Transformations

When Alan Moore started to write Marvelman, later Miracleman, MM learned that all of his previous adventures had occurred inside a virtual reality.

When Moore started to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, Swampy learned that he was not a man who had become a plant but a plant that thought that it had been a man.

In both cases, the entire basis of the series was completely transformed. And the transformations continued. MM's powers made him a benevolent global dictator, regarded as God. Swampy learned, thanks to John Constantine's intervention, that the passage of a man through fire and his transformation into a swamp plant is the first stage in the genesis of the next plant elemental, the guardian of the Terrestrial ecology. The elemental has powers that make him a nature god although Swampy had not suspected that he had such powers before he was written by Alan Moore.

MM changes the world. Swampy can change the world by transforming deserts into plains and forests but decides that it would be wrong to interfere in evolution in this way. The difference is that MM has his own continuity whereas Swampy must conform to DC Comics continuity where the pretense is that the world remains essentially unchanged despite the presence in it of powerful beings like Superman, other superheroes and the Swamp Thing.

In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias change the world because, although this group of characters began as the Charlton Comics superheroes who were incorporated into DC continuity, Moore was able to transform them into the Watchmen with their own continuity.

"...Inside You There Is A God"

Mr Cream tells Michael Moran:

"Mr. Moran...Listen very carefully...You are a fool. You are a weakling and a coward...But inside you there is a GOD. Inside you there is SOMEONE BETTER THAN US... ...And whatever the cost, you must PROTECT him."
-Miracleman No 7 (New York, 2014), p. 16.

Comic book dialogue has its own ways of emphasizing words and phrases.

I quote this dialogue because it is true of Moran while he is not Miracleman but also because it is true of every human being.

Miracleman 2

Marvel Comics Miracleman no 2 contains:

the next two episodes of the Original Writer's Miracleman;

"The Yesterday Gambit," a future episode published out of sequence but never before reprinted in color (and I am not sure that I still have Warrior back issues in the cellar);

Garry Leach art;

the earliest account of "The Birth of Marvelman", which is curiously combined with the story of a film about Marvelman;

the first ever, four page, Kid Marvelman story, originally published in Marvelman, which has a caption explaining that KM "...has been appointed by Marvelman himself..." (p. 41) - no origin story and KM takes action not only against a crook but also against a prejudiced policeman.

Is all this worth the £3 that I paid for it? Yes, if that is what we have to pay these days. I particularly appreciate having "The Yesterday Gambit" and in color and in better color than Eclipse Comics. Since I found a 20 pence coin yesterday and a pound coin today, I can imagine that the gods have subsidized me by 40%.

In the late 1980's, when I started to read comics again as an adult, I found a pound and went to a newsagent. One DC comic cost 40p and a special with extra pages cost 60p. The news vendor gave me 20p change, not realizing that one comic was a more expensive special. 120%: the gods could afford to be more generous 30 years ago.

Jerry Siegel And Mick Anglo

Mick Anglo was to Marvelman what Jerry Siegel was to Superman, the creator of a character later transformed by other writers. There is a difference of scale. MM has had two other writers whereas Superman became an industry:

the multi-media Superman;
superheroes;
Captain Marvel;
Marvelman;
the re-created Marvelman, later renamed Miracleman;
the Smallville TV series that began as a Superman prequel but became a distinct story and also proliferated into other media.

MM and Smallville, both good in different ways, are so dissimilar that it is easy to forget their common origin.

Realities Collide (Spoilers?)

(If anyone is reading Miracleman for the first time without any prior warning of how the story pans out, then maybe we are moving into spoiler territory.)

As Miracleman proceeds, casual references to then current events, notably to armed conflict in Northern Ireland and to Thatcherite cuts in the National Health Service, strengthen our grip on the real world while, at the same time, we learn what would be the reality if there were beings as powerful as Moran and Bates. Sooner rather then later, these realities, the real world and real superbeings, must collide - not coexist peacefully for decades as in regular superhero comics.

