Name: How Marvelman Changed Superheroes
Uploaded: 2026-02-02T17:00:28.000Z
Duration: 7 min 55 s
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It starts, as most things do in comics, with Superman.

In 1938, Action Comics 1 introduced the World to a new kind of hero and a new genre.

And the success of that naturally prompted others to create their own superheroes.

One of these others was Fawcett comics, who in 1939 created a character called Captain Marvel.

He was strong like Superman, and fast, and his alter ego was a reporter.

Captain Marvel's alter ego, unlike Clark Kent, was a child, Bill Batson, who, when he spoke the magic word Shazam.

Magically transformed into an adult superhuman.

Captain Marvel went on to become the most popular superhero of the 1940s, his comics outselling even Superman.

But in 1941, Superman's publisher, National Comics, later called DC Comics, sued Fawcett, claiming that Captain Marvel infringed on their copyright by being based too closely on their heroes.

Whether that's really true is for you to decide.

But regardless, the litigation dragged on for 12 years and ultimately resulted in Fawcett settling with DC and agreeing to completely cease publication of Captain Marvel Comics in 1953, before shuttering its entire comics division.

Meanwhile, in the UK, a small publisher called L.

Miller and son had been making money by reprinting the Fawcett Captain Marvel Comics for a British audience.

But with the result of DC's lawsuit in 53, they suddenly without any new material.

They created their own version of Captain Marvel, completely overhauling the name to Marvel Man.

Captain Marvel Jr became young Marvel Man.

With writer Mick Anglo at the helm, Elle, Miller and son had success for nearly a decade.

Then in 1959, Britain lifted the ban on imports of American comics.

And the black and white Marvel man just couldn't compete with the bright colors of the Silver Age.

In 63, Anglo's Marvel man run ended, and Elle, Miller and son closed its doors, too.

History became legend, legend became Myth.

And for 20 years, Marvel man passed out of all knowledge.

Until, when chance came, it ensnared a new writer.

Almost 20 years later, in 1982, Dez Skinn decided to revive Marvel man for his new comics anthology, Warrior.

And settled on a young writer named Alan Moore to do it.

What resulted changed superhero comics and superheroes forever.

You can tell from the first few pages that this Marvel man is radically different from his previous incarnation.

He's A disheveled man of middle age, still a reporter, but financially insecure.

And most importantly, he has no memory of ever being a superhero, Though he is having some strange dreams at a hijacking a few panels later, Moran discovers the triggering word kitoma and explodes into Marvel Man.

Suddenly remembering the history of his heroic exploits, he flies home to tell his wife who he really is, and

She points out that his backstory, essentially the basis of all superheroes, where he and his friends fight colorful villains on a regular basis, is ridiculous.

And if it is true, how come nobody remembers it?

Moore reveals that the entire history of Marvel man is a lie.

He and his super friends were actually created in a lab with alien technology by a scientist who was a murderer and a rapist and.

And a former Nazi in order to give the British government a superior weapon to the atomic bomb.

Their memories were dream fantasies programmed to test and control them.

Why did Moore retcon the entire Marvel man story?

Well, in order to pose the question that he actually wants to explore.

What if superhumans existed in the real world?

Realism in superhero stories is something we're very familiar with today.

In fact, it's something we sort of demand.

We want our heroes to have flaws, emotional depth.

We want our villains to be, if not sympathetic, then at least plausibly motivated.

We want the actions of both to have consequences.

We want that world, in other words, to resemble our own, common as it is today.

Moore was really the first to explore these ideas comprehensively, and

And the answers to the questions he asked were not always pretty.

What Moore suggests in Marvel man is that power changes the world irreversibly.

And if great power was embodied in individuals, those beings would inevitably look on the rest of us as we look on animals.

They would not be subject to our laws or even our morality.

And if they wished to be cruel, their cruelty would be catastrophic.

As we would be insects to them, they would be gods to us.

We will never grasp their hopes, their despair.

We will never know the destiny that howls in their hearts, never know their pain, their love, their almost sexual hatred.

We are only human, and perhaps we will be the less for that.

It's clear that, quote unquote, real superhumans wouldn't just fight crime like they do in the old comics.

It's clear that their battles would result in death and destruction.

In modern comics, those things are often depicted but after the fight is over and the havoc is wreaked, things usually go back to something approximating normal.

For Moore, the presence of superheroes signifies a more fundamental change.

Marvel man doesn't switch back to Mickey Moran.

Once his nemesis is defeated, he gives up the weak Moran forever.

The superheroes work together to alter every aspect of of life on earth.

They abolish money, they bring back the dead, they create new superhumans.

Power like that doesn't restore balance to the world, it makes a new one.

Marvel man, now called Miracle man, thanks to more legal stuff.

It's not worth it to get into is not perfect.

Moore would go on to treat these ideas about superheroes more elegantly in Watchmen, but

this comic is a watershed and still able to shock and stimulate even after so many copycats have desensitized us to its ideas.

Whether these themes have any juice left in them after almost 40 years is a question for another video.

Regardless, it's worth it to go back and see how Alan Moore brought superheroes into the modern age.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching.

I hope you're safe and well in this crazy, absolutely crazy time.

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