After decades of legal battles, and return and relaunch starts and stops, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham's Miracleman 'The Silver Age' is finally and officially back on track at Marvel Comics.
Marvel is publishing the completed story along with remastered editions of the first two published issues, complete with new artwork and bonus material - and now we've got your first look at artwork from December 28's Miracleman: The Silver Age #3, the first new chapter of the storyline in years.
"This script was written 30 years ago and has never been seen until now," Nail Gaiman says. "It feels so liberating to be able to bring people new Miracleman for the first time in three decades."
"We're back! And after thirty years away it is both thrilling and terrifying," Buckingham adds. "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."
In the first look, Dickie Dauntless, aka Young Miracleman, is desperately searching for his place in the modern world, a search that takes him to the top of the Himalayas and into a confrontation with a frightening part of this past with Johnny Bates AKA Kid Miracleman.
Marvel Comic calls Miracleman: The Silver Age #3 the "perfect jumping on point" to the saga.
"I have pushed myself to my limit to craft something special for these issues," Buckingham continues. "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."
Debuting as Marvelman in 1954 as a UK substitute for Captain Marvel created by Mick Anglo, Miracleman as we know him today appeared on the scene in 1982 in a post-modern reboot helmed by Alan Moore and the late Garry Leach.
Miracleman has a long, storied history not just in the comics, but also in the courts. After a back-and-forth battle between Gaiman and Todd McFarlane over the character in the late '90s and early aughts, it was revealed in 2009 that Anglo – the original creator of Marvelman – had retained rights to the characters all along, rights Marvel Comics now owns.
Alan Moore references Miracleman in his run on Captain Britain, one of the best Marvel Multiverse comic book stories of all time.