Regular comics neither accurately reflect the real world nor plausibly relate that world to super-powered beings. A super-villain appears above Washington/New York/Metropolis/Gotham City etc and issues an ultimatum with a deadline, thus giving the superhero plenty of time to apprehend him. The city-dwellers might panic for a while but their life soon returns to normal. In fact, an insightful writer might observe that Metropolitans or Gothamites become so accustomed to superhero rescues that they do not even panic. In a Superman novel by Elliot S Maggin, Lois Lane, trapped underground, merely thinks, "How long till Superman gets here?" In Watchmen, because Veidt, in his own words, is not a Republic Serial villain, he does not tell the other heroes his plan, involving multiple deaths in New York, until it has already been implemented.

Bates does not issue any ultimatum but simply destroys London and Londoners with horrific violence for several hours before Moran is even aware of it. Until then, superheroes did not have a public presence with secret identities. They were simply secret. Superpowered beings include the Miracle people, Firedrake, Warpsmiths and Qys (in a sense the equivalents of Kryptonians). The Law of Extraordinary Beings - that, on a planet where there is one extraordinary being, there will soon be many - reflects the fact that, when a company publishes one superhero, it soon publishes others, then brings them together in team ups, teams and crossovers.

Grounded In Reality

Several visual details ground Miracleman in familiar mundane reality before the title character flies into space:

a quiet British motorway very early while it is still dark;
a married couple prepares for a working day (we do not yet know what Liz does);
a railway station announcement and a hurrying commuter;
a train moving through the English countryside;
children demonstrating against the opening of a Nuclear Power Plant in the fictitious town of Larksmere.

The opening page of the second installment has six panels but we only notice the fourth, fifth and sixth and the speech balloons which partly cover the first three. These three panels are long and thin, although of increasing width, showing:

clouds and a star in a night sky;
more clouds and stars;
a building with lights in the windows.

Although we probably miss it, this is what Mike sees as he flies home. We gather that the Morans live in a London flat. Familiar reality persists, for a while, after Miracleman's rebirth.

The Death Of God

In recent posts, I have focused on Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014). However, having read the entire original run in Eclipse Comics, it is difficult not to reflect on the series as a whole.

Apart from the superman, another Nietzschean catchphrase is the death of God. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, God has died either metaphorically or literally, i. e., has either turned out never to have existed or has literally ceased to exist, I am not sure which. In either case, his death is a problem to which the superman is the solution.

In Miracleman, this sequence is reversed: the public regards the emergence of the Miracle Man as having caused the deaths of all the old gods and annually celebrates this collective divine death, I think on 25 December? (The answer as always is in a box in the cellar.) In a later episode, there is a right hand page on which Moran identifies himself with God, I think ironically, i. e., that he is articulating public perception, not necessarily self-perception. Nevertheless, the facing left hand page displays the chapter title: "Hubris."

Hubris is over-arching pride inviting Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution. The original writer ends his run ambiguously - was Moran right to change the world or was Liz right to reject his gift of superhumanity? Nemesis follows in Neil Gaiman's Silver Age which is to be followed by a Dark Age.

The phrase "God is dead" is the turning point of James Blish's two part fantasy, Black Easter/The Day After Judgment.

Back Again To 1956

The year 1956 is significant for yet another reason. Although both Marvelman and Young Marvelman had long runs, from 1954 to 1963, the team book, Marvelman Family, co-starring MM and YM together with the newly introduced Kid Marvelman, ran for only three years - but it started in 1956.

Thus, Michael Moran tells Liz:

"In 1956 we were joined by Johnny Bates. He was a little kid of maybe seven or eight. When he said my name he became Kid Miracleman. They called us the Miracleman Family."

- Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014), p. 23.

Dates of fictitious events as remembered by Moran exactly correspond to dates of publication. The word "Family" is used rather loosely. There is no suggestion that the three are related. And, indeed, being all male, they could hardly have been a family unit as such. However, it was thought that the young male readership would not have welcomed a Marvelwoman who, of course, was added during the Eclipse run, as Miraclewoman. (And Michael and Liz's super-powered daughter, far from being "Miraclebaby," named herself Winter Moran.)

Marvelman Family stories were rare both because of the relative shortness of the run and because, at least in the annual(s?), I understand that a single Family story was followed by MM solo stories. In the fifties, I did hear of, although I never got hold of, Marvelman Family and therefore imagined that I was missing out on something special whereas it is evident that MF stories were no more special than any of the many solo MM or YM stories.

The Sound Of Thunder

As Michael Moran wakes from his recurring dream of flying:

"The last thing he hears is the sound of thunder..."
- Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014), p. 13.

