Marvelman -some notes

 

I've had some conversations with a few old comic peopl;e about Marvelman/Miracleman since my last post on the subject. It does not really matter sincle Miracleman is NOT Marvelman and I think that was part of the deal betyween Anglo and Marvel. His pure fun character was not to be this nasty dark character.

As it is written in the comic history books when National (DC) sue Fawcett over Captain Marvel (Shazam) and the character's likeness to Superman Fawcett stopped publishing Leonard Miller and his son, Arnold, were in a bind since the Captain Marvel comic was a good seller. What they did was ask Mick Anglo to create a similar character to take over. Now contracts in comic companies were few and far between -Gil Page when starting out at Amalgamated Press was excited to be carrying a copy of the contract with Jerry Siegel who created The Spider for them and even in the 1980s no contracts were given out). Anglo designed and created Marvelman and that was it.

Now, when Anglo was getting out of comics he was known to have sold the character (I am not getting into an argument on British comics and copyrights!). I was told Samuel Assael (John Spencer) "was said to have purchased the character" -interesting since Samuel (rather like Gerald Swan) was not keen on comics which is why my deal with him was quick and cheap.  Others thought Alan Class (Class Comics) might have purchased the character but he only dealt with US reprints and had no interest in new material.

The best company that seemed far more likely because of their publishing output was Top Sellers. I was told in the 1980s that they had "agreements" with Anglo but never specified what exactly -it was why, when I saw Warrior magazine in a newsagents I asumed it was a Top Seller book.

Really, it comes down to Marvel purchased (contract not specific) Miracleman from Anglo. Unless you were in a company at the time when Anglo "sold" Marvelman, in which case I would love to hear from you, the actual goings on will never be known.