Saturday 18 January 2014

From MA To AM

How can we discuss the new Marvel Comics Miracleman series (Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014)) without naming its original writer by whom I do not mean the original writer of Marvelman, Mick Anglo, but the original writer of the Warrior Marvelman?

That original writer acted in good faith when he wrote this serial for a magazine that, unknown to him, had no legal right to the character. The re-conceptualized Marvelman/Miracleman is:

his work for which he deserves credits and royalties;
superb and seminal;
like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, an absurd, pre-existing comics character completely reinvented and made to say something important;
like Howard Chaykin's Janov Prohaska, Blackhawk, and Mike Grell's Oliver Queen, Green Arrow, a character originally written for children but now rewritten for adults;
in this respect, I think, an even greater achievement than Moore's Watchmen because this superhero revival retains but transforms all the absurdities of the original;
in fact, my childhood revisited in adulthood with timely references to "...selling arms to, like, the people..." (p. 12) and "...the alternative press...man. (p. 15)."

MM says, "Eighteen years. Eighteen years, trapped in that old, tired body. It doesn't matter...It's over now!" (pp. 18-19)

Is this wish fulfillment? It can also be reality when, on the first day of retirement, we start to exercise and become more active than ever.

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