When he whispers "...the word..." (p. 16):

"The whisper is drowned by the thunder!" (p. 17)

To immobilize armed terrorists, he merely claps his hands:

"He swings his hands together, and thunder bursts from between them." (p. 18)

When he describes to Liz Moran his vision of twenty-seven years previously:

"His vision becomes hers...In her vision she hears the deafening peal of thunder..." (pp. 21-22)

Why are there so many references to thunder? The thunderbolt is the weapon of a god. Someone who is not killed but empowered by a thunderbolt must be favored by the god. In Captain Marvel's case, two gods are involved in his transformation, Zeus, who wields the thunderbolt, and Mercury. (Zeus is the Greek name for the chief god and Mercurius is the Latin name for the divine messenger but pantheons are mixed to generate the acronym SHAZAM. Indeed, Solomon, for wisdom, is Biblical although the Greek wise man, Solon, could have been used.)

Back to the thunder: Miracleman, previously Marvelman, was a British adaptation of Captain Marvel who in his very first appearance was named "Captain Thunder," a name that was dropped for copyright reasons, although it was later revived, both by Roy and Dann Thomas (see attached image) and by DC Comics who, having acquired Captain Marvel, then parodied him with a "Captain Thunder" whose magic acronym was THUNDER.

References to thunder in Miracleman evoke both divine power and the earliest form of the pivotal Captain Marvel.

1956 Revisited

The original writer of Miracleman (New York, 2014) created a perfect contrast between the PROLOGUE (pp. 1-10) and episode 1, "A Dream of Flying" (pp. 11-19). Each of these short comic strips presents an interaction between the mid-fifties and the early eighties but their perspectives are opposite in every respect.

The first strip, written by Mick Anglo, was originally published in 1956. When the writer of Miracleman adapted it as his Prologue, he revised it verbally though not visually. Thus, in the Prologue, science fiction villains from the future, in the revised version from 1981, invade 1956 and the Miracleman Family counter-attacks in 1981, whereas in episode 1, originally both published and set in 1982, Michael Moran, unexpectedly transformed into Miracleman, suddenly recalls his strange adventures of the fifties although, like everyone else, Liz Moran has never heard of a Miracleman.

Mick Anglo had looked forward to a science fictional future whereas his successor looks back to a simpler time. As I say, a perfect contrast.

1956 is significant year for me because it was the first year in which I remember noticing that we were in a year with a number and that that number would change after 31 December. I was seven. We lived in the Lake District in the North West of England and, in 1956, I began to attend a boarding school, now closed and the building demolished, in a small seaside resort that was also a "dormitory town" of Glasgow. I occasionally read Superman and Marvelman in comics and hard back annuals.

The Miracleman Prologue highlights 1956 and episode 1 mentions "...the Lake District..." (p. 14) so that reading these strips feels like coming home but as an adult.

Syllogisms And Triads

A syllogism is two premises and a conclusion, e. g.:

All men are mortal;
Socrates is a man;
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

A Hegelian triad is a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis. e. g.:

being;
nothing;
becoming.

Imaginative fantasy is written within a syllogism or triad, e. g.:

the Golden Age of Baghdad, complete with jinns, flying carpets etc, existed exactly as described in the 1001 Nights;
Baghdad is now as we know it from the news;
so what happened?
Neil Gaiman presents a conclusion or synthesis in The Sandman: Ramadan.

Michael Moran remembers that he was Miracleman in the fifties and early sixties;
the world in the eighties was how we experienced it at the time with no knowledge or record of any Miracleman;
so where did Michael's memories come from?

The dialogue in Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014), expresses Michael's and Liz's bewilderment -

Liz: ...that's just so stupid!
Michael: I suppose you're right. Actually saying it out loud like that, it does sound...well...pretty unlikely. I never really thought about it before. But I had to believe it, don't you see? I was Miracleman. I was a being of almost unlimited power!!
Michael (later): This may, damn it...This does sound silly in 1982, but in the fifties it made perfect sense. This is how I remember it. This is how it happened. (p. 23)

Two realities meet and interact so what will happen next? The first thing that happens is that Michael shouts, "Damn you, Liz, you're laughing at my life!!" (p. 24) and puts his fist through the solid oak floor and she believes.

Why Collect The New Edition?

