MIRACLEMAN
Real
Name: Michael “Mickey”
Moran
Occupation: Newspaper Reporter, former newspaper
copy boy
Legal
Status: Citizen of
the United Kingdom on another alternate earth with no known criminal record
Identity: Secret
Other
Aliases: Captain
Marvel, Marvel Man
Marital
Status: Married
Place
of Birth:
Unrevealed
Place
of Death: London,
England
Known
Relatives:
Elizabeth (wife)
Group
Affiliation: ally
of the Anti-Fury Resistance Squad
Base
of Operations:
London, England (Crooked Earth)
First
Appearance: (historical)
Captain Marvel Adventures #19 (L. Miller Comics), (modern) Miracle Man #1
(Eclipse Comments), (recent) Marvel Super-Heroes #387 (Marvel)
Final
Appearance:
Daredevils#7 (UK) (Marvel)
History: Mickey Moran is a native of the
parallel earth of Crooked Earth whose history was very much like that of Earth
until modern times when different superhuman champions appeared to defend it.
Young Mickey was a young orphan in wartime London, England during World War II.
Nothing is known about where he came from or who were his parents were, but he
managed to earn a meager yet capable income as a newspaper copy boy for the local
Daily Bugle publication. He eventually encountered a mysterious person who
identified himself as Guntag Barghelm, an astro-physicist. (Some speculation is
that Barghelm, or Guntag Barghelt, was actually a Celtic mystic named Anthony
Ludgate, the Crooked Earth counterpart of the mainstream Dr. Druid.) Barghelm
claimed to be dying and offered Mickey a chance to inherit superhuman powers to
defend the earth against dangerous forces.
In
reality, Barghelm worked for an unidentified government agency that sought to
use scientific means to create a positive force for good. Moran was subjected
to a special machine and formulas to make him a perfect physical specimen. Other
boys who had been chosen to become such superhuman champions included Young
Richard “Dickey” Dauntless, who had served as a delivery boy for the Transatlantic
Messenger Service, young Johnathan “Johnny” Bates, all chosen to be the subject
for these government experiments in creating superhuman champions. Barghelm,
however, preferred Mickey to be the chosen champion for being pure in spirit
and allegedly invoked mystical spells to make him superior over the other two
youths in the experiments. According to him, all Moran had to do was call upon
the mystical word “Kimota” could call upon his power. (Barghelm had actually
derived the word “Kimota” by spelling “atomic” backwards.) In order to control
the superhumans, the project director, Doctor Gargunza, used mind control
devices to create illusions to lull the boys under his control. The boys
likewise had dreams of fighting evil as superhuman adventurers against the
Stasi (the East German Secret Police), their evil counterpart named Nastyman and
other menaces. In these adventures, Moran called himself at first Captain
Marvel, later Marvel Man. Dauntless meanwhile called himself Young Marvel to
keep from being confused with Moran’s alter ego and Bates likewise called
himself Kid Marvel. Gargunza also appeared as their enemy in these illusions,
but eventually Moran and Dauntless began rejecting their powers. In their
illusory world, they had merely asked Barghelm to remove their powers so they
could live their lives as normal people. Both Moran and Dauntless left the
project and were released to the real world unaware their adventures had been
illusions.
Moran
returned to his job at the newspaper and gradually became a reporter for the
Daily Bugle in the years after the war, believing his superhuman career was
over. As an adult, he married a girl named Elizabeth who had worked with him
there and lived a regular life. However, when the time came that he realized
his should tell Elizabeth about his former other identity, she told him that
there had never been anyone calling himself by that name. The realization came
as a shock to him as he tried to prove Marvel Man had existed and he tried to
track down Dauntless to no avail to prove it. Bates meanwhile had become a
captain of industry, and Moran went to confront him over their past together. Bates
revealed their adventures had all been illusions, but that he still had his
powers from the experiments, brutally attacking Moran as proof. Perhaps due to
the spells Barghelm had imbued in him, Moran once again called the word, “Kimota,”
and regained his power in the real world. He defeated Bates and revealed
himself to the world as Miracle Man rather than trying to return as a hero his
world never knew had existed.
In this
world, Miracle Man worked alongside many of his reality’s native heroes
including Captain UK, Gaath, The Arachnid and others. However, the demagogue
James Jaspers persuaded the British government that superhumans (or meta-humans
as he called them) presented a danger to the public. Jaspers persuaded the
British government to clamp down on all superhumans to restrict their
activities, most ostensibly to keep them from interfering in his own selfish
plans for domination. For his own part, Jaspers created the armored battle
construct called the Fury and sent it to destroy all the costumed heroes and
their allies of his world. Miracle Man and the combined heroes of this earth
joined together to destroy the Fury, several superhuman heroes were killed or
destroyed in the bloodshed. Joining with the last few superhumans to face the
Fury, Miracle Man held his own until the very end, subsequently dying in
battle.
