A comprehensive Miracleman bibliography / reading order

[u/thigerlel]

Marvelman

• Marvelman #65 - "The Birth of Marvelman"
• Young Marvelman #64 - "How Dicky Dauntless Became Young Marvelman"
• Marvelman #25-64
• Young Marvelman #25-102
• Marvelman #66-102 - "Introducing Kid Marvelman"
• Marvelman Family #1-30
• Marvelman #103-335
• Young Marvelman #103-335
• Young Marvelman Annual #1-8
• Marvelman Annual #1-8

Miracleman Book One: A Dream of Flying

• Miracleman (2014) Annual #1: "Seriously Miraculous"
• Warrior #12: "Young Miracleman"
• Miracleman (1985) #1

• Warrior #4-11

• Marvelman Special #1: "Saturday Morning Pictures"

• Warrior #9-10: "Warpsmiths"

Miracleman Book Two: The Red King Syndrome

• Warrior #13-18
• Warrior #20-21
• Miracleman (1985) #6-7
• Miracleman (1985) #9-10

Big Ben

• Warrior #19-20
• Warrior #22-27
• Warrior 1996 Spring Special #1 (flipbook with Comics International #67)

Miracleman Book Three: Olympus

• Miracleman (1985) #11-14
• Miracleman (2014) Annual #1: "The October Incident: 1966"

• Miracleman (1985) #15-16

• Who Is Miracleman Infinity Comic #1

• A1 (1989) #1: "Warpsmiths"

• Total Eclipse #1-5

• Miracleman Apocrypha #1-3

• Miracleman (2022) #0: "Apocrypha"

• Marvel Comics #1000: "Miracleman Prelude"

Miracleman Book Four: The Golden Age

• Miracleman (1985) #17-22

Miracleman Book Five: The Silver Age

• Miracleman (1985) #23-24
• Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Silver Age #3-7

David Colton: Miracleman

• Timeless (2021) #1
• Captain America (2025) #1-5
• Wolverine: Weapons of Armageddon #1-4
• Avengers Armageddon #1-5
• Avengers (2026) #1-ongoing

[u/Moeroboros]

I appreciate the sentiment, but the Marvel stuff does not belong anywhere near the Warrior/Eclipse comics.

Heck, for my money, not even Neil Gaiman's Miracleman should be grouped together with the Moore issues.

Moore created a perfect self-contained saga with one of the most interesting endings to any superhero comic book ever. It's perfect.

Gaiman's sequel idea is just "but what if power is bad", which is kind of the opposite of the Moore ending ("what if, for once, the superheroes actually succeeded perfectly?").

There should be nothing after Moore, the reader should take their own conclusions of what a superhero utopia entails.

Likewise, I am seriously afraid that Marvel will just turn Miracleman into their version of Doctor Manhattan and Doomsday Clock, pretending that he was an all-powerful being all along and not a hero with a relatively limited powerset.

[u/thigerlel → u/Moeroboros]

I would argue Moore's story is not perfectly self-contained as it required the existence of the Golden Age comics for him to turn on their head.

Regardless, I really don't think the ending of Moore's story was that the heroes succeeded perfectly. The final page is Miracleman staring into the distance, trying to understand why his wife refused to choose that world and wondering if there was anything, just something he'd missed...

[u/AcceptablySoiled → u/thigerlel]

Moore also had a Marvelman multiverse going on with spinoff Waprsmith comics he wrote and using the name Miracleman for the first time for MM and YM's cameos in Captain Britain.

Warrior published a unified timeline of their strips which tied MM in with V For Vendetta, Lazer Eraser & Pressbutton, and a few other forgotten characters. It was a popular fan early theory that V was a stealth sequel, with Young Marvelman under the Guy Fawkes mask (V having demonstrated seemingly superhuman strength and speed in his initial appearances,)

The specific golden age stories weren't really significant. Eclipse included one in their first issue, with enough rewritten Gee Whiz Cap dialogue and caption. My first MM issue was #14, which in retrospect was borderline incomprehensible, but after a a couple readings I piece together it was specifically about a grown up Billy Batson/Captain Marvel analogue, and the concept of a Fifties character having a rough time with the Eighties was clear.

[u/Moeroboros → u/thigerlel]

Yeah, I'm well-aware that the ending implies that maybe the new world is not as perfect as Miracleman wants to believe it is.

But that's part of the beauty of the ending. It's a seemingly perfect society with just the right amount of uncanny that allows you to draw your own conclusions as to how much you would want such a thing to come true.

You have the clear wonder of Miracleman and the skepticism of Liz to counter it.

