a_560x0

Although the Miracleman reprints by Marvel have more or less been business as usual and not the apocalypse, news of never-before seen Miracleman stories by Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan is still exciting. Vulture has the deets on a new Miracleman Annual #1 which will be out on December 31st and include a long-lost story written by Morrison, now found and drawn by Joe Queseda, and an all new story written by Milligan with art by Mike Allred. The cover is by Gabriele Dell’Otto, and the variant by Jeff Smith.

The Morrison story was unearthed in an article right here on the Beat written by Pádraig Ó Méalóid. Given the long antipathy between Morrison and Moore, it’s a surprising detail but according to Morrison in the Talking with Gods documentary, the story being spiked when it was written in the mid-80s might have been one of the root causes of the feud. Morrison said:

I didn’t want to do it without Moore’s permission, and I wrote to him and said, “They’ve asked me to do this, but obviously I really respect you work, and I wouldn’t want to mess anything up. But I don’t want anyone else to do it and mess it up.” And he sent me back this really weird letter, and I remember the opening of it, it said, “I don’t want this to sound like the softly hissed tones of a mafia hitman, but back off.”

With Miracleman back, Marvel started asking about the story and Morrison requested that Quesada draw it — it’s his first interior art in quite a while.

Milligan’s story is bit nostalgic as well, he told Vulture:

“We’re doing a story that, if you like, looks at the Mick Anglo years, what might be seen on the outside as the innocent, old-fashioned years,” Milligan told me. “There’s a scintilla of self-awareness, with Marvelman being — I don’t want to give too much away, but the story is not without some awareness that it’s all going to change very quickly. It’s an homage. All the guys are there, all the craziness.”

Marvel confirmed that the Neil Gaiman-written conclusion to the Miracleman story—now nearly 30 years in the planning—is still in the works. Finegrs crossed!

a_560x0 (1) a_560x0 (2)

14 COMMENTS

  1. If the Gaiman-caused delays on Sandman: The Overture are any indication, Marvel had better have Gaiman turn in all of his remaining scripts for Miracleman within the next couple of months or a year from now, when the reprints catch up with the published Eclipse issues and the unpublished-but-completed Eclipse issue, it’ll start being as late as the average Bendis-written Icon book. (rolls eyes)

  2. Hey, it’s been 20 years since MIRACLEMAN 24. If we can wait that long, I won’t mind a bit if “The Silver Age” comes out on the same kind of schedule as “Overture.”

    kdb

  3. So Marvel has decided to publish Morrison’s Miracleman story even though, by Morrison’s own admission, the story was nixed by Moore himself.
    Classy…

  4. I don’t see why Alan Moore’s wishes decades ago have any relevance now. I like Alan but he can be remarkably petulant about his prior work. Grant can be obnoxious, but at least he still… You know, likes comics!

  5. More to the point, Moore wasn’t saying that he didn’t want that one particular MM story to remain unpublished. He didn’t want anyone to be writing new MM but him; it was his gig and he didn’t want to share.

    That’s reasonable, at least as long as it’s his gig.

    But since then, he stopped writing the series, gave away his ownership share (and thus control of the property, beyond any copyright interest he has in the stories he wrote) and MM has been written by multiple other writers, notably Neil Gaiman, but also a variety of other writers, even including me.

    So at this point, the idea that Grant’s script can’t be published, but scripts by Matt Wagner, James Robinson, Sarah Byam, Steve Moore, Stefan Petrucha, Steven Grant and others were just fine…that doesn’t make much sense.

    I gotta admit, I’m wondering if these two new stories will be an occasion for reprinting MIRACLEMAN: APOCRYPHA and collecting them along with it…

  6. I wonder if “Triumphant” is in the pipeline. The script and pencils for issue #1 have already been posted online.

  7. Re: Marvel publishing this or that piece of the Miracleman pile – It appears that Marvel wants to milk every scrap of this property they can get their hot little hands on. If they’re publishing the crappy Anglo stories, believe me, they’ll be putting out Apocrypha, Triumphant, Silver Age, Styrofoam Age and Your Aunt Fannie’s Age.

  8. Since MIRACLEMAN TRIUMPHANT’s first issue was drawn by Mike Deodato, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marvel would like to get him to finish up the series.

Comments are closed.