“So what’s the good news?” “The good news is that Miracleman is coming back!”
And lo, there were solicits for the Miracleman revival:
MIRACLEMAN #1 & 2
THE ORIGINAL WRITER & MICK ANGLO (W)
GARRY LEACH, ALAN DAVIS, PAUL NEARY, STEVE DILLON & MICK ANGLO (A)
ISSUE #1 – COVER BY JOE QUESADA
Variant COVER BY JOHN CASSADAY
Variant COVER BY MARK BUCKINGHAM
Variant COVER BY JEROME OPENA
Variant COVER BY LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Sketch VARIANT BY JOE QUESADA
YOUNG VARIANT BY SKOTTIE YOUNG
CLASSIC VARIANT BY GARRY LEACHISSUE #2 – COVER BY ALAN DAVIS
Variant COVER BY ARTHUR ADAMS
Variant COVER BY MIKE PERKINS
Variant COVER BY MIKE MCKONE
Sketch VARIANT BY ALAN DAVIS• KIMOTA! With one magic word, a long-forgotten legend lives again!
• Freelance reporter Michael Moran always knew he was meant for something more — now, a strange series of events leads him to reclaim his destiny!
• Relive the ground-breaking eighties adventures that captured lightning in a bottle — or experience them for the first time — in these digitally restored, fully relettered editions!
• Issue 1 includes material originally presented in WARRIOR #1 and MIRACLEMAN #1, plus the MARVELMAN PRIMER. Issue #2 includes material originally presented in WARRIOR #1-5, plus bonus material.
ISSUE #1 – 64 PGS./Parental Advisory…$5.99
ISSUE #2 – 48 PGS./Parental Advisory…$4.99
First off…holy crow, that’s a lotta variants.
Second, since Steve Dillon is mentioned as one of the included contributors, I think that means we are getting that previously-unreprinted story from Warrior #4.
Third, “The Original Writer” is what they’ll be calling Alan Moore on this, since Marvel is following Moore’s wishes not to associate his name with the work, I guess. There goes a major selling point to the uninitiated (though I imagine any comic fans with interest in this material pretty much already know).
Fourth…well, it looks like Marvel is depending on the reputation of the material to sell the books, what with a $5.99 debut issue that, if I’m interpreting things correctly, includes the redialogued classic Marvelman story that began the Eclipse Comics MM #1, the initial 8-page installment of Moore and Leach’s revival from Warrior, and your second chance to not read all that stuff from the Miracleman Primer you didn’t read in the first place. So, like, 18 pages of comics, and 46 pages of other stuff if, again, I’m understanding correctly. And I’m guessing the “material from Warrior #1” business in issue #2 is a typo, since there ain’t that much MM stuff in Warrior #1 to begin with, unless they’re splitting an 8-page story across two issues of reprints.
At a $5.99 price point, that’s basically telling the reader who may have a casual interest to not bother. Modern comic fans aren’t necessarily going to dive into this long-unavailable comic simply because the names Moore and Gaiman are attached. (Well, not attached, in Moore’s case, but no media coverage of this comic is not going to mention him.) No matter how special and in how high of regard old fanboys like me who originally bought these comics way back when hold them, it’s still reprints of decades-old comics starring a superhero nobody’s heard of and featuring storytelling tropes that everyone’s seen by now and really why should I, a young, hip comic book reader who follows all two dozen Avengers titles done in the cool modern styles of today, bother to read this old thing just because Grandpa read it and liked it?
I exaggerate, but only a bit. I’ve already seen people expressing disinterest, folks who once enjoyed Moore’s and Gaiman’s work, now no longer so enthused about their output for whatever reasons. And I’ve seen people who might have tried out the comic decide to pass at the proffered price points, particularly since it seems these will be coming out at a more-than-monthly pace given the dual solicitation in a single month’s catalog. I would have loved to see an introductory issue at the promotional $1.00 price point — just comics, with maybe a minimal historical text piece, all killer, no filler — that could have grabbed a much larger base readership. A base that, having been exposed to the material, may be far more willing to follow along with the series at $3.99 per subsequent installment.
But instead we have $5.99 on #1, effectively capping the potential audience. There are the completists who’ll buy it regardless. There are the people who have genuine desire to finally own this material after hearing about it all these years. And there may even be some people who, despite Marvel’s best efforts to dissuade them, will pick up the first issue anyway out of curiosity. And those initial sales numbers will dwindle as the series progresses, until finally bumping up again as the new material finally appears in the series and all the original old Miracleman fans return to the book after previously having given up on rebuying comics they already owned.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope they do sell well. I love the old Eclipse Miracleman comics. I reread them every once in a while and they’re still as entertaining and fascinating to me now as they were when I first experienced them. And I’m really, genuinely happy that Miracleman will soon be available again for everyone to read. I’m simply hoping the strength and beauty, the joy and wonder, of the material can overcome the initial hobbling of its presentation.
Anyway, I’m sure these will eventually make a nice series of hardcovers. Assuming they don’t blow this “relettering” they keep ballyhooing.