Pádraig Ó Méalóid continues his look at the history of Marvelman over at the Beat, covering the years between the original strips and Alan Moore’s revival, and makes a surprising suggestion:
There is reason to suspect that Mick Anglo might have believed he was the rightful owner of the copyright on Marvelman. In the mid-seventies he wrote a book called Nostalgia: Spotlight on the Fifties. The last chapter in the book was called The Age of Marvelman, and this was accompanied by a reproduction of a page from Young Marvelman #38. Along the edge of one panel on this page is written ‘Mick Anglo Ltd – ©’ in Anglo’s own handwriting. The thing is, this copyright notice doesn’t appear in the original issue when it appeared in 1954. There is a standard copyright notice on the inside front cover of that comic, as there was on all issues of Marvelman and Young Marvelman, saying ‘All stories and illustrations are the copyright of the publishers,’ that publisher being explicitly stated as Miller… Either way, however, adding a notice claiming copyright to a reproduction of previously published work probably doesn’t add up to actually owning that copyright, and of course it is always possible that he was only claiming copyright in the art, rather than in the character himself, although this kind of detailed subdivision of rights, whilst commonplace today, might not really have been prevalent at that time.
If Anglo didn’t own the rights to the character, what did Marvel actually buy back in 2009?
March 4th, 2013 at 1:22 pm
“If Anglo didn’t own the rights to the character, what did Marvel actually buy back in 2009?”
A brief burst of PR.
March 4th, 2013 at 1:40 pm
I was under the impression the rights were actually worked out in the Gaiman v. McFarlane case, and that Anglo still came out on top.
March 4th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
really, aside from parts of the alan moore era, which is one of those things where people remember the really good parts and have erased from their memories the bad ones, who really cares? it’s a superman knockoff via the original superman knockoff. anything a creator would want to do with him can be done with any number of characters or a new character.
March 5th, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Clearly this is new ground you’re breaking or a feature that was catching mold on the hard drive for a few years?
March 6th, 2013 at 1:03 am
might not really have been prevalent at that time.