Alan Moore gives go ahead to Marvelman reprints

When Marvel announced that they had purchased the rights to the character of Marvelman, there was one name that was on everyone’s lips, one name that everyone wanted to hear comment on the events: Alan Moore, the man who brought the character back from Limbo and reinvented not just Marvelman, but the entire superhero genre. Adding fuel to this fire was the fact that Marvel had not announced that they were reprinting the Moore stories, and what with Moore’s fractious relationship with the company, would they be able to all?

Now, in an Interview with Kurt Amacker at Mania.com , Moore seems to have given Marvel permission to reprint his stories.

After being
initially informed by Neil’s lawyer, I had to think about it for a
couple of days. I decided that while I’m very happy for this book to
get published—because that means money will finally go to Marvelman’s
creator, Mick Anglo, and to his wife. Mick is very, very old, and his
wife, I believe, is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The actual Marvelman
story is such a grim and ugly one that I would probably rather that the
work was published without my name on it, and that all of the money
went to Mick. The decision about my name was largely based upon my
history with Marvel—my desire to really have nothing to do with them,
and my increasing desire to have nothing to do with the American comics
industry. I mean, they’re probably are enough books out there with my
name on them to keep the comics industry afloat for a little bit
longer. I left a message to that effect with Neil. I’ve since heard
back from the lawyer upon another issue, and he said that he was
certain that would be the case—that Marvel would accede to my request.
That looks like the way it will be emerging. And, Neil will be able to
finish his Marvelman story because he has a completely different
relationship with Marvel than I have with them—or rather, don’t have.
The main thing is that I will feel happy to know that Mick Anglo is
finally getting the recompense he so richly deserves. And, I will have
distanced myself from a lot of the deceit and ugliness that surrounded
the relaunching of Marvelman as a character.

I can see that, sort of, that Marvel is probably the logical comic
company, in that they are the only people who could publish it under
the name Marvelman without getting a lot of legal trouble from
Marvel themselves. That seems to be the situation. My initial problems
with Marvel started when they were refusing to allow the publication of
Marvelman—even under the generic title of “Kimota.” They were
very heavy-handed about the entire thing, especially since Marvelman
had been copyrighted in 1953, which, according to the no-doubt
antiquated calendar that we still use over here, was several years
before 1961, when, I believe, Marvel copyrighted their name in America.
So, it seemed to me to be just bullying at the time. That was what led me to state that I didn’t want to work for Marvel,
and they haven’t really done anything to change my opinion of them
since. So, that’s why it seems to just be the neatest solution—to let
them publish it so that Mick gets the money, but that my name’s not on
it.

So that’s good news then! Moore goes into more detail in the interview, he discusses the origins of his ideas for reinventing the character (MAD Magazine? Huh?) and also has some not-so-kind words about Dez Skinn. Interestingly, Moore implies that Neil Gaiman, his successor on the character, would be continuing his and Mark Buckingham’s story at Marvel. Let’s hope this is all proves out.

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Posted originally: 2009-09-04 14:05:59