about a 20 to 30 year old series that has been in copyright ownership hell for most of that time. Further, it was drawn by five or six different guys, meaning that the original artwork and production films could be anywhere at this point. However, according to Marvel’s SVP of Publishing, David Gabriel:
We’ve been working with the Miracleman artists to obtain original artwork or photostats in every instance possible, and then applying the same painstaking restoration methods and rigorous quality standards that are utilized on the Marvel Masterworks line. The Marvel Special Projects team have even been developing some new techniques specifically for this project. These Miracleman issues will receive the most advanced restoration possible to ensure the most authentic reading experience.
And then there’s those new issues, that will finally (and I can say “finally,” as I have been up to speed and personally waiting to see the ending for 12 years) give us at least the ending to The Silver Age and The Dark Age. From Gaiman:
The tragedy of Miracleman was that we published two issues, wrote three and a half – and then it all stopped. And Miracleman #25 has been sitting in the darkness – nobody has seen it. It was drawn, it was written, it was lettered over 20 years ago.
I love the idea that I will get to finish this story.
But still, nowhere in Marvel’s press on the reissue is Alan Moore’s name. Moore has had a long-running feud with Marvel, starting (if I remember correctly) with issues over reprinting early work he did for Marvel UK that Marvel reprinted without his permission (Moore maintains that he holds the copyright for that work) and which was beefed up (Beef! Get it?) early in Joe Quesada’s reign at the top of Marvel when they reprinted Moore’s run on Captain Britain… and someone forgot to stick Moore’s status as creator of a bunch of the characters in the trade paperback’s indicia. Now, Moore has been vocal about having his name taken off of projects that he disagreed with, like the Watchmen and V For Vendetta movies, and back in 2009, when Marvel first announced that had some of the rights to Miracleman, he said the same thing about Miracleman:
The actual Marvelman story is such a grim and ugly one that I would probably rather that the work was published without my name on it, and that all of the money went to Mick. The decision about my name was largely based upon my history with Marvel—my desire to really have nothing to do with them, and my increasing desire to have nothing to do with the American comics industry. I mean, they’re probably are enough books out there with my name on them to keep the comics industry afloat for a little bit longer.
God, I bet Alan Moore’s simply a pip at parties, but that’s not the point. The point is that Marvel is clearly holding up their end of the bargain and keeping Moore’s name off of the project (while still referring to it as “The Lost Watchmen“)… and may God have mercy on Marvel if they skip the second part and fail to cough up Moore’s share to Anglo’s family. Otherwise Moore will be forced to taunt Marvel a second time.
Either way, the first reprint issue should be out in January, 2014… but if you want copies with Alan Moore’s name on them, shoot me an email! I’ve got copies that I’m willing to part with for a surprisingly high price!
(via Comics Alliance)