A dream of variants.

§ February 7th, 2022 § Filed under miraclemarvelman, variant covers § 6 Comments

Okay, I had planned to jump back into Variant Cover-age Mondays here on the site again, but as I was working on the planned subjects for said post, I realized I didn’t have the info I needed to properly put them in their retailing/collecting context. So, let’s have that one sit in the oven a little longer.

Instead, I’m going to go on a variant tangent, as well as touching another popular topic on this here website, and take notice of this forthcoming variant for the Marvel Comics one-shot Timeless:


Due out in a couple of months, it plays up the fact that (spoiler, I guess) a character has visions of the Miracleman (or is it?) logo, revealed at the end of the story. I found out about that particular twist just in time for me to have sold out of my last copy…I did get a restock of some of the variants, but none of those did anything for me. And the forthcoming 2nd printing features that awful Punisher redesign, so a hard pass on that.

But that third printing? With ol’ MM front and center? Drawn by Mark Buckingham, the fella who illustrated Neil Gaiman’s truncated run on the character? Yes sir, that’s for me.

Now Miracleman at Marvel has not had an easy time of it. First, Alan Moore asked that his writing credit be removed (replaced by “The Original Writer”). Then the comics themselves were bloated, expensive messes, featuring the comics people actually wanted to read, backed up with extra editorial pages and reprints of “pre-return” Marvelman stories that nobody really wanted. And then of course there were the printing screw-ups, which, by the way, Marvel never did reissue corrected copies of that comic. Plus there’s the fact that the promise of new stories picking up from where the original series left off (with Eclipse Comics going out of business) was never fulfilled.

Well, Marvel put a lot of cash and time into straightening out all the rights issues and getting the character under their umbrella, so I guess they need to get their money’s worth. Now whether this is a new version of Marvelman (separate from the Miracleman comics by Moore and Gaiman), still called Miracleman but again separate from Moore/Gaiman, or (the most hilarious option) the next chapter of that Moore/Gaiman story, with MM dipping into the Marvel U. between installments of his own book.

I have no idea what will be the case, of course, and one wonders what kind of a fit MM would have in the Marvel Universe, even if only temporarily (see also: DC Universe and Watchmen). But we’re either getting an ongoing series with the character out of this, or (crossing fingers) those new stories from Gaiman and Buckingham picking up from where they left off decades ago will finally see the light of day.

Anyway, writing about this reminded me of the limited-run non-3D editions of Miracleman 3-D Eclipse offered way back in Ye Olden Tymes. This article seems to have that pretty well covered.

6 Responses to “A dream of variants.”

  • Thom H. says:

    I kind of don’t care what they do with the character as long as they also separately finish the Gaiman/Buckingham run. I’d like both the Silver Age and the Dark Age, but would honestly settle for just the former at this point.

    And I couldn’t agree more about the bloated reprints. Marvel should just give each issue a sturdy cover and make sure the coloring is impeccable. I’m going to pay the same stupid price just to finish the story. I don’t need any other incentives to buy it.

  • Joe Gualtieri says:

    I forgot about that. The censorship of the book is far more prominent in my mind

  • Joe Gualtieri says:

    [hugs Eclipse trades]

  • Chris V says:

    So, this being Marvel in 2022, I can only assume that they plan to resolve both the unfinished Miracleman and Omega the Unknown series in one book. It’ll probably be written by Jed McKay.
    Sure, a lot of people will be upset by Gaiman not being the one to finish his Miracleman story, but Marvel will promise a major Marvel Universe character will die in each issue, which will increase the sales to the same level as Neil Gaiman’s name-value without having to pay Gaiman.

  • ArghSims says:

    Hey, Chuck Austen, the writer formerly know as the artist “Chuck Beckum”, has ties to the book. Surely he’d be a consensus choice to finish it!

  • Chris V says:

    There ya go. Even better than a random Marvel contracted writer.