I have the Eclipse Miracleman complete either in the original comics or in the collected editions so why buy the current Marvel Comics reprints? Good question. I might have discontinued the order after checking out no 1. However, re-analyzing these early episodes, and comparing them with the Mick Anglo reprints, has enabled me to post quite a lot, which I enjoy doing, and it also helps that some people read the blog. Comments from anyone reading this character for the very first time would be particularly welcome.

I regard Miracleman as a culmination of superheroes as initiated by Superman in 1938 and, of course, Superman had several earlier roots - but I have discussed this earlier on the blog. (See here.) It matters that Miracleman is kept in print in durable editions and whether anyone can surpass it remains to be seen.

1956

In Eclipse Comics and again in Marvel Comics, a 1956 Mick Anglo Marvelman Family story is adapted as a Prologue to Miracleman. As I understand it, the writer of Miracleman changed some of the words but none of the art. For example, the opening words:

"PROLOGUE 1956 An age of lingering innocence, an age of golden dreams for the.. MIRACLEMAN FAMILY" (Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014), p. 1..."

- read like a rewrite.

The Marvelman Family story is a hopelessly inconsistent time travel story which, nevertheless, makes perfect sense in this context. (It will emerge that inconsistencies were deliberately built into the Family's early adventures to test their credulity and controllability.)

In the Prologue, the Science Gestapo attacks from 1981 whereas I am sure that, in the original, they came from many millennia in the future. However, this change makes sense because, in the 1980's, Miracleman will recall his adventures of the 1960's.

The story:

in 1981, the United Earth Government prevents Kommandant Garrer's Science Gestapo from enslaving the world;

the Gestapo travels in Chrono Cruisers to conquer instead the world of 1956;

a local compares the Chrono Cruisers to "...space rockets, just like in Dan Dare!" (p. 3), which strikes me as another rewrite;

Johnny Bates, happening along, transforms to Kid Miracleman and fights the invaders but more arrive so he goes at "...atomic speed..." (p. 4) for help;

Kid and Young batter the invaders who, however, recover unexpectedly quickly;

one trooper explains that the atomic storm troopers are arriving in other countries and we see them in Paris and Saigon;

Micky Moran reads stop-press news of the invasion and transforms to Miracleman;

the Miracleman Family and the Army subdue the first landing in Cornwall;

the Family split up to liberate Rome, Washington and Moscow, respectively;

the invaders in Cornwall recover and bombard the Army with "...rare magnetic gases from our secret video rings!" (p. 6) (words are sometimes used with no apparent knowledge of their meanings);

the Family returns to find fighting again in Cornwall;

Garrer orders his men to destroy the Chrono Cruisers, of which more are still arriving, so that he and his men cannot be returned to 1981;

leaving KM to fight in 1956, MM and YM travel "...at atomic speed..." (p. 8) to 1981 when they destroy the Chrono Cruisers before their departure, capture Garrer and hand him over to "...the Commander, Twelfth Area, World Police" (p. 10), who expresses no surprise and says that 1981 can now become a utopia;

ironically, MM hopes that he lives to see it;

in 1956, the atomic troopers fighting KM suddenly vanish!;

then, hearing MM's account, KM accepts instead that they were never there! - while MM jokes that "...that's the way it was...or was it?" (p. 10)

Hopeless:

if the Chrono Cruisers had already arrived in 1956, then destroying them before their departure in 1981 could not possibly prevent them from having already arrived in 1956;

if the Cruisers had not arrived in 1956, then MM and YM would not have traveled to 1981;

 
and, if the Cruisers had arrived in 1956, then there is no reason why the troopers fighting KM should suddenly disappear at some later time;

please do not tell me that they disappeared in 1956 at the exact same time as MM and YM destroyed the Chrono Cruisers in 1981! (Please don't!)

However, thanks to the ingenuity of the writer of Miracleman, we now know exactly what is really happening here. Gargunza is thinking, "They can even swallow that!"

From MA To AM

How can we discuss the new Marvel Comics Miracleman series (Miracleman, no 1 (New York, 2014)) without naming its original writer by whom I do not mean the original writer of Marvelman, Mick Anglo, but the original writer of the Warrior Marvelman?

