Marvel celebrates Miracleman’s 40th anniversary with special one-shot this October

Earlier this month, Marvel debuted a series of variant covers in celebration of Miracleman’s 40th anniversary in September. Unsurprisingly, that was only the beginning of the Miracleman 40th anniversary plans. Today the publisher announced a special Miracleman #0 one-shot this October.

Sporting a cover drawn by Alan Davis, the Miracleman 40th anniversary one-shot will feature new stories by superstar creators Jason Aaron and Mike Carey, legendary writer/artist Ty Templeton, acclaimed artist Ryan Stegman, and more! Moreover, according to the press release the giant-sized one-shot will feature a story by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham that serves as a prelude to their upcoming new chapter of Miracleman.

For those unfamiliar, Miracleman is the American version of Marvelman, a British character created by Mick Anglo in the ’50s as a Captain Marvel replacement after the popular Fawcett Comics series was discontinued. Saying the magic word ‘Kimota’ transformed ordinary Michael Moran into Marvelman, who was eventually joined by an extended Marvelman Family, including Kid Marvelman and Young Marvelman. The character was revived in the ’80s in the pages of Warrior by Alan Moore and Garry Leach, and the stories eventually made their way to the U.S. via Eclipse Comics, with the title character rechristened Miracleman to avoid legal complications with Marvel. Following six issues of reprints of the Warrior stories, Moore wrote ten more issues of the series for Eclipse with artists including Steve Bissette & John Totleben, and Neil Gaiman & Mark Buckingham continued the series following Moore & co.’s departure. Miracleman ran for a total of 24 issues before Eclipse folded.

In 2009, Marvel  announced they had secured the rights to the character from Anglo, and began reprinting the Eclipse Comics series in 2014. Marvel published new editions of twenty-one of the previously-published issues, along with an annual featuring a ‘lost’ story by Grant Morrison illustrated by Joe Quesada, as well as a new story by Peter Milligan and Michael Allred. Beyond that, there’s been no new standalone Miracleman material, aside from one page by Gaiman and Buckingham in 2019’s Marvel Comics #1000 anniversary one-shot.

The recent Timeless #1 one-shot from late last year was not only the the first tease of new Miracleman material from Marvel Comics in years but that the character would be officially be incorporated into the Marvel Universe. The aforementioned prelude by Gaiman and Buckingham seems to be a safe indication that the conclusion their long-awaited run decades in the making is finally on its way.

Stay tuned later this week for more Miracleman announcements!