Height: 6’ 4”
Weight: 310 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blonde
Strength
Level: Miracle Man
possessed Class 100 strength enabling him to lift (press) over 100 tons under
optimal conditions.
Known
Superhuman Powers:
Miracle Man possessed superhuman strength, stamina, endurance and resistance to
injury on a cosmic level. Virtually inexhaustible, he was equal in power to
such beings as Superman,
Hercules
and Thor in
power. All his physical abilities were charged on a cosmic level that was
constantly being replenished, but he did become weakened when he used up too
much of his energies before they could be restored. He could move at incredible
speeds and even will himself to fly through the air.
The
source of Miracle Man’s powers were obviously imbued in him by various unidentified
biochemical and scientific means then increased upon or stabilized by mystical
spells. In order to call upon them and transform to his superhuman appearance,
he was required to mention the word “kimota” which mystically transformed him
into Miracle Man by adding another hundred and fifty pounds of
cosmically-charged muscle and sinew to his frame. Whether he was actually
dependent on this word to change form is unrevealed.
Comments: (Captain Marvel) Created by C.C. Beck, (Marvel Man) Adapted by Mick Anglo, (Miracle Man) Adapted by Alan Moore
and Alan Davis
The
story behind Miracle Man goes back to the British published reprints of the Fawcett
Captain Marvel comics. In Captain Marvel#19 (December 23, 1953), on the "Club
Page", British readers of L. Miller and Sons reprints of the Captain Marvel
stories found a surprise. Billy Batson and Freddy Freeman, the erstwhile Captain
Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. respectively, wanted to live normal lives, and
so they gave back their powers to the Wizard Shazam; such events did not occur
in any published story in Fawcett’s Captain Marvel comics. Rather, what
happened was that DC Comics had successfully sued Fawcett, arguing that Captain
Marvel infringed on Superman’s copyright, and Fawcett folded its comic book
line. The announcement continued to state that, due to this development, the
magazine would switch over to telling the exploits of Marvel-man. Marvel-man made
his first actual appearance in Marvelman#25 (Feb 3, 1954).
Marvel-man,
with his cohorts Young Marvel-man and Kid Marvel-man, lasted till Marvelman#370
(Feb 1953). Along the way, they frequently faced the rogue scientist Doctor
Gargunza-- mirroring how Captain Marvel faced the rogue scientist Doctor
Sivana. Despite the cessation of publication of the Marvel-man stories, one
reader remembered him in the following years -- Alan Moore. Once, while
browsing through a Yarmouth bookstore and finding a Marvel-man collection, it
occurred to him that Marvel-man had not been published for some years. Wondering
what happened to him, Moore got struck by the image of Marvel-man as a middle-aged
man unable to remember his magic word.
Years
later, Moore made good on this idea. In March 1982, Moore revived Marvel-man in
the present day. Moran was presented as having suffered amnesia in 1962, only
after 19 years remembering his past as Marvel-man -- yet his wife, Liz, whom he
had only met after what he remembered as his last adventure as Marvel-man, and
had no knowledge of a Marvel-man ever having existed in the 1950’s. This
presented a perplexing situation, as many of the adventures Moran remembered
having as Marvel-man presented situations where Marvel-man was sighted by the
public, drew much attention, had his exploits extensively covered in the news
media, and so on. Certainly, his exploits would at least have made it into the
history books, so how could Liz not have heard of Marvel-man?
However,
compelling evidence that confirmed part of Moran’s memories of having had
adventures as Marvel-man presented itself when Johnny Bates--Kid Marvel-man--called
him. Bates confirmed Moran’s story of their last adventures together as Kid
Marvel-man and Marvel-man, and revealed that he had become a captain of
industry in the years since that time. Bates claimed that he had lost his
powers as Kid Miracle-man as a result of that last adventure. However, Moran felt
something suspicious about Bates -- and to his horror he discovered that not
only had Bates not lost the ability to turn into Kid Marvel-man, in 1962 he had
turned into Kid Marvelman and had not turned back into a human being since! A
pitched battle resulted in which Bates was defeated after impulsively gloating
and boasting, "I defeated you! Me… Kid Marvelman!" Oops…
Further
on in his revival, Moore established that Marvel-man’s 1950’s adventures had
actually never happened, explaining why his wife had never heard of Marvel-man,
but rather that Mickey Moran was an orphan boy who had been chosen to be the
subject for government experiments in creating superhumans. In order to control
the superhumans, the project director, Hispanic scientist Doctor Gargunza, had
used mind control devices to create illusions to lull the superhumans.