That original writer acted in good faith when he wrote this serial for a magazine that, unknown to him, had no legal right to the character. The re-conceptualized Marvelman/Miracleman is:

his work for which he deserves credits and royalties;
superb and seminal;
like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, an absurd, pre-existing comics character completely reinvented and made to say something important;
like Howard Chaykin's Janov Prohaska, Blackhawk, and Mike Grell's Oliver Queen, Green Arrow, a character originally written for children but now rewritten for adults;
in this respect, I think, an even greater achievement than Moore's Watchmen because this superhero revival retains but transforms all the absurdities of the original;
in fact, my childhood revisited in adulthood with timely references to "...selling arms to, like, the people..." (p. 12) and "...the alternative press...man. (p. 15)."

MM says, "Eighteen years. Eighteen years, trapped in that old, tired body. It doesn't matter...It's over now!" (pp. 18-19)

Is this wish fulfillment? It can also be reality when, on the first day of retirement, we start to exercise and become more active than ever.

More On Marvel Comics Miracleman no 1

(The attached image is the cover of Eclipse Comics Miracleman no 1. There never was a Marvelman no 1 because Marvelman continued the numbering of the Captain Marvel British reprints.)

Marvel Comics Miracleman no 1 (New York, 2014) contains, after the front cover and a contents page:

the first two short Marvelman episodes from Warrior as they had been republished by Eclipse, on smaller pages, colored, but here recolored, and with the character's superhero name changed;
three black and white Marvelman stories;
a Marvelman Family story that, renamed Miracleman Family, had been colored and re-presented as a Prologue to the Eclipse Miracleman no 1 and is presented thus here;
some art work;
an article explaining the origin of Marvelman, illustrated by pages of Marvelman;
extracts from an interview with the since deceased Mick Anglo, illustrated with photographs.

Thus, this is a combination of a comic book and a magazine. It is good to be able to compare and contrast Marvelman with Miracleman although I would have preferred more of the latter.

A caption in the large introductory panel of each Marvelman story summarizes the fictitious origin of the character, twice referring to MICKY MORAN as "...a Boy...," then referring to MARVELMAN as "...a Man..." The caption informs us that, when MICKY MORAN "...says the Key Word KIMOTA, he becomes MARVELMAN, a Man of such strength and powers that he is invincible and indestructible." (pp. 42, 48, 58).

So it doesn't sound as if he will ever experience any difficulty in defeating his opponents?

The perspective and quality of the writing in Miracleman could not be more different. The adult, married Moran thinks:

"If only I could remember that damn word. Kimono? No. Komodo? No. Krakatoa? No. Jesus, this headache." (p. 14)

We soon realize that we are reading a character who both remembers the old Marvelman stories from the inside and inhabits the same world as us - until, inevitably, he changes that world into something new and strange.

Marvel Comics Miracleman no 1

(i) Fawcett Comics stopped publishing the original Captain Marvel because of law suits from the publishers of Superman.

(ii) The Mick Anglo Marvelman ceased publication I think because he could not compete with newly imported American superheroes.

(iii) Warrior magazine published a reconceptualized Marvelman, received legal heat from Marvel Comics, then stopped publishing.

(iv) Eclipse Comics re-published, colored and continued the reconceptualized Marvelman, renamed Miracleman, but went bankrupt.

(v) Now Marvel Comics re-publishes both the Mick Anglo Marvelman and the Eclipse Comics Miracleman, the latter recolored, and hopefully will complete the latter.

(vi) Meanwhile, the Superman publishers publish the original Captain Marvel and Marvel Comics have their Captain Marvel.

Moral: a superhero cannot be killed.

Comment: the recoloring is subdued and superb, more like the way DC Comics colored the Warrior magazine V For Vendetta by the same original writer.

Man Of Steel Film Trailer

I have just watched the Man Of Steel trailer which conveys very clearly that Superman is a myth. On the one hand, we recognise the story. On the other hand, we always want to see a fresh new version of it. It is both old and new. Jonathan Kent played by an unfamiliar actor nevertheless is clearly Jonathan Kent.

The familiar myth is easily conveyed by the name "Clark," by a swirling red cape, by a distant human figure seen flying against the clouds.

Jonathan says that the man Clark becomes will change the world. This is as it should be. As Alan Moore made clear in Watchmen and Marvelman, anyone that powerful would change the world simply by existing in it. We should imagine that we are looking at a new version of Superman whose existence is being revealed now or the day after and that the future will be different with him in it: not only the Man Of Steel but the Man of Tomorrow.

