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Miracleman is an incredibly powerful and controversial superhero who’s now joining the Marvel Universe, but might be too much for the MCU.
Although his name might suggest otherwise, Marvelman/Miracleman has never been a part of the Marvel Universe. In fact, he’s only been owned by the company for under a decade, but things will soon be heating up for the character who was once a British ripoff of a Golden Age DC/Fawcett hero.
Miracleman is an incredibly powerful and controversial superhero who’s now officially joining the Marvel Universe, but he might be a bit too much for the MCU, especially if he will appear in a manner similar to the way he was depicted by Alan Moore.
Who is Miracleman/Marvelman?
The hero once known as Marvelman debuted, strangely enough, in Marvelman #25 and was created by British writer/artist Mick Anglo. The reason for this odd numbering was that his book had originally just been black and white reprints of Fawcett Comics’ Captain Marvel comic book in the UK. Once these books were no longer published in America, Anglo simply rewrote Billy Batson and company into new characters: Marvelman, Kid Marvelman and Young Marvelman. These happy go lucky superheroes engaged in all the silliness of the Silver Age, and mostly fought against the machinations of mad scientist and Doctor Sivana stand-in, Emil Gargunza.
In 1982, the character underwent a dark transformation under the pen of Alan Moore, who rebooted him for the anthology series Warrior. Micky Moran was now the adult Michael Moran, who had forgotten his past as Marvelman (eventually renamed Miracleman to avoid any legal issues with Marvel Comics). Eventually rediscovering his powers and finding out that his Silver Age history was a lie, the character was featured in dark and subversive stories that deconstructed superhero fiction far more than Moore’s later series, Watchmen.
What Are Miracleman’s Powers?
Moran’s powers as Miracleman were given to him by a supposed “space wizard,” in an obvious analogue to the wizard Shazam. Being in the Captain Marvel/Superman mold, his powers are pretty basic as far as “flying tank” characters go. These abilities include superhuman strength, flight, superhuman senses, durability and endurance, mental powers, and energy blasts. In terms of the Marvel Universe, he’s definitely in a similar weight class to cosmic level heroes such as Thor.
In the Alan Moore reboot, it was discovered that the “alien magic” actually was part of an experiment by the government, and it wasn’t as simple as Michael “becoming” Miracleman. In actuality, his mortal human body would literally switch places with a formally contained superhuman body. The transformation was activated by a code word, which in the case of the Miracleman family was “kimota.” This word, a backwards misspelling of atomic, is again a reference to the original Captain Marvel and the word “shazam.” Ironically, despite his being based on what is now DC’s Captain Marvel, his costume is quite similar to the Marvel character of the same name. The Alan Moore retcon of a contained alien body also mirrored a set-up briefly shared between Captain Marvel and Rick Jones.
Miracleman’s main weakness is that others of similar strength can hurt him, quite severely in the case of the evil Kid Miracleman. His human form is also still a mortal man, with damage sustained in this form not healing after he transforms into his superpowered alter ego. Likewise, severe enough attacks can cause him to burn out the energy of his Miracleman form and suffer from amnesia, as was the case when he initially forgot his own life story.
Could Miracleman Show Up in the MCU?
Now that he’s a part of the Marvel Universe (in some way or another), it’s possible that Miracleman could join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well. There are a few things holding this idea back, however. For one, Miracleman, at least the more popular Alan Moore version, is an incredibly dark character whose very existence is the opposite of the relatively lighthearted MCU. The character honestly wouldn’t be able to be done justice by interacting with or joining the MCU, and he would be better used in his own universe completely separate from any other Marvel movie world.
Likewise, he’d make the potential introduction of The Sentry even more of an issue. The Sentry, who is himself essentially a ripoff of Miracleman, is already a character who might be too dark for the MCU. To have him sharing the screen with a character who’s both more controversial and yet also much more well-received would certainly be problematic at the very least. Time will tell if Marvel will ever throw Michael Moran into the world of live-action movies, especially since his impact on the Marvel comic book universe has yet to truly unfold.
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