Bleeding Cool has revealed that the ongoing Avengers: Armageddon event is set to officially add Marvelman to the Marvel Universe. While the character has long been known as Miracleman, the site is hearing that we're getting "Marvelman," which makes sense.
"Maybe it's David Colton, maybe it's Mike Moran, maybe it's not," the site explains. "Maybe the Origin Box was indeed for a new Marvelman. I don't know. I've just been told that Marvelman will join the Marvel 616 Universe."
The character, whose publishing history is incredibly convoluted, has been languishing for years on the shelf, and the report posits that this "may also be a first step towards Marvelman movies." Marvel Studios is now more heavily involved in the publishing side, so it's possible that Kevin Feige has pushed for Marvelman to be front and centre ahead of bringing him to the screen.
As noted, Miracleman has one of the most complicated histories in comics. Before he was Miracleman, he was Marvelman, the UK's answer to Captain Marvel, created by Mick Anglo in 1954 for L. Miller & Son.
After Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel following its legal battle with DC Comics, L. Miller hired Anglo to create a replacement. The result was Marvelman, the alter ego of Micky Moran, who transformed into a superhuman by saying "Kimota!" Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman followed, with the series continuing the numbering of L. Miller's Captain Marvel title from #25 before ending at #370 in 1963.
Marvelman was revived in 1982 by former Marvel UK editor Dez Skinn for Warrior, where Alan Moore and artists including Garry Leach and Alan Davis completely reinvented the character.
Moran discovers that his seemingly innocent Marvelman adventures were actually artificial memories. The truth is far darker: the British government had used alien technology in a Cold War super-soldier programme, with former Nazi scientist Dr. Emil Gargunza involved. Moran and the other subjects were kept in a dream state while their powers were studied.
Moore's story continued after Warrior and later Eclipse Comics' Miracleman series after Warrior folded in 1985. Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham subsequently took over, beginning their planned Golden Age trilogy, but Eclipse went bankrupt before the second volume could be completed.
The biggest twist came in 2009, when it emerged that Mick Anglo had actually retained the underlying rights to the character. Marvel subsequently acquired those rights and began reprinting the original material before eventually bringing Moore's and Gaiman's stories back into print. Despite promises they would, Gaiman and Buckingham never got to finish the story, but did contribute a short story for Marvel Comics #1000 in 2019.
In 2022's Miracleman #0, various stories from the past were reprinted, including a new one by Jason Aaron, who teased the idea that there might be a multiverse of Miraclemen. That same year, Timeless #1 ended by teasing the character's existence, but nothing has really happened since.
Stay tuned for updates as we have them.