The only other comment that I can make at present is that, having searched for images on the internet, I do not like the changes that have been made to the costume.

Smallville: Hothead

Third Episode

The football coach's temper makes him a "hothead" and his meteoric power of combustion makes him a "firedrake", according to the terminology used in Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman series. Since the villain of episode two studied insects and gained insect powers, it appears that the meteors affect bodies through minds.

There are two father-son conflicts: Jonathan and Clark; Lionel and Lex. The coach and his players are at one stage compared to another father-son relationship. The Kents have to resolve whether it is safe for Clark to play football and Clark has to make his own decisions so he plays against Jonathan's advice, then realises that he no longer wants to. Lionel wants Lex to sack twenty per cent of his workforce and Lex wants to employ twenty per cent more. Ordered to sack the twenty per cent, he instead finds a way to cut costs by the required amount without losing any staff. Lex, as in every version of the character, is extremely clever but has gone from scientist to scientist-businessman to just businessman.

Clark pulls the door from a burning car but the man he rescues is unconscious and there are no other witnesses, then the car explodes, destroying the evidence of Clark's super strength. Lana leaves cheer leading and tries waitressing but goes back to cheer leading. So, as in many TV series episodes, things look like changing but don't. I think that the Jonathan-Clark and Lionel-Lex conflicts and Lana's unsuccessful change of direction provide enough drama so that the coach's meteor powers were unnecessary.

Comics And Science Fiction

Stories can be narrated, enacted or depicted. Adding extra speakers and actions transformed narrative into drama. Sequential art story telling, like the Bayeux Tapestry, the Stations of the Cross, the willow pattern, scrimshaw bracelets and comic strips, developed from static representational art. All religions have canonical texts – scriptures - but one, Manichaeanism, also had canonical pictures, in the “Book of Images.”

Comic strips, like opera, are a composite art form. The former combine pictures with words as the latter combines drama with music. Comics are no longer only comical as novels are no longer new. Comic strips can address any age group and can mediate any genre although they are most closely associated with the one genre that originated in this medium, superheroes. Superman is the transitional character between science fiction (sf) and superheroes as Frankenstein is transitional between Gothic fiction and sf.

Superheroes is a hybrid genre, combining elements of sf, fantasy and action-adventure. Thus, superheroes, powered either scientifically or supernaturally, can meet non-super powered masked avengers or costumed adventurers. Special effects now enable films to present superheroes adequately. Superhero prose fiction has to emphasize characterization rather than fantastic feats.

Mr Hyde and the Invisible Man were pre-comics super-villains. The latter forced a tramp called Thomas Marvel into the non-super-powered sidekick role. Later, Marvel, as the landlord of an inn called "The Invisible Man," secretly possesses but cannot understand the title character's notebooks containing "...the subtle secret of invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets..." ¹

Ironically, much later, superheroes included Captain Marvel and Invisible Girl, the latter published by Marvel Comics. No doubt, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, already incorporating Griffin (the Invisible Man), Cavor, the Time Traveler, Dr Moreau, Wellsian and other Martians, Hyde, Dupin, Holmes, Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, John Carter etc, would be able to link Wells' Marvel to the later Marvels. Are the "...dozen other strange secrets..." other super powers? Griffin says that his formula involves four dimensions (as, in other Wells stories, do the Time Machine, Davidson's eyes and Plattner's reversal) and that:

"In the books - the books that Tramp has hidden - there are marvels, miracles!" ²

After Marvel's death, when someone else can read and interpret the notebooks, a new superhero team, atoning for Griffin's crimes, might meet in the cellar of "the Invisible Man."

