Anyone that knows me knows that I love Alan Moore – and anyone that knows that knows that of all of his gifts to the comic book world, his 16-issue revamp of the (I guess) classic 50’s British hero Marvel Man (Miracle Man in the states to avoid the obvious legal entanglements) towers as my personal favorite of his. Hell, it’s probably even my favorite comic book ever written.
While I’ve never actually read much of the source material that Mr. Moore’s run set out to deconstruct, it’s for good reason. The guy was a blatant ripoff of DC’s Captain Marvel, complete with his own family and magic word that transforms him into a superhero. I never felt like I was missing much but it looks like I’ll get the get the chance to find out since this week Marvel releases the first in a series of fancy hardcovers collecting a bunch of those original comics from over a half century ago. While I can’t imagine it being all that great it’s still nice to see old titles like this maintained for historical value and not just left to vanish into oblivion.
There’s also the added plus that this marks the first official release by a major publication for this character in quite some time. I’ve already yapped about the seemingly endless legal woes over this property between the likes of Marvel, Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane amongst others before so I won’t go into it all over again – but for those of you hoping to get your mitts on Moore’s story someday (as well as Gaiman’s unfinished run that came right after, that I don’t really count), this week should definitely kickstart some excitment.
Click here to read up on this first volume and here to see what else you can find on the racks right now.