Grappling with the problem of creating a semi-logical way to explain to the
superhumans how they gained their superpowers, he had the good fortune of
finding an L. Miller and Sons reprint of the American Captain Marvel comic
books! (Moran, subconsciously to some degree aware of what really happened to
him, incorporated Doctor Gargunza into the fantasies he experienced.)
In
1983, while working on Captain Britain for Marvel UK, Moore introduced Earth-238,
meant to contain counterparts of British comic book heroes of the 1940’s to
1960’s -- including Marvel-man. Much as the British comic book character the
Spider had an Earth-238 counterpart called the Arachnid, Marvel-man’s Earth-238
counterpart was Miracle-man. Ironically, when Moore’s Marvel-man stories were
reprinted in the United States by Eclipse, Marvel objected to the name of the
character. As a result Marvel-man was renamed for the U.S. market -- as Miracle-man!
Miracleman#1 came out in August 1985. A name that Moore had first used as a
euphemism for Marvel-man became the name by which many know him by better
today.
Additionally,
"The Encyclopedia of Superheroes" by Jeff Rovin contributes info that
Marvel-man was revived in 1984 in "Warrior" under the Quality Banner.
Except for the story, which explained his absence, the rest of the stories were
reprints.
There
were a few subtle changes in his costume on the magazine covers. In 1985, Eclipse
Comics brought the character to the US. For this entry, it is presumed that
Miracle-man of Earth-238’s adventures more or less mirrored the adventures that
Marvel-man had in his 1950’s to 1960’s comic books. Thus, in contrast to what
Moore revealed in his Marvel-man stories of the 1980’s, for the Miracle-man of
Earth-238, these adventures did take place, and were not just illusions.
However, one bit of deception may have occurred with the Miracle-man of
Earth-238’s origin -- in Secret Defenders#18, Doctor Druid, Anthony Ludgate of
Earth-616, revealed that he had at some point used the alias "Guntag
Barghelm". This is a name that one should recognize from the history of
Miracle-man in this entry. (In the original stories of Marvel-man in the
1950’s, the entity that gave Marvel-man his powers was usually referred to as
"Guntag Barghelt." However, Moore usually used the
"Barghelm" spelling.) One could extrapolate that this Barghelm was,
in fact, the Earth-238 counterpart of Dr. Druid.
The
Marvel-man stories in the 1950’s frequently used Communists as villains, especially
the East Germans, given England’s proximity to Germany, hence, the listing of
the Stasi (East Germany’s secret police) as enemies of the Miracle-man of
Earth-238. The Stasi continued till the fall of the Berlin wall, its activities
in the 1970’s included training or assisting terrorists such as the Red Army
Faction, Black September, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigade and so
forth. (Admittedly, Marvel’s sliding timescale probably applies to Earth-238,
but since Earth-238’s history differed dramatically from Earth-616’s and the
real world, the Stasi’s longer continued existence would be allowable.)
There
are some legal concerns, and Alan Moore is seeking to regain the rights to his
Marvel-man. Marvel owns ZERO rights to Miracle-man, but they are helping to fund
Neil Gaiman in a legal battle against Todd McFarlane, who bought the stable of
Eclipse characters when they folded.
Basically, Gaiman inherited Alan Moore and Gary Leach's creator rights,
while McFarlane bought up the publisher's rights to the character, and they
each technically own about half. There
is an implicit understanding that if Gaiman does win his case, Marvel will have
first crack at reprinting them, but that's all for Marvel's involvement.
Moore
and Davis did the Captain Britain series featuring the Fury. While no background
is given on the character Miracle-man of Earth-238, who appears for a panel
being blown to bits, I think it's a pretty fair assumption that Moore obviously
meant him to be, at least, homage to the classic character. This bio gives his
most “probable” history.
Profile
by: John McDonagh
and William Uchtman
Clarifications: Miracle-man should not be
confused with:
·
Captain Marvel, William Batson, member of the
JLA, @ Whiz Comics #1
·
Captain
Marvel Jr,
Frederick Freeman, ally of Captain Marvel, @ Whiz Comics #25
·
Captain
Marvel, Roger
Winkle, other-dimensional adventure from another Earth, @ Captain Marvel #1
·
Miracle
Man, criminal hypnotist
killed by the Scourge, @ Fantastic Four I #3
·
Marvel
Man, brief alias
of Quasar, @ Captain America I #217
Edited: 09/14/07