Gladiator (1930) by Philip Wylie was a possible source for Superman (1938). Like the earliest published version of Superman, Wylie's Hugo Danner was strong, fast and invulnerable but could neither fly nor see through walls. Like Danner, Superman intimidated a corrupt lobbyist. ^{3, 4} Danner imagines becoming either a powerful bank robber and murderer or a super-detective dispensing summary justice. ⁵ His confidante suggests a super-powered group called "The New Titans." ⁶

Both Gladiator and the first Superman episode refer to weight-lifting ants and high-jumping grasshoppers. Danner's father says of ants:

"Strength a hundred times our own." ⁷

Siegel writes:

"The lowly ant can support weights a hundred times its own." ⁸

Siegel seems to have read Wylie. Superman, definitely descended from the Hebrew Judge, Samson, the Greek Hero, Hercules, and the philosophical concept, the Superman, may also be descended from the hero of an American novel, Hugo Danner. The progression from Superman, via Captain Marvel and Mick Anglo's Marvelman to Alan Moore's Marvelman, re-named Miracleman, is a Samsonian-Herculean apotheosis. Moore's Michael Moran (Marvel/Miracleman) neither despairs like Danner nor conforms like Superman but rules like the Messiah, with weapons destroyed, money abolished, the environment saved, energy abundant, necessities free, politicians redundant, super powers shared, Fundamentalists in hiding, civilization interstellar, physical resurrections and Moran worshiped. Thus, Moore's graphic but superheroes-transcending work restores Biblical, mythical themes but in futuristic, technological settings.

James Blish’s earliest sf, published in the same period as the original Superman stories, contains the kind of fantastic elements that came to be refined into a separate genre. Thus, a secret society uses mental powers against extra-solar invaders in “Citadel of Thought.”⁹ Poul Anderson’s first future history contains the Un-Men and “The Sensitive Man.”¹⁰ Julian May and Larry Niven incorporate superhero motifs into sf novels.^{11, 12}

 

Thus, the link between prose sf and comic strip superheroes may be closer than those who read only prose fiction realize. Also, several works by Alan Moore, including the pre-comics characters crossover and the superheros climax mentioned here, are culminating moments of the comics medium.

1. H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man (London: Penguin Classics, 2005), 150.
2. ibid, p. 89.
3. Philip Wylie, Gladiator (New York: Lancer Books, 1965), pp. 169-170.
4. Jerome Siegel & Joe Schuster, Superman in Action Comics (New York: DC Comics, 1938, 1988), pp. 12-13.
5. Wylie, op. cit., p. 129.
6. ibid, p. 188.
7. Wylie, op., cit., p. 6.
8. Siegel and Schuster, op., cit., p. 1.
9. James Blish, “Citadel of Thought” in Stirring Science Stories (Albing Publications, February 1940), reprinted in Blish, The Best Of James Blish (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979.
10. Poul Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York: TOR, 1981), pp. 31-198.
11. Julian May, Diamond Mask (London: Pan Books, 1995).
12. Larry Niven, Protector (London: Futura Publications Ltd, 1974).

More On Moore's MM

Superman: the original superhero.
Captain Marvel: a first rate copy of the original.
Captain Thunder: Captain Marvel's original name, later re-used by Roy Thomas.
Mick Anglo's Marvelman: a second rate copy.
The Marvel Comics Captain Marvel: a later superhero cashing in on an earlier name.
Mick Anglo's Captain Miracle and Miracleman: third and fourth rate copies.
The Miracleman in Alan Moore's Captain Britain: an alternative version of Marvelman.
Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman: a definitive statement on superheroes.
Neil Gaiman's Miracleman: a continuation of Alan Moore's Miracleman.

Mick Anglo's Marvelman despatched a Nazi with an uppercut in a single panel. Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman killed several horribly after one of them had accepted him as the Superman:

"He was a vision... That blonde hair. Those blue eyes... When I was a youth, our leaders spoke of a new kind of man. An ubermensch, ja? I saw him then in my mind. I saw him again, tonight. We waited for him to come for forty years..." (1)

Nazi: "Forty years. Forty years we have waited for you, for the first of the blonde gods that would replace us. Overman. You have come at last."
Marvelman: (face already covered with dead men's blood, putting his finger, then his arm, through the Nazi's body): "Yes. You can go now." (2)

Moore correctly deduced that a Nazi would respond like this to a superhero. It helped that MM, unlike his predecessors, was seven feet tall with blonde hair. Moore also reasoned that a superhero team would be able to change the world and ended with MM wondering whether they have been right to do so. Moore's successor, Neil Gaiman, was beginning to show conflict in utopia when his story line was interrupted by the publisher's bankruptcy. We hope that the story continues...

(1) Moore, Alan. The Red King Syndrome, Forestville, July 1990, p. 77.
(2) op. cit., p. 83.