Gaiman's sequel does away with all that nuance.

[u/Count_Backwards → u/thigerlel]

I'd say it doesn't really require an actual Golden Age comic, apart from the general sense in which pretty much any superhero story is dependent on the existence of Action Comics #1. You don't need to be familiar with Anglo's Marvelman to appreciate Moore's Miracleman, and if Marvelman hadn't existed and Moore made up the Golden Age comics (like he did with Supreme, 1963, Watchmen, Tom Strong, or Top Ten) it wouldn't have detracted from Miracleman.

You're right that the ending of Miracleman #16 is not "the heroes succeeded perfectly". It's more "if superhumans really did use all their powers to impose change on the world and stop crime and violence, would that actually be a good thing?" and Liz refusing to embrace it is that question mark we're left with. Which is what makes it such a great ending.

The Gaiman sequels had some interesting ideas but really were just belaboring a point Moore had already made.

[u/Shed_Some_Skin → u/Moeroboros]

I love Alan Moore's work. He is absolutely one of the best writers in comic book history and deserves his place in the pantheon of greats

But I absolutely fucking hate the idea that Moore's work should stand separate and alone as opposed to being part of the same tradition of reimagining and reinterpretation that other comic book characters are

Moore himself has a pretty acclaimed and successful chunk of his career remixing and interpreting other people's characters via League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Moore didn't create Miracleman. It doesn't belong to him. Even Moore doesn't think that, and he personally selected Gaiman to carry on the story after he was done

Just because Alan Moore wrote a good comic (and he did write a very good comic) doesn't mean the character should be retired forevermore

[u/Moeroboros → u/Shed_Some_Skin]

My sentiment doesn't apply only to Moore, it applies to comic books as a whole.

The moment a property has been sold or bought by different companies, the "canon" should be divided according to who owned the property and what were their creative intentions.

I also completely disagree that Alan Moore was writing "just another" Marvelman/Miracleman ongoing comic.

Moore's goal since the beginning was to create a novel-like deconstruction of the superhero comic using a forgotten Silver Age character. He was clearly using a self-contained structure with storytelling devices quite different from long-running superhero comics. He even proposed creating the exact same story with an original character, if they were unable to get the rights to Marvelman.

The goal all along was to continue the Marvelman/Warpsmith saga going after Book 3, but it was a pre-planned saga and not a "let's bring on new writers and see what they do" move like Marvel or DC do.

The saga of Miracleman (to distinguish it from the Mick Anglo character) starts in "A Dream of Flying". Mick Moran waking up from a dream where he was a superhero, that's the beginning of a novel, not another chapter of "Miracleman Adventures".

To treat comics with novel-like ambition as just another rendition of a corporate-owned IP, that's to undermine comic books as an art-form and condemn them to be corporate-driven playthings.

[u/Shed_Some_Skin → u/Moeroboros]

God, what an atrocious, fart sniffing response

What utter bumwash to talk about "novel ambition" and how that supposedly sets work apart from the base consumerism of comics work. Presumably you don't take the same issue of Herman Melville's intent when Moore stuck Ishamael on the crew of the Nautilus?

They're characters. They exist to be used. Moore has done plenty of it.

[u/Moeroboros → u/Shed_Some_Skin]

Bruh lmao

You think it's "fart-sniffing" to want comics to be more than IP samplers?

You think it's better for stories to run endlessly than to have permanent endings?

I mean, you do you, but that's bullshit.

Presumably you don't take the same issue of Herman Melville's intent when Moore stuck Ishamael on the crew of the Nautilus?

Complete false equivalency.

The difference between Moby Dick and Miracleman is that there aren't any fans posting a "Moby Dick chronological reading order" online acting like the SyFy Channel Moby Dick movie and the Melville novel are in the same continuity.

For Miracleman, going forward, a lot of people will undoubtedly start thinking that Alan Moore's Miracleman is part of the soulless corporate-driven brainrot comics that Disney currently publishes.

Just look at how Wikipedia treats famous novels and how Wikipedia treats superhero comics and you'll see what I'm saying.

If someone other than Herman Melville included Ishmael in their own book, it got classified as "Moby Dick in popular culture".

If Marvel includes Miracleman in any of their slop books, it just gets lumped into "Publication History" alongside Alan Moore's masterpiece.

That's the difference between novels and IPs, and why Miracleman should be treated as a novel.

[u/Dramatic_Letter6798]

The Driver in Donny Cates' The Paybacks is supposed to be a tongue in cheek Miracleman

[u/thigerlel → u/[deleted]]

Right. Except those placements make no sense  chronologically.