Nearly 15 years after first acquiring the rights to the elusive Miracleman/Marvelman franchise, Marvel Comics is finally poised to continue one of the great, unfinished superhero sagas.
Beginning in October 2022, Marvel will kick off a new limited series called Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham: The Silver Age. This series will collect the entire storyline from writer Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) and artist Mark Buckingham (Fables), only two issues of which were ever completed and released before original publisher Eclipse fell into bankruptcy in 1994.
"We're back! And after thirty years away it is both thrilling and terrifying,” Buckingham said in Marvel's press release. “Neil and I have had these stories in our heads since 1989 so it is amazing to finally be on the verge of sharing them with our readers.
Buckingham continued, "I have pushed myself to my limit to craft something special for these issues. Cinematic in approach, clean and elegant, drawing on the best of my own style but also paying homage to the exceptional talents of all who came before us, whose unique visions have shaped this ground-breaking series over forty years, and the 1950's Marvelman foundations on which it was built.”
Marvel will also release a standalone issue called Miracleman #0, featuring several new, short stories from creators like Jason Aaron, Mike Carey, Ty Templeton and Ryan Stegman. Issue #0 will also feature a new Silver Age prelude story from Gaiman and Buckingham.
Miracleman is a dark, mature readers-focused reboot of creator Mick Anglo's 1950's-era Marvelman comics. The series was originally spearheaded by a young Alan Moore, who wrote the first 16 issues before Gaiman and Buckingham took over with Miracleman #17. The new creative team completed the first of three planned story arcs, called "The Golden Age," with "The Silver Age" and "The Dark Age" stuck in limbo ever since Eclipse's bankruptcy.
Following a prolonged legal battle, Marvel finally purchased the Marvelman franchise in 2009, promising both reprints of existing material and brand new stories. However, there's been very little new Marvelman content in the years since. Marvel has mainly focused on reprinting the early Silver Age Marvelman stories and Moore's work, while occasionally teasing the prospect of Marvelman joining the Marvel Universe.
Marvel did eventually release Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Golden Age, and got as far as soliciting Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Silver Age back in 2016. However, the series was quietly canceled, and Buckingham later revealed he's been redrawing his earlier work in addition to the issues that were never completed in the '90s.
Do you think 2022 will be the year Miracleman fans finally get to read the story they've been waiting decades to see? Let us know in the comments. And be sure to check out IGN's review of Miracleman #1 and read up on the Marvel Comics mysteries that took years to be resolved.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.